;
"Hey, Mr. Retief." Joe set a glass of Bacchian black on the low counter in front of him. "This'n's on the house."
"Thanks, Joe. I'm not quite flat out yet."
"Nah." The alligator jaws twisted briefly in a tight-lipped parody of a human smile. "Didn't say you were. I just don't like what they did to you. Isn't right!"
"Well, thanks for the kind thought. What do the Holy Mystic Fortune Cookies have to say about being out of work?"
"That it sucks small, orange, and purple gamchucks. So . . . whatcha gonna do now? You mebee headed back to Terra?"
"That takes a fair bit of money, Joe. Looks like I'm stranded for a while."
"You got a job lined up?"
"Not yet. But I'm sure something will turn up pretty soon."
"That's the spirit! Like the Holy Mystic Fortune Cookies say, a burbling momgroth urdles no yerdles."
"I can't argue with that, Joe."
"Well . . . if you find yourself hard up, I could use some help around this place. Busin' tables, cleanin' up, that kind of thing. Pay's not that good, but you got your free meals and a room in the back."
"Thanks, Joe. I'll keep that in mind if things get really tight."
He leaned closer over the counter. "I'd take you on as a server, but I'm afraid you aren't as pretty as my regular girls." He nodded toward a particularly chunky B'ruklian female in spiked heels—eight of them—and carrying a tray of drinks. "Gotta keep the payin' customers comin' back for more, right?"
"Somehow, Joe, I just don't think cocktailing is my thing. Especially if I have to wear shoes like those."
"You got a place to stay?"
"I got a room at the Starport Inn yesterday. Paid through to the end of the week."
"Well, you need anything, Mr. Retief, you just give a growl. You got a friend here if'n you need one!" He turned away to attend to a customer at the end of the bar.
The customers in Joe's Bar and Bookstore this afternoon were a varied lot—B'ruklians, humans, and a few others. The humans all looked like students; several, he noticed, kept stealing sidelong glances at him from their tables.
Retief turned back to the bar, ignoring them.
"Hey, fella. Are you, like, that CDT guy?"
"I was that CDT guy," Retief replied. He turned. "Is there something I can do for you?"
Three students had approached him from behind. The speaker was a skinny, geekish-looking guy. Behind him were two that Retief recognized from the march of two days before—the complexion-challenged guy with the Grateful Reincarnated T-shirt—apparently he hadn't changed in two days—and the girl with the flashing nipple rings.
"Smallwick," the first student said, holding out a hand. "Freddy Smallwick. And these are—"
"Marty and Aquaria. We've met."
"Ooh, like, he remembers!" Aquaria said in a breathy near-whisper.
"I'm Retief."
"We, like, saw you tossing Tiny Dumbrowski around on the tube the other night," Marty said. "That was, like, somethin'!"
"I'm sure it was. Like something, that is."
"You pack quite a wallop, mister."
"Thanks. How's the wrist?"
Marty rubbed his wrist as though it were still sore. "It's, like, okay. Thanks."
"Listen, Mr. Retief," Freddy said. "We're with the Student Union . . . Local 3.14159."
"Oh? So you have a union beef with me? Tiny was just showing me his crunchball blocking technique. The crowd was getting a little unruly."
"No, no!" Aquaria said. She took hold of Retief's arm. "We're not mad! We want you to, like, join us!"
"My student days are long behind me, Aquaria."
"Nah, it's like, like this," Marty said. "What we got a beef with is, like, the government waging, like, unjust war against the Krll."
"Yeah," Aquaria said. "Like, the Krll are, like, just friends we haven't met yet!"
Freddy nodded. "And the CDT is, like, representing the government out here in the Cluster, y'know?"
"I think I'm following you so far."
"So, it's like, duuuuuude," Marty told him. "You're the man! Dig?"
"Now you've lost me."
Aquaria squeezed his arm against her substantial chest. "There's like this big bein tonight, y'know?"
"No, I didn't."
"Oooh, yeah. It's, like, the kickiest! Everyone's, like, gonna be there!"
"It's a really big deal, Mr. Retief," Freddy said. "Big concert by the Why. Lots of speeches. Lots of joyweed. A local theater group is putting on an all-nude production of Scales. The Guru's gonna be there, like spreading peace and benediction and everything. And it's all, like, climaxed by a big forn-in. It's like, y'know, totally mediocre!"
"Sorry, Aquaria. I'm lost again. 'Mediocre'?"
"It's, like, the tall nail gets hammered, y'know, man?" Freddy told him. "It's, like, in school, you don't want to be fleaglin' noticed, y'know? So it's, like, mediocre to the max."
"Gotcha. So where is this mediocre be-in supposed to take place?"
"At the Phark, man," Marty said.
"The Phark?"
"Yeah, dude! Like the Phark of Phenomenally Phlogistic Pheremones, man."
"Is it phree?"
