The First Love Of Alipang Havens

The father of the Ralston family that owned Shaggy the draft horse, as Terrance learned when he knocked at the door and Mr. Ralston appeared, had constructed a wooden snowplow for the horse to pull, in anticipation of just such needs as had now arisen. (The beast was mainly hired out to farmers in spring and fall; but after seeing the inefficiency of government in snow removal over the previous winter, the Ralstons had realized that Shaggy could serve a purpose in winter also.) Musgrave was authorized to offer him some money for the use of the horse and the plow, and Mr. Ralston trusted Terrance to manage the huge but good-natured gelding. Thus it was not long before Terrance and Mr. Ralston had fed Shaggy some oats, then hitched him to a sled, on which the plow would be carried to the work site, where it would then be connected to the traces in place of the sled.

Terrance walked by the great horse's head all the way, his youthful strength enabling him to keep going through snow that came up almost to mid-shin on him. The older and much less vigorous Mr. Musgrave rode on the sled with the plow, steadying it. While mostly talking to Shaggy to keep him feeling that all was well, Terrance managed to look back and ask the bureaucrat:

"Does this public event have anything to do with the reason why telephone lines to some parts of the other sectors have been shut down during the last four or five days?"

Musgrave seemed to weigh his answer for a few seconds, but when he spoke, what he said impressed Terrance as being candid and honest. "Very perceptive of you, Citizen Havens. You're like your male chromosome source: not much gets past you. But the service cutoffs are nothing to be alarmed about. They were merely something similar to a common practice in the primitive days of undisciplined internet use. You're old enough to remember when there used to be countless websites on which new motion pictures would be discussed..."

"Well, yes--although my family and I don't miss movies as much as I once would have expected to miss them. We get a chance now and then to see a videotape of an old film. But you were speaking of new movies."

"Right. When a new movie came out, youngsters used to make a great fuss about 'spoilers.' This is the analogy: the communities from which you are temporarily unable to receive telephone calls are ones in which the same entertainment scheduled for Casper today was already performed. The authorities concerned simply don't want to _spoil_ it for you. There is nothing more serious about it than that."

"And can you tell me about it now?"

"I suppose I can tell you a little. Although I understand that your superstitions usually prevent you from appreciating science fiction--"

Terrance abruptly halted Shaggy, and strode back toward Mr. Musgrave. "Citizen, you or your bosses already have the power to cause exiles like me to be shot or brain-blanked. Please don't _also_ shoot me with erroneous statements. Many of us do like science fiction; and still more of us have substantial knowledge of _actual_ science." Returning to the draft horse's head, he resumed their motion, adding, "So if this show is on a science-fiction theme, you don't have to worry about it being over our heads."

"Oh, um, all right. This live program will be something like what some big theme parks offer: actors playing out something based on a story that is known to a wide audience."

Terrance didn't press the bureaucrat for more. Continuing on, they finally reached the parking-lot-minus-cars when the sun was just above the horizon. Alipang, Wilson, and the Transport Police sergeant--assisted, as Terrance could now see, by Sarbar Pitafi of the Merchandise Service--had not only cleared out a space for setting up Shaggy with the snowplow, they had also cleared snow from doorsteps and other tight places that the horse would not be able to help with.

"This would seem to be our adventure," said Terrance to his elder brother. "Do you know if breakfast will be able to fit in between the thrills?"

Alipang looked at Mr. Pitafi. "Sarbar and his wife say they'll come up with something for us to eat soon. But guess what the big event is?"

Terrance put on an innocent expression. "Gosh, do you suppose it might be a live-action science-fiction show?"
 
Terence sounds like a character. As for Daffy's new young companion--"Skydazzle"? Someone needs to give these people a baby-naming seminar.... ;)
 
Copperfox said:
Conklin was less happy than Daffodil was. In the four presentations they had made so far, a grand total of eight Christian exiles had made any book purchases--and five of these had been motivated by threats of death to their families.
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Sounds like a bestseller.;)

Copperfox said:
Terrance put on an innocent expression. "Gosh, do you suppose it might be a live-action science-fiction show?"
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How perceptive of him!:D

Glenburne said:
Terence sounds like a character. As for Daffy's new young companion--"Skydazzle"? Someone needs to give these people a baby-naming seminar.... ;)
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They certainly need it!
 
