Disappearing Act

by Margaret Ball

  The beasts pulling their box—no, carriage—were allowed to amble while Gabrel went on about the political structures of Kalapriya. By the time they reached the meeting hall Maris felt she had learned quite enough about that subject to be able to play the Diplomat for the evening. As for the bacteriomat trade, it might be the ruling passion of the Barentsians, but it was nowhere mentioned in Calandra Vissi's orders. So at least she didn't have to pretend to know any more—or any less—than Benteen Teunis had told her that afternoon.

  This time Maris was prepared for the climate-controlled luxury concealed inside the humble-looking white stucco meeting hall. She was not, however, prepared for the gala décor and the brilliant lights blazing inside. Since that afternoon the hall had been transformed, the rows of chairs moved to make room for white-draped tables covered with glittering glassware and serving dishes.

  And the space between the tables was completely filled with tall, impatient-looking people. Maris shrank back as she took in their expressions.

  "Oh gods, we're late an' they're narked, ain't they?" she whispered to Gabrel, momentarily too agitated to maintain her toppie accent.

  "A Diplomat," Gabrel said in a discreet undertone, "by definition, is never late. The proper starting time for any function is when the Diplomat arrives. And don't show them you're scared; the old men will bully you if they think they can get away with it."

  Maris felt grateful for his hand under her elbow, steadying her as they moved into the room, and absurdly bereft when he was whisked away to a table for those of lesser standing while she was stuck at the head table between Dwendle Stoffelsen and a bunch of other old guys. Introductions were quick and businesslike; she caught the names Torston Huyberts and Pledger van der Wessels, but did not recognize or remember the titles of the official positions they occupied. So what? I'm not supposed to be a bunu expert on the organization of the Society . . . am I? Yeah, probably she was. Calandra Vissi probably had a datachip implant that had been freshly loaded with the Barents Trading Society's organization chart, names, titles, job descriptions, and complete bunu resumes! Oh well, it wasn't like they were going to interrogate her about the structure of their own business, was it?

  No. It was a great deal worse.

  "In order to facilitate your survey of the Society, Diplomat Vissi," Torston Huyberts began in a voice as oily as the soup that was placed before them by a slender, dark Kalapriyan servant, "it would be best if you could tell us now the precise scope of your inquiries and how you intend to carry them out."

  Maris took a spoonful of soup. Too bad it wasn't something solid; she could play for time by chewing or pretending to choke on it or—gods, her mouth was screaming for the fire marshals! She grabbed for the glass before her and poured half the contents down her throat.

  "Bread helps more than liquids," murmured Pledger van der Wessels. "If the distinguished Diplomat would care to try our native-baked paan?" He offered her a basket filled with flat things that Maris hadn't recognized as bread. She bit into one and discovered a soft, fruity filling that helped to assuage the minor explosions in her throat.

  Torston Huyberts chuckled. "One forgets that our colonial habits are sometimes a little too hot for offworlders."

  Was there a subtle threat in that, or was he simply enjoying seeing her discomfited?

  "I 'spect I'll get used to it, Haar Huyberts," Maris said in her best toppie voice, a little husky still from the searing mouthful of soup. "However, perhaps it would be best to begin slowly."

  "And is that how you plan to begin your inquiries? Slowly? Few visitors look on Kalapriya as a pleasure jaunt to be prolonged."

  He was definitely baiting her. Why? So she'd blurt out classified information? Maris smiled to herself. At least there was no danger of that.

  "We can do this slow or fast, any way you and yer—your colleagues like, Haar Huyberts. I been—I have been assigned to make certain inquiries; I ain't about to leave until I get satisfactory results." Like, maybe, tomorrow morning. If you define a satisfactory result as a ticket off this place . . . Time to take the lead. If she asked enough questions, he wouldn't have a chance to tease her, would he? "Perhaps you could begin by explaining to me exactly how the bacteriomat trade works."

  "Surely your briefing . . ."

  "I like to hear the local point of view," Maris said. It had worked on Gabrel.

