"But you must have known that I was on my way—that information was broadcast to all of the Strine receiving stations."
"Indeed it was." Cinder-feller gave another fatty chuckle. "But I did not expect that you would ever come to me by way of Fathom's territory. After all, she has been desperately trying to work her spies in here for the past four years. Dispose of you and put her own agent in your place—what could be more natural? There would have to be an official story for the Traders, of course, telling how you had died in an unfortunate accident in the Strine Interior. But that would be easy. I could see the logic for it—I even anticipated it, and arranged the chemsig test when I received word of your approach. If it was another clumsy attempt at espionage, I was prepared to eliminate you at once, as I have done twelve other attempts. But, no. You are truly a Trader."
As Mike's eyes adjusted to the gloom he could see the beads of sweat that stood on Cinder-feller's cowled brow and along the thin nose. He could feel a matching rivulet making its way down the back of his neck. "Perhaps I am being obtuse," he said slowly. "I can see no logic for what you are saying. I entered the Strine mainland with help from Fathom, certainly, but I see no way in which my visit here can benefit her."
Cinder-feller poured two glasses of the dark fluid and pushed one of them toward him. "That is only because you are a stranger to our internal politics. Fathom cannot penetrate this territory. Accept that statement as truth, and believe me when I tell you that she desperately wishes to do so. We have many bioscience developments that she wants. Despite her overweening pride in the Double-X plantations, we have new organisms here that make those seem insignificant. I have bio geniuses here beyond any others in the whole world. Fathom knows it. She covets their knowledge and the power that brings us—and she knows I will never sell that knowledge to her. So, how will she get the information that she wants?" The great shoulders heaved into a shrug. "She has tried one approach: sending in spies. Not one made it past the border. Now she seemed ready for another: sending an impostor, pretending to be a Trader. I assumed that—and I was wrong. So now I have another thought." The massive body leaned forward. "Fathom wants the use of a pair of eyes and ears to tell her all they can about my labs. Though no impostor, you could be those eyes and ears."
Mike shook his head. "Torture never pulls information out of a Trader. Our indoctrination assures that—and Fathom knows it."
"As do I. Torture could not be the answer." Cinder-feller sighed. "Nor would I ever accuse you of selling information to her. I have tremendous admiration for the Traders. Tomorrow you and I will, if things go well, set up a basis for our long-term relationship. But torture and corruption are not the only ways. You are, I assume, planning to return through Fathom's territory?"
"That was our arrangement. She is certainly expecting me."
"Then let me ask you one more question. The Strines have their own sources of secret information. On this mission you are carrying with you a special device. Where is your recording disk?"
Mike was shocked. Somewhere in the Trader organization was a big information leak. To hide his surprise he leaned forward and sipped at his filled glass. Alcohol, plus a hint of heroin—and what else?
Whatever it was, he had learned his lesson in the Darklands: prevention was preferable to cure. At the first opportunity he would take a detox pill. But what should he do right now? Admit to the presence of the disk, or deny its existence?
It was an easy question. There had been plenty of confidence in Cinder-feller's voice. Mike reached up, plucked the disk from his shirt, and handed it to Cinder-feller. As she stared at it curiously he seized the chance to take out and swallow a detox pill.
"It may be rude of me to say so, but might I suggest that the Traders seek a little assistance in miniaturization from Cap City?" The pale hand came forward and passed the recording disk back to Mike. He saw the dimples of knuckles in a fatty paw, and pudgy, soft digits. But despite its grossness it was perfectly formed, with no sign of injury or disfigurement. "This is much larger than I expected, and I cannot imagine that it is convenient to operate."
Mike shrugged and considered the possibility of swallowing the disk. "I have to say I agree with you. It was not my idea to bring it—and I certainly didn't realize that you would already know about it."
"Not only I. What would you say, Trader Asparian, if I told you that all Fathom's actions have been devoted to a single objective? She wants you to visit me and my territory and see as much of what we do as possible. And then leave the Strine Interior via her territory. She does not care if you are alive or dead when you reach her—because what she wants, of course, is that." Cinder-feller pointed at the disk, then raised her glass to her lips. The purplish mouth smiled a little at his appalled expression. "With the complete record of your visit here. If you were to swallow it, that would not matter. She will slit your belly open and cut it out of you with her own hands."
