Man Who Used the Universe

by Alan Dean Foster

  His knowledge of human psychology should help him, however. He would know better than most of his kind when to approach and when to retreat, how to defuse a potentially dangerous situation. Perhaps he even knew enough to get some answers.

  His professors were shocked when he applied for the grant to study human society from within instead of from a distance. They remonstrated with him, not wishing to lose a valuable pupil and brilliant mind to the mob violence, which oftentimes plagued human cities. But he persisted and, reluctantly, was given the grant. His record of achievement made it possible.

  He booked passage on a ship to Restavon. It was one of the two capital human worlds. He would begin there and make his way, as inconspicuously as possible, to Lewmaklin's headquarters world of Evenwaith, which under his direction had become such an industrial goliath that it now ranked third in production and importance only to Restavon and Terra themselves.

  He would take his time. Persistence and not genius is often the hallmark of the successful scientist. . . .

  Chapter 11

  It was fortunate that Chaheel possessed scientific detachment as well as expertise. Sometimes that was the only thing that allowed him to cope with the many blunt refusals and outright racial insults his attempted inquiries met with. Fortunately, the profit motive (i.e., greed) was common to both races, so with persistence he was able to find individuals whose love of money enabled them to overcome any personal loathing they might have felt toward the nagging Nuel.

  The Orischians were too old an ally of humanity to be of much help, but among the less rigid Athabascans and others, he found programmers filled with discontent, real or imagined, who were able to gather information for him from supposedly inviolate computer sources. This gave him levers with which to pry further at his human contacts.

  Slowly, inevitably, his work led him to Evenwaith. By now the human scientific community, at least, had come to accept his presence. He was a student of culture and psychology. They did not resent his presence. There were even a few who sympathized with his work and assisted him, without ever becoming aware of his real purpose.

  He never saw Kee-yes vain Lewmaklin. Most of the time the great man was not on Evenwaith but was off inspecting his innumerable interests on other worlds or attempting to close some major new contract or merger.

  All the while, Chaheel kept tabs on the activities of Loo-Macklin's concerns within the worlds of the Families and, in particular, those businesses related in some way to the Birthing industry. He discovered that by dint of surreptitious purchasing, outright merger and careful acquisition Loo-Macklin had gained control of some forty percent of all Birthing-related commerce.

  Not enough to constitute a monopoly: not quite, but large enough to influence methods of buying and selling, and certainly enough to influence the products of smaller subcontractors and suppliers.

  Among his Nuel employees he found the same kind of dedication Loo-Macklin inspired in his own kind. And why not? Most of them were unaware their efforts enriched, at the top of the scale, a human. Their loyalty was to their company and to their immediate superiors, all of whom were Nuel. Few had any direct contact with humans, none at all with Loo-Macklin himself.

  Those family agents assigned to keep watch on him showed no alarm. Family economists actually welcomed the fresh infusion of outside credit while the Si approved of this new evidence of the man's interest in his allies. Truly was Loo-Macklin's destiny interlocked with the continued well-being of the Nuel!

  So large had the human's investments among the families grown that the potential threat of confiscation of those holdings had become at least as powerful a weapon for controlling him as the implanted lehl.

  Yet still was Chaheel troubled, for Loo-Macklin continued to pour money into Birthing-related businesses when he stood to enjoy larger profits elsewhere.

  Then occurred an event, which shocked Basright and those nearest Loo-Macklin as much as it pleased the Nuel. Kees vaan Loo-Macklin announced his intention to marry. To the Nuel, the prospect of a Birthing to their vital ally was greeted with much rejoicing, for no sentient being responsible for young of its own was likely to risk its life on wild adventures or dangerous betrayals.

  Her name was Tambu Tabuhan. Loo-Macklin encountered her on Terra. His car was passing through a plant, which manufactured computer components, when he stumbled on the altercation. That there was a single woman involved, and a slip of one at that, battling three men, was enough to make him step in and put a stop to the fight. That she had been holding her own at the time was enough to lift her out of the seething mass of humanity high enough for him to take notice.

