His breezy young boss, Charles Oldham IV, was not pleased with what Ross had to report.
“Asked for Haarland!” he repeated unbelievingly. “Those dummies didn’t know where they were going or where they were from, but they knew enough to ask for Haarland.” He slammed a ruler on his desk and yelled: “God-damn it!”
“Mr. Oldham!” Ross protested, aghast. For a superior to lose his temper publicly was unthinkable; it covered you with embarrassment.
“Manners be God-damned too!” Oldham screamed, breaking up fast. “What do you know about the state of our books? What do you know about the overhead I inherited from my loving father? What the hell do you know about the downcurve in sales?”
“These fluctuations—” Ross began soothingly.
“Fluctuations be God-damned! I know a fluctuation when I see one, and I know a long-term downtrend when I see one. And that’s what we’re riding, right into bankruptcy, fellow. And now these God-damned dummies blow in from nowhere with a consignment exclusively for Haarland. I don’t know why I don’t get to hell out of this stupid business and go live in a shack on Great Blue Lake and let the planet go ahead and rot.”
Ross’s horror at the unseemly outburst was eclipsed by his interest at noting how similarly he and Oldham had been thinking. ‘sir’, ” he ventured, “I’ve had something on my mind for a while—”
“It can wait,” Oldham growled, collecting himself with a visible effort. So there went his chance to resign. “What about customs? I know Haarland hasn’t got enough cash to lay out. Who has?”
Ross said glibly: “Usual arrangement, sir. They turn an estimated twenty-five per cent of the cargo over to the port authority for auction, the receipts to be in full discharge of their import tax. And I suppose they enter protective bids. They aren’t wasting any time—auction’s 2100 tonight.”
“You handle it,” Oldham muttered. “Don’t go over one hundred thousand shields. Diversify the purchases as much as possible. And try to sneak some advance information out of the dummies if you get a chance.”
“Yes, sir,” Ross said. As he left he saw Oldham taking a plastic bottle from a wall cabinet.
And that, thought Ross as he rode to the Free Port, was the first crack he had ever seen in the determined optimism of the trading firm’s top level. They were optimists and they were idealists, at least to hear them tell it. Interplanetary trading was a cause and a mission; the traders kept the flame of commerce alight. Perhaps, thought Ross, they had been able to indulge in the hypocrisy of idealism only so long as a population upcurve assured them of an expanding market. Perhaps now that births were flattening out—some said the dirty word ‘declining’—they all would drop their optimistic creed in favor of fang-and-claw competition for the favors of the dwindling pool of consumers.
And that, Ross thought gloomily, was the way he’d go himself if he stayed on: junior trader, to senior trader, to master trader, growing every year more paranoidally suspicious of his peers, less scrupulous in the chase of the shield.
But he was getting out, of course. The purser’s berth awaited. And then, perhaps, the awful depressions he had been enduring would lift off him. He thought of the master traders he knew: his own man Oldham, none too happy in the hereditary business; Leverett, still smug and fat with his terrific windfall of the Sirius IV starship fifteen years ago; Marconi’s boss Haarland—Haarland broke the sequence all to hell. It just wasn’t possible to think of Haarland being driven by avarice and fear. He was the oldest of them all, but there was more zest and drive in his parchment body than in the rest of them combined.
In the auction hall Ross found a seat near the velvet ropes. One of the professional bidders lounging against a wall flicked him an almost imperceptible signal, and he answered with another. That was that; he had his man, and a good one. They had often worked together in the commodity pits, but not so often or so exclusively that the bidder would be instantly known as his.
Inside the enclosure Marconi, seated at a bare table, labored over a sheaf of papers with one of the ‘Sonnies’ from the ship. Sonny was wriggling in coveralls, the first clothes he had ever worn. Ross saw they hadn’t been able to get shoes on to him.
Who else did he know? Captain Delafield was sitting somberly within the enclosure; Win Fraley, the hottest auctioneer on the Port, was studying a list, his lips moving. Every trading firm was represented; the heads of the smaller firms were there in person, not daring to delegate the bidding job. Plenty of Port personnel, just there for the excitement of the first longliner in fifteen years, even though it was well after close of the business day.
