The definition of the word "lie" has nothing to do with the word "truth," which is not its antonym. A sequence of words can be defined as a "truth" or as a "lie" only in terms of the degree to which it achieves the purpose for which it was intended.
—Manual of the Tri-Galactic Intelligence Service, p. 1.6
He was a man of some importance. He was called The Fish, for his coldness of blood. Chief of the Tri-Galactic Intelligence Service most of his adult life, he had at his disposal at all times three hundred fifty hand-picked operatives with very special skills, and a maintenance staff of two hundred live persons, seven thousand Fedrobots, and three Central-computer terminals.
He could order people killed. He could manipulate the internal affairs of entire countries. He could make the top officials of continents tremble, by a chance word casually dropped. It was therefore interesting that the arrival of a message saying that Citizen Dean Shandalynne O'Halloran of Multiversity Two was waiting to see him made him want to hide under his desk.
He had just decided to instruct the Amanuensis Mark IV to advise the Dean that he was out, when the din coming from his outer office reached a frightening intensity and the panic-button glowed red on his comset's office panel, throwing open the communicator to let him hear just what was really going on.
"Sir," said the voice of the Amanuensis, "the Citizen Dean wishes to advise—"
"The Citizen Dean wishes to advise be damned!" The Dean's bellow cut over the computer like a buzz saw whipping through standing grain. "Either you see me, now, Alvin Wythllewyn, or—"
The Fish did not wait to see what the alternative to his compliance was going to be, although he felt a certain natural curiosity. At the sound of his name, which had not been uttered or written inside or outside TGIS in at least twenty-five years, he went stark white and slammed the communicator stud, shouting, "Send her in! Send her in!"
The door slid soundlessly open, and the Dean came in, smiling. "I thought that would do it," she said.
"Unfair!" said The Fish bitterly. "Really unfair, Citizen Dean."
"You should be flattered," she pointed out, "that I remember your name. It's been better than thirty years since you were a Student of mine, Alvin, and I've seen many many hundreds come and go in that time."
The Fish glared at her and motioned to the antique chair that faced his desk.
"Do please sit down, Citizen Dean," he said. "Please."
Shandalynne O'Halloran looked the chair over from the back, and then she walked around it and looked at it from several other angles, and her mouth puckered, along with her eyebrows.
"That chair," she said, "was carefully chosen to make whoever sits in it miserable. The back is too low, so that you can't lean back without it striking you right over the kidneys. The arms slant up, so you can't rest your elbows without making your shoulders ache. The seat slants down so that you get cramps in your legs. That's not a chair, Alvin, it's a torture instrument. Is it electric, too?"
"That chair cost fifty-seven deca-credits," said The Fish. "It deserves respect for its age and its long and faithful service, however odd it may be otherwise."
The Dean chuckled. "You always were a sneaky man, Alvin," she said, "and I see that you have not changed your ways. Fortunately for me, however, I deal with sneaky little men all the time."
She opened the pocket of her tunic, took out a small flat packet of dark blue plastic, pulled a tiny silver plug in one corner, watched serenely through the soft hissing of air, and then sat in the resulting chair. Even for an inflatable, it was elegant. And very comfortable.
"Now then," she said. "I want to talk to you."
The Fish waited, and she leaned back in her chair and smiled at him, and she waited.
"What about?"
"About one Citizen Coyote Jones," she said promptly, "who I hear is one of your TGIS men, and who appeared on my doorstep a few days back sporting a conservative loincloth, a wooden guitar, a bright red beard, and a veritable cornucopia of official directives which can easily be summarized as follows: Give This Man Anything He Wants and Don't Ask Questions."
"Hmmmmmm," said The Fish.
"It took me some time to find out who his chief was," she said.
"I'm glad to hear that."
"It didn't take me very long."
"Hmmmmmm," said the Fish again, and flashed his beautiful white teeth.
"Now," the Dean went on, "when this personage arrived to see me, I was informed that he was to be assisted in masquerading as a Student, on his way to the planet Freeway to do a dissertation comparing the effects of the Maklunite religion on various cultures with the effects of the Shavvy religion on the culture of Freeway specifically. I was not told why, but was given to understand that the fate of the universe et cetera, et cetera, hung upon the success of his mission."
"That," observed The Fish, "was something of an overstatement."