  "Surely your tour of the caves with Benteen Teunis—"

  "Haar Teunis was mostly interested in explaining the scientific aspects of the trade, not the business ones."

  Both Torston Huyberts and Dwendle Stoffelsen seemed to relax slightly at this statement. Why? Did they know how somebody was evading the controls Benteen Teunis put such faith in, and shipping illegal 'mats to Johnivans? Surely not, because they began immediately to serenade her with more than any human being could possibly want to know about the business.

  While the soup was removed and some kind of minced meat smothered in white sauce brought in, Huyberts explained the accidental discovery of the bacteriomats' potential when an explorer from one of the early contact ships slipped on their slimy surface in a sea cave and fell fifteen feet onto the lowest layer of rocks, breaking his head open and severing his spinal cord. When found, he was suffering from shock and dehydration and his face was half covered with a slimy mat of nanobacteria. The rescue crew reported the semiparalysis from the spinal injury and the fact that their attempts to cleanse the man's head resulted in shrieks of pain and hysterical arching of the upper half of his body, the part that could still move.

  By morning, when a landing party from the ship was able to bring a boat around to the cave mouth, the bacterial mat had shrunk to a thin film covering the badly broken skull . . . and the explorer walked to the boat.

  "Temporary paralysis of a bruised spinal column," said the ship's doctor.

  "That nerve was severed," insisted the medtech who'd examined the man with portable scanners.

  "Not now, it's not," said the doctor.

  "Exactly. You ought to take a closer look at whatever's growing inside the cave."

  It was a good story, and Huyberts told it well; his delivery was polished as a rock tumbled on the beach for many years. Probably, Maris thought, that particular story had been tumbled by generations of Barents colonials until it had a very fine polish indeed.

  The something-in-a-white-sauce was removed and plates laden with shellfish replaced it. Maris watched in dismay as Dwendle Stoffelsen attacked his with two of the strange pieces of silverware whose use she had not yet figured out, elegantly extracting bits of pink meat without getting the least spot of grease on his fingers. She'd been able to fork up bits of the previous course by watching Stoffelsen and using the same implement he chose, but there was no way she could imitate this technique.

  "The Diplomat does not care for our native krebsi? Do try some, they are delicious, almost exactly like Barentsian kreb," Stoffelsen urged her.

  "So sorry . . . an unfortunate allergy," Maris murmured, and then realized she'd hardly been on Kalapriya long enough to discover any allergies to the local food. Better get back to the technical stuff. "So what's been going on since that first discovery? You guys must've had to do a lot of work to get the 'mats through Federation Approval and set up the business."

  "Indeed, indeed," Stoffelsen agreed. While he told her all about the tests, the failures, the successes, the discovery that the bacteriomats were so flexible that they would mimic almost any missing or damaged brain or nervous system structure, Pledger van der Wessels unobtrusively signaled a servant who replaced Maris's plate of shellfish with something she could eat with a fork. It tasted like white insulation padding, but who cared?

  "With the superb technical education available on Rezerval, the Diplomat probably understands better than we do the mechanisms by which the 'mats repair and replace neural connections," Stoffelsen finished.

  Cripes, the Diplomatic School turned out trained scientists on top of everything else? "I doubt that,"
Maris said sincerely. "I mean, uh, bein' on the spot like you are gives a—a depth of understanding where our overview must necessarily be superficial."

  "Very well put," said Stoffelsen with a nod of approval.

  It ought to be. She'd borrowed the line from one of the classic holos that most of Johnivans' crew didn't care to watch, being they were so slow and wordy. Nice to know these folks appreciated the classics. Maris finished her tasteless substitute dish and set her fork down with relief. Eating like a toppie was such a strain, she likely wouldn't have tasted anything anyway.

  "The bacteriomats are a blessing for humanity," Pledger van der Wessels said solemnly. "It is a pity that we have not yet discovered a more efficient way to produce them than harvesting the sea caves. But every laboratory-grown strain has failed, and as the Diplomat doubtless knows, attempts to reproduce the environment on other worlds also have failed. There must be other organisms involved in the ecology that we have failed to detect."

