Masters of the Trading Game

by Jim Cline

  Masters of the Trading Game

  A Science Fiction short story by Jim Cline

  Cover design by Paul Adams

  Copyright ? 2009 J. E. D. Cline

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  Masters of the Trading Game

  The engine of the little aircraft he had rented had suddenly quit, and soon stalled, now heading rapidly toward the rough terrain below. He had a toolkit which quickly showed him that the engine had quit because its flight controller had been sent a signal by an airport ground control that the plane had landed and was to shut the engine down and let the passenger out. Unable to change the instruction to the autopilot, he activated his suit's buoyancy control, needed to live on this heavy gravity planet, set to a negative average weight, opened the door and jumped out. The plane sped downward past him; moments later it hit the ground, splattering pieces all over the mountainside. Reaching the ground, he adjusted his average weight for some traction, and bounded lightly across the terrain. Reaching the wreckage, he retrieved his luggage and lightly bounded away to a place that provided concealment; yet he was able to view the wreckage. Soon a helicopter arrived out of nowhere in this desolate place, and it squirted a stream of liquid fuel all over the wreckage, ignited it; hovered awhile to watch the inferno, then flew off.

  So far, his day was not going well. Up until today, things had seemed to be quite reasonable. He had arrived as an ambassador to this planet, with a specialty in sociology, to determine how the beings here needed to be treated for a harmonious trade relationship with the Federation of Planets. It was not a judgmental activity; merely standard research to determine the data needed to establish the optimum trade relationship parameters.

  They had no intention to interfere with any planet's doings; all they wanted was the working trade relationship so as to acquire needed goods in exchange for goods of which they had too much. The people here generally understood that. And yet, one of the natives had only yesterday acted odd and quietly told him to mind his own business or he would be in trouble, then the native faded away into the crowd.

  Feeling a bit hungry, he carefully selected leaves from the thorny tree which hid him, taking select leaves from the outside where it would let more sunshine in for inner leaves to relish and grow faster. Putting the leaves into his pocket snack converter, soon it produced a refreshing sip of nutritious liquid and some tasty munchies for him. Now what? He had noticed the same corporation markings on the helicopter as had been on the rented aircraft, apparently associated with this particular territory he had just begun to gather data within. It appeared clear that some quite competent group had worked to destroy him, and probably of the control of this territory. To go into a nearby town would likely invite another destructive effort, maybe one he would not be able to avoid. His sociological research report would have to incorporate the social phenomenon which had produced his current predicament, so making it look like he was missing while he was continuing his data gathering project seemed most likely to determine pertinent data. An observer always had to be careful to not significantly alter the workings of the social system that was being documented, and it appeared that the social forces here had considered his presence very disruptive. Opening his suitcase and accessing the data store, he found a map with his location on it, and located the nearest large town. There were none nearby, however, so he chose to head back to the place from which he had rented the aircraft, and where his other belongings were presumably still located. But he would remain on the outskirts in hiding; see what he could discover from there as to what was going on now.

  He traveled in the twilight hours, when the desert mountains were most active with animal life, hiding out both in daylight and the deep of the night, motion too risky. He was in no hurry; data was data whenever he obtained it. Arriving on the outskirts of the city, he squirreled a secure hiding spot where he could see the area where his motel room was located, and his rented ground vehicle. It was still in the parking lot; he saw no one entering his motel room. The security cameras were not aimed at him nor his vehicle nor his room, just at their usual views of access passageways. He needed to report in, so as dusk fell he set his suit to high buoyancy and lightly bounced across the intervening space, coming in at an angle not observed by the cameras; touching the motel roof, he flipped over the eaves to be in front of his motel room door, and was soon inside. Odd, the couple of electric sparks he felt doing tiny stings on his skin. This door opening would be signaled to the office, surely; so he quickly gathered supplies and his communicator, leaving everything else as it was. He left the room, bounced to the roof, and off across several roofs to gain a probably unobserved return to his hideaway. His suit was the equivalent to a portable airship inflated by hydrogen; it had already been determined that this civilization had abandoned rigid airship transportation due to a spectacular accident long ago, and had used powered airfoils for airlift since then.

  Back in his hideaway, he quickly set up the sub-space communicator and filed his report update. Then he switched the communicator to "observe local news" mode, suppressing its normal "interactive news" mode which would have given his continued existence away, making his job more difficult than it already had become. The folks receiving his report on his home planet would merely file it away; they had seen about anything possible, among the many planets which had been brought into the Federation. They had, however, cautioned him to be more careful about triggering activities by his presence that would further disrupt data acquisition and maybe even terminate him. Replacing him and his equipment would be costly and delay the acceptance of this planet into the Federation, so be more careful; end of message.

  So he resigned himself to a long stay in this rather uncomfortable quarters, furtively watching. It was going to be a longer time until he would be back in the comfortable embrace of his wife; instead, he was here in this hole made among sharp rocks and thorny leaf-bushes. His buoyancy suit was made of sturdy cloth and when partially inflated, it provided a barrier between his body and the uncomfortable rocks surrounding him, so he at least could be somewhat comfortable when sleeping.

  Opening his briefcase, he activated half of its fleet of micro-vehicles, programmed to scamper around the nearby city until hearing audio or observing activity, then transmit what ever they observed back to the suitcase along subspace channels. Periodically the raw data was sent in a packet through subspace to the home planet data center mindless recorders, just in case. A few of the micro-vehicles were hovering around his hideaway and if something suddenly obliterated him there, they would have described the incoming missile and so the home planet would have that data at least. Few ambassadors had ever been lost, and it was considered incompetence that led to their demise; and data as to causes was merely added to the vast database. He was on his own; no rescue would be sent. If he really messed up, he would merely be replaced, quickly forgotten. The Prime Directive was to not disrupt trade activities among planets.

  So. What had he done to offend these people so much? This was the fourth territory which he had explored on this planet; this one seemed much the same as the other three, bland and understandable. That is, up until his aircraft crashed several days ago. Must be something different happening here. What was it? He examined the statistics. People were busy making things, buying and selling, growing food, marrying, having offspring and getting divorced, same old stuff. The next level deeper among the data showed something a bit odd. There were far more females here than males, as compared to ratios in the prior three territories. That was something for the micro-vehicles to ferret out a bit deeper. He compared the current findings to the planetary library history set. There were as many females as males born, on the average, ev
erywhere. It was the same on the birth record in this town too, just as many males as females born each year. There were a large number of divorced females with children, as single moms were quite well supported by the system. Soon another irregularity was found, that even among the relatively few males here, many of them were living together in group living situations, some with a female among them, others not. Eventually he discovered that there were only a few males who were active in procreation. Males of that group were marrying a female, procreating, divorcing them, supporting them while going on to another single woman; he periodically visited all his former wives, who did not seem to have any other relationship but with him. Odd, how did that happen? The community was thriving; monogamy was part of the law here as elsewhere, but divorced moms were of course allowed to have relationships. So it was not obviously polygamy, but effectively so, staying within the law.

  Where had the extra females come from? Records seemed oddly scant, as if they suddenly