The goods were in sealed cases against the back wall as usual. Ross could only tell that some of them were perforated and therefore ought to contain living animals. Only the one Sonny from the starship crew was there; presumably the rest were back on the ship. He wouldn’t be able to follow Oldham’s orders to snoop out the nature of the freight from them. Well, damn Oldham; damn even the auction, Ross thought to himself. His mood of gloom did not lift.
The auction was a kind of let down. All that turmoil and bustle, concentrated in a tiny arc around the velvet ropes, contrasted unpleasantly with the long, vacant rows of dusty seats that stretched to the back of the hall. Maybe a couple of centuries ago Ross would have enjoyed the auction more. But now all it made him think of was the thing he had been brooding about for a night and a day, the slow emptying of the planet, the . . .
Decay.
But, as usual, no one else seemed to notice or to care. Captain Delafield consulted his watch and stood up. He rapped the table. “In accordance with the rules of the Trade Commission and the appropriate governing statutes,” he droned, “certain merchandise will now be placed on public auction. The Haarland Trading Corporation, consignee, agrees and consents to divest itself of merchandise from Consignment 97-W amounting by estimate of the customs authorities to twenty-five per cent of the total value of all merchandise in said consignment. All receipts of this auction are to be entered as excise duties paid by the consignee on said merchandise, said receipts to constitute payment in full on excise on Consignment 97-W. The clerk will record; if any person here present wishes to enter an objection let him do so thank you.” He glanced at a slip of paper in his hand. “I am requested to inform you that the Haarland Trading
Corporation has entered with the clerk a protective bid of five thousand shields on each item.” There was a rustle in the hall. Five thousand shields was a lot of money. “Your auctioneer. Win Fraley,” said Captain Delafield, and sat down in the first row of seats.
The auctioneer took a long, slow swallow of water, his eyes gleaming above the glass at the audience. Theatrically he tossed the glass to an assistant, smacked his hands together and grinned. “Well,” he boomed genially, “I don’t have to tell you gentlemen that somebody’s going to get rich tonight. Who knows—maybe it’ll be you? But you can’t make money without spending money, so without any further ado, let’s get started. I have here,” he rapped out briskly, “Item Number One. Now you don’t know and I don’t know exactly what Item Number One contains, but I can tell you this, they wouldn’t have sent it two hundred and thirty-one lights if they didn’t think it was worth something. Let’s get this started with a rush, folks, and I mean with a big bid to get in the right mood. After all, the more you spend here the less you have to pay in taxes,” he laughed. “You ready? Here’s the dope. Item Number One—” His assistant slapped a carton at the extreme left of the line. “—weight two hundred and fifteen grams, net; fifteen cubic centimeters; one microfilm reel included. Reminds me,” he reminisced, “of an item just about that size on the Sirius IV shipment. Turned out to be Maryjane seeds, and I don’t suppose I have to tell anybody here how much Mr. Leverett made out of Maryjanes; I bet every one of us has been smoking them ever since. What do you say, Mr. Leverett? You did all right last time—want to say ten thousand as a first big bid on Item Number One? Nine thousand? Do I hear—?”
One
of the smaller traders, not working through a professional bidder, not even decently delegating the work to a junior, bid seventy-five hundred shields. Like the spokesmen for the other big traders, Ross sat on his hands during the early stages. Let the small fry give themselves a thrill and drop out. The big firms knew to a fraction of a shield how much the small ones could afford to bid on a blind purchase, and the easiest way to handle them was to let them spend their budgets in a hurry. Of course the small traders knew all this, and their strategy, when they could manage it, was to hold back as long as possible. It was a matter of sensing emotion rather than counting costs; of recognizing the fraction of a second in which a little fellow made up his mind to acquire an item and bidding him up—of knowing when he’d gone his limit and letting him have it at a ruinous price. It was an art, and Ross, despising it, knew that he did it very, very well.
He yawned and pretended to read a magazine while the first six items went on the block; the little traders seemed desperate enough to force the price up without help. He bid on Item Seven partly to squeeze a runt trader and partly to test his liaison with his professional bidder. It was perfect; the pro caught his signal—a bored inspection of his fingernails—while seeming to peek clumsily at the man from Leverett’s.