"Oh?"
"Well ... it was important, but we will not actually crumble into the void if he fails."
"If he fails to what?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"I said, if he fails to what? What precisely is this poor crippled gentleman supposed to be doing?"
"Crippled?" The Fish registered, for once, genuine amazement.
"Certainly. Your man's mind-deaf—didn't you even know that?"
"Crippled ... " The Fish thought of a time when Coyote Jones had faced an advancing group of three hundred and ten tanks, each manned by a suicide squad of Haxxite warriors, each armed with a nuclear warhead, and had needed only thirteen seconds to convince the whole bunch to ride docilely around in circles until their fuel was exhausted. And then he thought of the concept of Coyote as a cripple, and snickered softly.
"Alvin, are you listening to me or not?"
The Fish jumped slightly, and leaned toward her attentively.
"Of course," he said.
"I have been asking you, Alvin, what the man's mission is. A simple question."
"And one that you surely understand I cannot answer."
"Nonsense."
"My dear Citizen Dean," protested The Fish, "you can't expect me to divulge to you a secret mission of extreme importance and delicacy with possible intergalactic repercussions that—"
"Then," snapped the Dean, "you can expect me to divulge to the press that I have been pressured into taking part in a fraud, passing off a TGIS man as a Student of Religion, and that my own important and delicate conscience will no longer allow me to remain silent about it all. In fact, at this very moment I feel the pressure to confess creeping over me, Alvin ... irresistibly."
"Would you really do that?" demanded The Fish, pained. "Have you no sense of the propriety of things?"
She faced him stonily, tapping the edge of his desk with one finger.
"I'll have you assassinated," he ventured. "A little drug in the night, as you sit studying by your window ... The headlines will read 'Mysterious Disappearance of Venerable Dean Baffles Authorities.' "
The Dean snorted. "You couldn't get away with it," she said contemptuously. "Assassinate all the heads of government you like, but you try assassinating me, Alvin, and it will be your disappearance that baffles the authorities."
The Fish thought it over, and decided she was probably right.
"The publicity would be terrible," he mused.
"Alvin!" she said. "Talk, and stop all this silly posturing!"
People did not talk to The Fish like that, and she knew it, but he had no opportunity to say any of the things that immediately occurred to him, because she was way ahead of him.
"Ah, Citizen Director," she sighed, all charm and feathers, "you must forgive the eccentricities of an aged academician, unaccustomed to dealing with the outside world."
"You would tell on us, though," said The Fish.
"In an instant."
The Fish made a mental note that future operations must not on any account involve Multiversity Deans, made a second note that whoever had suggested it this time was to be fired, and prepared to negotiate.
"May I ask what it is that has alarmed you so?" he asked, for beginners. "Did Citizen Jones insult you? Threaten you? Did you find his mission offensive to some personal principle?"
"Jones was ... diverted ... briefly from his mission," said the Dean, "and landed on Galoralon."
The Fish looked very surprised. "Really," he said.
"And," the Dean went on, "by some astonishing coincidence, only an hour after his landing, there was a revolution on Galoralon. Those who managed to flee report that the people of the swamps just spontaneously, with no warning at all, rose up and took over the government. 'As if inspired by a force outside themselves' was the phrase used in the threedies, as I recall."
"And?"
"And I don't believe in coincidences."
"Nor do I," said The Fish significantly.
"Which means?"
"The diversion," he said. "The so-called diversion."
"Well."
"Well, what?"
"I am quite willing to admit that I had something to do with that."
"That does not surprise me."
"And I am also quite willing to admit that it didn't work. Your TGIS man was supposed to be at this moment languishing in a Galoralon jail, inhaling the swamp gases and counting off the days on his cell wall with little drops of his blood, obtained by biting his thumb each morning."
"A certain element of delay, eh, Citizen Dean?"
"Precisely."
"And this 'cripple' managed to escape unscathed?"
"Indeed he did," said the Dean bitterly. "Right on to Freeway, with not even a full day lost."
"Hmmmmm."
"It comes of doing things without proper motivation," said the Dean.
"Explain, please?"
"It comes, Alvin, of having delayed your Citizen Jones—or rather, having tried to do so—without knowing exactly why I was taking that step. A certain feeling of distrust ... a nagging concern that he was going to cause trouble and I wasn't sure what sort of trouble ... these are not proper motivations."
