Psychohistorical Crisis

by Unknown Author

  On the way home he took a detour to pick up a tonic his

  doctor had recommended and found himself in the domed concourse twenty levels below his apartment watching a group of students joshing each other. Instead of catching a levitator and flopping into his bed underneath his mobiles of old warcraft, an impulse, perhaps prompted by the celebrants, sent him strolling to the tube end of the concourse. While he was grumpily nagging himself that he should be in bed, the old student roustabout in his soul called up a private transport pod from the dispatcher.

  The black robopod flipped open its top for easy access and he climbed in.

  “Comfort setting?” asked the dashboard.

  “Firm.” Konn wanted a fast ride to nowhere. The top sealed and went opaque. An internal air supply began to circulate a standard invigorating mixture.

  “Destination?” the pod asked when Konn had not volunteered the information.

  “Doesn’t matter. Just take me on a fast roily-ride that gives me heart failure. For that I’d like the windows cleared.”

  “My sensors detect a physical age which precludes my use of fast turns—do you have a medical waiver?”

  “Oh, forget it!” snarled Konn.

  Still they were not moving. “If you please, I require a destination,” demanded the robopod stubbornly.

  “Make it the Olibanum.” Konn was unwilling to match wits with the sand-grain brain of a machine. If he wasn’t going to get his joyride, the marvels of the Olibanum were the next best thing.

  “Your stop?” asked the pod reproachfully.

  “Kermis Station.” It was the only one he remembered offhand without asking his fam for a list.

  The pod did oblige him by clearing its windows while they passed through the conduits of the stygian betwixt-city. They swished at a respectable clip, past dark supports and air shafts, around grim water tanks and overdomes—but without finger-clenching speed it was no fun. Old habit was taking him back to the mecca of his youth, along the marvelous Corridor of the Olibanum, where the students of the Lyceum had always mixed with the Splendid masses in order to forget troubles and to bum time that could more profitably have been used to fuel their studying.

  “Release your seat belt only on green permission!” warned his single-occupant pod, not mentioning that it would report him to the police for a fine if he disobeyed. They popped out into a sumptuous station. The pod’s dash padding went green. He unfolded himself to exit into the cathedral quiet of the Kermis Station.

  A short walk took him through a twinkling sound barrier into the noisy bombardment of the Corridor. What a pleasure in the grin muscles to remember the wonderful times he had wasted in the bistros of this vast carnival strip when he was still as smug as that hotshot Nejirt had been this afternoon! Would a wiser Konn care to be seen in the Teaser’s Bistro in his aged incarnation? Futile task to try to keep up with himself as a juvenile! But the thought amused him—almost like a dare.

  He jostled among the crowds, trying to decide which were the students and which the bureaucrats and which the lay players. Dress styles had shifted so much since he had been here last. The signals by which people identified each other remained a fluid language. It was of no use to fam-flash anyone to scan their vita—the probably altered ID would be a mask, a joke, a sly come-on. The Olibanum was traditionally a place of festive anonymity.

  One famless musician caught his attention, surely a man from the deepest of the bedrock warrens or maybe a denizen of the corridors. How had he lost his fam? Or was he one of those unfortunates whose family had been unable to afford one for their child and charity had bypassed? He sighed. Hahukum was reminded of a grim time—earlier than his youth as a student—his mother had been an abandoned immigrant who did what she had to on the streets and lived where she could. The musician evoked his pity; he listened to the plaintive songs while other listeners came and went. The mendicant accompanied himself with a palm-size audiovib that was of far better quality than his voice.

  O, I know the time’s a comin when the bear will see in color and the rivers will run gushing; if my mom won’t sell a ticket then—

  I’ll steal one!

  One rhyme led to another. The Admiral loitered. “Do you know any navy ditties?” He had a weakness for the songs of the barracks of space.

  The smile—through broken teeth—was enchanting, and out popped a rowdy lyric about a deckhand who was always poking his fingers into the wrong places, from machinery to women’s private parts, and getting zapped in the chorus. The crowds flowed by. Some stopped for a moment to listen before they moved on.