  He sounded so sad that Maris wanted to cheer him up. "Yes, Haar Teunis explained all that to me this afternoon. But after all," she said brightly, "if there was a lot of ways to grow them, you wouldn't get so much money for them, and if they could be grown off-planet, you wouldn't have the monopoly anymore, would you?"

  There was a momentary silence; glancing around the table, Maris had the unnerving impression that two of her three dinner companions had been flash-frozen in place. Only Pledger van der Wessels continued to dissect his krebsi with apparent relish.

  "I do hope," said Torston Huyberts at last, "the distinguished Diplomat is not suggesting that we would deliberately restrict the supply of these precious nanobacterial constructs for personal profit?"

  Wouldn't you just, you old pig! If I was really a Diplo, I'd be suggestin' to Rezerval that here was something else needed lookin' into. "Such a notion never crossed my mind," Maris said. Until you brought it up, that is. For a moment she wished she really were Calandra Vissi, Diplomatic Envoy Extraordinary, with near-miraculous powers and advanced training in everything from nanoscience to unarmed combat . . . and a direct line to Rezerval. Because if Huyberts and Stoffelsen weren't involved up to the neck in procuring Johnivans' black-market 'mats or in something even worse, she'd . . . she'd eat a krebsi!

  And maybe it was time to change the subject, and play the Diplo a little more convincingly with the knowledge she'd garnered from Gabrel Eskelinen on the way over here.

  "The Barents Trading Society is, of course, above suspicion," Maris said loftily, stealing from another classic holo about toppie society life, "but one gathers the Society's control over the interior states is hardly complete."

  "We have excellent relations with Ekanayana and Vaisee," Dwendle Stoffelsen said huffily. Maris recognized the names as those of the two large states which dominated the coastal plain.

  "You have garrisons in both states," she corrected, "to enforce the mutual nonaggression agreement you forced down their throats fifty years ago." Good job Gabrel Eskelinen liked to talk so much.

  "Neither state is unhappy with the agreement," Dwendle countered. "As a result of their proximity to our coastal enclaves, their economies are flourishing as never before. The profits from the bacteriomat trade mostly return to Kalapriya; we purchase furniture, food, all the necessities of life from Ekanayana, and most of our servants here come from Vaisee and are happy to have money to send back to their families. They also benefit from such limited medical help as we are permitted to give under the Prohibited Technologies Act. Their currency is stabilized, backed by the Barents thaler, and both regimes have enjoyed an unprecedented fifty years of peace and prosperity. We may have employed some unofficially coercive methods to achieve the original treaties, but that is long in the past, and Rezerval can find nothing to complain about in our current relations with the Indigenous Territories."

  A bowl of fruit appeared on the table, a welcome change from the previous heavy courses. Real, fresh, whole fruit, not flash-dried slices! Maris remembered tasting a thin slice of apple once, a treat that Fingers had abstracted from a traveler's luggage and shared with the whole crew. Her mouth watered and she reached for the nearest piece of fruit, an oval lavender globe with a thin skin stretched over what looked like deliciously juicy purple pulp.

  "It's nice you get along with yer—your neighbors," she drawled, "but I hear things ain't—aren't so peaceful up in the hills."

  "The Indigenous Territories in the mountain regions," Torston agreed, "are smaller and more varied than the nations of the coastal plain and also less easily, ah, persuaded of the virtues of mutual cooperation."

  Maris nodded intelligently. "You mean they're still at war with each other all the time." She bit into the lavender fruit and her mouth filled with melting sweetness. But how did toppies keep the juice off their hands?

  "That has been unfortunately true," Torston conceded, "but it won't last long—oh!" He jerked as if somebody had kicked him under the table.

  "You were saying, Haar Huyberts?" Maris inquired sweetly.

