E-Wusk's shrug was a massive heave of his entangled body. "I know little about it. The traders there, not being of our galaxy, will be uncivilized and require constant watching, but I anticipate no problems. Trade is trade, wherever it is practiced. I have sent Gul Ceyh and Gul Kahn and Gul Meszk on ahead. They should be well established by the time we arrive."
"What are the natives like?"
"The natives of Montura? I have no information about that. They must be a shrewd species to be able to make their world such an important trading center. I'm told that traders from hundreds and hundreds of worlds center their businesses there."
"What I can't understand is how all those worlds get along without a galactic government."
E-Wusk shrugged again. "Obviously they have trading agreements and a means of enforcing them. Violations probably mean banishment from the mart, and for a trader or a world dependent on trade, that's the worst fate imaginable. The only legitimate functions of civilized government are the regularization of trade and the exchange of solvency, and the mart will provide those."
"But these worlds aren't civilized," Miss Schlupe pointed out impishly.
"Probably they are becoming civilized. Trade has a civilizing effect on worlds." He rubbed his limbs together in pairs, "A vast new market like this is a tremendous challenge. A right guess can net a fortune. A wrong guess can be catastrophic. But what a fascinating challenge it is!"
"How do they handle solvency exchanges?"
"They don't," E-Wusk said gloomily, "That's the problem with doing business with the uncivilized. Every transaction is by barter, It results in some exceedingly complicated exchanges, sometimes involving large numbers of traders, It also means that successful trading requires two correct guesses: what will be in demand on Montura, and what to bring back from Montura that can be profitably traded in this galaxy. Of course in our initial contacts we will merely study the mart and test demand with samples. But I'm forgetting. Rok Wllon said you would not concern yourself with trade."
"Right. While you make a big splash in the trading community, I'm supposed to butter up the natives and win their cooperation. What that amounts to is keeping you traders from messing up a promising friendship by unscrupulously fleecing those innocent, uncivilized Monturans. "
E-Wusk quivered with laughter.
"Actually, I haven't the faintest idea of what I'm supposed to do’” Miss Schlupe said. "No doubt it'll become perfectly clear when we reach Montura. I hope. Pack up your samples, and let's get started."
6
At first glance, the world of Montura reminded Miss Schlupe of the planet Saturn. It had rings.
The rings were artificial satellites, huge orbiting bins where goods brought to Montura Mart could be stored until traded. E-Wusk was impressed. Miss Schlupe thought it no more than an ingenious exercise in technological obsolescence.
"Not so!" E-Wusk said. "What would be true of a world in our galaxy doesn't apply to Montura. We have a galactic government and excellent communications. If I want a shipload of a certain kind of grain from a certain world, I can send a message and buy it. Or I can ask for bids and make counteroffers or negotiate. Once I buy it, I have, by the law of trade, three terms in which to arrange shipment. I can resell the grain - including whatever time remains of those three terms - s - and storage or shipment becomes the new owner's responsibility. Or I can order the grain shipped to any world that might constitute a market, either to complete a prearranged trade or on speculation. It would be most uneconomical to take goods to one centrally located world, and sell or trade them to someone who must then take them somewhere else. The cost of transport would be prohibitive”.
"But in this galaxy, which has no central government, no solvency standard for monetary measurement, and no galaxy - wide enforceable law of trade, a central place to bring goods and trade them for something else becomes highly practical. Probably it's a necessity."
Miss Schlupe remained skeptical. "I thought the satellites would be survivors of a time when chemical rockets were still in use. Why have them, except to save the time and trouble and expense of moving everything down to the planet and then moving it back to space again?"
"Chemical rockets are still in use," E-Wusk said. "Look - there goes one. So they don't have space - to - surface transmitters. Even if they did, the satellites still would save them time and effort and expense. It's much easier to shift freight compartments in space than under Montura's gravity standard, whatever that is."
They parked their ship in a berth at a large transfer station and rode a chemical shuttle rocket down to the planet. Seen from space, Montura was a beautiful world - but most worlds were beautiful when distance blurred their blemishes. As they slanted in for a landing, the beauty faded into wasteland and became an enormous plateau that was pitted and eroded like a decaying lunar landscape. Montura Mart lay in a wide, barren valley that bisected the edge of the plateau. Turning her head to keep it in view as they roared in, Miss Schlupe saw a building the size of a city. A vast, domed structure stood at the center, and protruding from it were a multiplicity of long, multi storied wings, each of them terminating in a pair of lofty, circular towers. The landing field surrounded the mart, and several monstrous freighters were parked there, but most of the ships were sleek shuttle craft like the one they arrived in, built for hauling passengers and light freight between the mart and the satellites.
They staggered forth with a throng of fellow passengers - traders all, Miss Schlupe assumed - and so inured was she to the variety of life forms in her own galaxy that even the more monstrous of these did not seem worth a second glance. In time the most active curiosity could be overwhelmed and stultified by nature's unrestrained virtuosity.