Remember that all teens and adults in this story were born _before_ the Fairness Party took power and America was redefined. So, although of course we already have ridiculous baby-namers in our own time, in at least some of my cases of weird names, people _changed_ from normal names _after_ the overthrow of all truth and good sense happened.
 
Around the time Terrance and Mr. Musgrave started for the Merchandise Center with the draft horse borrowed from the Ralstons, the father of Terrance and Alipang awoke at home.

Cecilia Havens, bundled in a woolen nightgown over jersey-fabric pajamas, was sleeping peacefully, breathing regularly with a smile on her face. Always grateful to God for anything _favoring_ the health of his true love, Eric Havens outdid himself getting out of bed carefully, and with equal caution stepped over Abraham Zondei who was softly snoring on the floor. Both sleepers, plus three others who were also crowded into the bedroom, stayed asleep as the stealthy dentist crept out and went to the room where Alipang and Kim had been installed.

His grandson Brendan met him at the door of this room, whispering in the near-darkness, "Grandpa? If you're looking for Papa, he went outside with Wilson and Uncle Terrance to look for something. But I'll help you start on breakfast if you want."

"That will be great," Eric whispered back.

Not long after they reached the kitchen and began making pancake batter, they were joined by the next person in the house to wake up: Frodo Von Spock. With his help, or in spite of it, they made progress at preparing some kind of breakfast for all the people now harbored in the Havens residence.

When things were as far along as they could be before the gradually-awakening guests were actually ready to be organized for eating, the landline phone suddenly rang. Little Brendan answered the kitchen extension, and a moment later called to his grandfather: "It's Papa, he wants to talk to you."

Eric took the phone and asked Alipang what was going on. The reply he received was: "We were asked to help clear the snow here at the Federal Merchandise Center, because the city snowplow truck's out of commission, and someone's putting on a show today! Sounds like it's going to be street theater on muscle-enhancing nanotechnology. In about an hour and a half, the administrators will be turning on the outdoor loudspeakers to give notice; the actual program will start about an hour after that."

"Bread and circuses?" Eric mused. "They don't often bother entertaining us here, unless crushing musical instruments is supposed to be amusing. Do you know what _sort_ of show it's to be?"

"Acting out something of a sci-fi nature. The author Trip Conklin is here in person; it seems to be derived from his books. He claims it'll have a wonderful inspiring effect on us primitives."

"I've heard of Conklin, all right," groaned Eric.

"Then you'll know why I'm about to ask you to be here when they do the show," said Alipang. "You and Pastor Zondei. We'll want level heads in the audience." He did not need to state explicitly his suspicion that this whole affair was a provocation, conducted _solely_ for the purpose of upsetting Christian exiles, so that some would object to the show's content, and could then be arrested and made into examples...so that the "Biblical" population would end up getting put in its place by means of a supposedly generous gesture on government's part. Alipang did not need to endanger himself by saying this on a monitored phone line, since he knew his father would suspect the same thing.

What Eric spoke aloud was, "I don't suppose we could just send Frodo Von Spock to the show?"

' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' '

At the Natrona Airport lodge, Daffodil Ford was awakened by the coming into his room of Skydazzle's father, the holograph technician, to get him up. For an instant, the boy was afraid; for it seemed to his inexperienced mind that the really very moderate making-out he had done with the flirtatious girl the night before was enough to get him reprimanded by every Tolerance House in the country as a crude male-chauvinist exploiter.

But the technician began with only such ordinary words as pertained to Daffodil getting dressed and coming to the cafeteria for breakfast. The most remarkable words were: "Have you ever eaten venison? They have some here."

Daffodil stared. "I don't even know what that is."

"It's animal protein. I wasn't paying attention before to what you ate; but now that you're Skydazzle's boyfriend for the week, you might want to try eating stuff she likes. And meat IS allowed inside the Enclave." Thus did the father get around to mentioning his daughter, almost as an afterthought; and along with doing so, he casually tossed off the implication that Daffodil, though himself denied any romance for his whole life till this tour, seemed to be merely ONE OF some unknown number of boyfriends enjoyed by a girl who was younger than he was.

