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. The last few moments of the quest had been so bad that the old man doubted his judgment in trying to dig out the source of the trouble.
Well, let's see . . . what had he found out?
The boy was born free. But he had always been sure of that.
The boys native language was System English, spoken with an accent Baslim could not place; it had been blurred by baby speech. That placed him inside the Terran Hegemony; it was even possible (though not likely) that the boy had been born on Earth. That was a surprise; he had thought the boy's native language was Interlingua, since he spoke it better than he did the other three he knew.
What else? Well, the boy's parents were certainly dead, if the confused and terror-ridden memory he had pried out of the boy's skull could be trusted. He had been unable to dig out their family name nor any way of identifying them -- they were just "Papa" and "Mama" -- so Baslim gave up a half-formed plan of trying to get word to relatives of the boy.
Well, now to make this ordeal he had put the lad through worth the cost --
"Thorby?"
The boy moaned and stirred. "Yes, Pop?"
"You are asleep. You won't wake up until I tell you to."
"I won't wake up until you tell me to."
"When I tell you, you will wake at once. You will feel fine and you won't remember anything we've talked about."
"Yes, Pop."
"You will forget
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