"She's Ori Snipe," Whitey called back over his shoulder, and Sam forced a quick smile and handshake as she left Stroganoff in her wake.

They walked into chaos. Dar's first whirling impression was of a thousand people frantically everywhere, doing purposeless things and shouting at each other in an arcane jargon. But after a few minutes, he began to be able to make sense out of it. There weren't really a thousand people-more like three dozen. And they weren't really moving very quickly-it was just that there were so many of them moving in so many different directions that it seemed frantic. He locked his gaze onto one woman and watched her for a while. She was riding around on a lift, a slender telescoping column on top of a three- wheeled dolly, adjusting the lights that hung far above him. Her movements were methodical, almost plodding-nothing chaotic about them at all. He dropped his gaze to watch another person, then another.

"It may look confusing," Stroganoff said beside him, "but everyone knows what he or she has to do, and does it."

Dar glanced up at him, saw a frown. "Something wrong?"

Stroganoff shook his head. "No, it's all going smoothly. A little ahead of schedule, in fact."

"Then what's the matter?"

"Oh, nothing, really." Stroganoff forced a smile. "It's just that sometimes the phoniness of it gets to me."

Dar frowned. "But you're making stories, here-and stories have to be made-up; they can't be real."

"Oh yes, they can." Stroganoff pursed his lips. "There're a lot of really great stories in the history books."

The statement had a ring of familiarity to Dar; suddenly, he could almost believe he was back in Cholly's Tavern. He cleared his throat to get rid of a sudden tightness. "That almost sounds like education."

"Sh!" Stroganoff hissed, finger to his lips. He glanced around furtively, then breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank heaven! No one heard you!"

"Why?" Dar stared. "What's wrong with education?" "Be quiet, can't you?" Stroganoff glanced around again. "Don't you dare say that word in here!"

"Why? What's the matter with ed . . . uh . . . hum . . . you know!"

"What's the matter with it is that it pulls low ratings," Stroganoff explained in a lowered voice. "That kind of program never attracts more than a handful of viewers."

"Yeah, but that's a handful of all the people in Terran space! A handful out of a trillion-and-a-half!"

"So that 'handful' is a billion or so people; yes, I know." Stroganoff nodded. "But that never sinks in, to the people who run this company.

All they know is that they can get a higher price for a more popular show."

"So." Dar frowned. "You don't dare put in anything ed . . . uh . . . at all deep, or they'll cancel the script." Stroganoff nodded. "That's the basic idea, yah." "And you don't like it that way?" Stroganoff hesitated; then he shook his head. "So you don't like your job?"

"Oh, I like it well enough." StroganofT looked around him. "There is still a fragrance left, out of the old glamor I thought was here when I was a kid. And it is exciting, putting together a story, even if it's purely trivial dross. It's just that . . . well, sometimes it gets to me." "But whyT' "Because I wanted to educate." Stroganoff turned back to Dar with a gentle, weary smile. "Not just a few interested students in a classroom-but the whole, huge mass of the audience, the billions of people who aren't interested, who don't want to learn all those 'irrelevant facts' about Socrates and Descartes, and Simon de Montfort and the Magna Carta." "I kinda thought knowing about the Magna Carta was necessary for all the citizens in a democracy," Dar said uneasily. "At least, if that democracy is going to survive ..."

"If," Stroganoff said, with a sour smile. "Look around you."

Dar swallowed. "I think you've got a point."

"Oh, I know I do." Stroganoff looked up at the lights on their grid of pipes, gazing at them but not seeing them. "And I knew 3DT was the perfect thing to teach with-give the people lectures, but make them so visually interesting that they'd watch it in spite of themselves. Don't just tell them about Waterloo-show it to them, the actual place, the way it is today, and the way it was then. Then show them the battle, reenact it, cut to an overhead shot so they can see how Wellington and Napoleon were moving their troops . . ."He trailed off, a faraway look in his eyes.

"Wait a minute!" Dar stabbed a finger at the producer "I saw that battle! In an old 3DT program! The charge, and the horses galloping into the sunken road-then you saw from overhead, watched Napoleon's army folding in, but while you were watching it, you - heard Wellington describing his strategy . - ."

"Sure you didn't read that in a book somewhere?"

"Yeah, but it didn't make any sense until after I saw the program!

Josephine's Boudoir, that was it!"

"Yeah, it sure was." Stroganoff's mouth worked as though he'd tasted something bitter "I'm surprised you're old enough to have seen it."

"I was way out on a, um, frontier planet. I remember it was mostly a pretty risque version of Napoleon's private life-but it did have the battle of Waterloo in it."

"Yes. It did have that." Stroganoff smiled out at the studio. "Not much education in it-but some. It'll do."

"Why didn't you go into educational programming?" Dar asked softly.

Stroganoff shrugged, irritated. "I did, fresh out of college.