Daffodil, however, managed to keep his equanimity. Skydazzle's embraces and kisses of last night were, after all, _extremely_ pleasing to remember. And the boy could hardly be scandalized about his new girlfriend, when he recalled his own mother's inability to stay consistent in ANY kind of human relationship.
 
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The loudspeakers fired up across Casper as predicted, and the voice of Trip Conklin was heard. Not that anyone in town who had not met Mr. Conklin would recognize his voice. What several persons did think about when hearing the announcement ringing through the cold bright air, was the old television series "The Prisoner."

What Conklin said was: "Good morning, citizens of the Wyoming Sector! The collective is all! You are invited to attend a free public amusement, which will take place one hour from now, in front of the facility of the Federal Consumer Merchandise Service. Attendance is not mandatory, but those who attend will have the chance to win a delightful prize: the opportunity to enjoy an hour of audiovisual communication with a person of your choice on the OUTSIDE!" (Just two days before, Conklin had persuaded the triumvirate to double the original half-hour offer, in hopes of ending the tour with a better crowd response.)

That such an offer was made at all, did not go unnoticed by Cecilia Havens. Eyes widened, she stared at her husband and whispered, "Chilena...Melody! Maybe they could be together in one place... Please, Eric. Please."

Her husband kissed her tenderly. "For you, sweetheart. And for all of us who wish we could talk to them again. But I'll take care of it. I want you, Kim and Harmony to stay here and look after all the children." Eric now swept his gaze over those adult guests who were in the same room. "I think all the rest of us adults should go to this presentation. There's no point in antagonizing them by snubbing it if no good purpose is served by the snub." He was hardly conscious of speaking like a leader, but that was in fact what he had become among the exiles. "Whatever we're going to see and hear, ask the Holy Spirit to give us discretion. Don't play along with them so obsequiously as to dishonor our Savior; but DO be as cooperative as conscience permits."

By the time Eric's Christian posse had ridden a bus to the Merchandise Center parking lot, Terrance had already returned Shaggy to the Ralstons, then rejoined Alipang. A reasonably large crowd was accumulating; naturally, ALL persons in Casper who were affiliated with the regime, if not needed for duties elsewhere, were in attendance. But good numbers of curious exiles were also present. When the two brothers saw their father coming, they went into a conference with him and Pastor Zondei. They were soon joined by Reuben Torvill, John and Felicity Waddell, and the two former church musicians. "Nine Walkers to set against the Nine Riders," Terrance jokingly whispered to Alipang. He made his joke just in time, before Wilson rejoined them and made it ten.

These ten were all guardedly optimistic that their fellow believers would remember to act with wisdom and self-control; but to encourage that kind of behavior, they agreed to spread themselves evenly through the crowd, so as to have the greatest possible chance of being able to calm down any who looked outraged at the blasphemies which might be uttered in the impending "entertainment."

When it looked as if everyone was here who was going to be here, Trip Conklin, escorted by six well-armed Transport Police officers, mounted a platform which had been set up not long before. He carried a compact but very effective bullhorn, with which he once again addressed the citizens of the Wyoming Sector.

"Fellow entities of the collective, thank you for coming today! I won't keep you waiting long for the show. My name is Trip Conklin, and the program will be based on my best-known series of science fiction novels, 'Churchbusters of the Galaxy!' I'm sure most of you have heard of that." Conklin looked as if he really wasn't aware of any reason why Christians being repressed by the government he served should not be overjoyed to see a dramatization of his propaganda. "When the performance is over, copies of all the Churchbuster novels will be available for sale inside the store. Just ten centavos will buy you a complete set!"

At the first performance, they had been asking twenty centavos for each individual book.

Conklin went on to explain the way that buying his books would lead to the chance for the prize. He left for later disclosure the part about having to write an essay praising the Fairness Party.

"And now, friends, I invite you all to use your imagination. Since faith is imagination, that shouldn't be hard, eh? Imagine a future time when, with the madness of war and hate left behind us, humankind flexes its inventive muscles and leaps out across a score of solar systems...."

Terrance no longer had his brother at hand to make another Tolkien joke to, but in his own mind he smirked that Grima Wormtongue had come to Wyoming. A moment later, though, he and some of the others in the crowd had their eyes drawn to an unexpected sight.

From the direction of Natrona Airport, something was slowly FLYING toward them. It looked like a medium-size helium-inflated airship, fancied up to resemble a spaceship in an old comic book. So at least this show apparently was going to consist of more than people standing around talking.
 