"Just a love offering, man."
"Are you coming, Mr. Retief?" Aquaria wanted to know.
"Young lady, I wouldn't miss it for the planet."
Firstsun was setting amid a splendor of towering green and gold clouds as Retief entered the B'rukley Starport just west of the city, and secondsun blazed like a pinpoint-tiny blue arclight high in the sky. Clad in a nondescript black shipsuit, Retief looked like just another crewman or port cargo handler, though there were few enough other humans evident in the crowds.
The Shamballa Cluster was located close to the nebula-strewn border of the Hub, where the Eastern Arm first spun off from the curdled starclouds of the galactic core. Deeper into the Hub, radiation levels rose dangerously, until human-crewed ships could venture only with powerful screens raised against the sleeting storms of charged particles whipping about the galactic center, and only extremely hardy, tough-hided, and gene-stable species like the Turvah or the Krultch found worlds they considered habitable.
So the Shamballa Cluster had become a kind of cosmopolitan end-point to human colonization coreward down the Eastern Arm, a crossroads meeting place for many diverse alien cultures, including human, but one where humans were definitely in the minority.
And that was what made the large and growing human student population on B'ruk so unlikely.
Retief found an out-of-the-way vantage point on a railed balcony overlooking the main passenger concourse. He wasn't entirely sure what he was looking for, but a passenger liner, the Theodosius, was due in today from out-arm, with her last stop at Newbraska. It might be instructive to watch her passengers coming through the gate.
While he was waiting, his attention was caught by a pair of men in cheap striped suits leaning against the wall next to the tunnel leading to baggage claim. Both wore technofedoras, the type with high-quality Japanese commo electronics built into the brims, both wore dark spyglasses, and both were absently flipping quarter-guck pieces in perfect, gleaming unison. They appeared to be waiting for someone.
Retief reached into a pocket and brought out his own spyglasses, which Magnan had checked out of Supply for him the night before his expulsion. Using the zoom-eye feature, he magnified the view until he could clearly see the men's faces beneath their fedoras. He thought he recognized one of them—Louis the Libido, a small-time hood in the Galactic Organized Syndicate of Humanoids, Local 1066. He didn't know the other one but thought he had the look of a "made man," quite possibly one made in Japan, a Yakuza Series ichi-man.
As he watched, an older man approached the two, looking furtively over his shoulder every now and again. Through the zoom-eye, Retief could see the insignia of a merchant captain on the old-timer's collar and guessed he was the skipper of one of the small tramps that called periodically at B'rukley. The patch on his sleeve read Starmaid.
Retief recorded all three faces for identification later. Using his spyglasses' zoom-ear attachment, he tried to pick up their speech. It wasn't easy; the concourse was noisy, and the government-issue glasses weren't quite up to the job of filtering out all of the background racket. Still, he managed to pick up and record a few words. Possibly the sound could be cleaned up and enhanced later, electronically.
"It's getting' too risky, I tell ya," the old man said.
"Youz got a lifetime contrack wid us, pops, see?" the made man told him. Retief missed the next handful of words. Then, " . . . if ya knowz—zzzzt!—what's good fer ya. See?"
"Look, there's nothin' . . . do about it, fellas! There's . . . peace enforcer . . . orbit. It's gettin' so's . . . shot at every . . . hit atmosphere!"
"Yeah, but you gotta unnerstand our . . . an' do what we says?" Louis told him. "Or else."
"Dat's right, see? Mr. Bug wouldn't . . . any udder way, see? Zzzzt!"
"Yeah," Louis added. "Mr. Bug was real . . . that last shipment you lost."
"Real upset, see? Zzzt!"
"Yeah, well, you tell Mr. Bug from me that it's getting too . . ." The words were lost behind the sudden commotion of a Japanese tour group gathering nearby, talking loudly while taking pictures of one another and everything else in sight.
The three continued talking with one another. Then, after a few moments, the tramp skipper walked with studied nonchalance through to baggage claim, while the GOSH hoods waited another moment, then followed.
Interesting. According to intelligence reports he'd seen at the embassy, GOSH held a monopoly on the transport of controlled substances throughout the sector. What wasn't clear was how they were smuggling the contraband—joyweed, mostly, but also airplane glue, antique Perry Como albums, and a cheap imitation of aged Pepsi. Apparently, they'd enlisted the aid of local tramp skippers. Very interesting.
His musings were cut short, however, by the arrival of the Theodosius, a titanic liner with the size and general appearance of a flying skyscraper, the pride of the Blue Star Line. He watched her approach through the transparent dome of the concourse as she gentled herself out of the sky and onto the landing field with a spooling-down whine of gravitics. Enclosed debarkation tubes connected with the mighty liner's side, and within a few minutes, the first of her passengers began off-loading into the concourse.
