There once was an agent from Saturn
Whose powerful brains made his hat burn;
While the fire-robots sprayed,
His Bureau Chief prayed,
"May his scalp ways more fireproof than that learn!"
—Anonymous (naturally), circa 2929;
often shouted in unison at the end of TGIS staff parties
He should have known. He realized that, afterward, when it was too late. If he'd done his homework properly, read every word of the Shavvy holy books as he ought to have done, he'd have had plenty of warning. As it was, he'd only skimmed a lot of it—especially that portion called the Book of Prophecies—because there were few things that bored him much more than religious language. Laziness—that's all it had been—and he had nobody but himself to blame.
Well, perhaps not entirely himself. There was, after all, the fact that this whole assignment was entirely outside his sphere of either training or experience. He was no scholar, although he could manage the jargon of official reports, after a fashion, and he was no diplomat. His ordinary way of doing a mission—and he was damn good at it—was to throw his mind around and subdue unruly nuisances. All this study and subtlety ... it was like asking him to join a ballet troupe and convince them that he was a ballerina.
What had done him in had been the announcement at the beginning of the Shavvy worship service. He'd been there in the flesh, observing, kneeling at the back of the group in the hope of being a little less conspicuous back there. He could have put on a Shavvy tunic and that would have disguised him somewhat; but it would have been highly suspicious, since the idea of anyone not wanting to be recognized as a Student was totally ridiculous. When only one thousand people out of trillions are allowed to play a particular role, and when new places open in that thousand only when one of the previous thousand completes the course and leaves, you are either proud to be one of the group or you are out of your mind.
And even if he'd been in Shavvy garb it probably wouldn't have helped that much. It was summer, and nobody was wearing the hooded robes, so his hair and beard would have been right out there in front, advertising his presence. Step right this way, folks, and see the Prophecies fulfilled!
He had still not had an opportunity to observe Drussa Silver at close range, although he'd arrived at a dozen places just in time to see her leave. Hoping that she might turn up at the worship-service, and feeling that since she wasn't scheduled to be there she might be, he'd gone to the largest service he'd been able to find within walking distance of Castle Fra.
The leader of the service, a man about his own age, had stepped to the middle of the spiral and raised his hands for attention. "Today," he said aloud, "our service will be a little different than usual. We have with us a guest who is mind-deaf; he could not follow our worship in mindspeech. As a courtesy to him, then, we will worship aloud this day."
Not one head turned to look at him. Not one eye turned to stare at the freak in their midst, although they had to have known that he was the guest, the way he stood out in his tattoos. They had gone right on looking at the leader of the service.
They'd started with a passage he recognized. It was the Shavvy Creed, chanted in unison, and like all such sequences of language, so far as he was concerned it was essentially without meaning, full of ponderous gobbledygook. A kind of heavy-breathing pompous paradoxical wordstuff that put you to sleep with its opacity. The sun spattered down through the nishia-bella above their heads, and the giant ferns swayed in the wind, and he was lulled and vulnerable. "I am a Child of Light," it began.
"Therefore,
I have the power to Search.
Trees of probability make up my life;
I have the power of Search along their branches.
I am a Child of Light.
Therefore,
I have the power to Choose.
Webs of chance make up my life;
I have the power to Choose among their pathways.
Every Choice begets another Choice.
I am a Child of Light.
Therefore,
it is my role to move with power along the time-trees,
along the golden space-webs that span time.
To a Child of Light, nothing can simply 'happen.'
Not to one whose eyes Search, and whose mind Chooses,
for truly such a one creates the passing days
and is ruled by neither space nor time nor any living
creature,
nor by any phantom of the spirit,
nor by emptiness."
They'd just begun the final line, "Come then, and make your place here, at my side," and he was very nearly asleep, what with the heavy scent of the ferns, and the hypnotic golden patterns of the leaf-broken sunlight, and the birdcalls, and the droning recitation of the sacred gibberish, when he realized that a group of young boys had moved in to block him off from the rest of the group. After that, things happened so rapidly that he had no clear memory of their sequence. There had been a sensation of rapid flight, a view of trees around him, and then he had begun to spin, faster and faster and faster yet, until the world had blurred, and gone black ...
