Trader's World

by Charles Sheffield

  "No chance."

  A small welcoming committee of one ugly old man and one beautiful young woman, each dressed in traditional paint and feathers, stood waiting as they descended the aircar steps.

  The woman stepped forward. "I am Robin Songbird, Martin Raincloud's personal assistant—"

  She was interrupted by a female cry of fear from far above. While Mike and Jake were looking at Robin Songbird and her companion, a bound figure had been carried out onto one of the crosswalks by two men. Before the Traders knew what was happening, the body was swung outward and thrown clear. The walkway was about five hundred feet above ground. The scream of terror did not end until the woman's impact with the stone flags of the sidewalk.

  Robin Songbird looked at Mike and Jake. "My apologies for an unfortunate piece of timing. That execution was supposed to take place earlier today. I cannot account for the delay." She sounded mildly embarrassed. Her handsome face was inscrutable beneath the layers of paint.

  "What was the crime?" Mike kept his voice as casual as he could.

  "Treason. She plotted against the welfare of the Great Republic."

  "I see." And the timing was an accident? More likely it was quite deliberate, designed to unsettle the Traders. So far as Mike was concerned, it had succeeded.

  The man with Robin Songbird had not spoken. He was small and wizened, with a left leg that ended below the knee in a metal brace. His paint was minimal, merely a couple of simple lines on cheeks and chin. He had watched the execution as impassively as Robin Songbird; now he stepped forward and looked at her expectantly.

  "And this is Old-Billy Waters," she said at last. "Cityboss deputy. Second in command to Martin Raincloud." And I hate him for it, her voice said. "He's going to be the man who will negotiate with you."

  Old-Billy Waters nodded to Jake and Mike. "Raincloud is busy so I'll show you where you'll be staying." He grinned like a small and good-natured monkey. "And Robin didn't say it, so allow me: Welcome to Skeleton City! May you enjoy your stay here."

  Behind him, the crushed body of the executed woman was being scooped off the sidewalk.

  The two Traders had agreed on their first order of business in the Great Republic when they were still on the open sea. While Mike clattered about the suite as noisily and visibly as he could, Jake made a fast inspection. After ten minutes he gestured to Mike to follow him into the bathroom and turned on the shower full force.

  "At least one Fly in the bedroom, up in the corner of the ceiling," he said, his mouth a couple of inches from Mike's ear. "And one in the main living area. But no sign of one here—unless it's too cleverly placed for me to find. Our instruments didn't record any other sensors."

  "What do you think?"

  "Leave them where they are. If they move around too much for us to keep track of them, we'll make other plans."

  "Sounds good to me." Mike reached into his pocket and took out a tiny black box. "What about this one? We want it where it will do the most good and where they won't find it."

  "Raincloud's private quarters." Jack Kallario held out his hand for the box containing the Fly. "Here. Give it to me. You keep their attention, and I'll find a hiding place they'll never guess." He turned off the faucets. "Let's go. Old-Billy Waters doesn't want to keep Raincloud waiting."

  * * *

  The cityboss had chosen the highest point of Skeleton City as his eyrie. Mike and Jake were taken by Old-Billy Waters to a central building, a sheer cylindrical column nearly two thousand feet high. It rose far above all its neighbors, a lonely pinnacle that would catch the morning sun five minutes before any other point of Skeleton City. They ascended on a spiral escalator that curled in a smooth helix around the outside of the edifice. Crossways connected to other buildings up to the sixteen-hundred-foot level; above that, Martin Raincloud could be approached only through the escalator and the outside staircase.

  As they rose higher, Mike felt disorientation. They seemed to be standing still, while the world spun away beneath them. He felt dizzy. He stood as close as he could to the smooth metal wall of the building, placing his hands flat against it. Above fifteen hundred feet, where the shielding of all the other buildings was gone, the west wind grew suddenly stronger. It swirled about them, tugging at their clothing, pulling them toward the abyss. Mike looked down only once. The people on the cross-ways had again become tiny, insectlike figures; but now they were below, instead of far above.

