Trader's World

by Charles Sheffield

  He had been lying there for almost two hours, still sleepless but perfectly happy, when Melly came hurrying into the room.

  "Mike!" She sat down on the bed and gripped his arm. "Mike, I was sure that something terrible had happened to you. Are you feeling all right?"

  "Much better than all right. I'm feeling wonderful." He reached out to take her in his arms. "Melly, come and lie next to me. Come and love me. It will be the most exciting thing ever."

  She had moved closer to him, but instead of lying down she took his head in her hands and examined it closely, probing delicately at the crown. She seemed to know exactly where to look. Mike lay back blissfully. She had found a wounded spot there, but it all felt marvelous.

  And then, suddenly, she was tugging hard at him, shaking him. He opened his eyes again. "Melly? Don't stop. Keep on touching me."

  She was pulling him upright. "Mike, stand up—now!"

  "Why?"

  "I have Cesar all ready. We have to leave. We'll have to let Wernher Eckart fend for himself for a while, he's in good health. Do you hear me, Mike?" She shook him. "We have to go!"

  Melly was amazingly strong. She had Mike up to a sitting position and was lifting him under the armpits. Every touch—even the shaking—gave him intense pleasure. Mike closed his eyes. "Go? I'm not going—not now, not ever. Not anywhere. Come to bed, Melly. We don't want to leave Dreamtown, it's the only place you'll ever feel full happiness. Lie down next to me."

  He put both arms around her and tried to draw her back to the bed. She resisted hard for a moment, then reached out to stroke his cheek. "Lie quiet for a moment, Mike. Then I'll come back and lie down with you. Remember now, don't do anything while I'm away!"

  She was gone. Mike lay back on the bed again, his head filled with blissful thoughts. Melly would return in a minute or two. And if she did not, that would be all right, too. Everything would be all right.

  Even when she returned and began to run the bonds around his arms and legs, he was not worried. The tight bindings provided an erotic touch to his wrists and his ankles, and the close-fitting gag across his mouth felt like a lover's kiss. He smiled up at her as she hoisted him off the bed and carried him out of the room.

  "Not a sound!" Her voice was a whisper. "Dominic Mantilla may arrive at my rooms at any moment. Relax and let me carry you."

  She was hurrying with him along the corridor, bearing his whole weight with no apparent effort. Now they were on a downward-spiralling ramp. Mike, his head against her chest, could not speak through the gag. He inhaled her perfume through his nose and smiled up at her. When they turned a corner in the corridor and a gust of freezingly cold air hit them, Mike thrilled to its icy touch.

  The interior lights of Dreamtown vanished, and Mike was looking up at a starry sky. They had emerged on to a wooden loading platform, the starting point for Glissando. A two-man sled was already in position at the top of the ice chute. As Melly moved forward and rolled Mike inside the curved body of the sled, platform lights suddenly came on, dazzlingly bright.

  "Stop." The deep bass voice that shouted the command was unmistakable. Melly did not even look around. She strapped Mike in the rear sled position, and began to rock the metal shell on its runners. Craning his head up, Mike saw that the forward sled position was already occupied by Cesar Famares.

  The sled began to tilt. With no emotion but pleasure, Mike saw that they were poised at the very brink of a gleaming wall of ice. It dropped away forever in front of them, curving slightly to the left as it went.

  There was a sound of running footsteps from behind, hard leather boots crashing down on the wooden platform. Melly, still bending over to strap Mike into locked position, was seized around the shoulders. As Dominic Mantilla began to lift her away from the sled she allowed herself to be drawn backward, She slid down to the level of his knees, turning and gripping his thighs as she went. As he moved forward to avoid overbalancing, she set her grip higher on his body and exerted her maximum leverage. Melly and Dominic Mantilla fell together on top of the metal sled.

  The double impact of their bodies was more than enough to push the shell farther out onto the downward ramp of the ice. For a second the whole group teetered on the edge, then rocked past the point of recovery.