He certainly should have known. The relevant verse was right there in the book, for anyone to read. Chapter 7, Verse 13. "And a cripple will come from another world," it read, "and his beard shall be the color of fire. He will wear the garments of one who desires to learn, but his mind will be like a stone, and his coming shall be a sign and a potent of great sorrow unto the Children of Light." And there he stood, in his Student disguise, red beard flaming away, while his mind-deafness was announced to the group assembled. It would have been quicker and less complicated to have just jumped off the edge of Harvard and terminated his assignment right there.
For a long time—eons of time—he was incredibly busy, while Creation rippled around him and he lay fascinated with its least detail.
He was wrapped in a rainbow, and there were choirs singing to him; except that they sang not notes of sound, but chords of color, and the colors were not ones he had seen before in this universe. From time to time bevies of silver birds circled round him, their wings the windblown prairies for enormous herds of tiny jeweled horses no bigger than his thumb, pounding up over the mountains of birdbacks and down the other side, with their spangled bridles trailing through the silver feathers ... from time to time, as the birds flew close, they would make charming leaps from the birds into his beard and gallop down onto his chest, where they tickled delightfully. He could not move—he had misplaced his body somewhere and was continually in the process of melting and flowing, but that didn't bother him. Nothing bothered him—not the pyramids of golden roses that formed with a single magnificent burst, not the glorious and beautiful women who melted and flowed right along with him and told him curious ancient tales that he was convinced contained the secrets of the universe. Not the cliff that he became and over which a river flowed, crashing into the depths below and breaking up into something not-quite-spray and not-quite-flower and not-quite-notes, only to race up the cliff and flow over it again. Not the voice that spoke to him from out of a whirlwind of scarlet cinnamon-smell in the key of E minor, and whose words were as soft upon his not-flesh as milkweed down.
None of it bothered him. He had a wonderful time and enjoyed himself hugely. He could have spent the rest of his life (or whatever it was) doing just what he was doing (or whatever it was) without the slightest regrets. Even being sucked backward at the speed of stars out into blinding golden light and tossed again and again into infinite space didn't bother him. He laughed, and bounced from star to star, and waited to be tossed just one more time.
It was not until it was all over that he began to feel uncomfortable, and even then he was not all that uncomfortable. He woke up in a drawer just big enough for one-and-a-half people, between two clean sheets, with his loin-cloth and all his tattoos and his shoes neatly hung in a small net bag on a hook beside his feet. Before he discovered that the drawer had a top and that it was only a couple of feet over his head, he tried to sit up, and the resulting thump brought a sudden scurry of feet, followed almost immediately by the drawer sliding out into an enormous room and its side dropping to admit the young woman who had undoubtedly saved him from an intergalactic incident to end all intergalactic incidents.
She slid in beside him and touched him in half a dozen places with a small crystal rod, each touch causing a tone to sound and provoking a satisfied nod from her.
"Good," she said crisply, giving him a look of qualified approval, "you are sufficiently recovered to get up and discuss this disgraceful situation."
She blurred for a moment and then slid into focus, and he recognized her at once.
"You," he marveled, "are—"
"Deliven Kellyr," she said, chopping him off in mid-phrase. "Yes, indeed. You met me at the Castle Reception just after your arrival in the Sector, and I found your conversation of some interest, since I had not met an offworlder before, much less a Student. That, however, does not explain or excuse your behavior since we met, Citizen."
His behavior. He thought about it. That might involve a number of things. Rape. Murder. Robbery. He might have gone to the center of City Fra and driven the populace mad collectively. Or he might have been more selective and driven only the various government officials mad by convincing them that they were lemmings and must flee into the sea ... Under the circumstances, he felt that silence was the only possible course, and he contented himself with clearing his throat and looking as innocent—and as weak—as possible.
Deliven Kellyr slipped out of the drawer as neatly as she had slipped in, and leaned over to deliver her parting message. "Your clothing is there at your feet," she said, "and I would appreciate it if you would put it on. You are quite clean, I assure you, as I have been taking excellent care of you during your ... episode ... but if you feel the need of any kind of refurbishment, it is available. You are in a guest-chamber—rarely used, thank the Rings—in Castle Fra, and there is a tiringroom just to your right as you reach the chamber door. I will wait for you in the antechamber. Please be prompt."