First came representatives of several species native to this part of the Arm—ponderously stalking Yahyas, rolling Tugalubs, bouncing Boroveers, and cloaked and hooded Grothelwaiths. In twos and threes, however, a number of young humans began gathering on the concourse just inside the gate, recognizable as students by the backpacks they carried. When about thirty of them had assembled, a human woman arrived from elsewhere in the concourse, motioned them together, and began talking to them as a group. Retief used his spyglasses to zoom in for a close look at her face.
Ann Thrope.
Retief tuned in on her speech. She had a shrill voice that carried well, and he had less trouble picking up the words than he'd had with the GOSH thugs and the tramp skipper.
" . . . you won't have to do any studying, of course," she was telling them, "though we'll register you at USC as exchange students, just to avoid any . . . irregularities with the government. You'll be staying at Camp Concentration, just outside the city."
Retief lost the next few hundred words as a group of yellow-clad Hare Krishnoids hared across the concourse, chanting loudly.
"Loudly . . . loudly . . . loudly . . . loudly . . ."
Then Thorpe's words came through once more. " . . . and the next spontaneous demonstration is planned for the day after tomorrow, at four-eighty pee-em, and you're all expected to be there. Tomorrow, there's a be-in and free concert at a local park. I encourage you especially to try to make it to a meditation class being held by Grady, the Garrulous Guru. He'll be talking about some of the special programs we've arranged here on B'rukley for you, including the PEAS Corps initiative at Weederham. It's an excellent program, and I strongly urge you to attend.
"Now, I'm sure you're all tired after your trip. I have a bus waiting outside that'll take you to your new home away from home. So . . . if you'll follow me . . ."
She led them off toward the tunnel leading to the baggage claim.
Also interesting. He would have to check that camp out. First, though, he wanted to have a look at a tramp cargo carrier called the Starmaid.
Half an hour later, Retief was outside, walking through the section of the port landing facilities reserved for cargo vessels, close by the warehouses. A handful of freighters were grounded here today, their stubby and inelegant lines all but masked by gantries and cargo cranes clustered about them. The dockyard was fenced off with a single gate; a dozen signs in as many languages told him to keep out and authorized personnel only admitted beyond this point.
He bluffed his way past the bored B'ruklian guard at the gate by flashing his Aldo Cerise library card; the guard scarcely glanced at it before waving him in and returning to a close perusal of a lovingly worn copy of Playbeing, the local B'rukley edition, Retief presumed.
"Hey, you!" a voice barked from behind. "Stop where you are!"
Retief obeyed and turned slowly. A B'ruklian dockworker multifooted it up to him.
"Can I help you?" Retief asked.
"No, but mebee I can help you," the local growled. "Where's your hard hat?"
"Sorry. Must've forgotten it."
"Here. Take mine. I got another back at the office. You humans got soft heads. You shouldn't go wandering around where things could whack you from above, know what I mean?"
"Thanks a lot. I appreciate that."
"Don't mention it. Lookin' for a ship in particular?"
"As a matter of fact, yes. The Starmaid. Know her?"
"Yeah, sure. That's her, right over there." He pointed at a rusty and decrepit-looking vessel resting in a blast pit a hundred yards away. "Captain Rufus. Whatcha want with the 'Maid?"
"I was wondering if Captain Rufus was hiring."
The B'ruklian goggled at him. "He might be. But, yiminy, fella! Do know what the 'Maid's route is?"
"Can't say that I do."
"Flies the Kordoban Circuit . . . B'rukley to Kordoban to Odiousita, then back to B'rukley!"
"Really? Odiousita, huh?"
"Durned straight! I hear the 'Maid's been potted at a dozen times, by Peace Enforcers and Krll deathcruisers alike! A being would have to be nuts to wanna sign on with her!"
"Why does Rufus put in at Odiousita V? What cargo would be worth the danger of flying into a war zone?"
"Ya got me, though there're rumors. What's Odiousita's biggest cash crop, anyway?"
"I didn't know they had one, aside from casualties."
"Joyweed, Terry! Joyweed! Don't know what you Terries see in the stuff, but you sure seem to like it! The five-eyes, too."
"Oh? The Groaci are interested in joyweed cultivation?"
"Yeah, but the word is that the Syndicate has the weed harvest on Odiousita all sewed up. Tramps like the Starmaid, and private boats, they make the run here from Odiousita every so often and smuggle in what they can. 'Course, transporting controlled substances like joyweed is against the Terry-Shamballa Accord, even if it's legal here on B'ruk, and the skippers that try it are takin' a mighty big risk."
"Well, thanks for the warning. I think I'd still like to take a look. You mind?"
"Help yourself. Long as you got a helmet!" The being waddled off.
Retief tried the helmet on. It had a self-molding inner band, so it fit him well enough, though its oblong shape was overlong for a human head. It had the look of the ceremonial headgear worn by devotees of religious racing-bicyclers. Then, suitably attired, he made his way toward the Starmaid, where a dozen B'ruklian and human dockworkers were hauling cargo crates off of the 'Maid's gantry and onto flatbed robohaulers for transport to the warehouse.