  Hahukum slipped the balladeer a money stick that was programmed not to buy medicine or drugs or alcohol and went on his way, somewhat appalled. How could a man live out his life famless, like a monkey, like a wastrel Rithian? How? And wretched teeth! A few inamins out of a watch in a chair with a mouth-assembler would fix that! No accounting for people! You might build a Galaxy safe from the raids of ravening space hordes or fill the stars from a cornucopia of luxuries for body and mind—yet there were always the woebegone to traipse off to perdition with the sincerest grumble in their song.

  His mood was such that he could not be long depressed, even by depressing memories or nagging worries—or a lack of superstudents. He was tempted to deactivate his fam and just bask in the animal aura of the Olibanum as a primitive.. .but tripping out on one’s naive wonder, guideless, in a con artist’s paradise was a recipe for waking up in an embarrassing fix. Too bad. He had to be content to drift along happily—with his comprehension intact.

  After being caught in a throng, he let himself be swept up a slanting belt lift, curious to find what galactic marvel lurked above the ecstatic hawking that could pull in such a crowd. They were all younger than he and obviously knew something he didn’t. What was a grumpmug? It couldn’t be more exotic than the elephant in bloomers he had once ridden here as a student.

  The mob propelled him up into a high-ceilinged depot with moving lights and streamers—approaches crowded with boys and their dates, some heading to festivities uplevel and some lined up at stalls to rent tiny enclosed cars. Konn rented a car (decorated like a beast-from-hell-with-fenders) and spent the next round careening about a vegetation-choked plain laid inside a rambling emporium. Above them the ceiling was a transparent dance floor so that the herd of less adventurous revelers could share vicariously in the rollicking mayhem below—which consisted of nothing more than bumping and banging grumpmugs and chasing the odd teenage couple hither and thither in circles. But it was fun.

  The hermaphroditic grumpmugs of Vincetori turned out to be cantankerous plains beasties jealously willing to defend their foraging range. They were built of cartilaginous sponge and bone that went well with their ornery dispositions and butting habits. They moved on a set of running stumps that could send them in any direction, with a slithering speed, allowing them to contact their rival with a respectable thunk.

  The vast majority of planets with an aboriginal oxygen atmosphere had been found to support life no more complicated than unicells; galactically the grumpmug rated as a very advanced species. But not so advanced that the amazing transformation of sky into dance floor was even noticed! In brainpower grumpmugs were a quarter of a billion years away from intelligence. Still, Konn felt that challenging them was more fun than butting heads with the fam-enhanced students of the Lyceum... thunk! Well, sometimes! A dodging grumpmug had side-slithered to butt his car over onto its back. Staring at the world from a strange angle, he ruefully began to suspect that considerable gengi-neering had toughened up these grumpmugs for their carnival life.

  Limping, the Admiral spent the rest of his small monies entertaining safer teenage girls on the level above—in a different kind of wit-banging.

  It was late when he set out again, having given his leg enough time to recover. He noticed that he was in the neighborhood of his old haunt, the Teaser’s Bistro. The Olibanum was quieter and he strolled up to the Deep Shaft, enjoying the walk
around its impressive promenade. He’d never met the latest owner of the Bistro though Rigone had already become notorious among the students. In his youthful heyday the Teaser’s had been a shady hangout; under Rigone its reputation was high-tech risque, not a strict respecter of the probe laws. He did not have to rely on his fam to lay guiding cues onto his visual cortex to find it—the route was still engraved in his wetware—two blocks beyond the Deep Shaft was a little alley and there, hidden away to the right, up an inconspicuous stairway, was the Bistro, as it had always been. Only the bizarre railings, crawling with carved snakes, were new.

  He had intended to pass by. A reflex more than half a century old took him up the stairs.