The Fish looked at her sternly, and pronounced, "Nothing is a proper motivation for a Multiversity Dean to interfere in the activities of a federal bureau."
"BEM-dung," said the Dean. "For everything, no matter what, there can always be—logically speaking—a proper motivation."
"Citizen," snapped The Fish, "we are not dealing in logic here, we are dealing in reality!"
"Then," said the Dean, leaning toward him, "let me set you the reality as if it were a logical problem. Given: one apparently crippled semi-idiot, tootling about the Galaxies on a secret mission. Given: one pleasant and inoffensive little religious movement, on a Novice Planet called Freeway, somehow involved in this mission. Given: one 'spontaneous' revolution, somehow involved with the activities of the crippled semi-idiot. Given: a universe full of real problems to be solved, real revolutions to be fought, real missions to send people on! And needed, my friend, some mechanism for deriving sensible conclusions ... or just sense ... from this array of givens. Now just what the devil is going on?"
She leaned back in the chair again and looked him straight in the eye. "I warn you, Alvin," she said softly, "I mean to know."
"Ah well," said The Fish, sighing enormously. "I'll tell you, then."
"I'm waiting."
"Simple enough," said The Fish. "We have sent Coyote Jones out to Freeway—using the Student cover, supplied with your excellent help, thank you very much—to find Drussa Silver, charge her with violating Galactic Regulation Seventeen, and to bring her back here for trial. At the request of the government of Freeway, I might add."
"The government of Freeway is primitive," said the Dean. "And corrupt."
"It is nonetheless entitled to ask for help from Mars-Central, like any other member of the Federation."
"The people of Freeway are oppressed and degraded by this government, which has them locked into a feudal system reminiscent of the Middle Ages of Old Earth!"
"There is a mechanism available to them," said The Fish calmly. "They need only file a Complaint Of Oppression with the Tri-Galactic Council, and they have not done so."
"They are not even aware that they are oppressed!"
"Then," said The Fish, "they are not yet ready to be mucked about with by the investigatory panels and jurists and legislators of the Tri-Galactic Federation. Freeway is still on Novice Planet status. Its government is still playing at sovereignty and ordering everyone to stay out of its territory—standard Novice behavior. They will need another ten, perhaps twenty years, before it is possible to bring them fully into the Federation without imposing severe shock upon their culture."
The Dean's eyes narrowed.
"A policy of benign non-interference, eh?"
"That is customary."
"Then what right have you to 'muck about' in their religious affairs?" thundered the Dean. "Galactic Regulation Seventeen, for the Light's sake! Using religion to defraud the people? Can you find me a Novice Planet where that regulation is not being violated?"
The Fish spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness.
"I repeat," he said, "we were asked to interfere by the government of the planet, which claims that this female charlatan is wreaking havoc with her mumbo-jumbo."
"What mumbo-jumbo?"
"She is," said The Fish patiently, "possessed of unusual psibilities, we are told, and is able to produce mass hallucinations of high quality and great ingenuity. She has convinced a high proportion of the masses on Freeway that she is capable of a wide assortment of miracles, and this conviction is causing massive defections of people of Freeway from their establishment culture. The government feels it can't be allowed to go on, and has asked for help—which is perfectly within their rights."
There was a long silence, while the Dean looked at him, and then she said, "What makes you so sure she is a fake, Alvin?"
The Fish raised his eyebrows. "Oh, come now," he scoffed, "do you believe that people can walk on the ocean barefooted? Fly through the air under their own power? Bring down showers of roses and lilies from heaven? Start and stop storms? Make it snow in summer heat? Make rocks sing—in four-part harmony?"
"You obviously don't."
"No, I certainly do not, and neither does any other thinking person. Some of the tricks are easily explained ... some sort of gravity-repellent substance on the feet for the traipsing about on the ocean, a concealed mechanical device for the seeming independent flight ... the others are clearly telepathic projections."
"And Citizen Jones is to do what?"
The Fish smiled. "Ah," he said with great satisfaction, "Citizen Jones is immune to her little tricks! As you noticed, he is mind-deaf, and he will have no difficulty exposing Drussa Silver for the fraud she is. Others will see showers of roses; Coyote Jones won't. It is that simple."