But they insisted that everything be dull and dry. Claimed the students wouldn't take it seriously if it was too entertaining- and they had research studies to back them up. Strange as it may seem, most people don't believe it's education if it isn't dull-and that means it reaches a very few people, indeed."

"Most of whom would learn by themselves, anyway?"

Stroganoff nodded. "The minority who read. Yes. They're wonderful people, but they're not the ones I was worried about, not the ones who endangered democracy."

Dar nodded. "It's the ones who don't want to learn that you want to reach."

"Right." Stroganoff closed his eyes, nodding. "Not that it's going to do any good, of course. Oh, if I'd started a hundred years ago, maybe ..."

"It can't be that bad!" Dar frowned. "I thought a democracy had to become decadent before it collapsed." "So?"

"But we're not" Dar spread his hands, hooked into claws. "Where're the orgies? Where's the preoccupation with sex? Where're the decadent aristocrats?"

"At the I.D.E. enclave in New York." Stroganoff gave him a wry smile.

"Ever seem 'em? Funny about that ..." "Well, okay. But the orgies ..."

"Been looking for them pretty hard, haven't you? Well, don't worry- they don't need to be there. How many orgies do you think the average Roman shopkeeper saw? Look for the decadence in the small things-the people who don't bother to vote because the candidates're 'so much alike.' The people who think it's fine for the government to crack down, as long as it doesn't interfere with their getting their supply of their favorite euphoric. The people who think talking politics is in poor taste. There's the decadence that kills a democracy."

"And it traces back to lack of knowledge," Dar said softly. "Not all of it." Stroganoff frowned; then he nodded. "But a lot of it. Yah. A lot."

"Ever hear of Charles T. Barman?" Dar said slowly.

"The rogue educator?" Stroganoff grinned. "Yeah, I've heard of him.

Read his main book, even. Yes, I've followed his career with great interest. Great interest. Yes." He turned to Dar, his eye gleaming.

"They never caught him, you know."

"No," Dar said judiciously, "they never did."

Dar took a sip and frowned up at Lona over the rim of his glass.

"What's he doing in there?" "Creating," Lona answered. "For so long?"

"Long?" Lona smiled without mirth. "It's only been six hours so far"

"It takes that long to do up one of those-what'd Stroganoff call it ... ?"

"Series format," Sam reminded him.

"Yeah, one of those."

"He finished that three hours ago." Lona took a sip. "Stroganoff needs the script for the first program, too."

"But he's just talking into a voice-writer! How can a one-hour script take more than an hour?"

"It's thinking-time, not talking-time. And don't forget, it's got to be verse. That's the only reason Stroganoff might be able to persuade OPI to do it-because it's a 3DT series of Tod Tambourin's poetry."

"And poems take a great deal of work," Father Marco said softly.

"Actually, I don't see how he can possibly have a full hour's worth of verse by 10:00 hours tomorrow."

"Oh, verse he can manage." Lona glanced at the closed bedroom door that hid Whitey. "Poetry would take forever- but he isn't worrying about quality. Verse he can grind out by the yard."

"What if inspiration should strike?" Father Marco asked quietly.

"Then," Lona said grimly, "we may be in here for a week."

"Oh, well." Dar got up and went over to the bar-o-mat for a refill. "At least he gave us a nice waiting room." He looked around at the luxurious hoteel-suite living room. "Come t think of it, I hope inspiration does strike. ..."

Dai had a vague memory of Father Marco shepherding them all to their bedrooms, muttering something about an early day tomorrow, but it was rather fuzzy; a tide of some nefarious mist reeking of Terran brew seemed to have rolled in as the light faded. He awoke with a foul taste in his mouth, a throbbing ache in his temples, and an acute sensitivity to noises. He dropped back against the pillow, but sleep refused to return. Finally he resigned himself to having to pocket the wages of sin-though the pocket in question was feeling rather queasy at the moment-and slowly, very carefully, swung his feet over the side of the bed. He clutched his head and waited for the room to stop rolling, gulping air furiously to quiet his stomach.

Eventually, it sort of worked, and he staggered to his feet. Then he had to lean against the wall, gasping like a beached fish, to wait until things stabilized again. It was a longer wait, but it worked, and finally he was able to stagger out into the sitting room.

The light had been turned down to a dim glow from the ceiling, thank heaven-but there was a babble of voices. Strangely, they didn't make his head hurt any worse-and, even more strangely, there was only one person in the room.

That person was Whitey, sprawled in a recliner with a strange glow in his eyes. He noticed Dar, cocked his head to the side, and held out a tumbler full of a thick, brownish liquid. Dar groped for it, seized it, and drank it off in one long gulp. Then his eyes bulged as his stomach gave a single, tumultuous heave. He swallowed it down and exhaled in a blast. "My lord! What is that stuff?"

"Uncle Whitey's Homemade Hangover Helper," Whitey answered.