Interposing a stack of off-loaded crates between himself and the workers, Retief made his way closer. A number of smaller crates, he saw, were being stacked off to the side. He made his way to this pile, careful to keep out of sight.
Settling down behind the stack, he took a look at the cargo manifest, which was stapled to the outside of each crate. This load, apparently, consisted of textbooks and was slated for shipment to USC.
The receiver was listed as "Ms. A. Thrope," and the manifest was stamped as being precleared through customs.
Retief pulled out his penknife and carefully prized back the lid of one of the crates of books. Inside, indeed, was a stack of books—a shipment of Elementary Economic Metacalculus as Interpreted Through Keynesian Philosophy, the twenty-third edition. Lifting one of the tomes out of the crate, he hefted it, curious. It didn't feel like it weighed quite enough for its thickness. Opening it, he saw that the pages had been glued together and an opening carved out of the center, leaving a concealed space inside.
And tucked into that space was a plastic bag filled with what looked like dried leaves.
Swiftly, Retief unfastened the twist tie holding the bag shut and extracted one of the slender, serrated leaves. Crushing it, he held it to his nose and sniffed cautiously. The scent of joyweed, sweet and a bit like sage, was unmistakable.
Retying the bag, he put it back in the book and closed it again. Replacing the book where he'd found it, he closed the crate, then returned it to its place on the stack and began to work his way clear.
Whir-click!
Retief stopped at the sound of machinery grinding. It was coming from—
"Well, well. Whaddawe—zzzt!—got here? Whir-click!" The made man he'd seen from the observation deck earlier stepped around the corner formed by stacks of cargo crates, blocking Retief's path, a seven-foot mountain of synthflesh in a cheap striped suit. "Whadda you—bleep!—doin' here, which you're not supposed t' be, see?"
"Whassamatter, Seven?" another voice said. A second later, Louis the Libido rounded the corner as well. "So! We got us a snoop, looks like!"
"Hi, Louis," Retief said. "How's the libido?"
"Huh? Howdja know my name, punk?"
"Because Mr. Bug told them to me," Retief said breezily. "He sent me to check up on you two."
"Oh, he did, did he?"
"That's right. And he said to tell you that if another shipment went astray like that last one, he'd hold you two personally responsible."
That bit of news appeared to have an affect on both of the hoods.
"Geeze!" Seven said. "Dat wasn't—zzzzt!—our fault, see?"
"Yeah," Louis said. "It was that tramp skipper, Rufus! Mr. Bug doesn't know how hard it is t'find good help these days!"
"Funny," Retief said. "Mr. Bug was saying the same thing about you two."
"Ulp . . . he was? I mean . . . hey! You just go back and tell Mr. Bug that Louis and Seven got the whole thing unner control, okay?"
"It's all unner control, see? Whirr-click!"
"Yeah! Like he says."
"Don't worry. I believe you. I checked the shipment, and it all seems to be there. Sheer genius, hiding the shipment inside textbooks."
"Yeah, you like that?" Louis preened. "That was my idea. I mean, it's a natural, this bein' a college city, an' all."
"Do you two deliver the stuff? Or does Ann pick it up herself?"
"Naw, she sends somebody to get it. Seven an' me, we was just checking t'make sure the shipment arrived all right. Can't be too careful, y'know?"
"Well, you two certainly do seem to be on the ball. I'll give Mr. Bug a good report."
"Hey, that's real good of ya, fella. What's your name, anyway? I don't remember seein' youz before."
"They call me Jimmy the Juridical."
"Yeah? Well, we'll be watchin' for ya, Jimmy. Hey, that 'juridical' thing. That's somethin' good, right?"
"Absolutely. It means I'm one of the good guys."
"Oh, yeah. Right!" Louis laughed. "Good joke!"
"One question?"
"Sure, Jimmy! Shoot!"
"Later, maybe. Why does Seven always say 'see'?"
Louis looked embarrassed. "Aw, he can't help it, Jimmy. He's a really old model. I mean, really old. They used a really ancient programming language on him. . . ."
Retief closed his eyes. "Don't tell me. 'C'?"
"That's the one, Jimmy."
"Yeah," Seven said. "C, see?"
"Si," Retief told him. "I'll catch you fellows later."
"Sure thing, Jimmy. Ta!"
"Yeah, see?" Zzzzt! "Ta . . . see?"
The hour was well past secondsunset when Retief again entered Joe's Bar and Bookstore and found a corner booth in the back room, out of the way and positioned so he could keep an unobtrusive eye on whoever entered the establishment. One of Joe's waitresses brought him a passable local imitation of a wine cooler, setting it down with a flirtatious snap of her alligator jaws. He waited nearly forty minutes before a slender figure muffled in a heavy dun trench coat and dark glasses entered the bar and wended its way back to where Retief was sitting.