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There were three persons inside the airship. One, a businesslike middle-aged woman by the name of Cassie Magruder, was its pilot. Taking one hand away from her controls, she placed a wrapped lozenge in the hand of the elder of her two passengers. "Here, I keep this for passengers, to cure airsickness. Works against all nausea; he'll be heroic again in a matter of minutes. I'll pass word to Conklin that I need to fly a couple extra circles before touching down."

"Thanks, Cassie," said Osmawani Jalil, and turned toward her fellow passenger and fellow actor, Daffodil Ford. "Put this in your mouth, Daffy, you heard--take it out of the paper first! Don't worry about your costume, it's totally stain-proof. We'll get someone to clean up your vomit afterwards."

Daffodil was glad for once to be the recipient of Osmawani's attentions. The lozenge soon had him feeling better. He looked at the pilot, who was already concentrating fully on flight once again. "Cassie, is there some kind of food-poisoning problem in the Enclave that I didn't know about?"

"Not at all, son. The only problem is that, according to your bio, you never ate meat in your life before today. And today you glomped it right down like a crocodile. Your body wasn't ready to digest meat, so it said, 'Here, send this back where it came from.' File it as experience. These things happen; I'll see to the cleanup, and no one else needs to know you puked."

"I won't tell," Osmawani assured the boy. "I'm sorry I didn't notice what you were doing at breakfast; I could have warned you about it. But I was trying to give you space to enjoy the morning with Skydazzle."

Daffodil managed a smile for his co-star. "You meant well. And I'm a loosh, trying to impress her as if I'd already been everywhere and eaten everything."

The Malaysian beauty kissed his forehead. "The show must go on."

' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' '

As Trip Conklin rambled through a description of the planet he had imagined for one of his novels, holographic projectors helped set the scene by placing images of that planet's three multicolored moons in the air above the Merchandise Center parking lot. Alipang enjoyed seeing the springlike colors on this might-as-well-be-winter morning; but his attention soon went back to the approaching airship, which veered right when it was close to the government store and began circling. Alipang was also noticing that the northerly wind was picking up.

Looking for anyone familiar, he spotted the De Sotos, Tilly supporting her husband Miguel. Working his way to their side, he muttered in Tilly's ear, "We need to move people back on the south side, make the open space larger. I have an awful feeling that this wind is going to nudge that airship off course a bit when it comes down to land on the alien planet."

From the De Sotos, Alipang moved on to every other familiar person he could spot anywhere near him, which eventually included his own son Wilson, the girl clarinet player, and two Grange acquaintances. Managing both to avoid creating panic, and to avoid being accused of disrupting the presentation, he and the others gradually caused people in the southern portion of the crowd to open out the area more on their side.

When the make-believe spacecraft began its descent in time with Conklin's dramatic shout of "Church... busters... of... the... Galaxy," it was visible that the north wind was trying to shove it southward. But well before descending dangerously low, the pilot had already corrected for this; and in the end, she touched down exactly where she had intended to. So the cautionary movement of the crowd had not been necessary after all.

Okay, that wasn't the reason why God wanted me here today, thought Alipang. Let's see what IS the reason.
 
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Moments before the quiet airship completed its landing, a speaker system began playing some tritely simple heroic music, sounding like a feeble attempt to emulate the soundtrack composers of action and sci-fi movies from the twentieth century. At this point Alipang was reminded that he was only five feet four inches tall by pre-metric measurements (though broad-shouldered and deep-chested in proportion). His short stature had seldom been any handicap in fighting enemies, but it had plenty of relevance to his being able to see the show. Carefully and politely, he worked his way between people to reach the edge of the performance area. While the simulated spaceship had been circling overhead, he had not seen any sign of it pouring out an extra dose of mind-control vapors; but there could be no doubt that the show itself was intended to influence the minds of exiles. Alipang wanted to see every detail of what they were going to do.

Other audience members were also shifting their positions, less for reasons of height than to try to make sure they were where they would be able to see the actors come out the door of the purple and green and orange airship. It had landed in such a position that its door faced Mr. Conklin's platform across most of the width of the parking lot. Alipang assumed that the actors, or the airship's actual crew, could see the crowd, and were waiting for their audience to grow still again.

