Trader's World

by Charles Sheffield

  "They seem to manage all right."

  She gave him a strange, half-amused look. "Yeah. Know why? They manage north of here because anything they find— anything at all—is food and drink." She massaged his arm, feeling the muscles of biceps and triceps. "You have a nice body, Trader Asparian. I appreciate it. So would they. Out in the wilds you'd be a nice long drink and ninety pounds of convenient protein. You're safe here, because they're programmed not to touch anyone near the airfields. That doesn't apply in the outback. Forget the idea of going anywhere on foot."

  "It's already forgotten. But what will we do?"

  "Take off and fly right over the top, on past The Musgrave. The dust storm ends short of Alice. We can stay above it and land at my home base. Then we can come south again overland, following the tail of the storm." She stood upright. "Come and sit forward when we take off. You'll see something worth seeing when we reach Alice."

  The wind at the airstrip was rising steadily, hitting the plane in hard gusts. The aircraft took off to the north and at once set into a tight upward spiral, gaining height rapidly. The dark-red wall of the brickfielder at first looked topless, only a few miles away.

  At five thousand feet, Mike suddenly saw the sun again. It was rusted and weary, sitting in a boil of brown-red smoke. At ten thousand feet they were well above the storm. They turned to fly north over a flat, featureless plain of wind-borne dust stretching away endlessly in front of them. Only the airspeed indicator told them they were speeding at Mach Four across the Strine Interior.

  Mike leaned forward in his seat, making sure that the recording disk on his shirt had a good view of the landscape through the forward window. Despite Fathom's promise, he was finding the view rather boring. There was simply nothing to see. And as he was reaching that conclusion a dramatic change occurred. The dust cloud below them vanished, cut off cleanly along an east-west line.

  Mike leaned to his right and peered out of the side port. He could see the ground again. The dusty, treeless terrain that had persisted beneath the aircraft all the way from their Strine entry point at Eucla to their recent unplanned stop was gone. In its place Mike saw a pattern of textured bluish-green circles, their centers laid out on a regular triangular grid.

  "Know what those are?" Fathom asked. She was turning toward him, leaning back in her seat with her eyes half-closed.

  Mike shook his head. "My first thought was a plantation of trees, with us looking down on their crowns. But then I realized how high we are. Each of those circles must be half a mile across. And it looks bone dry down there."

  Fathom smiled, but it was somehow directed inward, for herself and no one else. "Your first guess was right."

  "Trees? That big?"

  "Trees. They were developed here, in my labs, and they grow nowhere else. Multiple trunk, like a banyan, but much more productive. Food and timber. We're flying over a Double-X plantation. Average trunk diameter is thirty yards, maximum eighty."

  Mike realized that Fathom had changed. Previously there had been an underlying tension, well controlled but always there. He had been unaware of it before, because there had been no basis for comparison. But now, seeing her fully relaxed, the difference was obvious. Fathom was back in her own territory, in an environment where she was in full control.

  "Double-X?"

  "Shorthand." Fathom had hit a new control sequence, and they were dropping off altitude at an alarming speed. "Stands for 'Xerophytic Xyloids'—male tech-talk, gobbledygook for plants that can get by without much water and produce lots of wood. You'll see them close up when we head south again. They grow right down to the border with The Musgrave."

  Mike nodded but did not speak. "Male tech-talk." Was that a significant comment, even if an unintended one, on the Strine interior? Did males do all the technical work in the biolabs—as well as providing all the human test subjects for experiments?

  While the aircraft was landing and skidding to a halt, Mike recalled one of Lover-boy Lester's less cheerful pronouncements: "Don't get an inflated idea of your own value, boyo. Here, you're nothing. And be damn careful. In the Interior, the mommas use men as trading tokens. And torture is considered as one of the fine arts."

  He surreptitiously retested the communication link with Daddy-O and Jack Lester. Still jammed. There was nothing but static.

  Mike was on his own.

  * * *

  When the world had seemed ready to end in all-out nuclear war, the Strines sought safety underground. Once established, that taste for below-ground accommodation had never left them. Deep structures permitted better temperature and humidity control, and that was important in the Strine Interior to everyone except perhaps the haploid abos.