The figure thumped hard against the table. "Ow!"
"Maybe you shouldn't wear the dark glasses inside, Mr. Magnan," Retief told the figure. "Or else switch them to their low-light mode."
"Shh! Retief, please! No names! This is a covert operation."
"Ah. Excuse me." He pulled a hyacinth-scented dopestick out of his jumper pocket and puffed it alight. "I forgot."
"For the duration, you will address me as . . . Agent M. And you, of course, will be Agent R."
"Do you really think that's necessary?"
"Retief! I've been reading up on the topic. Why, the technological sophistication of some of the devices used by our security and espionage services is nothing less than breathtaking in their abilities! Why, there are spy satellites that can see through the roof of a building such as this and reconstruct out conversation by measuring the density variance of the air around us! There's a device that can measure the internal pressure of a wallet and deduce from its interaction with the muscles of one's gluteal region the amount of money you're carrying! There's a device—"
"If all of that's true, sir, we might as well admit it. Clandestine meetings are an impossibility. Why don't you sit down, sir, before you attract any more attention with that getup."
"Yes. Ah . . . where's the chair?"
"Move to your right. Put out your hand . . ."
"Ah. There it is." Magnan sat down, doing his best to look inconspicuous.
"I genuinely doubt, sir," Retief told his superior, "that the cloak-and-dagger is necessary. No one is going to be suspicious of two former colleagues meeting for a drink at a favorite local watering hole."
"Who said anything about a dagger?" Magnan wanted to know. "Or a cloak, for that matter. This is the latest in high-tech trench-coat wear from the boys in Intelligence. Pretty snazzy, huh?"
"Very."
Magnan rubbed the fabric of the coat's lapel almost reverently. "It is resistant to the most powerful chemical solvent known," he whispered. "And . . . it's reversible!"
"Waterproof, eh? What won't they think of next!"
"As for assumptions about the thoughts of possible hostile observers, I can only say that one can't be too careful in the world of covert operations. One mistake, one minor oversight, and our mutual identities would be exploded!"
"You mean our covers would be blown."
"That too. What do you have for me?"
Retief passed him a tiny sealed capsule. "My report's in there. Basically, though, it's what we thought. GOSH is smuggling joyweed to B'rukley in bulk. An organizer for the local chapter of ACHE is orchestrating things at this end. As it happens, she's also involved in bringing all of the off-world students for these peace rallies, through SMERCH. I don't know yet what that's all about."
"Excellent work, Retief," Magnan said, ostentatiously palming the capsule in an attempt to pick it up without having the act noticed. Somehow, he missed his pass and sent the silvery capsule clattering onto the floor. Ducking down, he tried to get it, couldn't see it because he still had his spyglasses on, then slammed the back of his head into the bottom of the table with a loud thud. "Oww!"
Retief picked the capsule up off the floor, carefully reached inside Magnan's trench coat, and dropped it into a jumper pocket while his superior gingerly rubbed his head.
"Names and photographs of the principal players are in that report," Retief told Magnan, "along with recordings of my conversations with some of them."
"Good . . . good work." Magnan removed the glasses, winced, and touched the back of his head again, lightly. "I expect this will nicely wrap things up all around."
"Not quite, sir," Retief told him. "We don't know where the contraband is coming from, other than that it's originating in the Odiousita system. Nor do we know how they're distributing it. And we don't know the identity of the GOSH leadership—the one they call 'Mr. Bug.'
"But what I'm most concerned about is the Groaci."
"Indeed? And what part do our sticky-fingered friends from Groac play in this drama?"
"I don't know, and that's what worries me."
"I spoke rhetorically, Retief . . . er . . .that is, Agent R. We have no reason to believe the Groaci are involved in this at all!"
"But we do. Broodmaster Shtliff was being amusingly conspicuous in his attempts to remain inconspicuous the other evening, and there is his apparent penetration of the local student scene as a religious leader. It stands to reason, though. If GOSH is involved, there's money to be made here . . . a lot of money. I don't think they're working with the organized crime people. That's not their style. But it could be that the Groaci are trying to cut themselves in for a piece of the action."
"That seems peculiarly opportunistic even for them," Magnan protested. "Planetary conquest, overthrowing local regimes, undermining legitimate Terran aspirations throughout the sector, that's all in a day's work for the Groaci, a part and parcel of the status quo. But stooping to crime and drug trafficking . . ."
"The illegality of the operation is still in question," Retief reminded him, taking another puff on his dopestick. "Joyweed's legal on B'rukley. The locals use it for roughage in their salad."
"True. But the fact that its transport from one system to another is illegal according to the Terran-Shamballa Accords should give one pause. There is also the matter of associating with a known and notorious criminal element, to wit, the Galactic Organized Syndicate of Humanoids."