  Her hair was jet black and straight, her eyes reflective of her Oriental heritage.

  "Who asked you to interfere?" she snapped at him, breathing hard and holding the top of her factory jersey together. Behind Loo-Macklin the plant manager nearly fainted as he frantically tried to indicate by signs and grimaces how important the man she was berating was. He failed. Her attention was solely on Loo-Macklin.

  "No one," he admitted.

  "Then why did you?"

  "I don't like unfair fights, even if they're not my own."

  "This one's finished." She turned to go.

  He put out a hand to stop her. She tried to shake him off, discovered she could not. That in itself was unusual.

  "My name is Kees vaan Loo-Macklin."

  "So what?"

  "I own this plant." That softened her pose, but not her tone.

  "That doesn't give you the right to paw me, any more than rescuing me from the likes of those three wimbs does."

  "What would give me the right to paw you?"

  "Not a damn thing. I don't care if you own the whole planet."

  "What if I told you that I did, more or less?"

  "I'd say you were a liar as well as crude."

  "I won't dispute the crudeness, but I'm not lying." Then he added the phrase, which caused the onlooking Basright's heart to miss a beat.

  "I'm alone. I've always been alone. I'd like to try not being alone. How would you like to be my wife?"

  She cocked her head to one side, studying him. "You're serious, aren't you?"

  "I'm always serious."

  "You own this plant?" She gestured, taking in the extensive production facilities stretching off into the distance.

  He nodded. The numbed manager confirmed it.

  "Other plants as well?"

  "I am not poor," he told her.

  "Well, I am, and it stinks. There's neither grace nor nobility to it, as some fatuous fools sometimes say."

  "I couldn't agree more, having once occupied such status myself."

  "So." She considered a moment longer, then shrugged. "Yes, I'll marry you, Kees vaan Loo-Macklin. You're tired of being alone, fine. I'm tired of being poor."

  So the bargain was struck. Basright pondered over it for many days thereafter. There had to be a reason besides loneliness, he knew. Loo-Macklin might be experimenting with life, as he so often did, or he might be trying to placate the Nuel, who were ever suspicious of unmated friends. But there had to be a reason. Depend on Loo-Macklin to think it through carefully and do the right thing at the proper psychological moment.

  He was only partly correct.

  After four years of work among the eighty-three worlds of the UTW, four years of enduring insult and imprecation, four years of unnatural working conditions, Chaheel Riens was ready to return home.

  For nearly a year now he'd been forced to consider the embarrassing possibility that he'd been wrong about Kees vaan Loo-Macklin. He wasn't positive he was wrong, might never be, but he was becoming certain he'd never be able to prove anything. Loo-Macklin's taking of a mate had removed the last vestiges of concern among his family superiors. The human was clearly bent on founding a family of his own, on producing offspring who would inherit the great position that would accrue to the family of Loo-Macklin once the Nuel assumed dominance over the affairs of men.

  Ch
aheel Riens was sick of worrying about it, as he was sick of the UTW, of alien food and culture, of the sight of creatures striding about on only two spindly solid legs instead of properly flexible cilia.

  Chaheel Riens, xenopsychologist extraordinary, was intelligent enough to recognize the symptoms. He was homesick.

  The four years had been anything but a failure, however. No representative of the Nuel scientific community had spent anywhere near that length of time among the humans. The papers Chaheel could now dictate at his leisure from his copious notes would fill several whole information chips. Acclaim and reward would greet his monumental work, the first extensive research ever done on human culture and psychology from the inside.

  Still Chaheel felt the pain of failure. It was not humanity he'd come to analyze. It was one human.

  So intent was he on returning home that he'd nearly forgotten the modest network of contacts he'd so laboriously woven during his first three years in the UTW. When it came, the breakthrough was presented to him not by an Athabascan or Eurtite, as he'd felt it might, but from another human being.

