Furthest Read online

  she never would have thrown it

  from her—

  that trip would have been a bummer!“

  (old nursery rhyme)

  He walked into the building they had rented for him, still suffering from a severe case of time/place disorientation and a stomachache. He knew nothing at all about the warp drive that made it possible for ships to get around the Three Galaxies in less than a couple of lifetimes, but he knew that the process never did him any good and the longer he had to spend at it the worse he felt when it was over. And this trip had been the longest there was… there wasn’t anyplace farther than Furthest. He still was unable to shake off the effect the warp drive always had on him, that curious feeling of being separated, of shuffling along behind himself pointing and snickering, chuckling at his foolish bellwether body, and longing for the integration that would gradually deliver him from the acute consciousness of self.

  How far away was he from the center of the First Galaxy? The figures didn’t mean anything to him. His head persisted in telling him that he was now located in the far upper right-hand corner of a wall in an office building on Mars Central.

  The building was perfect, and he loved it, both of him, the body that went in first and the spirit that followed. It stood on a street just off the main drag of K’ith Vaad, and it was just like all the other structures he had seen in the threedies, three stories of gray stone, tall and narrow and forbidding. But inside was something else entirely.

  All the inner walls had been taken out, except those around a kitchen and bath on the first floor and two small bedrooms on the second. The stone floors and walls stretched away all around him, smooth with the patina that comes of centuries of walking feet, and the sun streamed in through the high windows and blazed across the floors. Dust motes swam in the paths of light and danced about him; by waving an arm he could raise them in swarms and swirls of mad whirling, and Coyote was purely crazy about the place.

  He had never seen a building like this, not outside a historical threedy, in his entire life. No one had, if he was living now. There were plastibubble houses that inflated as you entered their doors and deflated behind you and rolled themselves up as you left. There were the circular clusters of earthen domes that made up the dwellings of the Maklunites, spread like petals around the central ashram dome. There were the monstrous upended pillars of indestructible plastics that served for every architectural purpose in the inner planets. There were the houses of extruded foam and plastics that any citizen could have issued to him by the government upon reaching the age of seventeen and that made up the vast majority of private dwellings throughout the Galaxies.

  But these buildings of Furthest carried him instantly back to the remote edges of history, to the days that had seen man first move out toward the stars, at incredible cost and only by virtue of brutally ignoring the misery that remained on the home planet. Such buildings as these of Furthest had disappeared from the known universe before the 25th century except for exhibits in museums—and now he stood inside one, and it was his dwelling-place for eighteen months. If he was careful, that is.

  The first step was to get a helper of some kind, someone who could act as liaison between him and the people of Furthest, someone that he could ask questions and that could keep him from making stupid cultural mistakes. He didn’t want to leave the building to take care of this at all; he would have preferred to spend the day just learning to be part of it. But such a course of action wouldn’t do one thing to further his mission here.

  He set down his flightbag on the floor, noting with pleasure that no servomechanism came rushing out to pick it up and carry it off. To test the thing further he scrabbled through his pockets and found a piece of disposable fiber that had been part of his ticket for Furthest and ostentatiously dropped it on the floor, too, whistling an incredibly ancient song about a sweet chariot swinging low.

  To his great delight, it stayed there right where he had placed it. He would be able to get things dirty if he wanted to, and to clean them up himself, a privilege hard to come by outside the austere clusters of the Maklunites. Things were looking up. (Although he had looked up “sexual prudery” and found it less than an encouraging prospect.)

  Reluctantly he went out into the street and headed for the center of town, where there was a public outlet to the planet’s information computers, and inserted his credit disc, still whistling.

  The outlet bonged loudly, a red light flashed on, and across the screen in brilliant purple letters he read it is noted that you are an offworlder. please stand by while your authorization is checked. He waited, amused, while it satisfied itself as to his credentials, and then the standby notice went off and was replaced by an equally purple welcome to furthest, your question please.

  He noted that there was an oldstyle manual keyboard, capable, he hoped, of handling Panglish, since his command of Furthest speech was very new and raw feeling, and proceeded to punch out his request.

  i wish to hike a helper from this city. how do i go about it?

  a helper? a helper to do what?

  i am here to establish a mesh. i need someone to do small routine tasks and act as liaison man for me. is there any sort of employment clearinghouse i might go to?

  The computer supplied him with an address, ejected his credit disc, and returned to rest status, and he went to the clearinghouse. There was a certain amount of difficulty there, because no one in the place had any idea what a MESH might be.

  “You’re joking,” he had protested. “You can’t possibly not know what a MESH is. Everybody knows what a MESH is.”

  “You’re mistaken, Citizen,” said a chilly lady at a desk. “We don’t know, not any of us.”

  Coyote looked around him, a bit bewildered. He had been warned, to a certain extent, as to what to expect of these people. In a tri-galactic universe where the vast majority of the populace either went nude or settled for some sort of tunic or loincloth, these people garbed themselves like royalty from antiquity. They wore full-length garments of synthovelvet, with long flowing sleeves, high collars, elaborate ruffs, skirts fully yards around, like a costume ball. It was one thing to be told of this, and another thing to see it. He felt more disoriented than ever; his eyes were taking it in, but somewhere behind his body there was this discorporate entity making snickering noises about not believing it for a minute.

