"Elgin,.Suzette.Haden.-.Star.Anchored.Star.Angered" - читать интересную книгу автора (Elgin Suzette Haden)

"That's easy," she said. "Nothing to it. Please keep in mind, Citizen Jones, that out of all the billions and billions of people in the Tri-Galactic Federation, not one in ten thousand ever has been or ever will be in contact with a Student. Anything you do, therefore, so long as you look like a Student, should serve."
"You're sure of that?"
"Certain of it. Think of yourself; you've traveled from one end of the inhabited universe to the other, you're far more knowledgeable than the average citizen. Have you ever been in contact with a Student? Before arriving here today, that is."
"Never."
"Well, then, you see, nothing could be simpler to bring off. Once your costume is corrected, there are only two essentials. First, you have to be able to carry on a reasonably intelligent conversation if you meet someone whose educational specialty—not as a Student, of course, but through the ed-computers—has been the study of Religion."
"That's not going to be easy."
"Why not?" asked the Dean. "Why ever not?"
"Because I know nothing about the subject, Citizen Dean. The Mass-Eds gave up on me early."
"Nonsense. It's merely a matter of tailoring your so-called specialty to something you do know well. Now ... in your file I see that you spent a year in a Maklunite Cluster. Correct?"
"I turned out to be one of the worst Maklunites of all time. They had to throw me out."
"But you spent a year there."
"Sure. I wanted—I wanted very much to stay."
"What matters," said the Dean, making a vague gesture with both hands, "is that you can actually qualify as an expert on the Maklunite sect, you have actually lived among them, done fieldwork compatible with your Religious Anthropology undergraduate major. You need only go on and on about the Maklunite religion, you see. No one will expect you to know about others."
Coyote whistled. "Is that how it's done?" he teased.
She stiffened. "Certainly not!" she said disgustedly. "This is not how it is done, Citizen, this is how it is faked."
She reached under the table again and pulled out a microfiche packet. "This," she said, tapping it softly against the table, "is a selection of abstracts, prepared by me personally, from all the basic texts that you would have been expected to read as an undergraduate in Religious Anthropology and a graduate Student in Religious Science. You won't learn anything from them, but you will acquire the necessary names, dates, titles and so on ... enough information to keep you from making a total ass of yourself so long as you are speaking only to amateurs. Should you, by some freak of fate, find yourself confronted by an expert, become ill. Faint. Fall off a parapet. All clear?"
Coyote took the sheath from her and slipped it into his pouch. "I'm grateful, Citizen," he said, and he meant it.
"And your Bureau, whatever its benighted identity may be, is presumably also grateful?"
Coyote all but batted his lashes at the lady. "Where," he asked blandly, "do you get these strange ideas? Perhaps you need a vacation from your duties."
She snorted, a sound that came from somewhere around her ankles and expanded in magnitude as it worked its way up.
"Then," she said, "there is the second crucial matter. You're going to Freeway—it says in your file—to complete your doctoral dissertation, in which you are going to compare the Maklunites to the religious rebels on Freeway."
"I am going to do that?"
"It says so, right here." She pointed under the table, where the source of all these things she kept materializing was presumably located.
"That's all very well—"
"Very simple," she said, cutting him off with a wave of her hand. "Let us consider the situation, as you would have considered it. You in your role of graduate Student in Religious Science, that is. On the one hand we find the Maklunites, a kind of splinter religious movement dedicated to a set of principles running counter to the mainstream of contemporary society. On the other hand, on Freeway we find a similar splinter movement, led by one Drussa Silver and calling themselves Shavvies. Superficially they share many, many similarities. The same love ethic. The same contempt for material goods. The same renunciation of technology. Et cetera, et cetera."
"But—"
The Dean raised one finger beside her cheek in the ancient gesture of Teachers, and he stopped.
"However," she continued, "although the Maklunites have spread throughout the Three Galaxies, establishing their Clusters far and wide, they have had little or no effect upon the cultures of the Federation. The Shavvies, on the contrary, although confined to a single small and backward Novice Planet, are about to bring the culture of that planet crashing down about them."
She stared at him, and he considered the possibility that he was expected to say something significant and stared over her head. It was rude, no doubt, but it was self-defense.
"Curiously," she said then, "nobody cares about the Maklunites. Let them spread to the outermost of the Extreme Moons ... no one pays any attention. Their compulsion for service is, in fact, a great convenience. But let the Shavvies threaten turmoil on one poor little planet, and what happens?"
She struck the low table a blow with her fist that overturned the bowl of fruit and set apples and pears and some varieties he didn't even recognize rolling across the floor.
"What happens," she hissed, "is that this is taken so seriously that pressure is brought to bear on me—on me, Citizen Coyote Jones!—to help you stop Freeway's piddling little religious commotion!"
There was nothing at all that he could say, of course, and in such circumstances he had learned long ago to rely on silence. He felt the tickling sensation above and just back of his right eye that meant the Dean was trying mindspeech, and he carefully maintained a face meant to convince her that he felt nothing at all. It wasn't much of an exaggeration, since she could have kept that up for hours and the tickling would have been all the communication that took place.
The shadows were reaching across the floor toward them, through the open windows, and the sky was full of moons, real and faked. He could smell a heavy flower scent, but could not identify it.
"Your special skill, Citizen Jones," she said finally, "must be an ability to simply wait."
When that provoked no response, she sighed heavily and went on.
"Your specialty," she said, "is the effect of religion on cultures. Your dissertation topic is an explanation of this curious difference in effect between the Maklunites, whom you really know about, and the Shavvies, whom you are there to investigate."
He was beginning to see it clearly now, and he was pleased.
"It will work," he said, nodding his head. "I wouldn't have thought it was possible, but I believe it will work.
You're as much the strategist as they say you are, Citizen Dean."
"It will work," she said grimly, in no way impressed with his little compliments, "so long as your tattoos are right."
"What tattoos?"
"Your pseudo-tattoos, my friend! They must be right."
"I don't have any."
"They're not marked into the skin like a real tattoo," she said impatiently, "they're just held by static electricity. You have no reason to look as if I'd suggested ritual mutilations."
"You really feel they're necessary?"
The Dean sat bolt upright and stared at him, eyebrows at maximum elevation.
"My poor Citizen," she said, "without tattoos you haven't a prayer of passing as a Student, no matter what my strategic skills on your behalf. People know nothing else about Students except the fairy tales they read in news bulletins, but they do know that they cover themselves with tattoos. I'll choose them myself ... I can imagine what you'd do. One blue diamond in mid-chest, or something equally preposterous. I'll have a Student bring us a selection, as well as something to eat and drink."
Coyote was surprised. "The Students do that kind of thing themselves?"
"Why? Did you think they didn't? Who do you suppose does the work around here?"