  He was in his quarters, the walls and cabinets now stripped bare, his possessions packed and ready for outship, when he got the message. The contents were as startling as the source.

  He was perusing his personal messages with boredom. They flashed across the monitor screen set in one wall of his chambers. They were in terranglo, a simple language Chaheel had mastered during the past four years. He had no need of the built-in translator unit. Once he'd felt pride in the accomplishment. Not any longer. There had been no accomplishments in some time and he was not the kind to linger over old ones. It was only work now.

  The special message was tucked inconspicuously among his other calls. Most of them were from home; requests for information on this or that aspect of human society. Chaheel had become quite a source for the curious stay-at-homes. A few came from human scientists. Exchanges of knowledge had followed the trail blazed by exchanges of goods. Knowledge often followed greed, instead of the other way around.

  What the peculiar message said was simply, "Recall your initial interests in certain humans commercial activities. Would request personal audience to discuss ramifications presented by same. Most truly. Thomas Lindsay." Beneath was a call number. An Evenwaith number.

  The seemingly ordinary communication was full of too many buzzwords for Chaheel to let it slide by. It had been a while since he'd thought seriously about his original purpose in traveling to the UTW. Now this terse, somehow anxious message renewed it.

  Ramifications . . . commercial activities . . . things that had first piqued his own fears and interest were thrown back at him by an unknown human to haunt him all over again. The key was the apparent misspelling of the word "human" as the plural "humans." If one added proper punctuation it became "human's." Possessive. Someone's activities in particular, then.

  Chaheel debated with himself. He was packed and ready to leave this miserable place, ready to return home to acclaim and praise. Possibly the message was placed by an unstable mind. A crank call, as humans termed it. Chaheel had received plenty of those in his four years within the UTW. Such psychological aberrants were common among mankind, he knew. Why waste his time with one?

  And yet . . . this "Thomas Lindsay," which might or might not be the caller's real name, had taken the trouble to search Chaheel out. It was the preciseness of the message's language, carefully calculated to attract the attention of no one but Chaheel, that finally persuaded him to put off his departure for at least another day.

  On contact the human refused to show his face, likewise refused to meet Chaheel in his quarters. Security reasons. Chaheel concurred, suggested a small eating establishment where he was not unknown and where his alien presence would attract little comment. The human agreed, broke off the transmission abruptly.

  He, for it was male, was not a particularly impressive representative of his species. He was very short and thin to the point of emaciation. Though not particularly old, he was losing his head fur.

  There were many other things, which would have been missed entirely by an ordinary Nuel but not by the humanwise Chaheel. Things, which told him this human was irritable, nervous, worried, and generally unpleasant to be around. And the man had said nothing as yet. Really, the inferencing Chaheel performed was impressive.

  The noise from the electronic music generator permeated the oval entertainment and eating chamber. It was quite deafening. Chaheel hated the music but enjoyed the noise because it kept him from hearing the comments other patrons often made about him. A human performed ritual gyrations on a stage, which further attracted the attention of most of the humans in the establishment.

  The emaciated one did something with a small electronic device, passing it through the air, over the table, beneath it. Satisfied, he slipped it into a pocket. They sat in a corner booth, human-designed chairs being quite impossible for Chaheel, but large booths providing acceptable if stiff-backed support.

  The human pushed aside the drink he'd ordered and leaned close toward Chaheel. This was a human gesture signifying trust and confidence. The psychologist knew this because there was nothing wrong with his hearing or with the human's voice.

  The man wore a dark indigo set of coveralls with a dull green shirt beneath the suspenders. Chaheel was clad in a single-piece black-and-yellow striped nonrenewing suit. El were difficult to keep alive past a certain time and there was nowhere on the eighty-three worlds to purchase new ones.

  "You're very interested in Kees vaan Loo-Macklin, aren't you, alien?"

  "You know that I am. That's why you have contacted me. You have information for me?"

