Trader's World

by Charles Sheffield

  They were at the axis of the upper wheel. The overall layout was familiar to the Traders, and Daddy-O had provided a detailed plan as part of the briefing. Now the trick was to make sure that Mike saw the appropriate sections for energy generation.

  He had no illusions about what he would and would not see. The Chipponese energy production facilities were scattered through every element of the Geosynch Ring, as a mixture of nuclear and, rarely, solar power plants. Here on this station he would find only nuclear generators, and those only of medium size. It would be no more than a snapshot of the overall energy supply situation, but it would still be better than anything else available to Old-Billy Waters and the planners of the Great Republic. Mike had one other card to play. During his stay at the station the Strines, by agreement with the Yankees, would briefly double their power demand. Mike, in a position to see how the extra load was met, might be able to make a guess at the available capacity of the whole system.

  On the way to the perimeter of the upper wheel, Mike again wondered what the loss of Yankee energy markets might do to the Chip economy. The Chipponese had been forced into space by the fallout of the Lostlands War, and at that time it had been touch and go if they would survive. What would the loss of their main market do to them—and to other regions—today? One sobering thought: the Lostlands War itself had started with the economic collapse of a single nation.

  They had reached the station sections containing the power systems, and suddenly Mike had a whole new situation to worry about.

  The energy generation units looked totally wrong—wrong because they were familiar.

  The Traders' information on Chipponese power systems had been painstakingly collected over the years using official information and expensive espionage. That was a slow process, and the Chips were very careful people. The last big leak of design information had been over fifteen years ago.

  Now Mike was looking at those same designs—which meant there had been no progress in Chipponese energy production technology for well over a decade. That was simply unbelievable. Even back on Earth, without the Chipponese focus on energy-producing systems, there had been a steady advance in fission and fusion reactors.

  Mike examined the equipment more closely. Everything was fission systems, and the units were not merely old designs—they were old equipment. The fuel recycling machines bore the scars and pitting of long use, and the pressure vessel seams showed evidence of many repair welds. The Chipponese seemed to be generating energy for use on Earth with antiquated, beat-up production facilities.

  While Li Xia moved them on farther, higher in the wheel, Mike struggled to make sense of the evidence.

  Plausible assumption number one: this was all a setup, the inverse of Rasool Ilunga's scheme. The head of the Ten Tribes had wanted Mike to report an advanced technology that he lacked. Suppose the Chips wanted to deny possession of such a technology? Then if they had some secret agenda of their own, or if they knew of Mike's own hidden agenda, they might have arranged for negotiation to take place on a station with old equipment. Then they could show Mike everything, yet give nothing away regarding their technical progress and production capability.

  Mike dropped that idea as soon as they reached the uppermost section of the wheel. It held a second set of power units, much smaller ones that served only to generate and beam power to the Chipponese communications satellites in the Geosynch Ring. And these units were new, compact, and far more advanced than anything that Mike had ever seen.

  On the way back down to the lowest wheel, the final mystery presented itself. Mike had an opportunity to examine the system control units. They were old, poorly maintained, and were already running close to their limits.

  That led to a series of questions that Mike could not afford to ignore. When the Strine power demand on this particular station suddenly doubled, what would happen? The system should have an automatic cutout if the call for power became too high—but would it work? The monitors looked even older than the primary power units. So what should Mike do? To alert the Chips to possible danger would give the game away completely and provide very poor service on the Great Republic contract. But to fail to warn the Chips, if something was on the way past danger point . . .

  He puzzled the problem all the way back to the innermost wheel and on through five more hours of negotiation. Training and experience allowed Mike to haggle with the Chip negotiators at almost a subconscious level—he realized for the first time just how deep the Trader training had gone in him. At the same time, his forebrain remained preoccupied with the mystery of the out-of-date power systems.

  The double effort strained him. When they finished for the day, Mike was a wreck, ready for nothing more than dinner and relaxation.

  Twelve hours of haggling had left Li just as weary. She yawned her way to the dining area and ordered dinner for both of them without even asking. They slumped opposite each other at the smooth-topped table, too worn out to pretend alertness. They waited quietly for the food to appear from the hatches. Tonight the food selection was less exotic, with only beer and tea served as drinks.

  By unspoken agreement this was Li's turn to talk. Mike learned of her family's history as wealthy industrialists in Shanghai, of the multiple shocks that came with loss of family wealth, and finally of the universal draft for the Unification program.