"We'll know more after tomorrow night, Mr. Magnan, when I check out the student be-in at the park."
"It's 'Agent M,'" he corrected. "'Be-in'? What's that?"
"A happening, sir. Love, peace, enlightenment, and letting it all hang out."
"That sounds . . . dangerous. Even illegal."
"That's why we arranged this cover, Mr. Magnan."
"'Agent M,'" Magnan corrected him again. "Agreed. Still . . . you be careful. Religious enlightenment, especially, can constitute a serious risk to one's mental equilibrium."
"It's not the enlightenment that worries me, sir. It's all of that free love."
"Free . . . free love?" Magnan's eyebrows crawled higher on his thin face.
"I've found that free love very often is not." He stood up. "See you in two days . . . Agent M."
"Magnan," Magnan corrected him.
But he was already gone.
The be-in, Retief found, was a whirling carnival of sight and color, of sound and sensation.
The atmosphere was considerably more relaxed than it had been during the demonstration the other day. College kids—mostly human but representing several species—lazed about in various stages of dress and undress, talking, making out, wandering about, smoking hand-rolled dopesticks. There was a lot of the latter going on, and the air was thick with the sweet odor of joyweed.
The haze was thick enough, in fact, that Retief stopped and pulled out a small plastic case. Inside were a pair of high-tech BreatheSafeT nose filters. One slipped up each nostril; he wanted to stay sharp and didn't care to get high on secondhand smoke.
On a crudely made stage, eight young humans and a couple of young Naghans, agleam in iridescent scales, danced and cavorted in the nude—an amateur production of the hit musical Scales.
One of the Naghans was crooning into a microphone, the words blaring from the enormous speakers rising from either side of the stage.
"She asks me why I'll
Be just a scaly reptile.
I'm scaly all the night
I think scales are all right. . . ."
"Hey there," a voice said from behind him. "You, like, came!"
"Hello, Aquaria. I wouldn't have missed it." For a moment, he thought his spy glasses were set to X-ray mode, but when he took them off he saw that Aquaria really was fetchingly attired in flower-print sandals and nothing else. "Are you in the show?"
"Huh?"
"Your costume."
She looked down at herself. "Oh, like, no way! I'm just, like, being, y'know? People are way too, like, uptight about their bodies. They're just, like, y'know, bodies. People, like, need to relax and, like, get on the beam, and, like, let it all hang out."
"Which you do very nicely indeed."
On stage, the performers were bouncing into the number's chorus.
"Gimme a bod with scales,
Green beautiful scales.
Shining, gleaming
Seeming iridescent. . . ."
"I was hoping you'd come. What's your name?"
"I'd be pleased if you would call me Jame."
"Jame. I like that."
"Why did you want me here?"
"Because you, like, seem like a cool guy."
"I'm a bit on the old side for this crowd, don't you think?"
She made a face. "That's just it. All of the guys, like, my age are such, such, like, children. I could go for a mature guy, y'know?"
"Ah. I see."
"Scales, scales, scales, scales, scales, scales, scales
Opalescent, luminescent
Makes me quite the adolescent . . ..
My scales! . . ."
"Hey, babe, dude," a scraggly-looking teenager with a blank expression said. "Ya wanna hit? Like, good stuff."
"Like, do me." She accepted a hand-twisted joyweed joint and sucked down a double lungful. "Totally mediocre," she said breathily. "Here, Jame! Try a puff?"
"Thank you, Aquaria, no," he gently refused. "Your radiant visual charms are quite enough to get me high."
"Aw, you're sweet." She took another drag.
"Hey, hey," the boy said, gesturing for the joint. "Don't pull a bogie."
"Good stuff," she said, handing the joint back. "Totally beamie."
"Like, ya wanna?"
"Nah." She took hold of Retief's arm. "I got my date."
"Like, cool." The kid wandered off, his blank expression unmoved.
"How do you feel?" Retief asked her.
"Oh, like, stellarific, to the maxi. Beaming up the starclouds, man. Galloping the sevens to the ice, with gorgeous grow-mes in the flutterbox."
"I'll take that as a 'good.' What was that phrase our friend just used? Pulling a bogie?"
"Aw, like, Bogie was an ancient tri-vid star who, like, always had a dopestick dangling from his, like, lips, y'know? So if you pull a bogie, you're hogging the weed."
"I see." As the joyweed hit her, Aquaria was becoming increasingly vacant. Her body twitched and jerked in interesting ways to the beat of the music from the stage.
"Say, where's that guru giving his talk this afternoon?" Retief said, changing the subject.
"You wanna go, like, see him?"
"I'd like to get a little further from those speakers."
"Sure! Like, totally beamy!"
"Beamy?"
"Like . . . on the beam, in the groove, like, you know?"
"No, but I'm learning."
"The Grothel-dude guru, he's, like, over this way!"
