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hardly
distinguishable from the noisy local trash element from which they had been
recruited, moved up purposefully, while Shortfall bustled over to confront the
chief.
     
                "See here, Chief,"
His Ex barked. "The principle of diplomatic immunity, once breached, will
lose all force, an eventuality with which I do not intend to have my name
associated! It's your clear duty to restrain this, ah, throng and to escort me
and my people in safety to our quarters!"
     
                "Oh, yeah?" Smeer
riposted. "Who's gonna make me?"
     
                i am, a silent voice cut across the ramp. Smeer responded by
becoming interested, quite suddenly, in the ceiling structure far above. He
gazed up at it apparently lost in awe, while the Terrans stared at each other
in astonishment.
     
                "There!" Magnan
exclaimed. "It's that Voice again! You heard it, too, didn't you,
Hy?" he appealed to the saturnine Agency rep.
     
                "No comment, Ben,"
Hy replied stonily.
     
                "We all heard it, Mr.
Magnan," Marvin Lacklustre confirmed. "It said, T am,' in an archaic
dialect of Standard, but it was clear enough!"
     
                "This is no time for
wool-gathering, Chief!" Shortfall rebuked the musing cop.
     
                Chief Smeer returned his
attention to the crisis at hand, assumed a more conciliatory, or at least less
aggressive expression and made 'all right, folks, take it easy' gestures.
     
                "Am I to understand,
Chief," Shortfall demanded, "that you are now ready to provide an
appropriate escort for my Mission to the quarters I am assured have been
reserved for us in the city?"
     
                "Well, yeah, OK, I
guess," Smeer muttered, as if wishing to avoid overhearing what he was
saying. "Come on, I got a couple paddy wagons'll save youse the walk. It's
only a couple miles, but I guess you boys are tired, after starting a riot and
all—"
     
                "It was hardly us, or
we, who precipitated the disorder!" Shortfall challenged, and the two went
off together, disputing technicalities, while the other cops directed the staff
toward a row of dilapidated vehicles with faded logos reading ' salvaged by hong kong sanitary department', or ex-bolivian home defense forces', and
even ' gift of the groacian autonomy to
the people of fust' , into which the Terrans were unceremoniously
hustled.
     
                Magnan peered anxiously out
the smeared window of the rude van into which the Terrans had been thrust by the
cops, as it bumped over a cobbled street like the bottom of a narrow ravine. He
winced at each jolt, but exclaimed, "Why, it's quite charming! Looks
exactly like the Place de l'Opera as painted by Pissaro or somebody! All these
messy facades, mere blobs of color, and windows that aren't square and don't
line up! The only thing is," he added, "they look the same close up.
They really are just sort of slopped together!"
     
                "Doubtless an optical
illusion, Ben," Stan Bracegirdle, the Assistant Cultural Attache remarked.
"I was Art and Revolution critic for the Activist Press for years, you
know," he went on, redundantly, as it happened, since he had individually
informed everyone on the staff of his impressive artistic credentials at first
meeting.
     
                "Yes, I know,
Stan," Magnan muttered. "But I hardly see what that has to do with
the fact that this city appears to have been designed to be viewed from a
distance, a sort of Impressionist Architecture, if you will. But what are all
those cables strung between the buildings?"
     
                "You imply that such an
architecture is in some way objectionable?" Stan inquired sternly.
     
                "I said it was
charming," Magnan reminded the attache. "It's just that it looks like
it might all fall down. Look at that roofline! It