  And on every one of their heads sat an article of clothing, or ornament, that looked like nothing so much as a pair of formal earmuffs; it was a broad band, elaborately decorated, that went across the top of the head and down the sides, and that was attached to an equally elaborate sort of puffed covering over each ear. Whew…

  “Mmmm…” he said, playing for time. “Perhaps I could explain.”

  “I think you had better,” snapped the chilly lady. “We certainly cannot allow one of our citizens to take part in something the nature of which is entirely unknown to us. Is it dangerous?”

  “A MESH?” Coyote laughed. “No, of course not. Not unless you’re one of those persons who only wants to see other people by appointment. It’s just a sort of service center, a place where people can be together, love one another, do things, see things, hear things, learn things.”

  “Like a school?”

  “No… more like a coffeehouse, more like a café.”

  “A restaurant, then.”

  “No.”

  Coyote shook his head, and reached into his pockets. “Here,” he said, “could I use your threedy projector? I’ve got some slides of MESHES from all over the Three Galaxies. I could show them to you.”

  The chilly lady’s face froze over irrevocably. “It is not allowed,” she said.

  “What’s not allowed?”

  “Threedies. Threedies are illegal on Furthest.”

  Well, thanks a helluva lot for telling me that back at Mars Central, he thought first, and then he realized he was being unfair. Of course the staff of TGIS had not thought to find out whether threedies were
legal on Furthest. Who ever heard of a planet where you were not allowed to watch threedies? He couldn’t even imagine such a thing.

  “Never?” he asked in amazement. “You’ve never seen a threedy?” And instantly he was aware that he had made a wrong move, that he sounded like an off-worlder being critical of the backward planet. Definitely not a wise remark he had made.

  He knew only one way to handle a situation like this. He began talking, softly, prattling facts about the institution called a MESH. And while he talked he projected just one message, at full power and without pause, and that message was A MESH IS A GOOD THING. FURTHEST NEEDS ONE. It was made easier by the fact that he actually believed the stuff he was putting out.

  “People can come and eat at a MESH, you see,” he said. “Usually there is a pretty full menu, foods from all over the Galaxies, exotic drinks, things like that. And there is entertainment, usually lots of threedies, but not here, of course. And music. Theater. I’m a folk-singer and guitarist myself, I specialize in antique instruments and songs, and I’ll be performing very often.”

  A MESH IS GOOD GOOD THING.

  FURTHEST NEEDS ONE.

  “And you can buy things there, too,” he went on. “Local people, artists and sculptors, artisans, craftsmen, can exhibit their goods for sale. There would be an import counter, a place to buy offworld things. And MFs… a MESH always stocks everything that can be stocked in the way of MFs.”

  There had been a murmur from the chilly lady, who was beginning to warm up under the steady pressure from Coyote’s mind.

  “MF?” she asked, almost gently. “What is an MF?”

  By the Light, were they still using books out here in this back of beyond? He couldn’t believe it.

  “Microfilms,” he said carefully. “MFs. Microfilms.”

  “Oh, yes,” the lady nodded. “I see. Of course we have microfilms… we’re not savages.”

  He was beginning to wonder about that, but he noted that she wore an MF viewer as a pendant on a chain about her neck, like a fashionable woman anywhere, so apparently it was not so bad as it seemed.

  “And you can learn things there,” he said, after a moment to remember where he had left off. “If you only have one or two outlets to the Edcomputers in your own home, you can go with a group of friends and use the group outlets at the MESH and take courses together.”

  a mesh is a good thing.

  furthest needs one.

  a mesh is a good good thing.

  furthest needs one.

  “It’s a place for being together,” he crooned, “for being together and being friends with one another.”

  Careful, he thought… remember, this is a prudery planet.

  “Just being friends,” he said. “All happy together, all learning, hearing, seeing, enjoying. It’s sort of a community nexus.”

  a mesh is a good good thing.

  furthest needs one.

  The chilly lady smiled at him.

  “You know,” she said, “a MESH sounds to me like a very good thing. I believe Furthest needs one.”

  Two men, incredibly gowned and draped and capped, came forward and shook his hand warmly, and he relaxed the projection just a little. He didn’t want to make them suspicious, and there was no data in the Central Computers about the psibilities of the Furthesters, except that those abilities were “average.”

  “Could you help me, then?” he nudged them, gently. “I really do need someone to work with me. Someone young, preferably, and energetic. Able to run errands for me. Someone who knows his way about.”

  There was a good deal of bustle, and punching of buttons on comsystems, and shuffling through files, and then they told him they had just the person. A boy, about fifteen, of a very good family, and intelligent. He did not need to work but had just completed his schooling and was still too young to go on to advanced work, but was bored with sitting around doing nothing.

  “That sounds exactly right,” said Coyote. “Can you send me to him?”

  “We’ll get him for you now, Citizen Jones,” they said. “Sit down, please, and be comfortable—it will take only a minute or two.”

