Writing popular fiction

imprisonment of a free citizen. He fought the legal battle all the way to the nine old men in nine old chairs where the case was won. I was nine when we did that—twelve long years ago.
    We have
now learned that the hero is apparently not of human parents, but an experiment of as yet unexplained "Artificial Wombs." He reads minds for pay—since his ability appears unusual—and is lucky to be a free citizen. We have also learned that the scene is the future United States, that Scandinavia is a source of fashions during this period, and that the hero is twenty-one.
It was snowing outside. The harsh lines of shrubbery, trees and curbs had been softened by three inches of white. I had to scrape the windscreen of the hovercar, which amused me and helped settle my nerves a bit. One would imagine that, in 2004 A.D., Science could have dreamed up something to make ice scrapers obsolete.
    At the first red light, there was a gray police howler overturned on the sidewalk, like a beached whale. Its stubby nose was smashed through the display window of a small clothing store, and the dome light was still swiveling. A thin trail of exhaust fumes rose from the bent tailpipe, curled upwards into the cold air. More than twenty uniformed coppers were positioned around the intersection, though there seemed to be no present danger. The snow was tramped and scuffed, as if there had been a major conflagration, though the antagonists had disappeared. I was motioned through by a stern faced bull in a fur-collared fatigue jacket, and I obeyed. None of them looked in the mood to satisfy the curiosity of a passing motorist, or even to let me pause long enough to scan their minds and find it without their knowledge.
    I arrived at the AC building and floated the car in for a Marine attendant to park. As I slid out and he slid in, I asked, "Know anything about the howler on Seventh? Turned on its side and driven halfway into a store. Lot of coppers."
    He was a huge man with a blocky head and flat features that looked almost painted on. When he wrinkled his face in disgust, it looked as if someone had put an egg-beater on his nose and whirled everything together. "Peace criers," he said.
    I couldn't see why he would bother lying to me, so I didn't go through the trouble of using my esp, which requires some expenditure of energy. "I thought they were finished," I said.
    "So did everyone else," he said. Quite obviously, he hated the peace criers, as did most men in uniform. "The Congressional investigating committee proved the voluntary army was still a good idea. We don't run the country like those creeps say we do. Brother, I can sure tell you we don't!" Then he slammed the door and took the car away to park it while I punched for the elevator, stepped through its open maw, and went up.
    I made faces at the cameras which watched me and repeated two dirty limericks on the way to the lobby.
    In the space of three hundred words, the hero reaches the AC building, managing to fill us in, as he goes, on more of the background of 2004 A.D. The wheeled vehicle seems to have been replaced by air-cushion craft. The social system is in turmoil, with rioters and heavy police patrols. A voluntary army seems to have been in effect for some time—giving rise to charges by the "peace criers" that it is somehow running the country. Background topics touched on thus far: social conditions, fashions, transportation, the state of scientific advancement.
When the lift stopped and the doors opened, a second Marine greeted me, requested that I hold my fingertips to an identiplate to verify his visual check. I complied, was approved, and followed him to another elevator in the long bank. Again: up.
    Too many floors to count later, we stepped into a cream-walled corridor, paced almost to the end of it, and went through a chocolate door that slid aside at the officer's vocal command. Inside, there was a room of alabaster walls with hex signs painted every five feet in brilliant reds and oranges. A small and ugly child sat in a black leather chair, and four men stood behind him, staring at me as if I were expected to say something of monumental importance.
    I didn't say anything at all.
    The child looked up, his eyes and lips all but hidden by the wrinkles of a century of life, by gray and grave-like flesh. I tried to adjust my judgment, tried to visualize him as a grandfather. But it was not so. He was a child. There was the glint of babyhood close behind that ruined