  Hahukum suspected that his entrance would make a stir. On a planet with a trillion inhabitants there were many places he could go without being recognized, but the student ghetto wasn’t one of them. The tavern was half full in a lazy third-watch sort of way, mostly youths at the long row of tables that marched down the central hall. A lanky rouster saw him first and turned to nudge his companion, a gesture noticed by the bartender who shifted his eyes to touch Konn, then swiftly faded into a back room. The identification became a subdued chain reaction. There were disadvantages to holding Rank as high as Second. If some of the clientèle were his Lyceum students he wouldn’t have known—they were dressed outrageously to avoid fam scan.

  The proprietor appeared even before Hahukum was able to settle himself. Rigone was a hefty man, curlicue tattoos on his face, certainly a Scav, charming in an irresistible way that one would be a fool to trust “Admiral! You’ve returned.”

  “After fifty years,” said Konn dryly, appraising this man who hadn’t even been bom the last time he had sat at the battered old bar.

  “You’re still on our roster.” Rigone grinned, not letting him be seated. “The drink is on me,” he said, leading the way. Whatever the owner of the Teaser’s thought might be the agenda of his powerful visitor, he seemed to want to conduct the negotiation away from his customers’ eyes. Konn was ushered out back and up the stairs and into private quarters which were doubly guarded. A vault-strong door closed behind them with the hiss of an air seal, followed by a crackling as they were allowed to pass through a forcecurtain strong enough, when active, to block a running man.

  The apartment’s only visible room was luxurious. There were shelves of antique ivory book-modules from late Imperial times, unreadable without the ancient hardware. The tapestry was probably Sewinnese; the bric-a-brac from the period of the Sack. A wall of electronic tools seemed to be exquisitely crafted for show but were certainly of the finest functionality. He smelled a faint perfume that bushwhacked his metropolitan imagination—wildflowers in a mountain meadow? When had he last set foot in a pristine mountain valley?

  Rigone spoke in a voice not meant to be overheard beyond an arm’s length. “Sorry, I’m not alone... entertaining one of the ladies...” Then: “Mer!”

  The delicately perfumed girl-woman who emerged from the slumber room seemed to hold a position of trust. She wasn’t expecting company and deferred to Rigone for an explanation, a slightly displeased expression on her face. She wore her hair in a cage and her eyes were outlined in metal with turquoise inlay; her informal jumpers were slashed boldly down the side, her feet bare. She was no student.

  “Mer... we have a guest... Admiral Second Rank Hahukum Konn.” Konn heard the voice of a cocky man flying through clouds on manual at night between the peaks of a rugged range, perhaps with mountain wildflowers below, looking for a safe landing site. It was a voice that would never admit to distress.

  Mer reached out with fingers extended; her greeting was cultured, sociable, noncommittal. But from the widening of her pupils Konn deduced that the girl was aware of him by reputation. Her whole attitude shifted to circumspection. And... she had quietly made the assumption, from some unspoken exchange between them, that Rigone was in trouble. She sought ways to support him, eyes leaving Konn from time to time to glance at her paladin of the Bistro, as if waiting for instructions.

  Strange, they were expecting him to make some demand of them, which they were steeling themselves to refuse. He was amused. He was here on nostalgic impulse. But he could always accommodate them and think of something to bother their peace. He was ever willing to ask service of those who saw themselves as servants. One only had to be careful not to ask more than could be given. That was simply a rule of good government.

  “They still tell stories about you around here,” said Rigone with a gleam in his eye, preparing a drink while Mer called up an aerochair.

  “They do, do they?” he said* graciously accepting the chair. “If I recall correctly I was quite sedate compared with today’s youth.”

  “I’m certain the punch lines of the stories have become exaggerated over the years.”

  One compliment deserved another. “My students tell me stories about you, too.”

  Rigone laughed. “I wish they wouldn’t do that. I spend too much time smooth-talking the police.”

  Wit was leading this man straight at his worst fear. To hide his smile, Hahukum sniffed at the drink to find out what his host had offered him. It smelled of the planet Armazin, imported and therefore impressive. “With charm as smooth as yours, I’m sure you’re never bothered by the police.”

  “Never, unless some highly placed individual decides to rattle my trivial world.”

