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you."
    "It's my pleasure to be of service," he
replied smoothly, sounding quite pleased with himself. As well he
ought to be from his point of view, I supposed; I'd never heard
Rapput thank anyone for anything until then! But that poor
woman—she might be jailed for years.
    Was it Rapput's fault? Li's? Or just maybe
mine?
    "You might want to take a few minutes,"
Rapput continued, "to explain to my nephews that from this moment
until we're at least one Jump from this star that they're to speak
to no one outside the family without my personal permission."
    "Of course, my lord!" Li replied. "I'll take
care of that immediately, even before examining the teaching
machines."
    "Perfect," Rapput agreed. "And with that,
good night."

9
     
    It was anything but a good night. Mr. Li
carefully explained to both Tim and I that we were to speak to no
one about anything. T hen he asked questions to make absolutely certain we both understood
fully. That all by itself was enough to creep us out. For the first
time I realized that we were about to be completely and totally
cut-off from practically the entire human race. Then we hit the
teaching machines for a little while.
    Sure enough, the academic stuff was all way
below our level; math was math wherever one went in the universe,
after all. Mr. Li set aside the arithmetic classes for the moment,
promising he knew some tricks that'd have us thinking in base
twelve in no time flat, a system which the Artemu had for some
reason adopted despite having five fingers and four toes. It scared
me to death, base twelve did! I doubted I’d ever learn to do
such weird math!
    Li chose to begin with a language lesson,
since all three of us were reasonably proficient already, and we
spent a pleasant hour listening to young, high-pitched voices ask
simple questions of their "Respected Instructor." This was all
straightforward; even some of the alien elements like having an
indicator light blink yellow for "wrong," red for "correct," and
orange for "somewhere in-between" was simple enough to figure out.
But the rest of it . . . Even our new tutor squinted at the screen,
baffled, as our virtual classmates lined up and placed their hands
on each other's heads at frequent intervals, and all of us fairly
slavered over the tantalizing glimpses we kept catching of what
appeared to be a basic, elementary school-type globe that sometimes
appeared in the background. The Artemu were almost completely
unforthcoming with information about their homeworld, or for that
matter the rest of the universe that still lay locked away from us.
Such information was to be doled out only on an as-needed or
as-earned basis, and sadly we men of Earth hadn't accomplished much
in either category yet.
    Then it was bedtime. Mr. Li shut off the
teaching machine and ushered us back to our rooms. "My door," he
explained with a small smile, "will be unlocked. It will remain
unlocked every night from now on, until either you two are no
longer in my charge or have grown into men in your own right. Come
to me any time for any reason. I'll do everything within my power
to help and protect you, even unto the cost of my own life. Do you
understand me?"
    First Tim nodded, then I did too. "You . .
." I began, not sure how to phrase things. "In the living room back
home . . ."
    He held up his hand palm outward in a "stop"
gesture. Then he cupped his ears and pointed at the walls.
    Timothy nodded. "Privacy is so hard
to come by."
    Li smiled, his face seeming to glow.
"Another day, under other circumstances, perhaps we shall discuss
human-type living room issues. In the meantime, we've all had a
difficult, demanding day, and tomorrow looks no better." He yawned.
"In years to come we shall spend much of our time together on
exercise and physical development. Today, however, we can afford to
make an exception."
    I was absolutely exhausted. So was Tim,
apparently—he yawned just as I did.
    "Right," Li agreed with a nod. "As I said,
my door shall remain