  Mantilla began to scream as soon as the sled moved forward. Ignoring Melly, he turned and scrabbled desperately at the edge of the platform. He managed a fingertip grip that held for a few moments, but then the weight of Melly, still clutching his legs and with her feet hooked into the metal shell of the sled, was too much. He lost his hold and fell backward, still screaming, right over the sled. When the machine finally began to pick up speed on the icy slope, Mantilla was just a few yards in front of it, skating downhill on his back.

  He struggled to roll over, and his fingers clawed at the gleaming ice. It was useless. He was accelerating rapidly, thirty yards down the slope, and still grasping hopelessly at the wall of the ice chute.

  The sled had also started to move. In less than a second it was dropping almost vertically. Mike and Cesar were huddled helplessly inside, while Melly crouched over them and held her body flat above the open shell.

  The ice wall was so steep that it was almost like free-fall. Mike felt the hollow sensation in the pit of his stomach, and laughed aloud with pleasure. He had no thought of fear. It was ecstasy, a feeling more intense than anything he had ever experienced in his life, so good that he was hardly able to stand so much enjoyment. He watched happily as Melly manipulated the controls of the sled, directing its course down the very center of the chute while the cold wind whipped at her body. She was still mostly outside the protecting metal shell. He saw her fair hair streaming behind her and thought he had never seen anything so beautiful.

  They were passing Dominic Mantilla. His body lacked the clean aerodynamics of the bullet-sled, and he lacked the control of his movements that Melly was providing for the sled. But he had stopped screaming and had managed to turn so that his head was facing upward. Melly was easing the bullet-sled past him, moving out higher on the smooth ice channel, when he reached out a long, black-clad arm and managed to get a finger hold on the side of the shell. Mike saw the glittering dark eyes turned toward them, then felt the sled begin to yaw off course as Mantilla pulled.

  Melly hammered with both fists at Mantilla's bloodied fingertips, but his grip held firm. He gave a snarling laugh of triumph.

  He was turning his body, ready to pull himself closer to the sled, when the descending course of the Glissando run met its first tight curve. They were entering a portion where the ice channel turned to the left through nearly sixty degrees. Centrifugal force moved the sled and Dominic Mantilla away from the center, upward and outward toward the right-hand lip of the chute.

  Mantilla was on the outside. Melly stopped beating at his clutching hand and bent again over the controls of the sled. She steered it out toward the top rim of the curving ice wall, nudging Mantilla gradually up the steepening slope.

  He saw what was happening and made a last attempt to pull himself into the sled. It was too late. The bullet-sled's runners moved close to the outer rim of the chute, pushing Mantilla's legs and trunk out over the edge. For a moment he was hanging there, flying along with his body horizontal, still gripping the sled's side. Then the forces became too great. With a despairing cry he lost his hold and flew out into the jumble of rock and ice that lay beyond the Glissando chute.

  Mike had watched the whole thing with intense delight. It seemed to him that he had never been a part of anything remotely as enjoyable. He stared happily at Mantilla's body, laughing as it spun and shattered against iron-hard rocks and finally dropped away over a vertical cliff. As Melly managed to regain control of the shuddering sled and steered them back down to the safer central part of the run, he felt ready to applaud.

  And then, a few miles farther on, it ended.

  Mike felt the pleasure drain like ichor out of his body. He was suddenly cold, aching, and terrified, filled wi
th an unendurable sense of loss. At the same time, he heard Cesar in front of him give a long groan of pain. Instead of slipping carefree down an exciting pleasure run, now they were hurtling to almost certain death. When they reached the end of their downhill run, they would hit the chill waters of the Pacific with destructive force . . . unless Melly could control the sled, with its added load of an extra person. Mike tried to free himself of his bonds, and strained upward to watch her efforts. "Melly!"

  She turned her head just long enough to say, "Don't move. You're changing the center of mass." And then she was again making fine adjustments to the controls, aiming them arrow-straight down the middle of the Glissando run.

  Five minutes more, and the waves of the Pacific were in sight. The sled was traveling at well over two hundred miles an hour. Straight ahead, square in front of their path like a bull's-eye, stood the circular arches of the deceleration rings. Before Mike realized it, they had reached the first of them.