Gul Ceyh was waiting for them. His eyesight was reputed to be faulty - he had no eyes in his head, but each of his eleven arms terminated in an eye instead of a hand - but he recognized Miss Schlupe instantly and greeted her like the old acquaintance she was. He made the necessary arrangements about their luggage and found places for them in a sprawling ground conveyance that eventually deposited them at one of the pairs of towers.
"This is the twelfth segment," Gul Ceyh said as be escorted them inside. "The mart is divided into fifty parts, each with a wing and towers. They're all identical, and you'll certainly get lost if you forget your number. Twelve is kuror in the most common mart language. Twelfth segment is kurog twanlait,"
The traders had taken a complete floor at the top of one of the towers. When E-Wusk discovered that the only access to it was by transmitter from the lobby on the ground floor, he sputtered indignantly.
"Agreed," Miss Schlupe said. "If the clods have transmitters, why make us take that stupid ride down from the transfer stations? Maybe they have a part - time god that lets them use transmitters on the surface only."
"The members of the gesardl are said to have space - to - surface transmitters," Gul Ceyh said gloomily. "We commoners have to use rockets."
They waited in line to use the lobby transmitter, just as one waited for an elevator on Earth. Finally their turn came, and they stepped through to their floor. They emerged in a large circular room without windows. Bands of light crisscrossed the ceiling, and much of the floor was honeycombed with variously sized waist - high cubicles.
"This," Gul Ceyh announced pompously, "is the Prime Common. We took the name Prime from our Galaxy Prime - s - though of course no one here calls our galaxy that. But we have to identify ourselves. Most traders use the names of their worlds."
"What are those things?" Miss Schlupe asked, indicating the cubicles.
"The common is a workroom. An office. All of the larger trading establishments have one. The cubicles are for the traders and undertraders to work in."
Eleven enormous, self - contained apartments opened off the common, each with its own lounge that featured a dramatic expanse of curving windows overlooking what would have been spectacular vistas if the surrounding country had o
ffered anything except an utterly barren landscape. Miss Schlupe caught only one glimpse of color as she moved from apartment to apartment - a patch of purple ornamenting a distant hilltop. The strange vegetation seemed to make the surrounding barrenness more depressing. Gul Ceyh offered her a room in the apartment the traders were sharing or her choice among the unoccupied apartments. She finally selected an apartment with windows overlooking the mart.
She wandered about trying the doors, which shot back into the wall at a touch, and marveling at the strangely shaped lavatory furnishings that apparently were designed to meet the functional requirements of every conceivable life form. The furnishings of another small room were even more bewildering and only vaguely identifiable as kitchen equipment. She would have to have lessons before she touched anything. The walls, which looked like neither wood nor metal, gave forth solid thuds when she thumped on them.
The furnishings were both spartan and impoverished: a few rolled-up mats, a few hassock-like stools. Probably the tenants were expected to supply their own, and these had been left behind by their predecessors. She selected one of the apartment's rooms for herself.
By then her luggage had arrived, and she piled it in one corner, unrolled a sleeping mat, and tried, without success, to call the place home.
She found the traders in one of the common room's larger cubicles, moodily gathered about an upholstered hump that could have been intended as a conference table. Gul Meszk and Gul Kahn, the other master traders E-Wusk had sent on ahead of him, had joined E-Wusk and Gul Ceyh. They greeted Miss Schlupe and moved a hassock into position for her.
"Why the gloom?" she asked brightly. "Don't tell me you expert traders have lost your shirts already!".
The common English expression emerged strangely in galactic speech. All of them turned to stare at her: Gut Meszk, a furry hoofed quadruped with spike-tipped horns and an extra pair of small limbs that functioned as hands and arms; Gul Kahn, who had neither arms nor mouth but instead possessed a generous supply of arm-length fingers and a shaggy beard of long, independently activated filaments that he dipped into nutritive liquids for his nourishment; Gul Ceyh, who placed two of his eye-tipped arms in her hand so that the eyes could look up at her perplexedly; and E-Wusk, who had piled himself into a tangled mound of limbs in the most remote comer of the cubicle.
Gul Meszk left off absently preening his fur to remark, "Shirts? We wear no shirts!" Which was perfectly true. None of them did.
Miss Schlupe was looking concernedly at E-Wusk. For a moment she feared that he was ill, but he was merely quivering with rage and humiliation. Each of the other three traders also was, in his highly individual alien fashion, seething with indignation.
"What is going on here?" she demanded.
They told her, talking in turn about the indignities the mart had inflicted upon them, and when Miss Schlupe could no longer keep her face straight, she exploded into laughter.
In their own galaxy, these pompous traders were personages of distinction and overwhelming business importance. At Montura Mart they were nonentities of the lowest order. Traders from outside the galaxy who touched down at the mart tended to be adventurers in search of quick profits or speculators attempting to salvage something from rash ventures gone awry elsewhere. Even among nonentities they were looked down upon.