  Although Mike knew the facts, it still came as a surprise to look out at a region apparently populated only by scrubby acacias, wattles, and grass trees, and learn that he was seeing the main biolabs and residential area of Alice.

  He was given no time to explore the underground. Fathom had paused in Alice only long enough to collect a beetle-browed, powerfully built guide known as Banjo, then they were in a ground car and heading south. After an hour's drive the car stopped and Fathom climbed out.

  "I won't be coming the rest of the way," she said to Mike's surprise. "Banjo will take care of you and get you to the transfer point. I'll see you on the way back, when you're all finished."

  Her manner to Mike had changed. It was cool, with no trace of affection. Was that for Banjo's benefit? Mike had no way of knowing. He settled back in his seat and stared around him.

  They were speeding along a straight asphalt road that ran through an avenue of the Double-X trees. Each of them was like a full grove, towering five hundred feet above the sun-baked plain. No other plants grew in their shade, and the ground beneath them showed no pattern of sunlight diffracting through leaf spaces. The tree structures had been genetically designed. They captured every available erg of incident solar energy and used it to produce polysaccharides—starches, sugars, and cellulose.

  As the giant tree farms finally petered out, giving way to a land scorched and barren in the hot sun, Mike wondered. Who was Fathom's chief bioengineer, the genius behind the Double-X trees? Banjo could not say—or would not. Communication with him proved almost impossible. Mike forced a few monosyllables from him in answer to some of his questions, and that was the best he could do.

  But when he finally asked why Fathom had not come with them, he received a roar of laughter and Banjo's longest speech of the trip. "Fathom Five Lavengro! Ha-ha—to cross the border with The Musgrave? Man, that's real funny. You know what Cinder-feller would do if Fathom came inside that territory? Cut her up for dingo dinners, that's what." He slapped a scarred brown arm on the car's steering-wheel. "Them two don't see each other anymore—ever. Didn't you know it, sport? They hate each other's guts. Just look ahead there. That's to hold 'em apart."

  The trees had all gone now, and they were approaching a barbed wire fence with a solid gate where the road ran to meet it. Another ground car sat waiting at the other side of the gate. Two haploid abos stood about a hundred yards away, looking at each other from opposite sides of the fence. As the car approached they both ran with incredible speed to the gate and stood quietly by it.

  "All right, man, here we are." Banjo stepped down from the car slowly and carefully, gesturing to Mike to do the same. "Take hold of this piece of leather, rub your hands on it, and let 'em have a good look at it. It's your identification. Carry it with you. I'll come as far as the other car, to make sure the driver is all ready for you—should be a young woman, name of Sweet Pea. Don't try to talk to her, 'cause it's a waste of time. She's a deaf-mute, works directly for Cinder-feller. I'll be waiting here for you when you come back. If you're gone more than two days, have one of Cinder-feller's people send a message back here."

  The abo guard took the identification that Mike held out to him, rubbing it between his finger and thumb. He shuffled all the way around Mike, sniffing at his feet, genitals,
and hair. After doing the same to Banjo he opened the gate. The haploid at the other side repeated the procedure, sniffed again at the leather fragment, then led them to the car. Banjo nodded his greeting at the dark-haired woman sitting within and allowed himself to be escorted back through the gate.

  The new car bore on its side a peculiar insignia like a quadruple interlocking helix. Mike climbed into the passenger seat and stared curiously at the driver. Sweet Pea was young, no more than his own age, with a flawless, ivory-white complexion and shining black hair. She looked as out of place in the Strine Interior as Mike felt.

  She nodded at him, smiling. After a few moments she suddenly pressed the accelerator to the floor. The car started in a cloud of brown dust, racing southward along another section of the same arrow-straight road.

