As I walked out of the home of Silence, the alien Vinki verser, I saw a long line of weak and wounded Vinki that I would have to pass by.  I asked for each one’s name as I went, and for the cause of their illness.

Their skin was yellowish with dark spots on their cheekbones, and their breath rattled in their tripartite lungs.  The skull material, one advanced case, was turning soft, into mush.  Many of them pleaded with me despite remonstrations from the proud, but heartbroken and healthy Vinki behind them for the Gift.

Deoxytomsysoferic acid mixed with a polymer to cut it did wondrous things to the mood of a Vinki, I was told.  It was the Gift of the Gods, the sick told me even as I wept for them in their delusion.  I prayed over each one, and told them of a better Gift sent by the True God, but I fear this only angered them.  Several tried to strike me, but my skills protected my body.  However, nothing could protect my heart.

At the end of the gauntlet of pain stood their leader, He-Who-In-Silence-Roars.  We walked on further to the edge of their neighborhood as I struggled to regain control, and fight back the tears, and the need to hurt someone for doing this evil.

"Drug Addiction." Silence said quietly.  "We didn’t have a word for it before I came here.  So we use the English."

"No….?"  I grappled with the concept of a race that had never used intoxicants.

"Our bodies are well-defended as you know." He touched his armoured skull where I had clocked him. "Most minor intoxicants have no effect on us.  And so we never developed this…affliction.  Plus, I suspect that our homeworld had a simpler elemental structure than yours.  Our chemistry seems underdeveloped compared to most other races I’ve met."

"And all that means you had little defense against it when you ran into it for the first time, eh?"

He nodded his great head solemnly.

"Before I came to this universe, they were killing those afflicted.  Now we struggle to free them, but with little success.  I will try this praying you favor."

"The One True God wants you and all sentient beings to be free from slavery."

"Well, then He and I are in aggreement." Silence said, and turned back to his people, as I went forward into the brighter lit streets of The City. 

It was filled to the rim with alien bodies, most of races that I was not familar with, and I found myself stung by a five foot tall jellyfish draped over a robotic ’spine’ and ‘leg bones’.  The fire lit up my pain sensors on my left side, and I gasped wondering if it was a deliberate attack.

I stepped back into a mound of plates and tusks, and bounced off like I was a small dog. Seeing a quintet of purple legs with razor talons heading my way pushed my ‘this is the last straw’ button.

"Back off." I ordered, envisioning a clear space five feet around me.  But my words had more than command, or threat; they had compulsion.  The jellyfish and the ton weight of armor plate stepped away while the ginormously tall and legged purple thing looked down at me, and in a perfect British accent exclaimed.

"How rude!"

"Madam." I replied as her? voice was female. "You’re the one swinging razor blades about near my face. So back off."

I enforced my first push with a jolt aimed at her alone, and her basic psi shield crumpled under my assault.  She stepped back as a puppet.  I let her go then, and turned about, glaring at anyone else who might choose to challenge me.

I heard a murmur of complaints about ‘the Human with no manners’, but they were just being snide, so I let it slide.  Thus in peace, I walked another forty feet until suddenly two small hands on either side of me reached up and grabbed my hands.  It was all I could do not to respond with sudden violence, but then seven and eight year old Human children don’t merit the Dim Mak.

"Lets go, lets go." They cried repeatedly.

"Why?" I asked them refusing to be drawn off the main thoroughfare and into the dark alley they were aiming me toward.

"She, the Purple Tower, she called the polizei.  She said you were a ‘hater’, and had ‘inappropriate emotions’, and showed a ‘lack of hospitality’." They didn’t stumble over the big words which worried me.  Any time a little kid knows big words, it means they are important to his life.