And she was gone.
When he joined her, the ground still seemingly rippling under his feet, she was seated at a desk in the antechamber with her hands folded neatly in her lap and an expression of restrained irritation on her face. He slipped into the chair facing her, noted that she had provided coffee, and waited for whatever was going to happen next.
"Well, Citizen," she said at once, "I assume that you would like to know what you have been doing for the past day or two."
He looked humble. He positively radiated humility. A day or two? Great spacehulls ... great galloping thunder-turtles—a day or two!
"Yes, please," he said.
She whipped a microfiche from the pocket of her skirt and looked at it, whipped it right back, and told him all about it. "You were found," she said, "in my personal sleeping-slot, when I returned from evening worship night before last. You were wearing all your clothing, your arms were covered with the glowstamps from the most disgusting of our nightspots and bars, you reeked of liquor—very cheap liquor—and you were so far gone that I strongly doubt this universe even grossly represented your location."
"I_"
"Silence!" she snapped. "I am not through, and you are scarcely in a position to quibble."
"Yes, Young Citizen," he said meekly.
"Have you any idea how you got to my rooms?" she asked.
"None whatsoever."
The corners of her lips twitched, and she stared down at the desk, but her voice was icy.
"Don't you think that's a very unlikely story, Citizen Jones?"
"My last memory," he said carefully, "is of being present at a Shavvy worship service. That may be difficult to believe, but it is the truth."
She looked at him then, her eyes dancing. She was going to be a beautiful woman when she grew up ... when her body grew up to match her mind, that is. There was nothing childlike about the mind that was in that small golden head.
"I do believe you, Citizen," she said. "I really do. And you will be pleased to hear that you were brought here by a group of five boys, the oldest of whom was fifteen years of age. They got past the computer by the simple expedient of pouring chocolate syrup into the vent guarding this area of the Castle ... not the kind of thing one expects to have to guard against, and therefore very clever of them. Chocolate syrup!"
She chuckled then, and it was clear to Coyote that she was not really frightened by this gap in the Castle's security system.
"What, exactly, were they up to?" he hazarded.
"The idea was to cause an intergalactic scandal," she said demurely. "You were to be an offworlder who got himself stinking drunk and decided to make free with the body of the daughter of Castle Fra, by hiding yourself in my sleeping-slot and pouncing on me when I came to bed."
"I don't pounce," said Coyote crossly.
"They were little boys, Citizen," she rebuked him. "What image do you expect little boys to have of sexual congress?''
Sexual congress? Coyote cleared his throat again and looked at the ceiling.
"Citizen?"
"Yes, Citizen Kellyr?"
"Would you look at me, please? That's better ... I dislike having to speak to your beard and that gaudy tropical chest."
"Sorry."
"Well, then. I understand what happened once they had you, Citizen Jones. Their idea was not to do you any physical harm, of course, but simply to embarrass you, tie you up in the intricacies of an interworld diplomatic scandal, make sure that you would be unable to move about freely for quite some time, and generally create a nuisance. The reason the plan failed is quite simple: first of all, they gave you far too much of the narcotic, so that instead of just keeping you euphoric and quiescent until I discovered you, it sent you flying off into the never-nevers. Second, they overdid it, poor babies—nobody could put away as much liquor as you were drenched in, or go as many places as you appeared to have gone, and still have the ability to negotiate the Castle ramps and stairs to the sleeping chambers. And finally, they underestimated me severely."
"That," said Coyote, "I can believe."
"I was supposed to shriek, scream for my father, and faint dead away, I believe," she said dryly. "A kind of behavior that occurs only in B-grade threedies on vice planets, or in the dreams of teen-age boys."
It would not have been tactful to point out that she was, to his knowledge, only twelve herself. Instead, he asked her what she had done, and she ticked it off for him on her fingers.