  Her grandparents had been incredibly lucky. They were already in Japan as part of the Unification conquering forces when the war began. They had been on one of the first shuttle flights up from the Kyushu launch sites. The first years had been a desperate attempt to survive. Then there had been many more years to mourn lost friends and relatives, and to grieve over the fertile acres of the Yangtze river valley that would never welcome the return of Li Xia's family.

  "Still, there is the dream," she said at last. "My grandfather cannot bear to look down on Earth, or to see pictures of others harvesting ripe crops."

  The food and drink had slowly been restoring their energy and spirits. By the time that the final course appeared, they were talking of more personal and recent matters. Li asked if a Trader always married another Trader.

  Mike shook his head. "There's no absolute requirement, even though it usually turns out that way. For example, I could marry a Strine woman, or a Yankee woman, or even a Hiver. But then I would have to ask the Trader council to accept her as a Trader, too. If they didn't agree—which has happened a number of times—I would either have to give up being a Trader, or give up on the idea of marriage. Usually, the Trader drops the marriage idea."

  "You are not married now?" she asked. She had been looking down, running her finger around the top of her glass and collecting the little drops of condensation there. Now she raised her head and looked straight at Mike.

  He felt a little shiver in his spine. Her eyes were so dark and serious; they seemed to stare right inside him.

  "No. Not yet. But someday I hope to be. To be married, to have a family of my own . . . it makes a difference when you never knew your own mother and father. I would love to have a little daughter."

  And again he felt surprise. He was saying words to Li Xia that he had never spoken before—thoughts he had never consciously thought before.

  She was nodding gravely. "And I would give anything to have a baby son." She smiled. "Wishful thinking, maybe. But it is good for us to have dreams, no matter how unlikely."

  After a long silence she reached over and squeezed Mike's hand. "I hope that one day you will have your daughter, and I, my son. But now we must not become sad, worrying about the future. Come—you are not eating your dessert."

  She was right. Li had ordered a chilled white confection, almond-flavored, that was served in a broad, shallow bowl of frosted glass. But Mike was not sure how he was supposed to eat it—there was no spoon. He looked at it, picked it up, and looked again.

  Li noticed his confusion. "Like this, Mike."

  She raised the bowl close to her mouth, extended a long, slim, pink
tongue down into the glass, and licked at the frozen white dessert. Her big, dark eyes watched him over the rim of the cup. The operation looked perfectly easy and perfectly natural, like a graceful butterfly delicately drawing nectar from a white blossom.

  Mike tried to imitate her action. His tongue didn't seem long enough. While she watched, he pushed his face farther into the bowl and came away with almond dessert on his nose, eyebrows, chin, and forehead—anywhere except in his mouth.

  Li looked at him. She put her hand over her own mouth. First she giggled, just a little. Then she began to hoot, and after thirty seconds she collapsed. She leaned farther forward until her forehead was resting on the smooth table top and shook with helpless laughter. Mike sat motionless for a few more seconds. Then he reached forward and put his hand gently on her mop of dark hair.

  And he decided, in a moment of black thought that came from nowhere, that he hated Ando Jia-Chi and the Chipponese system of parentally assigned marriage.

  * * *

  The next day it was more negotiations; business as usual—almost. But Mike had a couple more worries to add to his list.

  The first had come at the very end of the previous evening, when they were outside her room and about to say good night. Li had reached up, placed her hand on his lips, and said: "Trader Oath?"

  Mike stopped in his tracks. "Do you understand the significance of that?"

  She nodded calmly. "I believe I do. If you accept, then the information that I give you cannot be revealed to anyone. Let me add that I am acting for others on this, as well as for myself."

  It was a difficult decision. Mike already had his hands full, but whatever the Chips wanted, it surely would not be a job done here—it would be something back on Earth.

  He nodded. "I accept. What you say to me tonight will be under Trader Oath."

  There was no discussion of price—not yet. That would depend on the nature of the task, and it would have its own negotiation.

  Li stepped close and lowered her voice. Her breath was warm on Mike's cheek. "You have had dealings with the Great Republic. We know that you are familiar with their agricultural production system; but are you also familiar with the way that their economy depends on the supply of energy from us?"

  Mike's brain did cartwheels, while his face was held rigid. Did the Chipponese already know about his mission for the Yankees?

  "Li Xia, you appear to have some misunderstanding of Trader Oath. It means that I will accept confidential information—not that I will give it."