Ross let the next two pass and then acquired three items in rapid succession. The fever had spread to most of the bidders by then; they were starting at ten thousand and up. One or two of the early birds had spent their budgets and were leaving, looking sandbagged—as indeed they had been. Ross signaled “Take five” to his professional and strolled out for a cup of coffee.
On the way back he stopped for a moment outside the hall to look at the stars and breath. There were the familiar constellations—The Plowman, the Rocket Fleet, Marilyn Monroe. He stood smoking a cigarette and yearning toward them until somebody moved in the darkness near him. “Nice night, Ross,” the man said gloomily.
It was Captain Delafield, “Oh, hello, sir,” Ross said, the world descending around him again like a too-substantial curtain. “Taking a breather?”
“Had to,” the captain growled. “Ten more minutes in that place and I would have thrown. Damned money-grabbing traders. No offense, Ross; just that I don’t see how you stand the life. Seems to have got worse in my time. Much worse. You high-rollers goading the pee-wees into shooting their wads—it didn’t use to be like that. Gallantry. Not stomping a downed man. I don’t see how you stand it.”
“I can’t stand it,” Ross said quietly. “Captain Delafield, you don’t know—I’m so sick to death of the life I’m leading and the work I’m doing that I’d do anything to get away. Mr. Fallon offered me a purser’s spot on his ship; I’ve been thinking about it very seriously.”
“Purser? A dirty job. There’s nothing to do except when you’re in port, and then there’s so much to do that you never get to see the planet. I don’t recommend it, Ross.”
Ross grunted, thinking. If even the purser’s berth was no way out, what was left for him? Sixty more years of waiting for a starship and scheming how to make a profit from its contents? Sixty more years watching Ghost Town grow by nibbles on Halsey City, watching the traders wax in savagery as they battled for the ever-diminishing pool of consumers, watching obscene comedies like Lurline of the Old Landowners graciously consenting to wed Marconi of the New Nobodies? He said wearily: “Then what shall I do, Captain? Rot here with the rest of the planet?”
Delafield shrugged, surprisingly gentle. “You feel it too, Ross? I’m glad to hear it. I’m not sensitive, thank God, but I know they talk about me. They say I quit the space-going fleet as soon as I had a chance to grab off the port captaincy. They’re right; I did. Because I was frightened.”
“Frightened? You?” Delafield’s ribbons for a dozen heroic rescues gleamed in the light that escaped from the hall.
“Sure, Ross.” He flicked the ribbons. “Each one of these means I and my men pulled some people out of a jam they got into because of somebody’s damned stupidity or slow reflexes or defective memory. No; I withdraw that. The “Thetis’ got stove in because of mechanical failure, but all the rest were human error. There got to be too many for me; I want to enjoy my old age.
“Ready to face that if you become a purser? I can tell you that if you don’t like it here you won’t be happy on Sunward and you won’t like the moons. And you most especially and particularly won’t like being a purser. It’s the same job you’re doing now, but it pays less, offers you a six-by-eight cubicle to work and live in, and gives you nothing resembling a future to aim at. Now if you’ll excuse me I’d better get back inside. I’ve enjoyed our talk.”
Ross followed the captain gloomily. Nothing had changed inside; Ross lounged in the doorway inconspicuously picking up the eye of his bidder. Marconi was gone from the enclosure. Ross looked around hopefully and found his friend in agitated conversation with an unrecognizable but also agitated man at the back of the hall. Ross drifted over. Heads were turning in the front rows. As Ross got within range he heard a couple of phrases. “—in the ship. Mr. Haarland specially asked for you. Please, Mr. Marconi!”
“Oh, hell,” Marconi said disgustedly. “Go on. Tell him I’ll be there. But how he expects me to take care of things here and—” He trailed off as he caught sight of Ross.
“Trouble?” Ross asked.