  They were right, too; in five minutes flat the boy appeared before him, ill at ease but obviously bright and alert. He had the coppery skin and dark brown hair of all his people, the huge eyes of a brown almost black, the long straight nose that came from the forehead seemingly in an unbroken place, and if you got used to the strangeness no doubt he was a handsome specimen.

  They introduced him and told Coyote his name.

  “May I see that written down?” Coyote asked.

  “Surely.” They wrote it down for him. Arh Qu’e.

  He couldn’t say it properly, in spite of the drilling he’d had in the exaggerated aspiration of the language, and he gave up the attempt at once. There was nothing like a small strategic failure to win people over.

  “I can’t say it,” he said frankly. “But I’ll compromise. The name sounds like the Panglish sequence R-K. May I call you that—may I call you RK?”

  The boy frowned slightly, and then smiled.

  “Certainly,” he said in flawless Panglish. “RK is fine with me.”

  “Good enough, then,” Coyote said. “Now, can you come with me at once? The job will require that you live at the MESH, you know—I suppose they explained that to you.”

  RK nodded. “I can’t come with you,” he said, “because I have things I must do for my parents before I leave for any length of time. But if you will give me the address I can be there this evening by nine o’clock.”

  Coyote nodded and wrote down the address for him. He was pleased. It was only the first day and he was making good progress. The headquarters for the MESH was satisfactory, he had found a helper that ought to be perfect, no doubt his personal baggage had been delivered from the port by now. He could go back to the house, unpack, have a leisurely dinner somewhere, and still have an hour or two to himself to enjoy the sensation of being surrounded with something out of the dark past before RK came. He could tramp up and down the stone stairs and listen to the echoes of his steps—there were no echoes in plastic buildings.

  He thanked them at the clearinghouse, offered his credit disc in payment and was waved away. No, no. It was a public service he was doing. A MESH was a good thing, and Furthest needed one, and they wouldn’t think of charging him anything.

  Coyote went away feeling almost ashamed. It was one thing to use his psibilities against sophisticated people. In that case—the usual one—his only advantage was in sheer quantity. Whereas most human beings had the ability to send simple messages of three or four semantic units in length and receive the same, and talented experts could communicate far more freely and completely with their minds than people ever had with tongues alone, he was almost totally mind-deaf. A really powerful telepath could manage to get through to him with vague sensations, sorts of blobs of color and impressions of emotions, warnings of danger, all that kind of thing. But that was the total extent of it. He got all the feelings, but he could not get content at all, any more than a physically deaf person could hear music in the old days before deafness became a curable disorder.

  But he could certainly put out the messages. Mass projective telepaths were rare, and he was the rarest. He could control a crowd of two thousand people at a mile’s distance, and he could do that without even getting out of breath. And ammunition of that sort seemed a bit heavy for use against one chilly lady and two nondescript middle-aged gentlemen in fancy dress.

  To get rid of his feeling of guilt he very carefully visualized the clearinghouse as he walked away, and projected a message back at his three victims while he moved along.

  you are very good good people.

  furthest needs more people like you.

  everyone

  loves and admires you because you are

  very

  good

  people.

  He felt a lot better then.

  CHAPTER FOUR
/>   “Death is only a new becoming.”

  (from the Devotional Book of Tham O’Kent)

  There was mail for him the next norning, and he sat himself down on the flight of stairs to the second floor, bathed in the brilliant light from the windows, and went methodically through it.

  There was a garish chartreuse folder ostensibly from a company that called itself “Impact MFs Inc.” A coy citizen from some outlying world peeked at him from behind a giant fan of microfilm. “Huge discounts! Sale-day is Everday at Impact MF Inc.! Buy here, buy here, see hear, see here.” When opened the folder began to hum in a seductive female voice and gave off a powerful odor of roses.

  Coyote frowned at the thing suspiciously. No legitimate firm in this day and age would produce such a monstrosity. He turned it over and over, ignoring the sexy humming, and found what he had expected—a tiny fish hidden in a curly capital “I.” It was from the Fish, and was a demand for an immediate report.

  He dropped it gleefully down the stairs, planning to drop lots more stuff on top of it and make a regular pile of trash at the bottom of the steps, and went on to the next item.

  There were half a dozen legitimate brochures offering for sale the sort of goods that were sold in MESHes, which indicated that TGIS had done an appropriate amount of advance publicity for him while he was on the way here.

  There was an ad for an assortment of mobile flowers from the Extreme Moons, all colors, hybrids with double flowers, and all of them singers. That would be worth keeping. And a price list for MFs, the real thing this time.

  There was a note from an old friend, Tzaha Kai, ostensible head of a translation bureau but really TGIS like him, wishing him success in his new venture.

  And, finally, there was a small brown mailpouch, bearing a six-months-past postmark and the comsystem code number of the Maklunite cluster at Highmountain.

  Coyote opened it carefully, wondering what could have prompted an extravagance like the mailing of an old-fashioned parcel instead of a telebounce facsimile. It would have had to be something very important indeed, because the Maklunite clusters had little money to spend and a thousand ways to spend that little.