"One: I made sure the coast was clear to move you. Two: I got three carrying servomechanisms and moved you into the least-used guestchamber. Three: I cleaned you up and made you as respectable as was possible under the circumstances. Four: I obtained a medikit from our storerooms and made certain that you were in no physical danger. Five: I reported to my mother, who took immediate steps to get to the bottom of the incident. Discreetly, of course. Six: I waited for you to come to yourself again. And here we are."
Coyote sighed. It was not exactly something he could be proud of, being captured and bamboozled by a pack of teenage religious fanatics.
"Mmmmm," he said.
"Mmmmm? You have nothing else to say? We are holding the—uh, desperate characters—who kidnapped you and brought you here. Would you like to confront them, Citizen?"
"Would I like to what?"
"Citizen Jones!" She was clearly exasperated with him now. "I should like to get this matter attended to, if possible. If you are going to insist on preferring charges, which it is within your right to do, I should like to get on with it."
"Is that what your mother thinks I ought to do?"
"My mother has nothing to do with this, Citizen," she told him, in the voice one uses to address a small child who is being difficult in public. "She is a very busy woman, and she does not concern herself with nonsense of this kind."
Coyote took a deep breath and tried to concentrate.
"Dear Young Citizen," he said solemnly, "if there is one thing I want in all this universe, it is to not press charges. The Light preserve me from having to press charges."
"You're certain?"
"Oh, am I certain. Can't you see the headlines now? I can. 'Petulant Religious Expert Trussed and Trounced by Child Fanatics on Interplanetary Junket. Scholars Shocked.' Oh, dear me, child, let's not do that."
"You would not be comfortable with that."
"No. I would not. I would be so humiliated, and so degraded, and so much the laughingstock of Three Galaxies—"
"Citizen Jones," she broke in, "There is something that I don't understand."
"And that is?"
"How they got you unconscious in the first place, so that they were able to inject the drugs, plaster you with the nightclub stickers, and bring you here. There is an absolute Shavvy prohibition against violence—how did they manage?"
He told her, and she burst into pealing laughter while he sat and turned redder and redder.
"They spun you, Citizen?" she crowed, choking with laughter. "They spun you! Oh, clever little boys, if only they'd had brains to back up their Shavvy tricks!"
"I'm glad they didn't," said Coyote gravely.
"They would have succeeded, you know," she said, looking suddenly serious, "if only they'd put you into the bed of one of the cousins, or some silly fourteen-year-old servingwoman."
"Probably."
"And you do not want to charge these boys?"
"No," he said. "Not for anything in the world would I have it known that a bunch of kids got the better of me like this. Please."
"What about the consequences of letting their despicable conduct go unpunished?''
"Let it," said Coyote. "Let us only hope they will not brag about it."
"Oh, we will see to that," she assured him. "Set your mind at rest on that score. And I am pleased at your decision."
"Pleased?"
"Yes indeed. There is more than one possible scandal here, you know, Citizen. Can you imagine another headline? How about one on the subject of this Sector's allowing a poor innocent Student to be dragged through the vice pots, disgraced, made a spectacle of, and generally degraded? What about our failure to provide an offworlder—and a scholar at that, and therefore not likely to be accustomed to practical precautions—with the kind of minimal protection we provide our native Citizens? We would not enjoy that publicity any more than you would, Citizen."
He began to see, and he began to feel that he was going to survive this after all, bless her clever kissingerian little heart.
"We are in agreement, then?" he asked.
"In total agreement."
"I am grateful to you for saving my skin, and my image."
"You are quite welcome, Citizen. We are grateful to you for not bringing suit against us."
"Suit against you ... "
She looked at him with the kind of grave and measuring attention he associated with medrobots considering the sick. He could hear the wheels whirring in her brain, and then she spoke and made it all quite clear.
"Citizen Jones," she said gently, "you are most incredibly naive. It is only because I am convinced that you are also incredibly sincere that I am willing to explain to you that you assuredly have an excellent case against our government, if you cared to pursue it. It is our responsibility to protect offworlders, who cannot be expected to be aware of the perils of our culture. I was prepared, and am still prepared, to offer you a handsome settlement in exchange for your signature on an agreement not to sue. My mother has authorized a very respectable sum for implementing that agreement."
