ovian completely willing to talk about his _sargh_. On
the last day of the voyage they managed to be alone for a time without
the presence of Sal Karone.

Marthasa shook his head in answer to Cameron's question. "No, the
_sargh_ is not a slave--not in the sense I believe you mean it. None of
the Ids are. It's a matter of religion with them to be attached to us
the way they are. They have some incomprehensible belief that their
existence is of no value unless they are serving their fellow beings.
Since that means _all_ of them they can't be satisfied by serving each
other so they have to pick on some other race.

"I don't recall when they first showed up in the Nucleus, but it's been
many generations ago. There've been Ids in my family for a half dozen
generations anyway."

"They had space flight, so they came under their own power?" Cameron
asked incredulously.

"No. Nothing like that. You can't imagine _them_ building spaceships can
you? They migrated at first as lowest-class passengers on the commercial
lines. Nobody knows just where they came from. They don't even know
their home worlds. At first we tried to persuade them to go somewhere
else, but then we saw how useful they could be with their fanatic belief
in servitude.

"At present there is probably no family in the Nucleus that doesn't have
at least one Id _sargh_. Many of us have one for every member of the
family." Marthasa paused. The tone of his voice changed. "When you've
had one almost all your life as I've had Sal Karone it--well, it does
something to you."

"What do you mean?" Cameron asked cautiously.

"Consider the situation from Sal Karone's point of view. He has no life
whatever that is his own. His whole purpose is to give me companionship
and satisfy my requirements. And I don't have to force him in any way.
It's all voluntary. He's free to leave, even, any time he wants to. But
I'm certain he never will."

"Why do you feel so sure of this?"

"It's hard to explain. I feel as if I've become so much a part of him
that he couldn't survive alone any more. He's the one who's made it that
way, not me. I have become indispensable to his existence. That's the
way I explain it to myself. Most of my friends agree that this is about
right."

"It's rather difficult to understand a relationship like that--unless
you put it in terms I am familiar with on Earth."

"Yes--? What would it be called among your people?"

"When a man so devotes his life