  The man glanced nervously at a nearby table, quickly back down at his own. "Maybe."

  "Why do this?"

  The man looked up, his eyes hard. "'Cause I hate the ghit's guts."

  "A great many humans do, I am told. Why should you be able to do more for me than anyone else?"

  The man smiled slyly, an expression Chaheel had not encountered often. "Because I know a lot of things that most of the people who hate him don't. Things, which the Nuel ought to be interested in."

  Chaheel, who had come to the meeting convinced he was wasting his time, felt himself stirring inside. "Large words, truly. What things?"

  "Not so fast, slimeskin. You'll believe me better if you understand why I hate Loo-Macklin and how I come to know what I do. See, I worked for Tommotty for five years. It's a services outfit, mostly storage and information processing."

  "One of Loo-Macklin's companies," Chaheel said, drawing on his store of information about the human they were discussing.

  "Yeah. Not the biggest, but high-profit. Lot of money in information processing. Investment's in personnel more than material.

  "Anyway, I worked there five years."

  "You said that already."

  "Shut up and listen, will you!" The man shot another nervous glance at the patrons nearest them. No one seemed to be looking his way.

  "Never had any trouble with my work, never had any complaints. I worked hard for that outfit. You had to, to stay in. Well, I was using some of the spare capacity on the side. Everyone does it. You run a few programs for friends, maybe make a little credit above your salary. Nothing but electricity to the company.

  "I was doing it one day and stumbled into a code. Happens sometimes when you're hunting for a place to hide your clien . . . your friend's information. Normally you just ignore it and dig up another place, but I punched into this thing and I mean, the information came flooding across that damn screen! Just flooding. You wouldn't think so much would be stored under such an innocuous code."

  "Making something obvious but difficult is a good way to discourage inquiries about it," pointed out Chaheel.

  "Yeah, well, I wondered about it. It was a slow day, and just for the hell of it I slowed the stuff down and looked at it. Thought I'd skim it quick. You never know." He smiled in a comradely way. "Sometimes you might
stumble across something that could tip you to an impending merger or other big deal. Something you can make a little credit on it. Just for yourself, of course. I wouldn't have considered selling it to a competing company."

  "Of course not," said Chaheel politely.

  "Well, some of the names in the thing—" the man lowered his voice still further—"I recognized 'em. I mean, who wouldn't. Important people, really important. In the government, on the Board of Operators. Not just business stuff. It all pertained to you people, to the Nuel."

  Chaheel tried not to tense. His tentacles tried to retract up against his body.

  "Naturally I am interested in anything that pertains to my people, especially if, as you say, Kee-yes vain Lewmaklin is involved as well."

  "I'm getting to that," muttered Thomas Lindsay with maddening deliberation. "What I saw shocked me. Truly. I suppose it shouldn't have, but it did. I didn't know what to do about it. I mean, some of those names . . . So I just packed it in, you know, kept it to myself, and went on about my business. One time I tried retrieving the code again. I couldn't. Probably it was changed daily.

  "Couple months after that I got fired."

  "Fired?" Chaheel had an image of the man going up in flames.

  "Discharged. They threw me out. No job."

  "Oh." Chaheel's knowledge of human idioms was still imperfect. There were so many different ways of saying the same thing.

  "Yeah. Five years of sweat and hard work. The thing that gets me is that it had nothing to do with the code I'd stumbled across. Far as I know nobody knows that I saw any of that stuff. Far as I know.

  "No, it was because of my using excess capacity to make a little play money. Like I told you, everybody does it. They just don't talk about it. Not only did they fire me," he said angrily, "but they noted it in my resume file. I haven't been able to get another job since. Nobody'll touch me, even though most of 'em look the other way when the people they've got working for 'em now do the same damn thing."

  "Truly it sounds as though you have been unfairly singled out, Thomas Lindsay." Privately Chaheel knew he would never have recommended hiring this thief either.