Did the woman know everything?
"Nice idea," Mike said slowly. If Cinder-feller were deliberately employing the Traders' own guidelines for negotiation, she was doing it very well. She was taking everything that Mike thought he knew about the situation, and turning it upside down. "But the recording disk would be quite useless to Fathom, or to anyone else. It can be destroyed—with difficulty. But its contents cannot be read out or deciphered without the use of the Trader central computer."
"I am glad you feel so confident." Cinder-feller's voice was full of a disquieting cynicism. "Believe that if you wish. Speaking for myself, I have purchased many 'secrets' and the keys to many unbreakable codes in the past few years. And there are data exploration specialists in Cap City who just love that kind of challenge. I would not care to stake my own life on the security of a recording disk's stored information. Ask yourself this: Did Fathom see the disk? Yes. And did she ask you its purpose? And if not, why not?" She smiled at his expression, and Mike saw strong teeth and a fleshy pink tongue. "I thought as much. Doesn't that prove that she already knew quite well what the disk was doing?" She yawned. "Well, perhaps that gives you enough to think about for tonight. Tomorrow I want you to see my labs and learn what we have that should interest a Trader. As you will see, Velocil and the Candlemass Berries were little more than bait to bring you here.
"And I will provide you with at least the bare bones of my own objectives in negotiation, so that you will be able to do your own thinking tonight. My aims are simple, but they are large. The mainland and the other Strine holdings are fragmented. Each has its own security force, and its own weapons arsenal." Cinder-feller paused. "I wish to unite this region and control all the Strinelands. For that enterprise, I need allies, and I need equipment. But most of all, I need skills in negotiation. And that is you. As I told you, I admire the Traders more than any other group, on Earth or off it. Nothing would please me more than a joint effort with them."
Cinder-feller suddenly groaned. Mike watched in fascination as the great body levered itself off the sofa. The Strine bigmomma was even more impressive standing, towering half a head above Mike.
"For tonight, enough." The voice was weary, and the cowled head nodded past Mike. "He will show you to your quarters."
Mike jerked around. He had heard nothing, but right behind him squatted a haploid abo. "For your own sake," Cinder-feller said, "do not try to leave those quarters during the night. There is a danger that he might . . . misunderstand your actions." There was a throaty laugh. "You will find ample food and drink in your quarters. Sleep well, Trader Mike."
* * *
Cinder-feller's final words were good advice, but Mike had trouble following them. The abo warrior led him silently along a descending staircase to a windowless hexagonal room containing a bed, bathroom, and kitchen facilities. Mike went inside, closed the door, then after a minute or so opened it again. The abo was squatting at the far side of the corridor, eyes closed. Mike looked for a few seconds at the man's smooth, shining skin and peaceful face, until finally the head lif
ted and nostrils flared to sniff the air. The eyes opened. Mike went back inside and closed the door.
The kitchen area was large and liberally stocked with food and drink, most of it unfamiliar. There was the usual dried mutton, beer, bread, and bean-curd concentrates, but they were flanked by a dozen other jars and bottles. Mike sampled a small amount from each container. He could recognize the tang of fermented euclypt berries, and the resinous flavor of blackboys and prickly pear, and that was all.
He lay on the bed, checked the recording disk, and made his oral daily report. It was a slow business, and several times he paused to reconsider. How much did he actually know? Very little. He wished that Jack Lester were available to bounce ideas off. Crazy or not, Jack knew the psychology of the Strines. If Fathom were right, what Cinder-feller said could not be relied on; if Cinder-feller were telling the truth, then everything that Fathom had done, including the whole time on the ship from Orklan, had been a setup designed to win information via Mike regarding the operation here in The Musgrave. And if both were lying? Rule 30: Assume everybody is lying . . .