It was sad. Coyote thought about his own daughter, and tried to visualize her with all these burdens on her shoulders, and he thought it was a damned shame. A child should be thinking of what game to play next, and what delightful investigation of its environment to make next. Not intergalactic diplomacy. He was disgusted with a social system that exploited a child in this way and turned her into a precocious bureaucrat and wielder of power.
"You are a very comely man, Citizen Student," she said suddenly, distracting him. "If you are as clever as you are comely, the women who lie with you must consider themselves truly fortunate."
Coyote was startled, mostly to learn that she could still consider the possibility that he was clever. He reviewed his pre-mission briefing on Freeway sexual customs in his head ... PLANET FREEWAY: Human Sexual Pattern 11-c, Variation 5, as he recalled. Which meant neither male nor female dominance, sexual relations permitted from puberty and beyond, incest forbidden, homosexuality rare but considered normal ... followed by a list of what the planetary guardians of morals considered to be perversions. Mostly matters of physical position, if his memory served him right, and naturally lacking the one crucial item: that mindspeech was considered the perversion of perversions.
She was quick. "There is no need for alarm, Citizen," she said, standing up to look at him sternly. "I would not burden a stranger with a formal invitation from a daughter of Castle Fra; the diplomatic ramifications would be too complicated. I simply believe in giving credit where credit appears to be due."
"I appreciate the compliment," he said. "However undeserved."
"Now," she said, "are you ready to go back to your investigation of Shavvy culture, Citizen?"
Coyote considered it. He held out one hand and watched it shake, put his foot down solidly on the floor and felt it move, and shook his head.
"Not yet," he said. "I need another day to recuperate from that hell's brew they filled me with. Have you a suggestion?''
She frowned slightly.
"Food, first."
"By all means."
"And then ... is there perhaps something I could do for you? Other than rescuing you from the violence of children, I mean? Have you seen our city? Have you toured the Castle?"
He had it. "There is something you could do."
"Name it."
"You could take me shopping."
"Shopping!"
"Exactly. I want to buy gifts to take home with me, and I don't know your city at all. Since we've struck up an acquaintance ... after a fashion ... would you take me around and help me choose something? Do you have time? For that matter, would it be allowed?"
"Allowed?"
She gave him one measuring glance and then shook her head as if his condition were too pitiful to comment on. "Why," she asked, "should I not be allowed to do anything that I considered suitable?"
"There are planets," Coyote told her, "where a girl of twelve would have to ask permission to take an offworld man on a shopping expedition."
Deliven laughed softly, saying, "There are planets where the living process the bodies of their dead for protein. There are planets where infants are raised in complete isolation for the first nine years of their lives. There are planets where all manner of abominations take place. This is not such a planet."
"Don't you have any rules at all to mind, Young Citizen?" Coyote asked, thinking of Ratha at twelve and not sure he could face the prospect.
"Three," she said promptly. "Don't get up until the Wakers sound, don't neglect my studies, and never fail to be courteous to those around me." Then she frowned, and added, "You should remember, Citizen Jones, that we of the Old Faith know quite well what we can and cannot do, from birth. We are not burdened with a lot of troublesome choices, as are the heathens of other planets."
"Or the Shavvies?"
She shuddered delicately. "It is not in good taste even to discuss those people," she said firmly. "And we must be getting started, or there won't be time to do very much."
About her wrist there was a heavy silver communications bracelet, its various stations marked with small patterned dots of turquoise. She touched the single dot nearest her thumb, and Tayn Kellyr's voice answered, tinny and far away.
"The Student is up and about, Mother," said Deliven, "and you will be pleased to hear that he is as unwilling to pursue this matter as we are."
"Excellent," said the tinny voice.
"I am about to take him through the Street of Craftsmen, to choose gifts for taking home to his household. I expect to return in three hours, at the most, and the computers should be advised to expect Citizen Jones as a guest at table this evening."
"Very good, Deliven," said her mother, "I'll see to it."
Deliven stood up then, and nodded to him, her business with her own household completed.
"Come along, then, Citizen Jones," she said, and he followed her meekly out into the corridors, humming an ancient ballad about looking over a four-leaf clover, softly, under his breath.