The development of telepathic projection techniques was held back for almost a century by the powerful Grinder Psycho-conglomerate, which dominated all psychological and social sciences until the last of the Orthodox Grinderian Karismatics was assassinated in 2064. Perhaps the most obstructive of all the Grinderian Postulates was the Fourth, which claimed that no human being could be harmed by the thoughts or emotions of any other human being. Humankind is indeed fortunate that this dangerous and seductive movement was at last brought to a halt, although no one can admire the violent act which was the first step toward its downfall.
—Encyclopedia Galactica Fifth Edition, Vol. IV, p. 1421
For a while it had appeared that the liner Lazyday would never dock on Phoenix-One. Coyote had lost all count of the waiting orbits the ship had been obliged to maintain, and none of the coy placating techniques used by the liner staff had helped his bad temper in the slightest. He took no pleasure in seeing twenty-year-old threedies about intrepid colonists beating back helpless indigenous wildlife. Nor did he feel that heavily watered drinks served in edible mint-flavored tubes, or low-grade marijuana spiked with nutmeg, represented any kind of peak experience. There had been a bearable half-hour when one of the copilots had come to share his seat and tell him hair-raising stories about her early days on the Greyhound Rockets, but that had only made the boredom more painful when she moved on to the next passenger across the aisle.
By the time docking actually took place, he was cross and tired and disgusted. His head ached. His skin itched under the unaccustomed pseudo-tattoos. He was tired of the stares he was getting from the other passengers when they realized that they were sharing their liner with a real live Student. A furious baby had vomited down his back, bringing on a solicitous scrubbing down with ice water and Spotnomore by its embarrassed father.
He no longer saw himself, as the liner finally berthed, as the steely-eyed, red-bearded, muscle-bound secret agent off to do daring derring-do. He just wanted to go home to his daughter and help her water her plants, and maybe buy her a new gaza hound just because he had sworn that two such creatures was his limit.
He stumbled down the landing-ramp, muttering to himself and wondering what shape the next foul-up would take in this so-called mission. For example, there could be a note waiting to tell him that instead of his flyer being sent back from Harvard on automatic, per his instructions, it had mistakenly been tucked in with the cargo for a shipment to one of the Third Galaxy factories. For example, there could—
And then he saw the foul-up, right there before his eyes, and stopped worrying about the other possibilities. It was a vision of ... something. Not loveliness. It stood well over six feet tall, had enough shoulders for two normal people, sported a wasp waist and black hair flowing down its back, and it had great bulging lumps all over it that had been, long ago perhaps, human muscles. And it was clearly waiting for him.
A Jock, bigawd. A fathering Jock. And a Student Jock, at that, which was something he hadn't known existed. It was done up in multicolored stars and pinwheels, and its testicles were a spectacular display all by themselves, what with the feathers, and the Catherine wheels, and the silver-and-gold ruffles ... Coyote went over to the side of the landing ramp, where he was in everybody's way, leaned on the ramp's invisible guard-rails, and stared fixedly off into the distance while the Student waved wildly. Maybe it would go away?
"Citizen," said the robostew at his elbow, "you are holding up the disembarkment of this flight. If you are ill, will you please signal by saying aloud I AM ILL. If you are not ill, will you please move on. Thank you, Citizen."
Coyote glared down at the top of the poor little thing, all dented plastic and burnt-out lights and punched-in speakers, and he just hadn't the heart to give it any more trouble. He moved on down the ramp, determined to charge right past the waving Student and on into the night, and then he changed his mind.
As he would have changed his mind about stopping if a brick wall had suddenly bumped up against his chest. He looked straight at the creature, his eyes level with its massive nose, and sighed.
"Citizen Jones," said the Student, "I have a message for you."
"So I assumed," said Coyote. He was doing Weary Secret Agent Assumes Sardonic Tone With Underling. When tired, he found this sort of capital-letter self-programming one of the better ways of staying on his feet and not disgracing himself.
"A message from Dean O'Halloran, Multiversity Two. She's gone to a lot of trouble to get it to you, Citizen."
"Well?"
"Well, what, Citizen?"