  When people stated their fears that blatantly, they were asking for soothing reassurance—but it wasn’t Konn’s style to reassure glib criminals. “In that case,” replied the Admiral with an ambiguous irony, “I’m sure a small bribe is enough to settle the problem.”

  Quite suddenly the girl-woman erupted in the curses of a dialect that meant that her cultured accent had been lately learned. She reacted hotly to what she perceived as a candied threat; and it was the candy, not the threat, that insulted her. “And when you’re through wire-brushing your asshole, just say what you want!”

  Rigone reacted to her gaffe with horror. He made a small gesture to quiet his companion while he tried to master his own composure. She swiveled away in disgust to clean an already clean bartop.

  “Please excuse..To the Admiral he was making the naval hand-sign for seventeen, which meant that Mer was only seventeen years old.

  Konn cut him off. “I do want something.” He had just made a decision, again on impulse.

  A wary Rigone now found himself trying frantically to revise his damage control in midsentence. He had been talking about the trials of teaching proper manners to modem youth... “Something from me? I can’t see what I have to offer—compared with your resources.”

  “/can.”

  Rigone rubbed one of his tattoos to give himself time to think. “That means you have been hearing fantasies about me. I can do nothing for you. I am an honest man. I refuse to offer you anything but the finest hospitality.”

  “You’re into the fam-fixing business.” Not always legal. “Your work is very admired.”

  “No, no. Not at all. Rumors! I have a kind heart. Sometimes when a student has psychological problems I find myself being a father to him... we talk... I help in whatever way I can...”

  “Rigone,” cried Mer, “he’ll kill you if you don’t give him what he wants!”

  Rigone laughed helplessly. “Admiral, what do I do with a woman who is that overprotective... besides strangle her?”

  “You do exactly what she says.”

  Rigone froze. “That would make my life impossibly difficult,” he said coldly.

  “No, it wouldn’t. I’m not threatening you. I want you to modify my fam. Would I trust you with my fam if I were threatening you? It’s a small deal. You’ll do well. I pay for all services rendered. You spend a midnight watch souping up my fam; I help you in ways that no student can afford.” Rigone was perturbed. “You’re not making yourself clear. The Lyceum staff has available to it fam modifying tech far beyond anything I might muster.”

  “You don’t
understand. Why should I trust them? There’s a conspiracy against me at the Lyceum, and—unfortunately— they do have tech far beyond anything you’ve got. Think about it. The fam was originally a masterly modification of the psychic probe. It wasn’t used to augment minds; it was used to control them. A fam you’ve lived with all your life protects you against emotional control. The modem ones are designed that way. But how can it protect you when you’re not wearing it? Would you give your fam to a very skilled fam technician who had an interest in making you more amenable to his view of the universe?”

  ‘Then why would you trust me?”

  “That’s my business.”

  “Do what he wants, Rigone. You know as well as I—” “Shut up!” He turned back to Konn. “What is it that you are asking me to do? Fam augmentation is all very illegal. The fam damn near ruined the Founder’s Plan, and ever since Cloun-the-Stubbom you Pscholars have run a very tight galaxy-wide control on the laws governing fam use. I’ve been known to cross the line—but I survive because I’ve never violated the spirit of the law.”

  “I was hoping you could install me a crib sheet.”

  Rigone was incredulous. “You want a crib sheet installed in your functions stack?” He stared. “Why would you want a simple thing like that done?”

  “Why would a student want it done? Maybe I have a heavy exam schedule.” The Admiral was grinning. “But it has to be a very good crib sheet—up to date, of course—one that, at the very least, has the Hasef-Im test among its algorithms. A student of mine bothered me with that one lately. I can’t keep up with these kids anymore, Rigone. Mathematics is a young man’s game. The Founder was dead when he was my age!” “I’m not even supposed to touch your mathematical functions,” Rigone protested.

  “But you do, all the time. For a fee.”

  “The stuff is encrypted,” said Rigone defensively. “I can’t crack that kind of code. I have no desire to crack it! I just install the stuff.”

  “That’s good. Not being able to crack code is very good life insurance.”