  At its summit, the building changed character. The final hundred feet curved upward and outward, with smooth walls and no escalator. It could be ascended only by means of a steep spiral staircase, open to the winds and no more than two feet wide. Led by Old-Billy Waters, Mike and Jake went up to the topmost floor. The roof itself was a flat, bare circle, forty feet across. A narrow lip circled it, with a metal rail just beneath. A parked aircar occupied the available space on the roof.

  "For Raincloud's own use," Old-Billy said. "But he hardly ever uses it. Anybody who wants to see him comes here."

  He paused at the entrance to Raincloud's living quarters and looked around him. He appeared to be enjoying the view. Jake Kallario was just behind him. Mike, still on the last narrow step, gritted his teeth, pressed close to the wall, and wished they would hurry up and move inside.

  "I have traveled the Great Republic from shore to shore," Old-Billy said at last. He finally stepped inside. "But the air and the view here, at the very top of this building, is the best anywhere." He sniffed, looked west, and nodded to himself. "Big blow on the way, coming in from the mountains. We'll have wind and rain by morning."

  The building quivered, as though in anticipation. Let me inside, and you can have my share of the air and the view, Mike thought. He hurried in after the other two.

  They had entered a large, semicircular room, with one flat wall and a curtained doorway at the far end. Settees and soft cushions were scattered randomly across the floor. On the walls, display cases of vicious swords, knives, and tomahawks stood between elaborate murals. Following Old-Billy Waters, Mike and Jake walked slowly around the room, looking at the scenes painted on every available square inch.

  When they came back to the entrance, Jake gave Mike a nudge and a nod of his head. Mike stared at him.

  That quickly?

  Jake winked.

  The man was good. Mike could never feel comfortable with Jake Kallario, but he could appreciate skill when he saw it. Where had the Fly been placed? Mike made another circuit of the room. He could see no trace.

  "You like these murals?" Old-Billy Waters asked. He was following Mike closely. "That will please Raincloud. He painted them all himself. He is very aware of the history of the Great Republic."

  On every wall, battles were being waged between near-naked painted warriors and rough-clad men dressed in animal skins. The paintings were garish, bloody, and full of crude violence. In every one, the painted men were winning. "They are very . . . distinctive," Mike said.

  "An excellent choice of words," Old-Billy grinned. Did Mike detect a flash of humor in the little man's eye—something that suggested cityboss and deputy were cut from different cloth? Maybe it would be possible to negotiate here after all.

  Before Mike could reply the curtains at the end of the room were thrown back. Raincloud stood there, hands on hips. Old-Billy Waters jerked fully upright.

  The appearance of the top cityboss was familiar from their briefing materials, a squat, waddling figure with a bull neck and a pink, balding head. The paint on his face emphasized a jutting nose, thin slip of a mouth, and broad cheekbones, and his remaining hair was long, brown, greasy, and tied behind his head. The eyes were black, protruding, and wide apart. Raincloud responded to Old-Billy Waters's introduction with a low grunt. He stared at Mike and Jake.

  Mike stared back. The cityboss was even uglier in person than he was in pictures.

  "Traders." He spat the word out like an oath. "Holding the rest of the world to ransom. But some day, sooner than you think, you will lose your p
ower. Why should we use you as negotiators, when I am quite capable of dealing with the Strines myself?"

  "That is your option." Jake Kallario's voice was calm. Neither Trader had met Martin Raincloud, but on the basis of Jake's experience with the Great Republic they had agreed that he would be the principal spokesman. "I feel sure you are correct, you are capable of dealing with the Strines." But you and I know, his tone said, that they would never deal with anyone who was not a Trader.

  Instead of replying, Raincloud turned and strode back through the curtain. At Old-Billy Waters's urging, Mike and Jake Kallario followed. They came to a smaller room, little more than a long, dark cubbyhole. Along one wall ran an elaborate set of display screens. Beneath the screens stood a vast control console.

  Martin Raincloud was already seated at the console. "Power! This is power." His mood had changed. Now he was chuckling as he jabbed at the keys, causing images to chase one another across the multiple screens.

  "Nuclear missiles!" The scene panned across a plain filled with gray and silver rockets. "Battle lasers!" At Raincloud's shout, arrays of long tubes turned to point to the sky. "Ha, ha! Projectile defenses! Point protection!" Mike and Jake found themselves looking at thousands of high-velocity artillery units, crouched ready to send a hail of shells from horizon to horizon.