  "I think my colleague meant to say that the quarrels of the more distant Indigenous Territories really have little effect on the Barents Trading Society. After all, the bacteriomats can be grown only in the sea caves along the coast—any child knows that!" Dwendle Stoffelsen boomed.

  "In fact," Torston rejoined the conversation, "Valentin is the only city on Kalapriya with any claim to a distinguished visitor's interest. Even our other enclaves are little more than laboratories set up to take advantage of caves offering good 'mat breeding facilities. All off-planet trade must necessarily come through our port here. So you will be able to satisfy yourself in no time that Haar Montoyasana's allegations are pure fabrication."

  "Oh, I don't know about that," Maris said, happy in finding a subject she actually knew something about. "You gents may think nothin' comes through Valentin you don't know about, but there's ways and ways of getting around any customs system. Bent inspectors, ship's crew taking an unofficial back door, masking projectors that'll make a sonic disruptor look like a lady's depilatory kit . . ."

  Torston and Dwendle exchanged glances.

  "NOT on Kalapriya," Pledger van der Wessels said forcefully into the momentary silence. "You have seen for yourself the extreme care we take, even in our private homes here in Valentin, not to expose the natives to prohibited technology."

  Maris glanced involuntarily at the short, slender, dark people who ceaselessly carried dishes, filled goblets, replaced napkins, and mopped up minor spills all through the hall.

  Torston's face reddened and he launched on a confused explanation of why the servants here were a special case that didn't really count as violation of the Prohibited Technology Act, an explanation that might have rambled on indefinitely if it hadn't been broken off by a surprised gasp. Maris reckoned that this time, Stoffelsen had kicked him on the ankle bone. Hard.

  "Rest easy, Torston. Diplomat Vissi is welcome to study the clauses in our contract allowing exemption for a certain number of servants, so long as those servants are not allowed to work on any offworld mechanical or electrical devices directly or observe their workings."

  "I wouldn't dream of it," Maris said politely. "I'm sure all is managed exactly as it should be."

  "And very shortly, I trust, we will be able to satisfy you that this is true of everything about the Barents Trading Society's dealings with Kalapriya," Dwendle said. "I'm sure you have no desire to prolong your visit on this primitive backwater, dealing with the ramblings of some delusional fool who's gone native himself. Not exactly a career posting, eh, Diplomat Vissi?"

  At least they were in agreement on that much. Maris couldn't be out of here too soon to suit her. "Not meanin'—meaning any offense to Kalapriya," Maris said cheerfully around another mouthful of the lavender fruit, "but there are more pressing matters requiring my attention. As soon as we've settled our business, I need to leave . . . on the first ship not passing through Tasman."

  Dwendle Stoffelsen coughed
, choked, and finally favored her with a fruity laugh. "A fine jest, Diplomat Vissi. How would we all like to bypass Tasman and their extortionate passage tolls—although I suppose as a Diplomat on Rezerval business, you were not troubled with that particular semiofficial piracy?"

  "No joke," Maris said. "Okay by me if I never see that station again."

  "Unfortunately," Torston said, "as the Diplomat well knows, there is no interstellar traffic from Kalapriya except by way of Tasman. That is the only Singularity point which serves our system."

  "And a damned good thing those spaceway robbers have made of it, too!" put in Pledger van der Wessels. Maris noticed that he was eating his fruit with a fork and a small, crescent-shaped knife, in a bowl that caught the overflowing sticky juices. So that was how toppies handled the problem. Oh well, they could just decide that she was setting a new fashion. She had other things to worry about.

  "No exit except through Tasman," she repeated mechanically. A fragment of juicy pulp was lodged in the back of her mouth; she chewed and swallowed carefully. Suddenly the fruit seemed to have no taste at all. "I—I knew that, of course." She actually had known it. Johnivans had made his fortune off smuggling to and from Kalapriya; Johnivans had killed the real Calandra Vissi to warn away what he thought was an intrusion into his monopoly of the Tasman smuggling business. But somehow, in all this crowded day, Maris had not thought of what this singularity in the fabric of spacetime meant to her.