“Not exactly. The hell with it.” Marconi stared indecisively at the auctioneer for a moment. He said obscurely, “Taking your life isn’t enough; he wants more. And I thought I’d be able to see Lurline tonight. Excuse me, Ross. I’ve got to get over to the ship.” He hurried out.
Ross looked wonderingly after him, caught the eye of his bidder, and went back to work. By the time the auction was over and dawn was breaking in the west, Oldham Trading had bought nine lots of merchandise: three breathing, five flowering, and one a roll of microfilm. Ross took his prizes to the office where Charles Oldham was waiting, much the better for a few drinks and a long nap.
“How much?” demanded Oldham. Evidently they were both supposed to ignore his hysteria of the night before.
“Fifty-seven thousand,” Ross said dully.
“For nine lots? Good man! With any kind of luck at all—” And Oldham babbled on and on. He wanted Ross to stay and view the microfilm projection, stand by for a report from a zoologist and a botanist on the living acquisitions. He pleaded weariness and Oldham became conciliatory to the wonderful young up-and-comer who had bid in the merchandise at a whopping bargain price.
Ross dragged himself from the building, into a cab, and home. Morosely undressing he lit a cigarette and brooded: well, that was it. What you’d been waiting for since you were a junior apprentice. The starship came, you had the alien prizes in your hands and you realized they were as tawdry as the cheap gimcracks you export every week to Sunward.
He stared out the window, over Ghost Town, to the Field. The sun was high over the surrounding mountains; he imagined he could pick out the reflected glimmer from the starship a dozen miles away. Marconi at least got to examine the ship. Marconi might be there now; he’d been headed that way when Ross saw him last. And evidently not enjoying it much. Ross wondered vaguely if anybody really enjoyed anything. He stubbed out his cigarette.
As he fell asleep he was remembering what Delafield had told him about the moons and the planet ports. His dreams were of the cities of other planets, and every one of them was populated by aloof Delafields and avaricious Oldhams.
• • • • Three
“Wake up, Ross,” Marconi was saying, joggling him. “Come on, wake up.”
Ross thrust himself up on an elbow and opened his eyes. He said with a tongue the size of his forearm in a dust-lined mouth: “Wha’ time is it? Wha’ the hell are you doing here, for that matter?”
“It’s around noon. You’ve slept for three hours; you can get up.”
“Uh.” Ross automatically reached for a cigarette. The smoke got in his eyes and he rubbed them; it dehydrated and seared what l
ittle healthy tissue appeared to be left in his mouth. But it woke him up a little. “What are you doing here?” he demanded.
Marconi’s hand was involuntarily on his breast pocket again, the one in which he carried Lurline’s picture. He said harshly: “You want a job? Topside? Better than purser?” He wasn’t meeting Ross’s eye. His gaze roved around the apartment and lighted on a coffee maker. He filled it and snapped it on. “Get dressed, will you?” he demanded.
Ross sat up. “What’s this all about, Marconi? What do you want, anyway?”
Marconi, for his own reasons, became violently angry. “You’re the damnedest question-asker I ever did meet, Ross. I’m trying to do you a favor “
“What favor?” Ross asked suspiciously.
“You’ll find out. You’ve been bellyaching to me long enough about how dull your poor little life is. Well, I’m offering you a chance to do something big and different. And what do you do? You crawfish. Are you interested or aren’t you? I told you: It’s a space job, and a big one. Bigger than being a purser for Fallon. Bigger than you can imagine.”
Ross began to struggle into his clothes, no more than half comprehending, but stimulated by the magic words. He asked, puzzling sleepily over what Marconi had said, “What are you sore about?” His guess was that Lurline had broken a date—but it seemed to be the wrong time of day for that.
“Nothing,” Marconi said grumpily. “Only I have my own life to live.” He poured two cups of coffee. He wouldn’t answer questions while they sipped the scalding stuff. But somehow Ross was not surprised when, downstairs, Marconi headed his car along the winding road through Ghost Town that led to the Yards.
Every muscle of Ross’s body was stiff and creaky; another six hours of sleep would have been a wonderful thing. But as they drove through the rutted streets of Ghost Town he began to feel alive again. He stared out the window at the flashing ruins, piecing together the things Marconi had said.
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