  The silence was fine with Mike. He wanted to wrestle with a puzzle of his own. According to Jack Lester and Banjo, Fathom Five and Cinder-feller Lavengro never went to each other's territory—were not even safe in each other's territory. If that were true, then Fathom had never intended to land the aircraft in The Musgrave—and would not have been allowed to do so. Therefore, her earlier statements about their travel plans must have been false. She could not have conveniently created the dust storm, but she could have known about it long before it happened. The Chips offered an expensive weather-monitoring system that gave at least seventy-two hours notice of major storms and wind patterns. So Fathom might have included the brickfielder in her advance plans. But why?

  At that point Mike was stumped. Fathom was using him, he was increasingly convinced of it. But he could not see how.

  Mike sighed to himself. Why, how—he was building up questions when he was supposed to be answering them. The inside of the car was very hot, and it had been a hard twenty-four hours. He thought of the rule that was not in the official Traders' Rule Book, but ranked high in the unofficial one: Food, drink, sleep—take them whenever you have a chance.

  He lay back in his seat and closed his eyes.

  * * *

  The Strine mission was over, and it had been a huge success. No trainee had ever done so well. After the triumphant return to the Azores and the final ceremony of induction to the position of full Trader, Mike had been given the key of the vacation lodge by Lucia Asparian. It lay high in the mountains of the Economic Community. When he looked out of the open window, it was at a succession of soaring white peaks. The air that blew in on him was clean and freezing cold. Too cold. Mike reached forward to close me window—and was suddenly awake.

  It was deep dusk. The air-conditioning unit of the Strine car was set so high that it had pulled him out of a heavy sleep.

  He sighed. No successful mission, no triumphant return—only a situation that looked more and more out of control. The car was slowing, turning off the smooth road. He stretched, moving his shoulders to ease cramped back muscles.

  The driver had noticed his movement. She gave him a quick sideways look. "I hope that your sleep has rested you," she said, in a precise, slow voice.

  Mike stopped in midstretch and turned to her in astonishment. "You're not Sweet Pea?"

  "Yes, I am." The voice was carefully produced, with rather exaggerated lip movements.

  "But Banjo told me—" Mike stopped in confusion.

  "That I could not hear or speak?" Sweet Pea's face lit with an uncontrollable joy. "Once I could not. Now, I can do both."

  Mike waited for more explanation, but none was forthcoming. Instead, Sweet Pea pointed ahead of them, to a glow of ruddy lights against the flat Strine skyline. "Two more minutes, and we will have arrived at the Headquarters of The Musgrave." She turned her elegant head, to give him a longer and frankly curious stare. "I do not think that I have ever seen a Trader before. Certainly not since I have been here. Is it true what I have been told, that a Trader has no home, anywhere?"

  "In a way it's true." Mike wondered how many false rumors they had been told about Traders—and how many false facts he "knew" about the Strines. "Once we finish our training, we have no fixed home. We negotiate all over the world, and up in space, also. Our headquarters, where we coordinate our work, is the nearest thing we have to a single living place. But we do not think of ourselves as having no home. We feel that we are at home everywhere, in any place where there is trading and negotiation to be carried on."

  As he spoke the lights ahead of them began to disappear from view. The car had left the level road and was descending below ground level, following a long tunnel that curved down for many feet. When the descent finally concluded Mike saw something that he had never expected to find in the Strine Interior: the reflection of far-off lamps in still water. They had reached the shore of a subterranean lake, several miles across, that filled the central region of a huge cave. The surface glowed faintly, as though from submarine lighting. He looked for signs of buildings along the lakeshore, but could see little in the gloom around the perimeter. Much of the lake ended in vertical walls of earth, reaching to the ceiling of the chamber.

  "So much water!" he said to Sweet Pea. "I did not know a lake like this existed in the Interior. None of the maps shows it."

  "We made it. It is the only one." She had allowed the automatic control system to take over, and it was guiding the car gradually toward the lakeside. "Because of this, we have the richest territory in the mainland. That would be true even without our biolab products. And our labs are the best." There was great pride in those carefully enunciated words. Mike was itching to see proof of the statement.

  They stepped out of the car, which had parked in an underground garage where a fleet of ground and air vehicles stood arranged in neat lines. Each one bore the same spiral insignia.

