Dar shrugged, took his tumbler out of the slot, and settled back with a contented sigh. “I’m beginning to see advantages to decadence.” He beamed down on the city passing beneath them. Then he frowned. “What’s that?”
Below them, a mob filled several streets, waving signs and throwing bricks.
“What?” Whitey leaned over to the window, looking down. “Hey, not bad! Let’s see if we can hear them.” He turned a knob and punched a button beneath the speaker grille. It filtered faint words to them:
“Espers are Ethical!”
“Don’t Sell the Psis!”
“Terra for Telepaths!”
Whitey nodded with satisfaction. “A political demonstration. Nice to hear the voice of dissent.”
“The bricks are bouncing back at them,” Dar called. “Bouncing off of thin air, in fact. What is it, a force-field?”
“Give the man a point!” Lona said brightly. “You’ve got it, sophisticate—it’s a force-field. Makes sure the demonstrators don’t hurt anybody.”
“There’re a few Security men outside the force-field …”
“Well, you wouldn’t expect them to be inside, would you?”
“But why do they need them, with the force-field?”
“Who do you think set it up?”
“Also, they’re the official sign that the government is hearing the citizens’ grievances,” said Sam, with full sarcasm.
“The government approves?”
“The government embraces it, almost to the point of lewdness. They’ve even written it into law—for every hundred thousand persons demonstrating for eight hours, they get one vote on the issue in the Assembly.”
Dar turned to her, frowning. “Sounds a little dangerous. A fad could get voted into law that way.”
“Not when you remember that the Assembly represents ninety-three human-inhabited planets with a total population of eighty billion. You have to have forty-eight votes just to get the issue onto the agenda! Not that it hasn’t happened, mind you—but rarely, very rarely.”
“Two of the programs based on such issues have been enacted into law,” Father Marco reminded her.
“Two laws in five centuries? Not exactly a great track record, Father!”
“Well, no. It does require that the majority approve the issue.”
“Yeah.” Sam slid over next to Dar and stared out the window gloomily. “But some chance is better than none, I suppose. At least it gives the counterculture the illusion that they can accomplish something.”
They passed over three more demonstrations on the way to Bocello’s; each was huge, making the pro-telepath mob look like a handful—and all screaming for the telepaths’ blood.
“What’re we getting upset about?” Dar wondered. “We’re not telepaths!”
“Try and prove that to Pohyola,” Sam growled.
What with one thing and another, their nerves were in a fine state of disarray by the time the limo landed.
They stepped out into the midst of a tournament.
The knights had apparently unhorsed each other; the beasts in question were standing back, watching their masters with jaundiced eyes. The knights were hewing at each other with broadswords that went CLICK! CLUNK! whenever they met. The Green Knight wore full plate armor; his opponent wore a haubergeon. Behind and above them stood a scoreboard with two outline-drawings of a human form; whenever one of the knights managed to “wound” his opponent, the “wound” would show up on the scoreboard as a red light, and a chime would ring the knight’s number of points.
Around them stood and sat a hundred or so people dressed in the latest fashion of the fourteenth century. Or the twelfth. Or the tenth. Or maybe the ninth. They nibbled at pasties and swigged ale, laughing and cheering, while peddlers circulated among them with food and drink, and troubadours and gleemen strolled about singing and chanting. An occasional monk stood near, inveighing against the evils of tournaments and enjoining the faithful to repent.
Lona turned to the chauffeur. “Sure you didn’t take us to the wrong address? Say, maybe a mental hospital?”
“Not at all,” the chauffeur assured her. “This is Mr. Bocello’s house.” And there it was, rising high behind the medieval crowd in full Gothic splendor, looking more like a public monument than a dwelling.
“A man’s castle is his home,” Dar murmured.
“Mr. Bocello is entertaining,” the chauffeur explained. “Just a few friends from his club.”
Dar eyed the crowd. “Not what I think of as the usual plutocrat-orgy set.”
“Very few of them are wealthy, sir. But all share Mr. Bocello’s fondness for the medieval. He has gathered them to celebrate the return to Terra of, ah, in his words, ‘the greatest gleeman of our age.’ ”
A slow grin spread over Whitey’s face. “Now, that’s what I call honoring me according to my own taste and style! I am more of a gleeman than a poet, anyway! Come on, folks—if the man does me honor, let’s honor his doing!”
A very tall, skinny man in full ducal robes shouldered his way through the crowd with a peasant lass on his arm. “Tambourin!”
“Cello, you filthy old wastrel!” Whitey reached up high to slap the duke’s shoulder. “How’d you get this crowd together on only a day’s notice?”
“Oh, I had a few words with their employers, and they were more than happy to oblige. You didn’t think you could set foot on old Terra again without causing a festival, did you?”
“Well, I did have some naïve notion about slipping in unnoticed,” Whitey admitted.
Bocello raised an eyebrow. “What is it this time—a vengeful husband, or an irate sheriff?”
“It’s more like a list, really…”
“Oh, is it indeed!” Horatio turned the peasant wench around and sent her off with a pat on the backside. “Off with you, child—I have a feeling we’re about to be saying things that you truly want to be able to claim you didn’t hear. Come now, no pouting—I saw the way you were eyeing that acrobat; deny it if you can …” He turned back to Whitey as the girl swept off with a blush and a giggle. “Now, then! It’s been a while; perhaps you and your entourage would like a quick tour of my gardens?”
“We would indeed! Preferably out in the middle of a wide expanse of lawn, free from prying mechanical eyes and ears…”
“Ah, but one can never be totally certain of that anymore.” Horatio took Whitey by the arm and led him away. “They’re doing such wonderful things with miniaturization these days. Still, my gardeners do, ah, ‘sweep’ the lawns every morning, so we’ve a reasonably good chance … By the way, what did you think of Greval’s latest epic?” And they were off, happily ripping apart other artists’ work in the time-honored tradition of amateur critics, as they wove and dodged their way through the crowd. The gang had to scramble to keep up with them, and by the time they came out onto the open grass, Dar was winded.
Sam was starry-eyed.
Dar glanced at her, glanced again, and scowled. What was she looking moonstruck about? He glanced around quickly, but didn’t see any gorgeous hunks of manhood nearby. As a last resort, he glanced back at Sam, and followed the direction of her gaze; it arrowed straight toward Horatio. Dar felt a sudden, biting jealousy, which surprised him.
“Now, then!” Horatio stopped in the middle of a wide, open field, chewed into mud at its center. “The lists are the most private place we’ll find, at least until the next joust. Let’s have your list. Who’s chasing you first?”
“The Solar Patrol, at the moment,” Whitey answered with a grin, “cheered on by a weasel named Canis Destinus.”
“Canis what?” Horatio frowned. “Why is he on your trail?”
“Because I’m helping a friend.” Whitey nodded toward Dar. “And this Canis guy is chasing him because he’s on a secret mission of some sort. It involves getting to the Executive Secretary for a few minutes.”
“I think he does have an opening on his calendar, next Thursday…” Horatio pursed his lips. “Still, it’s a difficult appointment to make.”
“Especially with Canis trying to cancel it,” Whitey agreed. “We can’t be sure, mind you, but we think he’s the one who’s been rousing the local police against us on every planet we’ve been to. There must be at least three warrants out for me, along my backtrail.”