"Don't ask what's in it."

"I won't," Dar said fervently. He groped his way to a recliner and collapsed into it. "How'd you know I was going to need it?"

"I looked in on you halfway through the 'night.'" Whitey grinned.

"You were a gas."

Dar frowned. "A gas?"

"Throughly tanked," Whitey explained.

A hazy memory of Whitney's bleached face, peering down intently, floated through Dar's mind. "Oh, yeah. I remember something about it." He frowned, then forced a feeble chuckle. "Yeah, you . . . no, it must've been a dream." "It wasn't. Why'd you think it was?" "Because you asked . . . and I told ..." Dar swallowed heavily. "No. Had to be a dream." "Asked what? Told me what?"

"Well-my mission. What I'm supposed to do on Terra." "No dream,"

Whitey assured him. "And I timed it just right. In vino veritos."

"'In wine there is truth'?" Dar stared, aghast. Whitey's eyelids drooped. "You do know a little Latin! Amazing, in this day and age.

Who managed to drum it through your head?"

"My old boss, a bartender named Cholly. But ..." "Hm. Must be an interesting man." Whitey's eyes were glowing again. "Like to meet him sometime."

"You will, at the rate we're going. You won't have any choice in the matter." Dar swallowed. "What'd I tell you?" "What do you remember?"

"That I had a message from Genera] Shacklar to the I.D.E. top brass- about a plan for a coup. ..." Whitey nodded. "Perfect recall." Dar groaned and crumpled, covering his eyes. Whitey leaned forward and patted his shoulder. "Don't take it so hard, laddie-we all make mistakes the first time out. At least, if you had to spill the beans, you did it to a friend." "'Friend'?" Dar glared up. "How can I be sure, now?" "Because I've spent a lot of money, and put myself in quite a bit of danger, just to help you-and when I heard your story, I was glad I had. Not that I think we can succeed, mind you- but I can't let democracy go down without a fight."

Somehow, Dar believed him. He frowned up at Whitey, against his headache. "You must've had a hunch I was doing something you believed in, then-to put yourself and Lona at risk."

"Well, yes." Whitey settled back, picking up a glass. "I did have a notion the gamble was worth it. Lena's another matter, though. I didn't make her come. She could've stayed behind, with plenty of money, and she knew it."

Dai's brows pulled together "She doesn't strike me as the self- sacrificing sort."

"She isn't. That line she feeds out, about wanting to wallow in luxury with plenty of leisure time to slaughter, is true down to the word-but she knows there are more important things. Such as having one person nearby who really cares about her- me-and freedom, without which she wouldn't have a chance at luxury."

Dar looked around. "Where is she?" Whitey jerked his head toward the closed door. "Proofing the script."

"It's done?" Dar's gaze steadied on Whitey's face. "Any good?"

Whitey shrugged irritably. "Does it matter? It'll get you where you need to go; that's the important thing."

Suddenly, something seemed wrong. Dar lifted his head. "What happened . . . ? Oh. The voices stopped."

"Voices? The 3DT, you mean?"

"Is that where they were coming from?" Dar turned to the wall screen, and saw the word "EMERGENCY!" floating in a blue sea. A voice said, "Indulgence, citizens. We have to interrupt to bring you news of a conspiracy against the whole of the Interstellar Dominion Electorates." The word dissolved into the head and shoulders of an earnest-looking, handsome older man. "Sehn Loffer here, with news directed from I.D.E. Internal Security. We are threatened, fellow citizens- threatened by an insidious evil, creeping up on us everywhere, to choke the life out of our democracy and suck the blood of its freedom."

Whitey muttered, "Lousy prose!"

Dar stared at him, appalled. "But he's the top newsface! They're hearing him all over the Solar System-and FTL liners will take this recording-cube to all the colonies within the month!"

"Yeah. 'Nothing succeeds like excess.'"

"The villain may be your neighbor, your friend, your co-worker,"

Loffer went on. "No one can know where the evil ones lurk-because, citizens, they are telepaths!"

Whitey stared. Dar goggled.

"Insidious telepaths, their tendrils of thought snaking out to enfold your brains! All through the I.D.E. they are. How do we know?

Because, for a month now, Security has been chasing a notorious telepath all the way from the marches, the outermost colonies, here to Luna itself! Time and again, they have almost caught him, only to have him whisked away into hiding, by local assistance!" The "local assistance" swore under his breath. "Who would aid a rogue telepath?" Loffer declaimed. "Who but another telepath? Wherever this monster goes, he finds help-so there must be telepaths spread throughout the I.D.E., helping him, working secretly, to undermine the foundations of our freedom and destroy our government-to take power themselves!"

"Uh-don't I detect a few flaws in his logic?" Dar asked. "Logic? What's that?" Whitey snorted. "It feels right, doesn't it? So it's got to be true- doesn't it?"