Sure enough, the spectators had scarcely finished shuffling themselves when the door opened. Out came two persons, in uniforms of the same colors as their "spaceship"--only with the addition that on the front of each uniform was an image of a Cross and a Star of David, broken in pieces. One of the actors was a young and strikingly attractive Asian woman; she carried a visual scanning device, the descendant of old-time binoculars. Her companion, taller than she but clearly younger, was a fair-haired boy who was pushing a wheelbarrow. In the wheelbarrow were eight or more of what looked to be some kind of electronic devices, all identical. Just props for the show, or devices to work on us, picking up where their vapors left off? Alipang wondered.

As soon as the pair had advanced half a dozen paces from their ship, the woman raised her viewer to her eyes and swept it searchingly from side to side. The teenager with the wheelbarrow then spoke the first line of dialogue: "Commodore Shang, the situation on this planet is looking bad. The last report I heard before our ship entered the mutants' interference field was that our other ships were observing fanatic assaults on the second and third continents."

Lowering her scanning device, the woman looked at the boy and replied, "Keep on task, Turgenev. We have to trust our fellow Churchbusters to handle the situation in their assigned sectors. You and I, here and now, need to get the counterforce working on _this_ continent. Start positioning the logic-wave emitters!"

"Yes, Commodore!" And the boy began setting the electronic devices on the ground at wide intervals, while the woman resumed scanning the imagined extraterrestrial horizon. Each of these futuristic stage props began blinking with colored lights when the boy flipped a switch on it. "Pardon me, Commodore, but why do all of the devices have to be activated to produce the desired effect?"

"Because the devices are themselves a collective, and the logic they provide to troubled brains is the logic of the collective. So make _sure_ you activate all of them." Here the "Commodore" turned especially solemn, as if expecting some crisis. "No matter _what_ happens to me, _your_ duty is to get all of the emitters working together!"

The boy assumed his own solemn look. "Understood, Commodore!"--and he continued placing the devices, which by now Alipang was _almost_ certain were nothing more than props.

The character addressed as Turgenev still had at least three devices left to activate, when a chorus of screams in the voices of children cut through the tableau. The sound seemed to come from someplace behind Mr. Conklin's platform, thus from the vicinity of the store building. They were screaming something like, "The Nazi mutants! Help us! The Nazi mutants are after us!"
 
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Had Alipang known it, the playwright had in his own mind made an enormous concession by calling his villains "Nazi" mutants instead of "Christian" mutants. But of course the extreme secularist movement had already been treating those labels as synonyms for years before it morphed into the Fairness Party.

A group of ten school-aged children came running into the performing area, led by a black teenage girl. They also wore garishly futuristic costumes. With glances over their shoulders, they made straight for "Commodore Shang" and clustered around her, crying for her to save them from the mutants. Alipang had never seen any of these youngsters before; he guessed that they might have been brought down from the Party-operated boarding school in Rapid City, the Enclave capital being where most bioproducts of government personnel were housed, assuming the caregivers bothered to bring the children into the Enclave with them at all.

"Take shelter in the ship!" the Commodore told the children. They did so--except for the one teenager, who stayed in the onlookers' view to milk her part as a terrorized refugee. Also, it seemed, to cast what looked like amorous glances at "Turgenev." It was she who first directed audience attention to the next set of characters coming from the same direction the children had come from.

"Look out! It's the mutants!'

Some sort of mist came blowing toward the spaceship and the tableau around it. Both of the Churchbusters had sidearms, but neither of them drew a gun. The fair-haired boy hurried up his positioning and activating of the "logic-wave emitters," while the Asian woman went into an exaggerated martial-artist posture.

From the mist emerged seven figures which, by their look of a solid core with a translucent outer layer, must be actual persons with sophisticated holographic devices producing illusionary bodies for them. All of them looked like what the cinema zombies would have been if Night of the Living Dead had been filmed by extraterrestrials. Nothing about their visual appearance blatantly declared a religious affiliation; but their dialogue, if so it could be called, gave the subtle hint.

All of them repeatedly chanted in unison: "God hates everyone, so we hate everyone! God hates everyone, so we hate everyone!"

The subordinate Churchbuster dropped his jaw in an overplayed look of alarm, and shouted, "There's too many of them, Commodore! Let's shoot them!"