This was a Student? This was a member of the intellectual elite of the universe, selected by years of painstaking observation and batteries of subtle tests? Still crammed flesh-to-flesh with the young man, Coyote did the best he could to look flabbergasted, and the Student—finally—turned red under the stars and spangles and backed off.
"I beg your pardon, Citizen Jones," he said. "I was distracted by all the noise."
Coyote said nothing at all. Weary Secret Agent Signifies Mute Contempt For Underling.
"The message," said the Student, "is that Drussa Silver is not on Freeway at this time and won't be there for several weeks. Dean O'Halloran wanted to be sure you would not waste time going there after her."
Coyote took a deep breath, shoved past the Student to a nearby plastibench, sat down firmly, and said, "Oh, putrescence!" as clearly and vigorously as he could manage in his current state of exhaustion. "Oh, flowering putrescence!" he added for good measure.
"I am sorry," said the Student, sitting down beside him. The plastibench creaked alarmingly, and Coyote braced himself against its imminent collapse.
"What is your major, anyway?" he asked the Jock.
"Music, Citizen."
"Music?"
"Yes, Citizen. I'm a harpist."
"A what?"
The Student looked miserable, and dogged, and said, "Well, I am, you know. I play a harp. I play it very well, I compose for it, I am at the head of my classes."
Coyote was genuinely curious now, and he asked gently, "When did they let you know that you were going to be a Student?"
"Late. Very late."
"I see."
"See here, Citizen Jones, I really am sorry. They tell me you've been going around up there for hours. And it must be rotten to get down here, finally, and find out that your plans are all fouled up."
"It's not your fault," said Coyote grudgingly. "It would have been even worse if I'd gone on from here to Freeway and then found out the Silver wasn't there."
"Your thesis depends on direct observation of Citizen Silver, then?" said the young man, and Coyote nodded gravely.
"Oh yes," he said. "Yes, indeed. And I could do with some more information. Did the Dean tell you where Citizen Silver is, if she's not on Freeway? Or has she ascended to the skies, to fall to earth we know not where ... or something." He was overtired. He was definitely overtired.
"She has gone, I understand, with a group of Shavvies, on a missionary expedition to Galoralon."
"Oh, no." Coyote leaned back against the hood of the bench and closed his eyes.
"I know how you must feel," said the Student softly.
"No, you don't."
"I do," he insisted. "Everybody knows about Galoralon."
Coyote opened his eyes. "Why," he asked, "why would she want to go there, on a missionary or any other kind of expedition? Can you tell me that? It's the nether asshole of the universe, Galoralon. It's the Pesthole Expert's Pesthole. Even the bugs on Galoralon wish they could leave ... not to mention the slime molds."
"Perhaps she felt that the people of Galoralon really needed her help, Citizen."
"Perhaps. Perhaps she is mad, as well as a fake." He closed his eyes again, and contemplated the blackness there, shot now and again by a gloating little yellow thing that slid across his eyeball and out of sight.
"Is she a fake, Citizen Jones?"
Coyote's eyes snapped open, and he glared at the Student.
"Well of course she is," he said crossly. "That's a ridiculous question."
"Well," said the Student, "Dean O'Halloran does not agree that she is a fake."
Oops. A small warning bell managed to get past the fog in Coyote's mind and recall to his attention the fact that one does not—repeat does not—attempt to alter the special kind of trust a Student usually has for Deans. It was just that Citizen O'Halloran had seemed so spectacularly pragmatic.
"Dean O'Halloran," he said musingly, watching the Student's face, "is a fine, intelligent woman. A bit behind on her cosmetic injections, perhaps, a bit too eager to race up and down halls and in and out the windows, but a fine, intelligent woman nonetheless. Not the sort to be taken in by a bag of cheap psi-tricks."
The Student's face assumed the thunderclouded aspect he was anticipating, and Coyote stood up immediately, obliging the young man to occupy himself in keeping the plastibench from falling over with him.
"Do you suppose I can get a visa for Galoralon?" Coyote asked, changing the subject.
The Student snickered. "I expect they pay people to visit Galoralon," he said. "I'll bet you can get visas for Galoralon out of the comsets, Citizen."
He turned out to be right. The official only grinned when asked about the visa, whipped out a stamp whose shining condition showed the rareness of its use, stamped Coyote's unipass with a resounding thwack, and stood there smirking at him.