The Dean stared down at her hands and said nothing, and The Fish, who remembered her very well, considered this an alarming sign. Any moment, for example, she might well ask him why on earth, if Coyote Jones was suited for this mission only because he was mind-deaf, he was a TGIS man at all. Or she might remember the curious juxtaposition of Coyote and the Galoralon revolution, and demand an explanation for that. At which point he would have to lie, and lie convincingly enough to fool Shandalynne O'Halloran. It was not a prospect that appealed to him. It struck him as a good moment to send for liquid refreshments, and he did that, including the code words that meant do-it-faster-than-it-is-possible-to-do-it-or-else.
When the Dean did speak, however, she did not raise the questions he had anticipated. Instead, she asked a question that made him wonder if she was getting old.
"What," she asked him, "if Drussa Silver is not a fraud?"
That was an easy one. Or a trick. He was not sure which.
"Impossible," he said.
"Why?"
"Either she's a fraud or she's divine," he said flatly. "An avatar, an incarnation of the divine in human form ... and if she's that, I'm Michaelmouse."
"Why again?"
"In the first place, all avatars are male," said The Fish, pouring the drinks. "Please note: Christ, Buddha, Mohammed, Lao-Tzu, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Not a female in the lot. In the second place, divine beings belong in the same spacebucket as the Easter Bunny, the Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, the Helga Dik, and the supposed benefits of taxation. You know that. I know that. Despite the fact that you are trained in a curious discipline called Religious Science, you know that."
"Alvin—"
"And," he charged on, "if she is genuine—which is impossible, but I'm a tolerant man, and willing to humor an aged and eccentric academician—if, I say, she is genuine, there'll be no problem. Coyote will bring her back, she'll stand trial, she'll be acquitted, we'll send her home first-class by government rocket—unless, of course, she prefers to fly home under her own power through space, breathing the perfume of roses and lilies—and that will be that. End of episode."
"I see," said the Dean.
"You see!" The Fish laughed. "All that explanation, dragged out of me by blackmail—oh yes, it was, Citizen Dean, shameless blackmail—and all you can say is 'I see.' Aren't you satisfied?"
The Dean leaned back, her hands in an attitude of prayer, and tapped her fingertips together lightly, thinking.
"Almost," she said. "Almost."
Ahah! thought The Fish. The Dean had never been one to lose track of the thread of an argument.
"You have been most cooperative," she said.
"Thank you."
"However ... "
"Yes?"
"I would still like to know precisely the connection between your man and the revolution on Galoralon. Three-thousand-some-odd years those swamp nomads have fiddled along without the slightest sign of political feeling, and then suddenly, on the one day, at the one hour, when Coyote Jones lands, wham! bang-o! A total overturn of the government!"
"And I," said The Fish pleasantly, "would like to know precisely how you managed to—divert, as you put it—an agent of this bureau, land him on a swamp planet, and damned near get him arrested and thrown in jail to languish for months as an embarrassment to the Federation and the TGIS."
"Touché," said the Dean.
"I think so."
Shandalynne O'Halloran stood up and smoothed her rumpled tunic. She tapped the control on her inflatable chair, watched as it shrank docilely to nothing, folded it up neatly, and put it back in her pocket.
"Delighted to have had a chance for this little visit," she said heartily. "You must come and see me some time."
"On Harvard?" said The Fish with horror.
"Certainly, on Harvard. That is where I am to be found."
"I do not travel," said The Fish stiffly. "I do not have time."
"And," said the Dean, "you suffer from space-sickness."
"How," he asked disgustedly, "can you possibly remember that?"
She gave him a significant look and one last smile.
"Deans," she said as she turned to leave, "remember everything."
The door closed soundlessly behind her, and he sat there feeling that he'd gotten off reasonably well, since she had somehow not asked the one really awkward question. He only hoped that that did not mean she already knew its answer.
Shandalynne O'Halloran knew that she was not being very polite. Certainly she was not fulfilling her obligations to this Advanced Student whose turn it was to spend the evening in her company. Since each Student got only one such turn, it was unbecoming of her not to rise to the occasion and Be A Dean, concerned only with the problems of this Student.
