Chapter Seven

You will maintain in your reports at all times the cumbersome style developed by the linguistics computers through analysis of the educational literature of 20th-century Old Earth. This style, which was characterized by an almost total lack of semantic content, lends itself superbly to adaptation for coded messages. (In addition, since it is used nowhere else, it serves to identify agents' messages in cases where they are lost, misplaced, or stolen.)

—Manual of the Tri-Galactic Intelligence Service, p. 4

FILE : 1304.a, Segment 2

TOPIC: MISSION FREEWAY, Initial Report

FROM: Citizen Coyote Jones

TO : TRI-GALACTIC INTELLIGENCE SERVICE

GALCENTRAL, STATION FIVE (MARS-CENTRAL) DATE: Novemberthird 3030

1. I arrived on Freeway one week ago, shortly after dawn, and was landed by Hook, an exotic touch which was somehow not included in my briefing for this mission. As a result, my mood on landing lacked the cheery perfection my friends ordinarily associate with me, and there might well have been an unfortunate intergalactic incident. (This eventuality was aborted by the accidental item that my first on-planet contact was a computer rather than a Citizen.) No doubt steps will be taken in the future to prevent this sort of dangerous failure to supply much needed information to agents at their pre-mission briefings.

2. I was met by one Agamen Horta Cady, a member of the noble family living in Castle Olyon, Sector Five ("sector" being both a political and a geographical division of this planet), and was taken by him to a meeting with the chief religious official of Freeway. This personage is Agamen's sister Fara, officially known as the Reverend Rabbi-Pastor Sarah Dorcas Elimalek. The woman appears to be of venerable age, despite the effects of cosmetic injections, and is clearly in a position of significant power. The meeting proceeded satisfactorily, and I will provide full details upon my return.

3. The political situation on this planet is one of the Standard Modes—a class-stratified society with a group of "noble families" at the top, a class of civil servants called "fealtors" in the middle, and a mass composed of everybody else at the bottom. The government is pseudo-parliamentarian; there is a Red Council, representing the nobility, a Blue Council, representing the fealtors, and a Green Council representing the average citizen. As would be expected in this primitive Mode, the power is concentrated in the Red Council, although there appears to be no overt oppression of the lower classes. The planet is divided into eight Sectors (see #2 above), of roughly equal size, each ruled by one of the noble families. Details are provided at the end of this report.

4. Each noble family has a castle in the capital city of its sector, in which the immediate family and innumerable relatives make their residence. Outside the castle proper, but within its walls, are the homes of the fealtors. Outside the castle walls the rest of the population is housed in settlements ranging from small villages to cities of 50,000 or more. (Freeway is, as noted in extant documents, a planet of very low population density, a situation not surprising in view of (1) the great difficulty of clearing the nishia-bella groves to provide land for expansion, and (2) the fact that there is essentially only one habitable continent. However, since the beauty of the planet lives up to the extravagant claims made for it in Classified File 10738942, this situation obviously will not outlast the cancellation of its Novice Planet status. The oceans which occupy most of the planet surface will obviously support thousands of floating buckminsters, and I am certain that the immigrants to settle the buckminsters would be in the millions. The current population of Freeway is not going to appreciate this growth, and the anticipation of its happening will certainly create great difficulties and delays when termination of Novice status begins. Please see that the relevant fedbureaus are alerted.)

5. A brief architectural remark. The "castles" are a paradigm example of tradition in conflict with progress. On the outside, they are straight out of the ancient Grimm texts, complete with turrets, moats, drawbridges, the lot. There are almost five hundred separate rooms in Castle Olyon, for example, and I am told that it is not the largest of the eight castles. Inside, however, these buildings are like luxury scientific spaceliners, with every need supplied by computers and various servomechanisms. The entire "staff" for such a castle, which must once have involved great numbers of citizens under the supervision of the fealtors, now consists of a single human being known as the Castle Economist. I was not allowed to take photographs, of course, but when I return I will be able to provide data for simulations to be prepared by our art people.

The fealtors live in g-i bubble houses, in the usual depressing colors and styles, as do the masses. The only apparent difference is that every fealtor home is a single-family dwelling, while most of the lower rank live in multiple-family communal housing. I have not yet been able to learn whether this is obligatory, a matter of choice, or keyed to the income of the individual.

6. I have now been given housing in one of the guest houses attached to Castle Fra, in the sector where Drussa Silver is at this time operating. I have suffered through the usual introductory round of parties and receptions and tours—at none of which, the Light be praised, have I encountered any real expert in Religion—and I now anticipate that I will be able to begin observing the Shavvies, and Drussa Silver, directly. The noble contingent have made arrangements for me to be accepted, apparently without question, by the people Citizen Silver leads. (I will of course not learn until I actually try it whether there is going to be resistance to my "scholarly investigation." At least none was expressed to the nobles, but that probably means just about as much as it would in any society of this primitive type.)

It is important, by the way, that the files in the relevant bureaus be altered to show that the name given this group in my briefing—"Silverites"—is not correct, and is a typical administrative error. The group are properly called Shavvies, Panglish-phonemically /sha+viyz/. The term "shavvy" itself is an old slang word meaning "fruitpicker," from the historical period of Old Earth just before all human agricultural workers were replaced by agrirobots. I would suggest that inquiries be made by the Federal Bureau of Linguistics with regard to the possible relationship between the word "shavvy" and the Old Panglish proper name "Chavez," which occurs several times in ancient manuscripts of this group.

