Moon Flower

by James P. Hogan

  “I thought about it this morning after I woke up, but if you don’t mind, sir, I’ll give it a pass,” Orban said. “Collecting and delivering things around the town is what I do, and there’s reason enough to be content in that. But thanking you kindly, all the same.”

  “We’d pay you a lot more than you’ll ever make collecting and delivering,” Lang answered. “It would be a highly valued service to us. One day the Terrans will be strong allies of Vattorix and an important influence in Yocalan affairs. Your help would not be forgotten. As an officer on our payroll you could do very well.” An informer in the town would be an invaluable asset, and somebody like Orban, who moved around and talked to everybody, would make an ideal recruit. But Lang had been unable to come up with a line that he would buy.

  Orban’s brow knitted in the way of someone who had made up his mind but didn’t want to offend. “Very kind, I’m sure. But what would an officer like that do, exactly? I don’t get the feeling it would be the right thing.”

  This infuriating Cyrenean recourse to feelings again. Why couldn’t they ever give a plain, simple reason for deciding the way they did? “How could you know enough to feel anything at this stage?” Lang asked. “All I’m saying is stay in touch after today. I can give you a device that will let you communicate with us at any time.”

  “As I told you, sir, I thought about it when I woke up this morning.... Anyway, here we are. Let’s see if anything’s come up.”

  They entered the rear gate of the yard and walked between heaps of straw, stacked sacks, and stable buildings where a couple of grooms were cleaning out stalls. The owner that they had talked to earlier was at the far end, at the back of the building facing onto the street, washing down one of several Cyrenean horses with moist and muddied flanks, recently in from the road. “Any luck, squire?” Orban inquired as they approached. This was the third stabling house that they had visited. They had been told that early the previous morning, it had provided two sturdy horses for a carriage driven by a man matching Chev’s description.

  The stable owner looked over his shoulder. “Yes, I think so,” he said, without stopping what he was doing. “Those two there.” He motioned with the sponge he was holding, indicating a patchy brown and a gray-and-white that were already dried and eating from a manger. “That’s them. They were turned in about half an hour ago. So they wouldn’t have gone more than about thirty, say forty miles at the most.”

  “Does you know where they was turned in from?” Oban asked him.

  “Just a moment. Yem inside should know....” The owner looked toward the door at the back of the building. “YEM!” A Cyrenean shuffled out, clad in a loose shirt and jerkin. “Those two there that I asked you to keep an eye out for. Who was it turned them in?”

  “A gentleman an’ a lady riders, it was. They said they got ’em at Vigagawly, up in the ‘ills.”

  “Vigagawly,” the stable owner repeated, looking back at Orban and Lang.

  “Where’s that?” Lang asked.

  “A hill hamlet to the north from here — about half a day by carriage this time of year with the weather we’ve been having.”

  Lang looked uncertainly from him to Orban. “What goes on there?”

  “Oh, nothing that the friends you’re trying to catch up with would be very interested in,” the stable owner said, rinsing out the sponge and returning to his work. “Sleepy little place. They’d just have been changing horses and carrying on.”

  “What’s past there?” Lang asked.

  The owner stopped to scratch his head. “Depends which way they went. There’s several roads you could take north of Vigagawly. There’s the road inland through Trif and across the marshes. Another west toward the coast. And then there’s the road north over the top and on, that could take you across into Ibennis.”

  “Maybe they’d know which way they went at this hamlet that you mentioned,” Lang said.

  “Oh yes, they’ll know.” The stable owner laughed. “Everything that happens in a place like that is news.”

  “How can I get there?” Lang asked. “I don’t need a carriage. I can ride.”

  “You might be talking about a couple of days or more.”

  “No problem.”

  That was another thing covered in training. Traveling to other worlds in Heim-drive ships, communicating and navigating by satellite grids, and being able to use a compact machine pistol like the one concealed under Lang’s tunic was all very fine, but it was surprising how many more basic skills were often better suited to the kinds of world they were discovering.

  “We can fit you out, all right,” the owner said. “It’s a bit late in the day now to be starting out, though. Maybe first thing tomorrow. And it would give you time to find yourself a guide. I wouldn’t recommend a stranger to these parts to be going up there alone.”

  Lang looked at Orban. “Are you a riding man too? I’d make it well worth your while. And we could talk some more about the other business that I mentioned.”

  Orban shook his head with the kind of smile one gives to somebody who doesn’t give up. “Very kind of you, I’m sure, but my business is around the town. This man will know plenty of people around here who’d be able to take you, I’m sure.”

  “YEM!” the stable owner bellowed in the direction of the door. The same figure as before shuffled out again. “Feller here needs a guide to take him up past Vigagawly. Who do we know that might be free?”

  “I don’t know my way around this town yet.” Lang cautioned.

  “If they give us a few names, I can take you to them,” Orban said. “At least I’ll be able to do that much for you.”

  It sounded as if once that was taken care of, Lang would have the rest of the evening free. “You probably have a lot of other local information that I could use,” he said to Orban. “I could stand you another couple of flagons at the inn later if you’d like to talk about it.”