  Sweet Pea walked Mike to an elevator. When the lift arrived she motioned for him to enter and pressed the button for it to descend. She remained outside.

  "Just a minute." Mike held the door open with one hand. "I don't know my way around this place. What happens when I get to the bottom?"

  Sweet Pea smiled. "You will meet with Cinder-feller. This elevator leads only to the bigboss private quarters, or back up to the surface."

  The elevator door closed before Mike could say anything more, and the car began a leisurely descent. The doors finally opened onto a room maybe thirty yards long, oppressively hot and humid, with a high vaulted ceiling. The far wall was one great sheet of curved glass. Beyond it lay the waters and bed of the underground lake, artificially lit so that an observer could follow events many yards away in the clear water. Even as he walked forward to marvel, Mike realized that he was witnessing an act of technical bravado. In one of the Earth's driest regions, Cinder-feller Lavengro was allowing her visitors to look out on her creation: a priceless treasure—millions of cubic feet of fresh water.

  The interior of the room was dimly lit, and it was not until he was halfway to the glass wall that Mike realized there was another person present. Off to his left was a long dark table, and beyond that a low sofa. And on that sofa, swaddled in tasseled blankets and thick quilts, sat a dark figure. "Did you know," a sweet tenor voice said, "that in this region a man's life is usually worth no more than twenty gallons of fresh water? How many men do you think you are looking at now?"

  He turned toward the sound and peered curiously at the seated figure. The voice was oddly androgynous, and he was not sure if a man or a woman had addressed him. Whichever, the swathes of blankets and gaudy patchwork quilts were draped around a grotesque being. He was looking at a person of enormous size, maybe as much as five hundred pounds in weight. It was impossible to tell where flesh began and ended in the rippling folds of garments. Long tresses of brown hair showed beneath a gray cowl, worn forward to shadow the brow and eyes. The mouth was thick-lipped and pouting, with a purple hue beneath its vivid red. The pale, bulging cheeks gleamed with sweat.

  Mike stepped up to the table. "You are Jinjer Lavengro?"

  The tenor voice chuckled. "Why, yes, I suppose that I am. Though no one has called me Jinjer for m
any years. Do as the others do, and call me Cinder-feller. And I will dispense with ceremony and call you Mike. All right? Then we can forget the protocol nonsense and get right down to business."

  One thing that a Trader education included was the business rituals of different regions. Before serious discussions began, the Chipponese served hoi tea, the Republic tobacco, the Community alcohol, and the Unified Empire dope; even the Chills of the Cap Federation offered their warmed liquid seal fat. The Strines alone did nothing. They observed no polite overtures. Fathom had been just as abrupt as Cinder-feller—worse, if that first naked sword counted as a greeting.

  Mike shrugged. "Let's talk business. I came a long way—and not to see the sights of the Strine Interior. Where shall we begin?"

  Cinder-feller drew in a long, snorting breath. "It is late, and you must be tired. But we can clear some groundwork tonight. I think there are illusions to be dispelled—perhaps on both sides." There was a movement of the massive form, and the creak of the sofa beneath it. Cinder-feller nodded at a container of dark fluid sitting surrounded by glasses and dishes of sticky-looking confections on the table in front of them. "Eat and drink, if you wish. For my part, I will refrain from food tonight and promise you a banquet tomorrow. I will begin with my own questions. Your turn will come."

  How old was she? Was it truly she? It was easy to be confused about the sex of Tommy Lavengro's younger child. The voice gave no clue. Mike tried to see some outward sign of the deformities inflicted by Cinder-feller's accident, but the only flesh visible was nose and cheeks, and they appeared unblemished. The drapes and shawls could hide almost any injury, even the loss of an arm or leg. "Continue."

  "We begin with a surprise," the cloaked figure said. "A surprise for me. We have already performed an analysis of the chemical signatures on the piece of identifying leather that you carried. It matches the chemsig for you provided by the Trader bank. You are indeed Mikal Asparian, of the Society of Traders. I was convinced before you arrived that you would prove to be an impostor."