Mike thought again of his instructions from Lyle Connery; of Sweet Pea, the deaf-mute who wasn't; of Cinder-feller, the "hideously mutilated" boss of The Musgrave, whose voluminous clothes might hide any deformity, but whose face and hands showed no signs of one; and finally, of the superbly conditioned haploid abo who now sat outside the door. Mike compared that man with the warrior column he had seen running off into the roiling dust storm.
The conclusion that he reached kept him awake for many hours.
* * *
When he finally fell asleep, he dreamed . . .
. . . he was running, fleeing north across the flat, open land of the Strine interior. The sun was in his eyes, blinding him. When he turned toJook back they were always there, fifteen or twenty of them. They were a couple of miles behind . . . closing steadily. Haploid abos, naked, slamming effortlessly across the badland barrens. He looked ahead. The sea lay in that direction, due north. It was only a few miles away, but it might as well have been at infinity. He was nearly exhausted, moving more and more slowly. The abos had broken their silence. Now he could hear them cooing and calling to one another, in thin whispers of sound . . .
Mike awoke. He was sweating, and his heart was pounding. The room was lit by one faint fluorescent wall tube. He jerked upright. As he did so, two people who had been talking together in low voices near the door fell silent. After a few seconds they looked at each other and moved closer.
"Good thing you woke," one of them said. "We didn't know if we should let you sleep or not. It's nearly noon."
Mike shivered and put his hands to his head. The detox pills worked, but sometimes they had their own brief aftereffects. After a few moments the room steadied. The intruders were a man and a woman, identically dressed and so similar in age and appearance that they had to be fraternal twins, if not cross-sex clones. They were in their middle twenties, with tight curls of dark brown hair, bright brown eyes, and cheeky expressions.
It was the girl who had spoken to Mike, and hers was the voice he had somehow woven into his dream. Now she came to the side of the bed. "We're here to show you round the labs," she said when Mike did not speak. "I'm Bet Bates."
"And I'm Alf Bates," the man chimed in. Even their voices matched, his half an octave deeper than hers. "We'll show you the whole place, but there's no hurry. If you want to wash or eat, we can wait outside for you."
"No. Give me a few seconds to get my head together." Mike stood up slowly, rubbing his eyes. He had to wipe out that nightmare of abo pursuit. "All right, I guess I'm ready. Where's Cinder-feller?"
"Where she always is." Bet Bates sounded surprised. "She doesn't leave Headquarters, except sometimes at night she'll go out and swim in the lake. And she can get to that right from her rooms."
"I thought she wanted to see me again today."
"She does," Alf said cheerfully. "We'll take you to her when we're finished. Anything special you want to see?"
Their attitude was oddly casual and confident. Neither seemed much impressed at meeting a Trader, or at all deferential toward Cinder-feller.
"I don't know what there is to see," Mike said. "But I'm a Trader. So show me anything here in The Musgrave that you think might be worth trading."
The other two exchanged pleased looks. "Right," Bet said. "Come with us." They led the way from Mike's quarters into the corridor and up three full turns of a long spiral staircase. "Hold tight," said Alf, pushing open a heavy metal door. They were at once hit by the full sunlight of midday Strineland. After the gloom of the underground facility the effect was shattering. Mike squeezed his eyes shut, seeing a dull red glow through his eyelids and waiting for his pupils to make their adjustment.
Alf laughed. "Gotcher. You have to be ready for that. Don't worry, we'll be going back down in a minute. This is just a short cut to the main labs."
The heat was enough to make Mike feel dizzy. He took a deep breath and gazed around him. The ground was like baked brick, red and bare, without even the scrubby vegetation that he had seen through most of the Strine Interior. The only exception was a thin ring of trees that grew in a rough circle about two miles across. Their blue-green leaves rustled in the hot noon breeze, and their species were unfamiliar to Mike. After a few moments he realized that they must mark the boundary of the underground lake. If so, the body of water was a good deal smaller than his earlier night impression of it.