"So?" I said, and looked back at the ‘Purple Tower’ who was gleaming in the etheric levels with malignant satisfaction.  I cut to the chase, and lunged into her brain.  And there it was.  She had indeed registered a complaint with not only the polizei, but the Alien Friendship Board, her embassy, and sent out a report to a promo friend of hers who as always looking for stories about ‘Earthmen being reactionary intolerant bigots to aliens’.  And she fully expected to see me thrown into a ’sensitivity reeducation facility’ for ten to twelve months along with having my name be added to the infamous List of Bigots which the High Council of Nuevo Amsterdam apologized for weekly.  It was a grand and glorious moment for her.

At least it was until I riffled through her brain like a short order cook making sandwhiches for a capacity crowd.  I’d used the fastest, and one of the less gentle psionic probes I know that works on herbivores, and she’d be spending the next several days with a headache, and a continuous sense of almost forgetting to do something or the other.

"As near as I can tell, you’re a guest on this planet. The whole lot of you are, and yet you don’t have the courtesy to clean your feet before you enter the house."  My broadband psi vocalization hit everyone in the street, and they all backed off several feet.  I heard murmurs again this time, but they were of fear.

"Master telepath…"

"Is he going to fry our brains?"

"No, but I would like you to show some respect to the owners of this planet, and not step on them in the street."

I spoke, and then slipped out of the street even as person sized flying cars bearing the insignia of NA Police swept around the corner.  A small bit of pseudo-invisibility, and I and the children were well away.

I asked questions as we walked deeper into the shadows of the Human Quarter, and they answered back artlessly.  With my sword hilt in hand, I was not bothered by some of the predators I saw hanging in the doorways, and the others were not predators at all.  They were merely Humans with no work to keep their hands busy and their mind active.

"So, the aliens accuse…"

"Every week some poor schmuck gets added to the List.  I think they deliberately look for someone when things are calm in the Quarter because they don’t want to let us forget who has interstellar empires, and who’s just the lowlies on the planet."

"But they all come here?"

They shrugged.  This question was too hard for the two.

I saw a man in the corner of my eye, and he opened his mouth.  His sallow skin looked like it had not seen the sun in months.

"Yah, we’re on a major nexi of trade routes.  Especially the Reki, but others too.  But, no one cares about us down here.  They have to keep us down."

And there I saw it, a flicker of insight.  The Humans had something of value, but they were less sophisticated, and less powerful than most of the aliens.  Or so the aliens made themselves believe because I think The City impressed many of them even if they didn’t want to be awestruck by this conglomeration of huge towers and sky-high walkways and hundreds of races and perhaps a billion sentient beings.

But, if they insulted and injured the Humans, the Humans would be grateful for what scraps they got from the master’s table.  It was a theory that needed testing.

"What did your father do?"

The skinny fellow blinked at me slowly.

"He-he made ribbon steel bridges. Good pay, but very dangerous.  Lots of men fell, and the a-g harnesses worked only so-so."  I already knew that you can’t rope to ribbon steel.  Before its safely finished, its sharper than a razor blade could ever dream of being.

"And you?"

He shrugged, and pointed to his spot in the doorway.

"What new government agency opened up when the aliens started arriving in big numbers?"

"The Alien Comity Group, bunch of thieving, stinking liars."

Ask yourself this, how do you turn a hard-working, risk-taking culture of workers into a collection of street scum in one generation?  Hmmm, the usual answer is governmental interference with incentives.

"And where can I?"

He pointed up to the ribbon steel bridges and the high towers and the pylon that held the miles-long Reki starship to The City.  Up there, I could sense another verser.  Of course.

But first, I had to go visit the drug dealing verser.  I cracked my knuckles and thanked everyone for their help.  As a gift, I reached out and readjusted their bodies after asking.  The young girl would soon find her nightly cough healing itself, and the young boy, well, he did have a hangnail I helped him with.  The man, he was toxic from the poisens I sensed in him, and so I gave him the Word, and cleansed his kidneys and liver, and sent him to sleep for a day by the end of which he would feel five years younger.

The problem I had was that all I had done was simple.  Any moderate tech society capable of lunar travel, let alone someplace like The City could have done what I did with medical equipment. 

The City was messed up.  Now all I had to do was find a way to fix it.