If this weren't problem enough, they had arrived at the mart with nothing to trade. The astute Greater Galaxy traders refused to accept a sample as evidence of a good's quality and availability a galaxy away. A trader's status at the mart depended entirely on the quantity and value of what he had in docked ships or satellite storage, registered and available for exchange, and - ultimately - how quickly he could dispose of what he received in trade and bring in new goods to replace it.
Fortunately Gul Ceyh had included a few measures of Dwanlunk crystals with his samples. These luminous, veined pebbles from the world of Dwanle had the charm of novelty and were valued highly enough to bring them a very tentative marginal status as traders and a short-term lease on their accommodations. If they did not establish a respectable volume of trade, and quickly, they would be summarily evicted.
E-Wusk looked stonily at Miss Schlupe, who had managed to stop laughing and was wiping her eyes. "Our mission is jeopardized!" he hissed.
"Nonsense! Maybe we don't have status, but we're established here and ready to start doing business. It shouldn't take you long to stand these minor-league traders on whatever they use for ears. Who decides what constitutes a respectable volume of trade?"
"The gesardl," Gul Ceyh said.
"No. Our own gurgesard," Gul Meszk said.
Montura Mart was owned by fifty proprietors - individuals, or trading companies, or worlds. Each of these elite entities was known as a gesard. Collectively they were the gesardl, the ruling council or board of governors of the mart.
Each gesard held absolute ownership of a pie-shaped wedge of the enormous circular arena, the central market area where goods were displayed. Its ownership extended to the multistoried structure that fronted on the arena and included the corresponding wing and towers of the fifty that extended from the main building. The gesard naturally utilized the most choice space for itself, not only in the arena, but also in the common rooms facing it. Space it did not need was assigned to gurgesardl. Custom or law limited each gesard to ten gurgesardl.
Outsiders, such as themselves, were called kaskirdl. Gul Meszk bitterly described the function and status of a kaskird, and when he finished Miss Schlupe said thoughtfully, "Then we're janitors."
Gul Meszk cocked his head at her inquiringly.
"Janitors," she said again. "Sweepers up of others' leavings." "Janitors," Gul Meszk agreed.
The sweepers up were expected to be humbly grateful for that privilege. In order to achieve the lowly status of kaskird, an outsider had to make the rounds of the five hundred gurgesardl, importuning each in turn with a glowing verbal portrait of the business he expected to transact. If a gurgesard chanced to believe him, at least in part, and happened to have a bit of display space or a common that wasn't in use, and further was in a suitably generous mood or pleased with the applicant's humility, he might grant the outsider a short-term lease, during which time he could function as a sublicensee of the gurgesard.
In return for this lavish favor, the gurgesard took an incredible 10/10 per cent of every transaction - ten per cent of everything the kaskird sold, and another ten per cent of everything he received in exchange. The gurgesard of course paid the giant share of this extorted tribute to his gesard, and it required very little calculation to establish that the fifty members of the gesardl ranked high among the wealthiest institutions in three galaxies. The fiendish ingenuity with which the gesardl's trading monopoly was fashioned awed E-Wusk and his colleagues into morbid attitudes of unworthiness.
"What are the Monturan natives like?" Miss Schlupe asked.
A moment of meditative silence followed. Then Gul Kahn remarked that one encountered a dazzling diversity of life forms at the mart, many of them exceedingly strange; but they hadn't thought to inquire which, if any, were native to the world of Montura.
"Which type dominates the gesardl?" Miss Schlupe asked.
As lowly kaskirdl, the traders had not been honored with attendance at a meeting of the gesardl. They could not say definitely whether they'd even see one of them.
"All right," Miss Schlupe said. "I'll figure it out myself. What language do these characters speak?"
"A multitude of languages," Gul Meszk said mournfully. "There are interpreters available, of course, but few of them speak the languages of our galaxy. This is one reason we progress so slowly. One has to search interminably for an interpreter before every discussion of business."
"So why not hire one of these interpreters?" Miss Schlupe wanted to know.
That hadn't occurred to them.
She left them to a complicated argument about products with a high value per volume unit.
She had a problem of her own to meditate.
Before she could take steps to establish favorable relations with the natives of Montura, she would have to find out who they were.
Also, she wanted to see this fabulous Montura Mart for herself.
7
In the first-floor lobby, Miss Schlupe was delighted to discover a bank of transmitters she had overlooked before. She spent some time attempting to master the destination board before she used one, with the result that she finally reached the mart's arena on her nineteenth attempt.
She stepped from the transmitter, took another step, and then she halted, staring, while those behind were forced to bump and crowd around her. It was the culmination of her long lifetime of delight in humble spectacles: the epitome of every county fair she had ever seen inflated to galactic proportions. One improbable exhibit after another was crowded side by side along wide aisles that converged on the distant center of the arena, where an enormous column blossomed at the top into a vast mushroom that supported the rose tinted, translucent dome.
[Jan Darzek 03] - This Darkening Universe Page 6