  “Oh, there’s no need to do that,” Orban said. “But thank you very much, sir. I don’t mind if I do.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Chev’s instructions had been simply to bring them to Doriden. Neither he nor Uberg had been made aware of where the trail led beyond there. Now that Blanborel was satisfied that Uberg was Uberg, and Shearer was indeed the person that Wade was expecting, he revealed that the way ahead for them was to continue north for a further two days. It would mean going back up into the high country and following the road over the top and down into the valley of a river called the Geevar. It was a bit bare and desolate up there, but at this time of year the road was passable. Beyond the Geevar they would enter a region of forest and mountains known as the Harzonne, bordering the land of the Ibennisians. Exactly where to head for then, Blanborel couldn’t tell them. “But don’t worry,” he told his guests. “Wade’s friends will come to you. They’ll know you are there.”

  Finding much to interest them, they decided to stay at Doriden the following night as well. At the same time, naturally, they had an invaluable stock of Terran knowledge to share with their hosts and the students. In the evening, after dinner, out of curiosity Shearer introduced a group of the students to the nuts game. They used a bowl of dried seedpods gathered from dishes set on the dining-room tables.

  The result was totally different from every instance he had witnessed on Earth. Upon his announcement of “Go!” the four players sat looking at each other with expressions of quiet and confident trust. After the stipulated ten seconds, none of them had made a move. They watched while Shearer doubled — approximately, judging by eye — the number of pods he had placed in the bowl to start with, which brought it to about half full. They did the same thing for the second period, and the bowl was full. At that point one of them assumed the lead and took a portion that looked to be around an eighth. The other three followed suit, reducing the content to half again, after which Shearer once more topped it up. Seeing that Shearer’s stock was by this time getting depleted and that he and his colleagues had plenty
, the leader obligingly returned a few. The others did likewise. The cycle could obviously have repeated forever.

  The next morning, the three Terrans were still discussing the experience as the carriage bumped and swayed on its way along the narrow road away from Doriden, with Nim standing with paws on the window ledge, missing nothing. Uberg hadn’t seen the nuts game before.

  “It reminds me of a problem called the Prisoner’s Dilemma that we studied when I took a philosophy course years ago,” he said.

  Shearer nodded. “That’s what it’s based on.”

  “What’s the Prisoner’s Dilemma?” Jerri asked.

  “Two suspected accomplices in a crime are interrogated in separate rooms,” Uberg replied. “Each is given an offer, and is made aware that the other has been told the same. He can betray the other by confessing, and in return receive a reduced sentence. But if both confess, each confession is less valuable and the sentences will be harsher. However, if they cooperate with each other by refusing to confess, the prosecutor will only be able to convict them on a minor charge.”

  “Okay, I think I’ve heard of it,” Jerri said. “Something like it, anyway.”

  Uberg went on, “If there is no trust between them, it is to both their immediate advantage to betray the other first. They would both fare better if they refuse, but it requires equal nerve and trust in the other by both of them to act on that conclusion.”

  “And that was exactly what we saw with those guys last night,” Shearer said. It was the old problem that logicians and students of human behavior had been debating since the times of the Ancient Greeks and probably before then. In the long run, everybody in a society would do better if they cooperated with each, but it only worked when everybody played the game. As soon as a few realized that they could gain a short-term advantage for themselves by exploiting the misplaced trust of others, then the only workable strategy for the remainder would be either to adopt the same predatory tactics to survive, or else be eaten. Once the slide started there was no way to stop it, and that was what had happened to Earth.

  But on Cyrene a different principle was in control, and somehow it was able to endure. Wade had realized it too, and was determined to help the Cyreneans develop and build what would eventually be a star-going civilization around it. When that happened, the days of what Earth’s diseased political and economic carcass would have become would be over. No wonder Interworld were going all-out to stop him.

  The guide that the stable owner in Revo had found for Lang was called Xorin. They had ridden to the hill hamlet of Vigagawly the next morning, but while everyone they talked to could confirm that the carriage had stopped there and describe its occupants, none was able to say where it had been heading. Scouting around among the farms lying to the north, where the several roads diverged, Lang and his companion stopped to interrogate an old man and a youth that they came across, driving a cart filled with purple turniplike vegetables.

  “I ‘eard about ’em, right enough, but meself I never seen ’em,” the old man said. “What kind of people are they, these Earth ones that yer friend ‘ere’s lookin’ for? What do they do?”

  “They’re people who want to find out about things,” Xorin told him.

  “Learnin’ an’ such,” the old man said. He gave the impression that he approved, even if not really seeing the point.

  “Isn’t there a place somewhere up along the Harzonne road where people do things like that?” the youth said. “Lads like me go to get taught about numbers and measuring; how to make mechanisms. Things like that.”

  “You mean Doriden?”

  “Doriden, that’s it,” the youth affirmed. He looked at Xorin. “Some Ibennisians came through here a while ago on their way there. The smith in Vigagawly says they’re going to build some kind of engine there. One that runs on steam. It will do the work of twenty horses.”

  “Which way is Doriden?” Xorin asked.

  “Go back to the bridge that you came over. Carry on north about four miles from there and take the left road....”