The Commodore gave a heroic toss of her hair. "No, Captain! Not while there's any hope of curing them, and making them into productive citizens!" With this, she ran toward the nearest "mutant," and launched a flying kick, which missed him by a meter, but he obligingly fell down anyway. Have to give her credit for physical fitness, Alipang told himself, but let's see if she really has any technique worth squat.

While Captain Turgenev continued his task, and his apparent love-interest screamed "Karma help us," the Commodore lunged and spun and leaped this way and that, while the mutants clumsily tried to grab her. Every time one of them was knocked down, he got right up again, which made them more menacing, and prolonged her kung-fu display. Her stamina was admirable, even causing Alipang to wonder if she had received any artificial enhancements to her physical strength; but by the time every chanting zombie had been knocked down at least twice, Alipang had seen enough shortcomings in her moves that, unless she had plenty of stuff she was hiding, he knew she would have no chance against him in a real fight.

As Turgenev was planting the very last "emitter," the zombies finally ganged up on the heroine strongly enough that she could no longer dodge, and was pulled down to the pavement. The teenage girl beside the ship shrieked, "They're going to kill her!" But the tall boy shouted back, "No, they're not! LOGIC WAVES ACTIVATED!!!"

As he switched on the last "emitter," the whole array began to give out an impressive electronic sound effect; and the next instant, the holographic pseudo-bodies encasing the bad-guy actors were shut off, so that the mutants were "transformed" into normal humans.

One man, whose hands had been on the heroine's throat, instantly let go, exclaiming, "What happened? What were we just doing?" Another man said, "All at once I don't hate anyone anymore!" Two others, their faces looking bewildered, gently helped the Commodore up to her feet. The Commodore then proceeded to say more words than had been said by anyone in the whole play up to this point: a benevolent speech to these men who had been cured of the terrible disease of religious hatred. She welcomed them to the collective, and so on...

While Alipang felt a desire to vomit. He was later to learn that his father and others had had several occasions to calm down their neighbors, reminding them in whispers that satellites were watching this crowd even if no Overseers were.

At least someone besides Trip Conklin was pleased with this drama. The girl who had led the fleeing children ran over to Captain Turgenev and began passionately kissing him, in the most sincere-looking display of emotion so far.
 
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Chapter 55: Daffodil and the Dentist

The heroic music played again, but softly this time, so Trip Conklin could be heard over the P.A. system saying: "Thank you for your attention, citizens! Now, if you'll step on into the Merchandise Center, you'll find enough complete sets of the Churchbuster series on sale for all of you; you can meet Commodore Shang and Captain Turgenev; and the salespersons will explain the rules of the contest for the prize of outside communication! Right this way, citizens!"

As many as three dozen exiles had already formed an intention of at least looking over the offered books, albeit in many cases only because Eric Havens had asked them to do it as a fairly painless concession to the establishment. Now, squeezing between the Transport Police officers, Sarbar Pitafi and his wife Dalbir came in sight, flanking Mr. Conklin--their eyes pleading for more people to come in, to save them from bureaucratic displeasure. The Pitafis being reasonably well-liked in Casper, their wordless begging added another ten or so potential book-buyers.

The rest of the audience dispersed, only a few of them even bothering to take a closer look at the disguised airship. Lines of sight being thus cleared for those who remained in the parking lot, those of the Havens family quickly found each other, being joined also by Abraham Zondei and Frodo Von Spock.

Daffodil and Skydazzle went on making out, oblivious to bypassers, until Osmawani came up to tap their shoulders. "Good show, kids; we're getting more exiles into the store than at all the other shows combined! Skydazzle, you and the pilot need to make sure the little citizens all rejoin their escorts. Daffy, you need to come on inside the store with me; we may find some Biblicals actually speaking to us today!"

Reluctantly disentangling themselves, the two teenagers did as they were told. As Daffodil and Osmawani headed to join Trip Conklin, three of the lingering audience members contrived some sort of half-hearted compliments for them, along the lines of the show having been "colorful." When the actors and their playwright were about to go indoors, Daffodil glanced behind them to see if more exiles looked like entering the store besides the several who already had. Some were in fact coming; and all of a sudden, one face among them grabbed the boy's attention. He was so struck by what he saw, that he caught hold of the Malaysian woman's arm--the first time he had _ever_ of his own accord initiated any physical contact at all with her.