  "Impregnable, indestructible, invincible!" Raincloud swiveled around in his chair, grinning in excitement. "We are invincible. Every one of these weapons is under my control, ready to fire at my direction. When you go back, tell this to the Traders—and let them tell the world! The Great Republic is the most powerful region on Earth. And we are the rightful leaders of the world!"

  Rule 77: Don't debate lunatics—you might not win.

  Mike and Jake waited, and the outburst ended as suddenly as it had begun. Raincloud leaned back in his seat and smiled sunnily. "Very good," he said. "It is now time for my singing lesson with Robin Songbird. Is there anything you need before you begin your negotiation? If so, please tell me, and Waters will take care of it."

  Mike gave Jake a nod.

  Jake caught the cue. "Nothing we need for the moment. We've had a long trip, now we'd like an hour or two to unwind. Could we take a look around Skeleton City, and begin the main meetings this afternoon?"

  Raincloud looked at Old-Billy Waters. The deputy nodded. "Certainly, whatever you want. I'm available." He turned to the Traders. "Come on. I'll take you down."

  The ascent had been bad. The descent was worse. On the way up Mike had been able to focus on the path ahead. Now he was forced to look down. He was suspended in midair, hovering over a two-thousand-foot drop with nothing to support him but the frail strand of the staircase. It bent beneath his feet. He could see past its open mesh of metal, down, down, to the tiny dots of buildings and cars below. The wind buffeted from every side in unpredictable gusts that pushed him always toward the edge.

  Mike paused and huddled in to the side of the building, hands on the wall. His feet had frozen.

  "Hey." Jake was right behind. "Move it. I don't want to be up here all day." Under pressure from their surroundings, Jake was letting his feelings about Mike show through.

  Mike forced himself to slide forward along the wall fixing his eyes on Old-Billy Waters's back. If the Yankee had heard the dislike and contempt in Kallario's voice, he ignored it. He was ambling along in front, his artificial leg clattering on the metal of the stairs. "Don't get too upset by what you heard up there from Raincloud," he said, turning his head to look at Mike and Jake, but still walking down the winding staircase. Mike could hardly bear to watch. "Cityboss talks tough, but he barks more than he bites."

  A man hoping to convince himself?

  "Even when it comes to weapons?" Jake asked.

  "Ah, well, maybe that's the exception. The weapons he showed you are the genuine article—enough to blow us all to Chippoland. I'll be honest, they scare the hell out of me." Old-Billy stepped onto the escalator, still facing back toward the other two. His right foot was no more than two inches from open air and a sheer drop of seventeen hundred feet. "But I pray we'll never use 'em—Raincloud likes to play with the displays, but thank God he doesn't know most of the control sequences." He looked around, then at Mike and Jake. His voice dropped to a whisper. "I'll say this when we're out here in the open, with only the wind listening, but don't ask me to repeat it. Raincloud's right off his head, and getting worse. You realized that, didn't you, when we were in there?"

  Could this all be a deep plot, with Martin Raincloud as master schemer? Mike found that hard to believe. Raincloud really seemed to scare Old-Billy as much as he scared Mike. But could Waters be worked with? "You don't share his view of Traders, then?"

  "I don't hate you, if that's what you mean. Not at all. Raincloud loathes Traders; if he had his way he'd kill the lot of you."

  "And he doesn't try to hide it," Jake said. "So why on earth did he agree to let us come here?"

  "Beats me." Waters rubbed his liver-spotted pate. "Three months ago, he swore he'd had it with Traders. He was frothing at the mouth. We'd seen the last of 'em, he said, screw 'em all, we'll have no more like that in the Great Republic. Two weeks ago, he tells me, hey, guess what, I changed my mind. We're going to have some Traders here. We need Traders. And then yesterday I'm pulled off other duties and told I'm it—the principal interface with you two. Without advance notice."

  "Come on now. You're the deputy. You must be involved with everything that goes on here."