Retief followed Aquaria across the red-ocher grass of the park, crossing a low rise and descending into a bowl-shaped depression that formed a natural amphitheater far enough from the stage that the thundering music was muted to a dull rumble largely masked by the intervening ridge.
A crowd of several hundred had gathered in the bowl, seated or sprawled on the grass or on blankets brought for the occasion. Some couples were enthusiastically engaged in other activities involving repetitive movements and few clothes, but most were quietly listening to the guru as he delivered his oration. The sweet-heavy smell of joyweed was thick in the air.
A stage had been built here as well, though it was low and ramped about with earth, creating a squat, truncated pyramid perhaps five feet high. The Grothelwaith—or, rather, Shtliff in his Grothelwaith disguise—sat on a colorful blanket at the center of the mound, a circle of smoking joss sticks planted in the earth around him. A banner raised behind him proclaimed: Make Peace! Make Love! A pair of young, human females wearing not much of anything at all flanked him, like ceremonial handmaidens.
Or perhaps they'd just grabbed the best seats in the house.
Retief and Aquaria found a seat on the slope of the bowl affording them a good view. Retief pulled out his spyglasses and gave the guru a thorough long-range examination.
Set in X-ray mode, Shtliff's black robes faded to a hazy outline, and the Groaci's spindly-legged, dumpy-torsoed body was revealed beneath, his five stalked eyes erect behind the pair of lights mimicking glowing eyes within the hood. And, sure enough, Shtliff was wearing a mechanism suspended over his narrow chest that, from this angle, at least, looked like an air-filtration system and respirator. The unit also appeared to have a built-in voice amplifier; Shtliff's normal voice, as for all Groaci, was a sibilant, breathy whisper, but he was addressing his audience now in strong, commanding tones that echoed back from distant buildings and all but drowned out the musical next door.
" . . . and thus we know, because it is written in the Book of Ages, that service to your fellow beings is the true path to enlightenment!" Shtliff was saying, speaking Standard with only a trace of an accent. "Finding joy in honest labor, your hands deep in the good rich soil of a bountiful world, tending the Creator's green acre of growing things, ripe for the harvest!"
There was something about Shtliff's amplified voice . . . an overtone or a harmonic that Retief couldn't quite pin down, at once grating, like nails on a blackboard, and commanding. Odd. Reaching up, he touched the pressure control on the frame of the spyglasses that projected a tiny heads-up display across the inside of the left lens. Shtliff's electronics were putting out some very unusual harmonics, many of them in the infrasonic range, below the threshold of human hearing.
Conscious human hearing, that is. He set the glasses to record. The sounds could be fully analyzed later. In the meantime, Retief studied the other listeners gathered in the amphitheater. With a few exceptions that had more to do with love than peace, all seemed riveted on Shtliff's presentation. And that was odd as well, since Shtliff's material, while nicely orated, was hardly the stuff of spellbinding epics.
"It so happens that just such a venue for wholesome work and enlightenment exists here on this world of enlightenment. I refer, of course, to the PEAS Corps. My assistants will pass out the necessary information. . . ."
"PEAS Corps?" Retief said. "Do you know anything about that?"
"No, but it sounds like the beamiest."
The two young women who'd been up on the stage were handing out brochures, passing stacks of them along each row of the audience. When a bundle came to Retief, he took one and passed the rest along.
The PEAS Corps, he learned, was the Politically Enlightened Alliance of Students, a group formed under the sponsorship of both ACHE and SMERCH, and dedicated to bringing thousands of students to the warm glow and fulfillment of life on an agro commune.
"Working on a farm?" Retief prompted. "Hard work, no pay, plain meals . . . that sounds beamy?"
Her eyes were closed, and she was swaying gently back and forth. "Like, awesomely beamy."
"Where are you from, Aquaria?"
"Like, Newbraska, Jame. I grew up on a farm on Newbraska."
"Why did you leave? Why did you come here?"
"Aw, like, I just wanted to get off of that farm, y'know? Nothing but work, work, work, doin' the chores, feeding the livestock, mucking out the hydroponics. So I decided to go to school."
"At the Cornfed Veterinary, Horticultural, and Miscellaneous College of Conservative Arts, by any chance?"
"Yeah! Like, beamy! You know the place?"
"By reputation only."
"Well, it wasn't that great, but at least I was off the farm, y'know? Then I got the chance to sign up with a SMERCH tour to come out here to USC B'rukley. And it's ever so much beamier, with all the cool guys and the good weed and the, like . . . wow, a chance to join the PEAS Corps. . . ."
She seemed to be drifting out of the conversation. He shook her gently by the shoulder. "Stay with me, Aquaria. Let me get this straight. You couldn't wait to get off the farm where you grew up because you hated that life . . . and now you can't wait to join a commune where you'll be working on a farm again. . . ."
"Like, totally cosmic rad, like, awesome mediocrity! Isn't that the beamiest? So totally moxsome to the maxi . . ."