  The electromagnetic field seized the metal sled and pulled it hard backward, slowing its motion. Mike and Cesar, strapped tightly into the sled's interior, decelerated with it. But Melly was outside the metal body. As Mike watched helplessly, she was ripped from the sled and flew on with undiminished speed toward the gray Pacific waters.

  The sound of her impact was a flat, lifeless slap, loud enough to carry back to them. Mike saw her body in a tangle of breaking limbs, then he closed his eyes. At that speed, water was as destructive to human tissues as solid earth.

  When the sled came to a complete halt at the foot of the Glissando run, he did not try to release himself. Only the sound of the approaching Trader pick-up plane made him stir himself enough to begin to loosen the straps that held him. He helped Cesar to do the same. They put their arms around each other and stood in shared misery on the beach.

  Melly was gone. But even worse, Dreamtown was gone . . .

  Both men were weeping hopelessly when they were hoisted aboard the Trader craft and the plane tipped low over the water to pick up Melly's shattered body. The injection that brought unconsciousness was a longed-for relief from mental pain.

  * * *

  A hangover—the worst one ever. The pain in his skull was simply too bad to believe.

  Mike lifted his hand and tried to touch the top of his head. Instead of hair, he encountered bandages.

  "Get your bloody hands off that!" a sharp voice said. "And wait a minute."

  Mike recognized Jack Lester's tone. A moment later he felt a sharp sting in his thigh, and the pain in his head eased. He opened his eyes.

  He was lying flat on his back in a hospital bed. Above him was a big blank display panel. Cesar Famares lay next to him, still unconscious, with his head also swathed in bandages. A robodoc was clucking over both men.

  "Want to see the Greaser version of what happened?" Lester asked. "Daddy-O, show him what we got as the Unified Empire news release."

  The screen filled with script, and at the same time Daddy-O's soft voice read it aloud. "In an unfortunate accident that occurred after an official reception yesterday evening. Highlands Coordinator Dominic Mantilla and three visiting Traders were killed. The body of Mantilla has been recovered, but those of the three Traders are still missing. The Highlands Coordinator and his visitors were in the process of negotiating an important trade agreement . . ."

  In his mind's eye, Mike saw again the spinning body of Dominic Mantilla, the downward rush of the sled, and the dreadful impact of Melly's body with the water. He and Cesar had survived only because of her self-sacrifice.

  "That's the party line, Mike," Lester said briskly. "A simple accident. Come on, boyo. How's your head now?"

  "Better." Mike touched his eyes. They felt grit-filled and swollen with tears. "What happened to me?"

  "You had a platinum needle in your brain. It had been fired right in through the top of your skull. It's easy enough to shoot one in, right through the bone, but a damned sight harder to get it out. You'll have a headache for a few days. Cesar, too. What the hell happened to you?"

  "Dominic Mantilla's people did it."

  "They tortured you? Hey, we can compare notes."

  "They had something better than that." Mike thought back, trying to recapture the incredible feeling of well-being that had filled him just a few hours ago. "He knew exactly what he was doing. If I'd had my way, I'd never have left Dreamtown."

  He struggled to sit up. "Lover-boy, we've got to warn all the other Traders. We've always prepared ourselves so we don't crack under torture—"

  "—and it works a treat."

  "Usually. But Dominic Mantilla taught me something new, something I could have deduced without leaving the Azores if I'd been smart enough. But I had to go there to learn it. He was called the "Prince of Pain," sure, but his job in the Unified Empire was to create pleasures."

  "You're right. That sounds contradictory."

  "But it isn't! You should see the facilities he built in Dreamtown. They're all intended for pleasure, but some of them inflict pain to do it. I never realized it before, but there's no boundary line between pain and pleasure. They merge into each other. So he didn't break us with pain—we are all prepared for that. He just gave us so much pleasure that things like Trader Oath weren't important. I almost had everything figured out when he shot that needle into my head and turned on the field. And after that I was too happy to do any thinking at all. I'm sure if we'd been there another day, I'd have rewritten that Chipponese treaty any way that Mantilla wanted it."

  "He must have been awful confident, to go ahead and sign what he did." Jack Lester sniffed through his half-regrown nose. "We read what you had, and it's a real give-away deal. Daddy-O already had a call from the lads in the Unified Empire, trying to wriggle out of it."

