“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 risqué 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 seen ‘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 hotel-suite living room. “Come to think of it, I hope inspiration does strike…”

 

Dar 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?”

“Thoroughly 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 veritas.”

“ ‘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 General Shacklar to the I.D.E. top brass—about a plan for a coup…”