Trader's World

by Charles Sheffield

  "So where were they?" Mike drooped against Kallario. "I'll tell you. They were in the Trade Fair. We were told 'synthetics'—the sign said as much—so we thought synthetics. It never occurred to anyone that what we might be seeing were natural gems, the finest in the Darklands—and that means the finest in the world. Rasool Ilunga stole from his own coronation to bamboozle his visitors. It was his most delicate touch. And it worked."

  "Not quite," Daddy-O said. "But it came close. Go now, and rest."

  Supported on Jake Kallario's shoulder, Mike tottered out. Lyle Connery watched until they were out of sight, then turned back to the terminal.

  "Those two seem friendly now," Daddy-O said. "Do you think that is the case?"

  Connery shook his head. "Jake Kallario will be a good Trader. He did well on this mission, and he's already learned how to hide his feelings. But it's my guess that he hates Mike Asparian more than he ever hated him."

  "Unfortunately, that is my perception also. It is a problem that must be addressed at some time, but not now. For the moment, this mission confirms my earlier suspicion. The quartet is ready to be disbanded. They should move to solo missions."

  "So soon? Are you saying that you believe Mike Asparian's analysis?"

  "Of course. " If an electronic voice could sound surprised, this one did. " No other interpretation of the events at Coronation City is remotely plausible. The amazing thing is only that Asparian reached it. It was not a task for a trainee."

  "You said he was lacking confidence. Do you think he has it now?"

  "In an acceptable amount."

  "Then he's going to be one hell of a Trader. He has it all."

  "No. One day he may, but I am able to identify in him nine critical areas that still need development."

  "I can't imagine what they are."

  "Then we must discuss them, and plan the future. They are as follows." Daddy-O produced a near-human sigh as he initiated a data transfer to Connery's display screen and closed the mission file. "It was a near-perfect result, from a long-shot mission."

  "You're too critical. I would have said, quite perfect. What was wrong with it?"

  Daddy-O paused. "Nothing that affects these Trader trainees. But old computers are allowed their dreams. I cannot help wondering: what could we not do if we had Rasool Ilunga working for us? A perfect mission would somehow have achieved that result . . ."

  Nine critical areas of Asparian that need development; and a tenth that cannot be mentioned. Daddy-O did not transmit that thought. At the same time as the computer was talking to Lyle Connery, a second transfer was taking place to an internal data file. It had no outside pointers, and access came only through Daddy-O's own operating systems.

  By its nature, the computer had near-infinite speed and infinite patience. For two human generations, Daddy-O had waited. Now the hidden file snowed that a far-off and ancient objective had moved one step closer.

  CHAPTER 6

  Rule 20: Hang in there; help is on the way.

  And if a Trader trainee didn't believe it, Daddy-O would cite me case of Jack "Lover-boy" Lester. He had caused the Strines some minor annoyance and, worse than that, he wouldn't tell them the nature of his secret mission.

  They had showed their irritation in a practical way. When a Trader Smash finally rescued him, he was not in good shape. He was armless and legless. The Strines had removed his penis and his scrotum, then carved out his eyes. When he still would not reveal his mission, they had become quite annoyed. They had flayed him, cut off his lips, burst his eardrums, pulled all his teeth, and cut out his tongue. They had of course done this slowly, a little at a time to cause maximum anguish, with full use of their life prolongation techniques to make sure he did not die before his time. Finally they had removed his heart, liver, lungs, and kidneys, and put him in a tank. This was sheer bitchiness, of course, since those operations were not even painful.

  The Smash unit had rescued Lover-boy Lester, flown him back to the Azores camp, and hooked his brain in to Daddy-O. His first words were, "What kept you?"

  Trader trainees inclined to be skeptical of the story were given one inarguable proof: they could go and see him. Jack Lester was still alive, in the training camp hospital.

  He was tremendously cheerful. He had frequent visitors. And he told all of them that the only thing that had kept him going in the Strine Interior was the knowledge that help was on the way.

  "What can we do for you?" asked the more caring—or the less sensitive—visitors.