  Old-Billy Waters offered Mike an incredulous glare. "When did you ever hear of a deputy knowing half of what his boss was doing? I'm the last to know. Robin has more idea than I do, and she's just his bedwarmer. You ought to be here when he has one of his 'singing lessons' from her." He sniffed. "I tell you, there's a lot of things I don't know, and a lot I don't want to know. As for being a negotiator, when I hardly know what one does . . ."

  They had finally reached the bottom of the escalator. Mike stepped onto solid ground with unconcealed relief. Waiting for them on the roadway stood a tall, fat man with an enormous domed head. His small mouth was framed by a long, drooping moustache, and red stubble covered multiple chins in a two-day growth of beard. A gray cloak was swept around his body from neck to ankles. A flat-topped black hat, one size too small, perched above the great brow.

  He nodded past Waters, to Mike and Jake.

  "Vandermond." The word was a pronouncement. A thick hand emerged from beneath the cloak.

  Mike stared at him in astonishment. Sabrina?

  "Sebastian Vandermond," Old-Billy Waters said. His bird-like look darted from Mike to Jake, then back to the man in front of them. "These are our Trader visitors, Sebastian."

  "Obviously." Ice-blue eyes swept over them. Mike saw in that look disdain and enormous impatience. He recalled the definition of a psychopath: an individual unable to recognize the reality of other humans.

  "What can we do for you, Sebastian?" Waters asked. The other man towered above the rest of them.

  "Martin Raincloud promised us an hour with the visitors." Vandermond's tone held an Olympian indifference to Old-Billy Waters.

  "Did he?" Old-Billy raised his eyebrows. "Well, I was getting ready to show them around the city."

  "Good. Then I will do it instead." Vandermond moved to interpose his body between Waters and the two Traders. "Come." The tone commanded more than the word. "We need to talk with you."

  Mike and Jake were shepherded away. Old-Billy Waters stood nonplussed behind them. "We begin negotiation in two hours," he shouted.

  Vandermond ignored him. "First, a quick survey of Skeleton City," he said. "And then, home. We have an important meeting there, and little time."

  Vandermond's idea of a tour was simple. He hurried them along, walking, pointing, holding his hat on with one hand, and saying little. That suited Mike. He needed to see for himself. As usual, Daddy-O's briefing began to seem most notable for what it had neglected to mention. He followed Vandermond's pointing finger and un
derstood Raincloud's domain for the first time.

  Skeleton City stood in the eastern foothills. Thirty miles to the west, the cordillera that ran the length of the Great Republic rose snowcapped to fourteen thousand feet. The builders of Skeleton City had drawn their inspiration from those mountain heights. It was as if they had taken the original city on this site, a place not tall by Yankeeland standards, and stretched it. Like drawn sugar, each structure had thinned as it was pulled higher. The new cloud-capped palaces, buildings a third of a mile high, measured no more than three hundred feet across at the base. Even with the strongest materials from the Chipponese space factories, each building was unstable against compressive buckling and wind loads. The crosswalks, doubling as pathways and cables, provided the support that was needed. Skeleton City measured no more than half a mile across at ground level, but it existed as fully in three dimensions as other cities did in two.

  Vandermond pointed out and named the more important centers: Communication was high up in that building, Transportation down near the ground in this one, Agriculture all the way out at the edge of town. He did not consider worthy of note the groups engaged in casual conversation on the crosswalks, hundreds of feet above them. The wind was strengthening, and the slender pathways swayed and stretched in the varying gusts. The people did not seem to notice, adjusting automatically to the changing wind pressure.

  Mike forced his attention back to ground level. No wonder Martin Raincloud was a madman, and his assistants little better; anyone who lived in a place like this needed to be mad.

  Sebastian Vandermond. Sabrina Vandermond. Was it the result of a sex-change operation? Shades of Cinder-feller. It took a major effort of imagination on Mike's part to transform the towering colossus of Sebastian Vandermond to a female form.

  The tour went quickly. Within fifteen minutes they had returned to their starting point at Martin Raincloud's headquarters. This time, to Mike's relief, they went down. From an entrance at ground level they descended three floors to a pair of wide doors. Sebastian Vandermond swung them open and ushered Mike and Jake through.