  “Goddamn woman!” Myles Callen stabbed savagely with a finger to delete the missive from Earth and glowered at the option boxes left on the screen. He had fallen into bad favor among Milicorp’s higher echelons, and Rath Borland, true to form, was distancing himself and keeping his head below the parapet. Athough the reasons hadn’t been spelled out, from some of the allusions and wording, Callen had a pretty good idea of what had happened.

  The stupid bitch just had to find a way of ensuring that gutless-wonder Henry would get to know. Henry had whined to Joseph Corbel, the tribal chief, who had conveyed to his corporate ministers at Interworld that maybe their choice of security contractor left something to be desired. Now Milicorp were rolling out the damage control team to assure them it was one overstressed Facilitator who had declined taking therapeutic leave and was out of line. No prizes for guessing who wouldn’t be likely to be around much longer after he got back.

  The galling thing was that he couldn’t really argue. That he had sampled the forbidden fruits of such rareified strata, he had no regret; bringing a little much-needed equalization into the world was gratifying, and if he started repenting now it would mean denying himself and writing off a good part of what made life challenging. But he had to admit that this time he could have used better judgment. It was all very well for the asses that warmed chairs at HQ to talk about overstress and therapeutic leave. They should try a few weeks in the field, or being shut up in something like the Tacoma for a couple of months sometime.

  He was still fuming and brooding over what to do about it, when a call alert sounded on a secure personal channel. He acknowledged, and a code appeared announcing the caller as Dolphin. Callen cleared the call and directed it to a vacant screen, which illuminated to show the face of Dolphin, looking sun-flushed and dusty, with the top part of a hood thrown back over his shoulders.

  “Well?” Callen asked without preamble.

  Dolphin answered in a low voice, at the same time scanning with his eyes as if to make sure he wouldn’t be overheard or interrupted. “I’m at a place called Doriden, a day’s ride north from Revo. As best I can make out, it’s a kind of technical academy. They were here for two nights and left this morning, heading for the area called the Harzonne. They don’t seem to have had any definite destination there, but they are on their way to join Wade. It sounds as if the Cyreneans he’s with there will know they’re coming. Local tom-toms, I guess.”

  Callen nodded. Something seemed to be working out, anyway. “How are they traveling?” he asked.

  “An enclosed coach with a driver’s shade, dark brown with yellow ornaments and flashes. Two horses that they got from a place along the way called Vigagawly. One black and brown, the other plain black. All three targets positively identified. Also, a Cyrenaen who goes by the name of Chev, exact function uncertain.”

  “Keep after them. Plan unchanged. Any more?”

  “That’s it.”

  Callen nodded. “Out.”

  He called a map onto the screen, used an index compiled by the earlier missions to locate Doriden, and identified the Harzonne as a region of forested, hilly country on the border of Yocala and the land to the north, which was called Ibennis. For several minutes, he sat mulling. Then he got up abruptly and went a floor down from his office to the Communications Section.

  The Duty Supervisor led him through to a room filled with consoles and monitor stations, from where surveillance operations around Cyrene and communications with the ship were coordinated. An operator brought up a screen showing the area inside a hundred-mile radius from the center of Revo. Scattered over it were numerous icons and codes indicating boats, conveyances, and other possibly connected activities that were being tracked. Callen extended a hand to point at the area he had studied upstairs. “Concentrate on here — somewhere along that route, between there and the Harzonne region. We’re looking for a brown, enclosed carriage with two horses, one black, one black and
brown. Low priority on other categories. Discontinue other areas.”

  So Wade was threatening to subvert the whole operation, and Interworld wanted him back, did they? Try persuasion first, but use as much force as necessary if that fails, Borland had said. Callen wasn’t in a mood to pussyfoot around asking favors or trying to persuade anyone. If he was going after Wade, he was going in hard, he told himself. He’d deliver to them what they’d asked for, with no nonsense and professionally — the way he knew how. And then they could all do what the hell they liked.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Chev was not familiar with the region they were now entering. After climbing back up to the highlands beyond Doriden, the road reduced to little more than ruts in places, with occasional piles of gravel that were apparently left for filling in the muddy stretches in poor weather. The land became more open and rugged, with rocky crags and ridges of grass and shale slopes rising among between flat basins of bog land and shallow lakes hemmed in by rushes and reeds. Trees gave way to lower growths of brush and scrub inhabited by noisy populations of birds and various other small creatures that could be seen from a distance but vanished at the carriage’s approach. Jerri let Nim out to meander from side to side around the carriage, every now and again running ahead to investigate something he had seen.

  Of course, there were the inevitable proliferations of flora. Chev stopped the carriage to point out a clump of huge lilac blooms growing twenty yards or so from the road that must have measured three feet across. Uberg insisted on walking across to have a look at them and said they belonged to the same group as the moon flowers, possessing the characteristic collar of secondary petals that closed during the day. Chev told them it was known as the “Oracle Rose” — at least, that was what Shearer’s NIAD made of it. It seemed to play a similar role in folk lore and mythology as crystal balls did on Earth, and was credited with the ability to instill visions of the future.