  "Mantilla was convinced he had me. And the really neat part of his scheme is the limited range of the stimulating field. If anyone ever strays away from Dreamtown and gets out of field range, he'll turn right around of his own accord and hurry back—he couldn't stand the loss of pleasure. If Melly hadn't strapped us in tight, or if Mantilla had managed to shoot the needle into her skull, too . . ."

  There was a long silence, until Jack Lester said, "Your move, Daddy-O. I won't handle this one."

  Something close to a sigh came through the computer's voice synthesizer. "Very well. I will do it. Mike, your assumption is false. Melinda Turak did indeed have a needle shot into her head, at the same time as you did. It was that event which made her come to your room, to see if the same had been done to you."

  "But that's ridiculous! She went ahead and carried out a whole rescue, me and Cesar. How could she possibly do that, if—"

  "Listen carefully, Mike. Four months ago Melinda was involved in a Trader Smash rescue operation in the Great Republic. There was unexpected opposition, and our vehicle was attacked. Melinda led a diversion to allow the rest to escape. But in doing so she was injured. She received a major head wound, and was declared brain dead on arrival at base. Her body was not affected. So as an experiment, a molecular central processing unit and memory were implanted, and the data banks loaded from my own files. I provided the necessary microcode for the body to function and to perform as a Trader. But of course, the new Melinda Turak was quite immune to any Stimuli provided by Dominic Mantilla's needle. And also the new Melly could not 'die,' which has been upsetting you so—the processing unit and memory were recovered intact from the broken body when it was taken from the water."

  The Traders' master computer paused, taking in the scene through the arrays of visual sensors. Mike was staring upward, his face expressionless.

  "What is wrong?" Daddy-O asked. "Do you have trouble accepting this as true?"

  Melly's initial ignorance of the informal rule book—and then, within a few hours, her total familiarity with it; her inability to recognize sarcasm when Dominic Mantilla had employed it; her cool, searching look at everything she saw; her uncanny detailed knowledge of briefing materials . . .

&nbs
p; Mike shook his head. "No. I fully accept what you say." He reached up to the control panel and closed his eyes. "I must sleep now."

  He depressed the master switch. Suddenly Daddy-O and Jack Lester were alone in the circuit.

  "A great shock to him, of course." Daddy-O brought additional processing capability on-line. "The mission was a great success, as he surely realizes. And he accepts the explanation, but not apparently its implications. Were his reactions, would you say, predominantly of grief, or anger?"

  "Anger! You chip-faced idiot." Jack Lester was banging around in his tank with rage. "You sit there and listen to all that, and you still have no idea what you've done! I thought you were supposed to have some sort of brain. You've probably ruined the best young Trader we've got. Can't you see what happened, you great silicon dummy?"

  "I cannot. If he is wishing that he were again in Dreamtown, for the pleasures provided there, that is no more than natural—"

  "Mike doesn't give a monkey's doodah about Dreamtown. It's Melly that's killing him. Can't you see what happened? Gor, if I had legs and you had a butt I'd come over there and kick it. She was his old friend, from back in training camp. And worse than that—he was starting to fall for her."

  "You mean—a romantic attachment?"

  "I mean love, you dummy. Love! Stick that up your Josephson junctions."

  "Love." There was another moment of silence. "Ah, yes, I did not allow for love. I am sorry. That is my error. Do you think that—"

  But Jack was no longer on-line. Like Mike, he had broken the connection with Daddy-O.

  In the next five seconds, Daddy-O put in the equivalent of a million years of human thought on the subject of love. At the end of it there was, as usual, no conclusion.

  And no surprises.

  Jack Lester and Mikal Asparian had been lied to, of course; Daddy-O had correctly predicted Asparian's emotional involvement with Melinda Turak and had been able to estimate his post-mission reaction with high accuracy. There had been deception, but deception was necessary; just as it was necessary to accept this paradox: logic must form the basis for all actions, and in a logical universe there was no need for love; and yet, if Daddy-O's grand design were ever to be achieved, love would be an essential component in that design's fulfillment.