Another flotilla of light aircars was parked close to the trees, each carrying the same quadruple spiral insignia on its blunt nose. There were even more of them here than Mike had seen in the underground garage. Alf saw the direction of his look. "Local transport. We use them to travel inside The Musgrave and patrol the borders. Of course, we hardly need them for that. The abo teams stop anything coming in or going out."
A barbed message from Cinder-feller? Don't try to get away, you'll never do it without my help. Maybe. Mike walked closer to one of the cars, studying its design. It was quite different from the vehicle that had carried him from Eucla to Alice. These were electric-powered runabouts, Yankee imports with a range not much more than a hundred miles. They would get him to the border of Fathom's territory, or northwest into the badlands, but nowhere else. He pointed at the marking on the aircar's nose.
"Our sign," Bet said proudly, without waiting for a question. "Just you wait. In a few years you'll see that on half the biolab products anywhere in the world." She jerked her thumb toward the trees and bushes that marked the edge of the underground lake. "Alf and me, we designed every one of those. They're all valuable, and all different. They're biological concentrators."
Mike stared at the dusty vegetation. On a closer inspection he could see odd nodular fruit growing in close to the main stems.
"For different materials," Alf added. "Metals and rare earths, mostly. See that one? It concentrates selenium. Takes it in through the roots and deposits the oxide in the black fruit."
"What about water?"
"The taproot is strongly hydrotropic. It'll grow from a seed, right down till it gets to the edge of the lake. The tree next to that one handles vanadium—seventy percent pure in the red fruit. Both of them can tolerate seawater on their root systems."
Mike looked at the plants for a long time. "You developed these?" he said at last. "The two of you?"
"Sure did." Bet shrugged. "You like them? That's nothing. We did veggies when we were first starting, four years ago. They're old stuff. Wait until you get inside our new labs."
They were skirting the tree line and approaching a long escalator that ran down parallel to it. Mike took a last look around him, scanning the scene. He made his own assessment of distances and locations, then followed the twins onto the descending staircase.
How old was the Trader information on the Strine biolabs? It had been five years since Jack Lester was in southern Strine-land, three since the last Trader visit. And nothing in the briefings had hinted at
what Mike was seeing now in The Musgrave. Cinder-feller was no more than a name in the Trader data banks, while Alf and Bet—Alpha and Beta?—Bates, inventors extraordinary, were not even mentioned.
The staircase took them down to a lab deep underground, a room nearly two-hundred yards long. It was tall ceilinged, white walled, and impeccably managed.
"Plants," Bet said simply, and led the way.
Plants . . .
. . .plants thriving in almost total vacuum. "Chipponese market material," Alf said confidently. He dug his thumbnail into a thick, waxy leaf. The wound healed itself in seconds. "We want to do a little more work on this. It'll be another year before we look at its use in space."
. . . fruits that were violently explosive, ranging from pea-sized squibs to powerful bombs as big as melons . . .
. . .fruits with ninety percent ethyl alcohol. "The boozer's dream," Bet said. "Alcohol, fructose, and flavor—even has a pop-off top at one end."
. . . high-protein food fruits, duplicating the composition and texture of beef, pork, chicken, and fish . . .
. . . forty yard blackboys, their horizontal trunks built of spirals of monofilament carbon strands, far stronger than any metal. "The neat trick here was to make them grow flat," Alf said. "We had to take the phototropic and geotropic impulses and turn them through ninety degrees. We did it taking DNA splicing from iris rhizomes; they grow that way naturally. Come on, let's look at something else."
Bet led the way through a triple series of doors to a smaller lab.
"Animals," she announced.
. . . tiny, modified jerboas, patiently assembling microscopic electronic components and staring at the visitors with calm, intelligent eyes. Next to them was a cage of sluggish, jewel-eyed lizards, their necks swollen with gland sacs. "Full of nerve poisons," Bet said happily. "A thousandth of a gram would kill the lot of us."
She led the way to a huge, flower-filled cage. Hummingbirds, silver and crimson and purple, flashed around the interior so fast that they could be seen only when they hovered briefly in front of a blossom. "Just for fun," Alf explained. "I did these as Bet's twenty-first birthday present."
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