  "Maybe a pepperoni pizza?" Jack said. "Or if you're feeling super-energetic, there used to be an enormous big Greaser whore down in Punta Arenas. I bet she's still there. Her name is Little Suzie. I always wondered what it would feel like to jump on top of her. 'Course, she has sixteen sorts of pox, but if you'll go there and take a wallow, then come back here and tell me all about it, I'll pay you out of my pension."

  Of course, Jack Lester, what was left of him, was clinically insane. His conversation proved it. But he was still the Traders' best proof that help was always on the way.

  * * *

  Lover-boy Lester was far from Mike Asparian's thoughts as he sat in Lyle Connery's office. He had more immediate things to worry about. This was going to be the big one, the ultimate test that decided whether or not he would become a full-fledged Trader.

  "Final Trial, so of course you're entitled to help from a Mentor," Lyle Connery was saying. "But I'm afraid we're having Mentor communication problems in Strine territory. Probably a Chill jammer in there. If you lose contact, you'll have to use the old-fashioned back-up system. This is a Trader recording disk. We used them as standard operating procedure before we had the Mentors. This one replaces your top shirt button."

  Mike looked dubiously at the training director, then at the tiny disk on the table in front of them. It was about a quarter inch across and made of a white pearly material.

  "Don't worry, it's unobtrusive and it works." Connery reached out a muscular bare arm and held the disk on edge between thumb and forefinger. "Audio and visuals. Not as good as a Mentor, but pretty good quality. All you have to do is make sure you give it a clear field of view. Just be sure you bring it back—swallow it, if you have to."

  "But suppose it's—what if I—"

  "Excrete it?"

  "Yes."

  "You won't. When the disk senses the composition of digestive juices, it extrudes hook attachments and stays put. It will be in your stomach until we take it out."

  Mike looked again at Lyle Connery's expressionless face. This was the final test. According to camp rumors, any trick in the book could be thrown at a trainee. But surely there were limits. "Suppose the Strines take it out first?"

  "That's a danger. But you can decrease the chances of that. Tell them you're part black. That way they'll be less likely to do any fancy cutting up on you. They save their most elaborate interrogations for white people. Illogical, but it's built into their prejudices."

  "According to the gene codings, I am partly black."

  Connery consulted the screen in front of him. "So you are. Then you ought to be convincing." The disk came rolling on its edge across the table toward Mike. "One other thing: has anyone talked to you about your Mentor assignment?"

  "No. The Medlab people said they were waiting for Daddy-O's assignment of somebody with the right Strineland experience."

  Connery frowned. "That should be easy enough. Let me find out what Daddy-O has been up to. You'll need a day or two to adjust to the presence of the Mentor, and your flight to Orklan is scheduled forty-eight hours from now. We don't have much time. You need to go and get an equipment check, and then you'll need a time-zone and a seasickness shot. You can get all those at the clinic. Might as well do it now."

  Mike was dismissed. Lyle Connery waited until he was gone, then shook his head in perplexity. He called for a Daddy-O voice and video connection.

  "Are you sure you want to do this?" he said as soon as the connect light came on. "I have t
o believe you know what you are doing—but in five years as an instructor, I've never seen a trainee treated this way."

  "State your objections."

  "You're not being fair to Asparian. This is his first solo mission. We usually pick out something simple as the entry test for full Trader status. But this mission profile would scare a Trader with twenty years' experience. It's too tough for him."

  "Need I remind you that you are the one who has constantly lauded Asparian's superior talents and potential?"

  "I believe he has them. But he's still only a trainee, for Crock's sake. Do you want him to fail?"

  "I certainly do not." Daddy-O's voice sounded cold and casual. "But my analyses convince me that a traditional Trader approach to the Strines would be useless for this problem. And you know that I, too, am interested in testing Asparian's potential. A conventional mission would fail to do that."

  "Fine, test him by all means—but give him some help! It would be a real shame to lose him. I hope that you've at least picked out a first-rate Mentor."

  "The best there is."

  "Good. That's something. Then I'd better help Asparian get ready." Lyle Connery had cut the circuit when he had second thoughts. The best Mentor—for the Strine Interior? He reconnected to Daddy-O. "Toto Larsen is on other assignment. Who will Asparian's Mentor be?"