"Osmawani!" he babbled. "Look back there, coming toward us with some other people--the Asian man! He's the man I told you about, the man I saw in the streamcast, the one who's a dentist and a paramedic, the one with a Native American friend, the man Dynamo Earthquake interviewed!"

"Oh, you mean Alipang Havens. Good eyesight, Daffy; he didn't have that heavy beard when you would have seen him on the news."

Daffodil's eyes widened. "You know him?"

"Only by reputation--and the database, which of course includes pictures. Nash talks about him often, even at bedtime. A textbook case of Oppositional Defiant Disorder."

"But he seems to be coming into the store, along with those others."

"The others include his male chromosome source, and one of his siblings. Anyway, you're right, they are coming in. Maybe we're better actors than we realized. Let's get inside and take our positions at the book table."

 
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Alipang has been "diagnosed" with Oppositional Defiant Disorder? :rolleyes: This is sounding more Soviet by the minute....
 
Yes, if you find it inconvenient to kill off all the dissenters (like, if they're almost the only persons left with any talent and work ethic), you can generously offer to "cure" them of their "illness" of thinking for themselves.
 
The show was certainly colorful.

Copperfox said:
Yes, if you find it inconvenient to kill off all the dissenters (like, if they're almost the only persons left with any talent and work ethic), you can generously offer to "cure" them of their "illness" of thinking for themselves.
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How generous!:rolleyes:
 
The Churchbuster costumes were made of a good insulating material; and in view of the weather, Osmawani and Daffodil had been allowed to add gloves, plus an ear-warming headband in Daffodil's case. Nonetheless, with the excitement of performing in a show past, the two actors were just as glad to get indoors. Skydazzle and her little flock of children, as well as the "mutant" actors, had been more properly dressed for the cold air, but they were equally happy to return to a heated building. So were Sarbar and Dalbir Pitafi, who like the Malaysian woman found hot climates friendlier than cold ones. But the Pitafis, being Christians, had had no fun being part of making this propaganda event happen. It was just their assigned work; and now, they had to act as if they _didn't_ wish they could rip to pieces every Churchbuster book they had been made to accept in stock.

Trip Conklin, installed at the book table, gained some satisfaction from talking with several exiles who, separately from the Havens family group, had come to the event because of the hope of winning an outside communication. Osmawani, the Pitafis, and two local girls who had been hired on as general help, all found potential customers to speak to--including Frodo Von Spock, who acted enthusiastic both about the book offer and about Osmawani's body. As for Daffodil....

He almost gasped when, unpremeditated though it really was, Alipang Havens upon entering walked straight toward him.

The Filipino man being a full head shorter than Daffodil did not make him any less imposing in the teenager's eyes. Close behind Alipang was a white boy, about the same age and height as Daffodil; but although physically more similar to the diplomat's son, this other youth gave an impression of being more akin in spirit to the adventurous dentist. A little apart from them, looking at other things in the store, was a darker-complected boy of perhaps Skydazzle's age, whose face bore some resemblance to Alipang's.

As Daffodil gawked, Alipang Havens courteously extended a hand. "You have guts, young man, performing in this weather wearing only a track suit. My name is--"

"Alipang Havens!" Daffodil burst out. "You know Bert Randall!" Then he remembered his manners, and shook hands while still staring. The hardness of the Filipino man's hand made the boy feel as if his own hand were made of soft soy-cheese.

Doctor Havens' small dark eyes widened. "Why yes, I do know him, and the Chinese gentleman who toured the Enclave with him. But how do you know who I am?"

Daffodil still being in an awestruck state, the young man beside Alipang told his stocky companion: "He must have seen you on the news last summer!"

From where he sat, the science-fiction author suddenly snapped his head toward Alipang. "Doctor Havens, I appreciated you and your brother helping to clear the lot this morning, but I can't have you creating a distraction from the promotion of my books! You can talk to Captain Turgenev about the stories and the prize offer, but save irrelevant matters for later!"

"I'll just buy a set of the novels right now," replied Alipang calmly, fishing money out of a coat pocket.

"But please don't leave till we've talked more," Daffodil urgently hissed.

 
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