Especially this Student, who was one of her favorites. Ai-Myn, she was called, and she was an Angel. Not really, of course; technically speaking she was a Hequelian, a Citizen of the third of the Extreme Moons. But it was not possible to look at the Hequelians, note the height and slender elegance, the extraordinary beauty of their faces, the soft clusters of short golden curls that framed those faces, and not understand why the Terran space captain who first encountered them had said immediately—"Angels!" The vestigial white-feathered wings had done nothing to discourage the perpetuation of the nickname.
"You are thoughtful tonight, Citizen Dean," said the Student. "Your mind is ... devoted to a question."
"No," said the Dean. "Not quite. My mind is devoted, rather, to a puzzle. Perhaps two puzzles."
"And you expect to find the answer in there?"
The Student pointed at the microfiche the Dean had been holding when she came in and had been turning round and round in her hands ever since.
The Dean set the thing down, guiltily. This really was not fair to the Student, to come to her for this one evening in which, according to tradition, she was to have the opportunity to take up her own problems with the Dean, and find that Dean obsessed with something else.
"It is Woman Transcendent," said the Dean. "I had a feeling, somehow, that when I read it ... long ago ... there was something in there that applied to the—the puzzles. But I've been reading it over for hours, and whatever it was that I thought was there, I can't find it."
"Can I help, perhaps?" asked Ai-Myn. "Sometimes another person can find the missing piece because she has not been looking for it with such intensity."
The Dean nodded. "Quite right," she said. "And perhaps you can, if you are willing to do something very trivial."
"Anything at all," said Ai-Myn. "Only ask me."
"Then," said the Dean, "do this for me. Woman Transcendent is a basic text. On every elementary reading list. It is not something with which a Student at your level any longer spends much time. But could you state for me, just to give my own thinking the benefit of yours, the basic principles which Ann Geheygan established with the book?"
This was a very superior Student. She did not hesitate for a moment.
"First principle:" she said, "that women achieve with ease that state of transcendence which men are able to attain only through great effort. Geheygan was, I believe, the first to name this state surpassment."
"Correct," said the Dean. "Continue, please."
"Second principle: in those times of prehistory when the greater physical strength of the male gave him a certain advantage, he noted this female talent for the transcendent state and recognized it as a great danger to patriarchal society."
"Third principle: as a way of protecting the patriarchy against this danger, men took it upon themselves to pervert the natural female religious talent, using the technique of convincing the female that what she really had was a talent not for surpassment but for submission. This perversion was maintained by the patriarchal religions down through the ages."
"Fourth principle:" said the Student, and she chuckled softly, "since these first three basics had been thoroughly suppressed by the male, to such an extent that most men had truly forgotten them, it was necessary for Geheygan to bring the facts to light and put an end to the ancient perversion."
"Well put," said the Dean with great satisfaction. It was a necessary skill for any Student—summarizing large amounts of information into a few well-constructed statements—but very few did it so well as this one. Especially on such short notice.
"Have I left anything out?" asked the Student hesitantly.
"Do you think so?"
"Well ... Geheygan established that many of the so-called theological problems were only problems of linguistics ... but that was not original with her ... No. I can think of nothing else. Have I helped you with your puzzles, Citizen Dean?"
"No," said the Dean, trying to hide the frustration in her voice, but sure she was doing it badly. "And I cannot understand it, Ai-Myn. I know that somewhere in this book—somewhere in the theological system of Ann Geheygan—is the clue. I remember, I remember in that maddening, maddening way, where it is right on the tip of one's mind ... Oh, Ai-Myn ... let's drop this and speak of the things you have come to me to talk about. Come, we'll put my so-called puzzles aside, along with my memory, which is obviously failing me."
"May I make just one suggestion?"
"Of course," said the Dean. "Have you thought of something else?"
"Perhaps what you remember is not in Woman Transcendent. Perhaps it is, instead, in Geheygan's earlier work."
The Dean's eyes widened.
"Her earlier work?" she said slowly. "I had forgotten—if I ever knew—that there was earlier work by Geheygan."
"Assuredly. There was a very short book, written when she was quite young. The book for which she was discharged from her teaching position. It was called A Handbook for the Great De-Fathering Festival."
"Of course!" The Dean smacked her forehead with her open palm. "My memory is failing, you see. I had forgotten all about the Handbook."
"Perhaps," said the Student gently, "what you seek is there."
The Dean grinned and took the Student into her ample arms.
"Probably," she said. "Probably so. And now we will talk only of you."