7. The Shavvies have been allowed to function undisturbed on Freeway for countless years, exactly as I was advised in my briefing. Their existence as a threat to the established culture, however, which has developed only recently with the emergence of this woman Drussa Silver, is in no way mysterious or obscure, as follows: all members of the establishment religion, a branch of Neo-Judaeo-Christianity called (as usual) the Old Faith, pay a tithe of THIRTY PER CENT of their income to the church. (The "Church" being, of course, the noble families.) The sudden and massive defection of citizens to the Hawses is not a threat to the religion, it is simply—excuse my departure from the style of the Official Manual For Preparation Of Official Reports—playing hell with the treasury.

8. I have only just begun to accumulate data about the Shavvies, although I have naturally read all the materials provided to me by the Dean at Multiversity Two. One fact that appears to be sufficiently striking to report at this early date, however, is that one of the defining characteristics of the religion is an advanced development in telekinesis. (This is of course an additional similarity between the Shavvies and the Maklunites—see RB Publication 67.3, Chapter 14, for details.) It introduces a complication of some importance, since my task here is—basically—to catch Drussa Silver faking a "miracle" in order to provide some basis for the charge that she is violating Galactic Regulation Seventeen. All of the Shavvies apparently walk on water, disappear and appear by self-teleportation, toss things around by power of the mind alone, and so on. Interestingly enough, they contend that this is perfectly ordinary human behavior, a part of Drussa Silver's teachings on the proper function mode for human beings.

Now, given these conditions, I'm not quite sure what will constitute a "faked miracle." I will assume, for the moment, that what I am looking for is something done by the alleged lady avatar that everyone around me appears to see happening while I see nothing. If this does not seem to TGIS an adequate way to proceed, please advise at once. But it is crucial that the techniques this woman uses in her teaching be made available to the staff at the Communipath Creche and perhaps to the mass-edcomputer staffs throughout the Federation. If she is able to increase the telekinetic abilities of these people so drastically, when they are not Factor Q individuals but ordinary people with ordinary psibilities, think what the same techniques might develop in the highly gifted! I suggest that this be given top priority.

9. Further reports will be forthcoming as soon as I have gathered sufficient data.

END OF REPORT

PERTINENT DATA FOR INCORPORATION IN FILES:

NOTE ONE: Why the hell was I not advised that mindspeech is the primary taboo on this planet? You think that's funny? I don't. I didn't think the surprise Hook landing was funny either.

NOTE TWO: No doubt you have by now been advised of my brief detour to the Planet Galoralon. I sincerely hope my performance there was satisfactory to everyone?

* * *

Darling Ratha,

I'm glad now that I didn't try to bring you along, love. This trip has turned out to be a lot more exciting than I had thought it would be, and some of it wouldn't have been pleasant for you. I'm sorry, though, that you can't see the planet where I am staying, because it's beautiful. Can you imagine trees so big that people ride little animals, like donkeys, along their branches? And not just children like yourself, darlin'—here the grown-ups spend as much time up in the trees as they do on the ground. When I get home I'll tell you all about it.

I've been spending my time with interesting people ... though I expect you'll be ashamed to hear that I spend most of my time on the ground. I'm not comfortable wandering around hundreds of feet up in the air without so much as a string to hold on to. They tell me nobody ever falls, and that's nice. But I keep thinking I might, and that's not.

Anyway, yesterday I was watching a group of these people working in a Shavvy garden. (They're very polite about letting me follow them around and watch the things they do.) They were using old-fashioned pyro-ceramic hoes, hand tools, things like that. So what do I do? (Care to guess?) Right. My best Ugly-First-Galaxer act. I made a little speech about how much more efficient it would be if they'd use power tools like everybody else on their planet does, or the servomechanisms that are all over the place. And a lot of other things along the same line.

Well, they looked at me, and they looked at each other. As I said, they're very polite, and they set down their hoes and folded their hands, and then the hoes started racing up and down the rows all by themselves. The vegetables came flying out into baskets, the baskets loaded themselves into wheelbarrows, and the wheelbarrows took off for the storage buildings. Me, I'm standing there watching all this, but I still didn't get it—I was thinking about some kind of new fancy gadget—so they made it absolutely clear for me. They picked me up, dumped me into a wheelbarrow, raced me up and down a row or two, and then unloaded me back where I'd been standing. All without ever coming near me, or laying a finger on me. All very gently. The point—which I finally got—was that if they were after efficiency, they sure didn't need any machines to help them get it. I felt pretty silly and pretty stupid, but it was interesting.

And I've met a girl named Deliven, only five years older than you, that I'm anxious to talk to you about. She's something like a child, and something like a princess, and some like something I can't figure out at all. Maybe you'll be able to help me.

I'm bringing you a present, just because I love you, and I'm bringing Tzana Kai a present for putting up with you while I am away. If I'm in a good mood, I may even bring a present or two for your gaza hounds. You tell Tzana Kai hello for me, and do the best you can to be a satisfactory person, even without me around to be your model. (Don't tell Tzana Kai I said that!)

Bless you, love ... Coyote