  "Who else?" The voice circuit sounded weary. "Jack Lester knows more about the Strine psychology than Toto Larsen or any three other Traders."

  "Lover-boy! How are you going to explain that choice to Mike Asparian?"

  "I'm not." There was a slight pause while Daddy-O diverted part of his network to handle conversion of a large incoming database. "You are."

  CHAPTER 7

  An experienced Trader had three ways to reach the Strine mainland. If he had been there before and been well-received, he could go direct by air to Swales and BigSyd. Or he could go by sea, to one of the trading ports around the Strine south coast. And "he" meant he: the Strine mommas would not accept female Traders on the mainland.

  If he was mad and quite desperate, there was the north approach. A Trader could go in by any damn fool way he liked through the northern badlands, where the southern fringe of the fallout had swept east. No one watched that coastline. Things still grew peculiarly there, even by Strine standards. And they acted worse than they grew.

  Mike had looked at the northern approach for about five seconds, shuddered, and abandoned it. Get through the badlands, and then what? He would be carved up by the Interior tribes, unless he were very lucky or very skillful, before he got to Berra or BigSyd or anywhere else that counted.

  As a neophyte on his first full mission, Mike decided he had no real choice. He had to take the second option of the southern sea-route. He would fly to Orklan, then go west by surface vessel to enter at BigSyd on the east coast. From there it would be a tough overland trek into the worst part of the Interior—only a few hundred miles south of the badlands.

  And after he reached the Interior, the hard part would begin. According to Connery, the Strines were "expecting him." Instead of being reassuring, that somehow sounded ominous.

  The flight to Orklan in a Trader transport was dull but comfortable. Mike spent the time taking a last look at briefing documents. The Strine penchant for swords and knives didn't sound promising. Mike had not seen a sword since he left the Darklands, and he certainly didn't know how to handle one. Nor did he intend to try.

  Orklan was small and sleepy. The real culture shock began when he was dropped off at the jetty and went aboard the Strine ship waiting at the quayside. Although the three-funneled, broad-hulled vessel appeared to be totally deserted, within two minutes of his arrival the engines had started and they were maneuvering their way out of Orklan harbor.

  "The crew—where are they?" Mike subvocalized the question deep in his throat. It went to the organic converter in his cerebellum, generated the hyperfrequency pulse, and sent a directional signal. Mike waited the necessary fraction of a second while the message went up to synchronous orbit, through a Chipponese relay satellite, down to the Azores, and back.

  "Probably asleep." The thread of Jack Lester's voice came amused to Mike's left ear. "And there should only be one crew member. Read your briefing notes, matie. Don't worry, we'll find him once we're well on our way. Make yourself at home here. These ships can run on full automatic—the Strines use the best microcircuits that Cap City can provide. The only reason for a crew at all is probably to keep an eye on you. Take a good look round, would you? It's too long since I've seen this part of the world."

  Mike dutifully took a tour of the deck, looking out now and again across the dark swells of the open sea. He did it slowly, waiting for Lester's acknowledgment at each stage before moving on. The ship was traveling at high speed. Orklan was already out of sight behind them.

  "Ah! Smell that air!" The Mentor's voice was an ecstatic whisper. "Take a good sniff for me, boyo. There's nothing like that anywhere else in the world. Dust and euclypts and mulgas. That west wind comes here right out of the middle of the Strine mainland; after it passes over Orklan it won't hit land again until the Greaserland coast—seven thousand miles of open sea!"

  Mike looked around and felt far from ecstatic. They were well out of sight of land, heading across endless gray water. The brisk wind in his face was blowing the surface of the sea into long, sullen swells, and the ship was plunging straight into them. The black metal deck had begun to pitch and roll in an alarming way. Spray from the bows was blowing back to wet his face.

  Suddenly Mike had the feeling that they were cutting through dark hills of thick oil, the rendered fat of some primitive and gigantic beast. He could taste it on his lips. He held tight to a deck derrick, and wondered why the Medlab had bothered to give him a seasickness shot that didn't work.