"Have a pleasant visit," said the official, and Coyote smirked back.
"May your mother's breasts fall off," he said pleasantly.
He retrieved his luggage from the ejectislot in the far wall, disentangled himself from the Student, and went to the nearest hertz to rent a flyer. He was through with commercial flights, and the Service could bloody well pick up the tab for the rental. Enough was enough.
"You're leaving at once, Citizen?" carolled the rental robot.
"Certainly not," snapped Coyote. "I am going to a good hostel. I am going to have the most expensive dinner obtainable on Phoenix-One. I am going to buy six bottles of the best beer this place has got. And then I am going to sleep for twelve hours. And then I am going to Galoralon."
"How long," asked the robot primly, "will this program take, Citizen?"
"Have the flyer fueled and ready to go at ten o'clock tomorrow morning," Coyote said. "After breakfast. A leisurely breakfast."
"Very good, Citizen Student."
Very good, Citizen Student? And just who had paid for the fancy programming that enabled this machine to recognize him as a Student? Waste! Conspicuous waste! Coyote restrained, the impulse to kick its pedestal, and contented himself with patting it on its little pointed head.
WELCOME TO GALORALON! said the sign.
In letters sixteen feet tall. They were not, unfortunately, either tall enough or thick enough to hide the view, which went on forever. Flat. Flat as Kanzas, as the saying went. Everything was pale green as far as the eye could see, and that was incredibly far. Sinkholes and potholes and an occasional drainage ditch. Pale green thickets and pale green trees, from which dangled pale green vines and pale green snakes. Over pale green mud, through which bubbles rose from time to time with a soft pop. And none of this green was the pale green of tender April buds, either; it was a shade more properly associated with medical textbooks.
Pheew.
Coyote landed the flyer on the pad, and congratulated himself when it didn't sink into the slime. They did not call Galoralon "The Swamp Planet'' as a joke; they had excellent reasons. It was almost all swamp, and where it was not swamp it was bare tundra with a kind of scruffy gray grass. It was the kind of place that matched a really bad hangover perfectly. It had four continents, each more revolting than the last, and a total population of just over eleven million miserable people. Most of them lived on the continent of Krausse, where a city of sorts had been built on tundra chunks and government-issue floaters, along with a small landing-port. The city, predictably, was called Krausseburg, and its entire complement of flat, boxy structures stretched away before Coyote's eyes, perched on stilts above the ground, for when the swamps rose in the fall.
They came out to meet him, which he had not expected, and there were five of them, also unexpected.
"Citizen Coyote Jones?" said one of them.
"Right," said Coyote, and before he could get out another word—to point out, for example, that his name had three syllables, not two—they had a restraining net over him.
"You are under arrest," said the short fat one who appeared to be in charge. Another one reached into the flyer and pulled out the satchel and the guitar case and took off with them in the general direction of the port building. The others poked him rudely in the back and shoulders.
"Move it!" they said in chorus.
Coyote set his feet firmly and stood as still as possible, since the net would tighten automatically in response to anything remotely like a struggle.
"Just a minute," he said. "You've made a mistake. I realize I'm somewhat ... unusually ... dressed, Citizens, but I am in fact a federal agent on a very important mission, and if you'll just let me get to my credentials—"
"Shut up, Citizen Jones," said the fat one. "We are quite aware that you are a TGIS man. You make a lousy Student."
"In that case—"
The man's voice rose to a shrill and ear-puncturing scream. "And we are sick and tired of the continual efforts of the Tri-Galactic Intelligence Service to interfere in the internal affairs of Galoralon!"
"But—"
"And we are aware, Citizen, that you come to stir up revolution among our nomadic peoples and cause them to rise against our benevolent government, which—the Light knows—has nothing but their best interests at heart."
"I just—"
The man shook a thick fist in Coyote's face and jerked at the restraining net until it tightened enough to satisfy him.
"Enough!" he screamed. "We have the evidence, Citizen Jones! We know what we are talking about! Enough!"
He snapped his fingers, there was a flicker of cold at the back of Coyote's neck, and everything went ... in the best secret-agent tradition ... black.