Retief reached over and pulled up Aquaria's left eyelid . . . then the right. Her pupils were widely dilated. She didn't appear to see him. He moved his hand up and down in front of her face without getting a reaction, though she continued to mumble a long ramble filled with "likes," "awesomes," and "totally beamies."
"The PEAS Corps needs young beings like yourselves," Shtliff was saying from his dais. "With the PEAS Corps, you will find enlightenment, bliss, understanding, peace. . . ."
He looked around at the rest of Shtliff's audience. Quite a few were sprawled out on the ground now, apparently oblivious to everything around them. A few were up and dancing, which was a little strange because the sounds from Scales had ceased, and they were dancing to music that evidently only they could hear.
"The PEAS Corps wants you. The PEAS Corps is home. . . ."
A number more were getting up off the ground and wandering off vacantly, wearing empty expressions like masks.
Aquaria started to get up.
"Where are you going?"
"I . . . need to . . . like . . . join the PEAS Corps," she said. "They need me. Enlightenment. . . ."
"Sit down, Aquaria."
Obediently, she sat.
"Can you hear me?"
"Yes."
"Where are you staying?"
"At the . . . StarBrite Hotel . . . in town. Room 540. But the PEAS Corps is my home. . . ."
"Aquaria, I want you to go to your room at the StarBrite Hotel. Get dressed. Then go straight to the Terran Embassy, at the Plaza of Articulate Naiveté. Ask for Ben Magnan."
"Ben Magnan."
"That's right. Tell him you claim asylum as a distressed tourist. He'll have a doctor look you over. Do you understand?"
"Yes."
"What did I just tell you?"
"I should go to my room at the StarBrite . . . get dressed . . . Terran Embassy . . . Ask for Ben Magnan . . . say I'm a distressed tourist. . . ."
"Good girl." He took another look at the pupils of her eyes. She acted as though someone had slipped her a powerful hypnotic. That joyweed joint? Whatever it was had made her extremely suggestible.
And it appeared to have affected quite a few other human students gathered in the amphitheater.
Vacantly, Aquaria stood up and walked off in the general direction of the center of High Gnashberry.
And Retief decided to have a little talk with the guru.
Shtliff apparently had not yet seen Retief. The heavy black hood of his disguise seriously restricted his vision, even for a being with five eyes, and Retief had no problem walking around to the rear of his dais, making his way to the top, and sitting down cross-legged at Shtliff's side.
"Well, well, well," Retief said. "And what would the Groaci First Assistant Minister of Sneaky Affairs on B'rukley be doing preaching sermons from a mountaintop?"
At the very first "well," Shtliff started so violently he nearly fell over.
"To be not doing that, Retief!" the being said, his whispered Groaci amplified to a commanding declaration. "To be scaring me out of ten years' growth!"
"What's the idea, Shtliff," Retief demanded in Standard. "What's the angle with the PEAS Corp? The Groaci aren't farmers and they don't go in for civil-works projects."
"Get out!" the agitated Shtliff ordered in Standard. "Go away! Shoo!" He shifted back to Groaci. "To not want you here to cramp my style!"
The students in the audience, Retief noticed, were getting up and wandering off in all directions, obeying Shtliff's unintentional command. The two handmaidens stood nearby, looking stunned.
"You've got those students in a highly suggestible hypnotic trance," Retief told the alien. "What'd you do? Spike the joyweed handouts?"
"To be interfering with the mission-field work of a simple laborer in the vineyards!" Shtliff scrambled backward away from Retief, his hood going astray, his five stalked eyes lashing about wildly. "To be messing things up for the Church! To be racking up serious bad karma!"
"To burn later a serious buttload of sacred joss sticks in penance," Retief said, grabbing the hem of the Groaci's robe. "You know, Broodmaster, the Peace Enforcers take a very dim view of slavery. They might be quite interested in your little scam, here—drugging Terry students, hypnotizing them into doing free labor. Just what is it your little agro community is supposed to be growing, Shtliff?"
"To be perilously close to blasphemy, vile Terry! The religious work of a simple preacher in the mission fields, to be none of the business of you or the Peace Enforcers!"
"Let our guru go," one of the young women ordered. Retief glanced up and saw that both of them were holding small but deadly Groaci power pistols and were aiming them at his head.
"Put the guns down, girls," he told them.
"Uh-uh. You let Broodie go!" Both of them, he now saw, were wearing nose filters like his. Slowly, he released Shtliff's robe and raised his hands.
"Where were you hiding those?" he asked with genuine interest. Neither girl wore enough clothes to hide a pack of dopesticks, much less a pistol.
"Shut up. Turn around."
He turned. "I take it you don't care that your guru is actually a Groaci disguised as a Grothelwaith."
Something—the butt of a pistol, he thought—cracked against the base of his skull, and Retief dropped into darkness.