  "Three days before we reach BigSyd. Is it going to be like this all the way?"

  "Like this? Nah." Lester giggled in his ear. "This is a flat calm. We're in the Roaring Forties, where the winds blow right around the world and hardly see land. When we're farther out, we might get a real blow. Cheer up, boyo, you'll be all right once you get your sea legs. You'll be up and looking for trouble. Your problem is, you don't have enough to do, so you stand around and think about your innards. Why don't you go forward and look for the skipper? I've been wondering if I might know him from other trips."

  Mike stared around him, belched queasily, and shook his head. Lover-boy Lester might be right, and his conditioning would no doubt eventually take over. But there was no sign of it yet. He clutched his midriff, lurched down a dimly lit companionway to his quarters, and felt his way to a bunk.

  "Here, what are you doing? You're not supposed to goof off before you even start."

  Mike lay down and tongued the control that cut Lester out of contact. He had been told to do that only when he slept, but the hell with it. The Mentor was more than he could take at the moment. Mike closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on his mission. He had been briefed often enough about what he ought to do when he reached the Strine mainland, but no one had thought it worthwhile to mention how sick he was going to feel before he even got there. What else had they not bothered to tell him? And how many little surprises did the Traders deliberately put in their final test for admission? And whose idea was it to inflict Lover-boy Lester on him as his Mentor? And as for that damned clumsy recording disk . . .

  Mike allowed himself five minutes of silent general misery— Rule 39: Don't be ashamed of self-pity; it is the only sort you are likely to get—then he forced his mind back to the present situation.

  The mission. If he kept his mind on the mission, he wouldn't have time to think about being sick. He would lay out the bare facts and see if anything new came to mind. Think positive, he told himself. We've passed Orklan and are on our way.

  Mission profile. It had sounded simple enough; but then, almost everything did, when Lyle Connery explained it. Three months ago, a Strine bigmomma had died of
a sex-drug overdose in Ree-o-dee. All the expensive hotel rooms in the Unified Empire pleasure towns were bugged as a matter of course, so within five minutes the hired male consort had been decoupled and whisked away. The room was made ready for a new occupant. The bigmomma's body would be returned to Strineland, assuming suitable payment, or disposed of locally.

  No problem. A neat, standard Greaser operation, something that happened ten times a day somewhere in the continent, handled with the efficiency that had made the Unified Empire the world center for illicit sex and drugs. The situation became more complicated when a Trader agent had the opportunity to search the momma's body before anyone else. He had found and removed a small package of yellow berries from a secret compartment of the momma's spiked bootheel. They were smuggled back to a Trader analysis lab, and there the mystery grew. Daddy-O had nothing like them in the data bases—and Lyle Connery assured Mike that if Daddy-O didn't have it, nobody did. It was a new plant species, genetically modified. Daddy-O had produced a couple of useful pointers: the berries seemed to be the fruit of some form of Strine euclypt; and the bigmomma had come to Ree-o-dee from The Musgrave, smack in the middle of the Strine Interior. Also she had let it be known in Ree-o-dee that she had something special with her that she might sell for the right price. Add in the Strine biolabs' skills in bioengineering, and the picture was clear. Some Strine lab had developed a new plant species.

  "We thought that might be the end of it," Lyle Connery had said, "but it turned out to be the beginning. Our first set of tests on the berries showed that they contained a complex alkaloid, one that we couldn't identify. We weren't sure what we had, and we wanted the most complete analysis we could get. So we let the other regions bribe us a little. That way they could each get their hands on a few berries from our supply."

  "Why let them into it?" Mike asked. "Aren't our labs as good as theirs? Seems to me they'd try and screw us if they found anything good."

  Lyle Connery shook his head. "Our equipment may be as good, but we won't experiment on human 'volunteers' the way that some of them will. And even if they found the berries were valuable, they would still have to deal with us—because we are the only ones who know where the berries come from. The Strines aren't talking. Anyway, about a month ago the agent grapevine began to pass along test results. They were quite something. Look at this video. It's the recent sprint final from the Unified Empire Games."