Everything Went Black.
When he came to, he was in a small room, sitting in a chair facing the five of them. Plus a woman in the uniform of a Federation Outpost Marshal. His tattoos were all in place, the restraining net was gone, and his mouth tasted of swamp gas.
"Citizen Jones," asked the Marshal courteously, "are you sufficiently awake to view the evidence against you?"
"I need some air," said Coyote crossly, "You apparently include injections of swampwater in your hospitable welcomes to this garden planet."
The Marshal nodded to the others. "We'll go out on the balcony," she said. "It's logical that he should feel the need of fresh air. Citizen Jones, do not try to escape, or we will be forced to give you another of those ... swampwater ... injections."
"I wouldn't think of it, Citizen Marshal," Coyote cooed. "Besides, I wouldn't want to miss the view from your balcony. What is it, waterfalls?"
It was of course tundra, bordered by swamp, and a long line of square lumpy dwellings and buildings strung out along a pale green road, but they said nothing. No doubt if you were a Citizen of Galoralon, you quickly became immune to slurs on your homeworld's physical beauty.
"Please sit down, Citizen Jones," said the Marshal. "And you, Citizens."
"May I speak, Citizen Marshal?" demanded Coyote.
"Offworld dog, be silent!" bellowed one of the men, and Coyote looked at him in genuine astonishment. Even in the antiquated threedies he'd seen while waiting in the landing pattern for Phoenix-One, there'd been nobody with the nerve to say "offworld dog."
"It is you who will be silent, Citizen Hupp," said the Marshal crisply. "The offworld Citizen may speak."
"I would like to know precisely what I'm charged with," said Coyote, "and on what ridiculous basis, and then I would like to get on with my mission."
"The charge," she told him, "is inciting revolution. The basis is anything but ridiculous."
She pointed to the man on her right, saying, "Evidence, please, Gordeyn," and the man slapped a flat packet smartly into her outstretched hand.
"This was found hidden inside the lining of your guitar case, Citizen Jones," said the Marshal. "Examine it, please."
He did, shaking the contents out and shuffling through them rapidly. It was an appallingly amateur array of junk. The kind of thing you might get if you sent off for a "Junior Secret Agent Kit." There was a microcassette labeled "Nomads of the Swamps, Arise Against Your Tormentors!" There was a cheap machine for making duplicates of the cassette. There were negatives of some revolutionary posters. There was a bad map of the swamps of Krausse, there was a detailed—and pitiful—scenario laying out his alleged plans for fomenting this revolution. And there was a packet of lapel buttons reading WHIP INIQUITY NOW.
Coyote stared mournfully at this assortment of trivia, and then at the Marshal, who informed him that the case seemed swamp-gas tight to her.
"At this very moment," said Citizen Hupp ominously from his Marshal's side, tugging at the lapels of his bolero, "the nomadic peoples of Krausse, some half a million strong, are gathering in the swamps that encircle this beautiful city." He waved his arms in an enormous circle. "At this very moment," he repeated, "they come by the hundreds of thousands to celebrate their traditional Festival of the Seventh Year. And if we had not learned of the wicked, vicious, despicable plot against us, if we had not, I say, come to find out, by the merest, the most fortuitous chance, that—"
Coyote waited for an open space to come along in the man's tirade, and then he asked casually, "Is an offworld woman named Drussa Silver leading this horde of nomads, by any chance?"
Hupp's completely blank expression provided him the answer he had expected, and the rest of the man's ravings were drowned out by the pounding of blood in his ears.
In the first place, he'd been had. Nobody but good old Dean Shandalynne O'Halloran, his friendly neighborhood briefer, with her abstracts and her tattoos and her expert advice about how simple everything would be, had sufficient power to pull off a thing like this. He had been royally, imperially, pontifically had. And now he was supposed to be dragged off to jail, where he would sit for months, if he was lucky, and years, if he wasn't. While the TGIS tried to negotiate diplomatically for his release, all the while denying that they had ever heard of him. He was supposed to be pretty helpless, of course, so far as the Dean was concerned, since she had no knowledge of the particular skill that had gotten him stuck in TGIS to begin with.
In the second place, somebody had taken a laser, or a knife—god-forbid-and-fend, a knife!—or who knew?—on this place, perhaps a pointed stick?—and had torn up his guitar case. Coyote didn't like that. That guitar case was a museum piece, an irreplaceable antique lavender-plush-lined museum piece, and while he didn't mind people looking at it, or touching it, the thought of somebody slashing into its heart and hiding things there made his beard stand on end. The idea of somebody slashing in there to get the things back out was unbearable.
And in the third—and most important—place, his pride had been done an injury from which he was not sure it would recover. The idea that he, Coyote Jones, strongest projective telepath in three galaxies, a man able to control rioting thousands at a distance of damn near a mile, had come here to start a revolution with lapel buttons! Why not say he'd planned next to fly out over the swamps dropping paper leaflets out the window in little plastic envelopes? It was past bearing, and he didn't intend to bear it.
If he had not been so totally enraged, he might have thought twice about what he did next. If he had not just happened to know that the administration of Galoralon was indeed corrupt and wicked and soundly deserving of overthrow, he might have hesitated. If he had not been someone who firmly believed that not all good things must be totally devoid of laughter, he might have waited a bit. But none of those factors happened to be relevant here, and he didn't consider them for a second.
Instead, he leaned forward a little, took a deep breath, and projected. At full strength, in all directions, and with the greatest of joy:
PEOPLE OF GALORALON!
PEOPLE OF THE PALE GREEN SWAMPS!
PEOPLE OF THE TWINING SNAKES, LIMPID AMONG THE TREES!
FLOWER OF THE GALORALON OUTLANDS, OH BEARERS OF DESTINY, I CALL ON YOU!
THE TIME HAS COME ... TO THROW OFF THE CHAINS OF OPPRESSION!
THE TIME HAS COME ... TO RISE AGAINST YOUR WICKED MASTERS!
HOW LONG, O PEOPLE OF THE MIRE AND OF THE SCENTED MIASMAS, WILL YOU TOLERATE THE BRUTAL FOOLS WHOSE HEELS ARE SET UPON YOUR PROSTRATE THROATS? HOW LONG, HOW LONG? ARE YOU HUMAN BEINGS, OR ARE YOU SLIME MOLDS?
COME DOWN INTO THE CITY, O NOBLE PEOPLE OF THE SWAMPS, AND CUT DOWN THE DOGS WHO DARE TO SIT IN THE SEATS OF GOVERNMENT THAT ARE RIGHTFULLY YOURS AND YOURS ALONE! HAVE NO FEAR, THERE ARE ONLY A HANDFUL OF THEM!
O PEOPLE OF GALORALON, O NOBLE NOMAD PEOPLE, ARISE!
THE PRESIDENT IS A FOOL AND A WEAKLING, DRUNK HALF THE TIME AND DRUGGED THE REST, HE CANNOT STAND AGAINST YOU! HIS MEN ARE FOOLS AND WEAKLINGS LIKE HIM, COME FORWARD AND CUT THEM DOWN!
A SWAMP-NOMAD SHALL SIT IN THE PRESIDENT'S CHAIR AND WRITE AT THE PRESIDENT'S DESK! HURRAH!
A SWAMP-NOMAD SHALL WEAR THE ELEVEN-POINTED STAR OF JUSTICE AND THE GRAY RIBBON OF IMPERIAL PURITY! HURRAH!
O NOBLE PEOPLE, O NOBLE NOMADS, HARKEN TO ME!
ETC., ETC.
He had a wonderful time. The longer it went on, the more he warmed to it, and by the time the first wave of them came over the balcony rail, he was really enjoying himself. After all, he'd put down more riots than he could count, but this was the first one he'd ever started.
He went up on the roof to avoid the crush, and stuck around long enough, projecting encouraging words and sustaining songs, to see the President being carried away trussed up in vines like a pig, and a pallid greenish nomad sitting behind the Presidential desk with a stylus in his hand, drafting a State-of-the-Planet Message. Then he headed for the port and his flyer, pausing only long enough to snatch up his satchel and his guitar. He left his mutilated guitar case behind.
The roar from the city behind him as he took off was a source of great satisfaction to him. He wished only that the Dean could hear it, too.