  She smiled serenely. "Ah. Let me begin again. It is of great importance for us to know the degree of dependence of the Great Republic's economy on the continuous supply of energy from Chipponese power sources. What would happen if such energy were not available? We also wish to know how other groups on Earth would be affected should the economy of the Great Republic run into serious difficulties. We are unable to determine such information for ourselves. But you could discover it easily, upon your return to Earth. We would like to employ you for that purpose."

  Given the battered, beat-up appearance of the energy generation equipment that Mike had seen earlier in the day, Li Xia's comments had an ominous ring. Mike's own feeling was that Earth's whole economy might fall apart if the Great Republic went belly-up. All the talk of regional independence was fine, but everyone relied on everyone else. The balance of industries had been established over many years. It was workable, delicate, and might not survive a major upheaval. In a few years' time, when the Yankee fusion system came on-line, things might be different. But not today. A billion people would be affected. And that left Mike no choice.

  Prime Rule: You are a human being first, and a Trader second. He had to follow this at least a step or two farther. "I agree. Subject to future negotiation, I will attempt to do what you ask. But I need to know more. Why do you anticipate problems in continuing the energy supply to the Great Republic?"

  She stepped back and shook her head. "I cannot answer your question tonight. My task was only to seek a general agreement between us. Tomorrow, perhaps, I can take this further." She opened the door of her room, stepped inside, then turned and took his hand. "But this must be good night, Mike Asparian. The day is over. May you sleep like a child and have pleasant dreams."

  * * *

  Li Xia's wish may have been well intended, but it was not realistic. Mike's nightly report to his built-in recorder did nothing to relax him. And when he did fall asleep, it was to disturbing dreams. He was back on Earth, but it was a warring, violent Earth which had severed all ties to the Chipponese group. The globe was aflame, as the regions exhausted their weapons' arsenals on one another. Mike was in the Trader training center, looking up at the wintry, dust-obscured moon. He could see Li Xia's face there. She was starving, and forever beyond his reach.

  He woke up shivering, heart pounding, and blamed it on unfamiliar gravity. He wandered off to breakfast with little appetite. While he was eating, all the lights on the station went out for five seconds. He froze, his mouth full.

  The lights flickered back on again before he had much time to dwell on air-lock failure and the long-ago doom of Station Twelve. Another negotiation tactic? Possibly. But it was still on his mind when the morning meeting began; he asked Wang Tanaka what it meant.

  "Oh, the lighting?" The Chipponese negotiator was casual and relaxed. "Don't worry about it. Just a station reactor being removed for regular maintenance. It will be out of service for a couple of days. The remaining ones have more than enough capacity, and all critical systems have standby power sources."

  Wang Tanaka sounded unperturbed and reassuring, but Mike saw that Li Xia's face was drawn and unhappy, the eye sockets like black holes in her skull. She had wished him pleasant dreams, but her own sleep period had certainly not been peaceful. Something was eating at her. But was it business, or a personal matter?

  The second day of negotiation ground on. They made progress, but Mike noticed one oddity. No matter what offer he made to the Chip negotiators, they would not consider any deal that implied energy delivery for more than two and a half years.

  Rule 9: Locate the non-negotiables. To see how far he could push it, Mike began to hold out tempting tidbits for any contract that extended to three years, or even two and three-quarters. It was no good. Thirty months was a wall, an absolute barrier for the Chip position. Mike could offer them anything, but if it also implied a longer contract there would be polite rejection. He filed that away for future use.

  The afternoon discussions were wearying. The Chips were working on him in pairs now, and after his restless night Mike was negotiating largely on instinct. Two other factors preoccupied him: a power generator was out of commission in an already ramshackle production facility, and an increased energy demand was on its way to this station from the Strines.

  He had to take another look at the energy generation system, even if it interfered with the negotiation. A Chip reactor blowup was an "incident," a minor news item down on Earth; here on the station it would be an absolute disaster.

  At the first chance for a break he excused himself and headed for the upper wheel. Li followed at once. She asked no questions, not even when he made a close inspection of the reactors and the power transmission facility—which was certainly no part of his official role on the station.

  The situation was worse than he had thought. Radiation levels were high, there were sticky control rods, and the mechanical linkages were worn. Maintenance personnel were few and widely scattered.

  Li Xia had been watching every action. When Mike finally stopped, stared around him, and shook his head hopelessly, she took him by the hand.

  "Come," she said. She led the way upward, out past the reactors that produced power for Earth, on past the new and well-maintained equipment that gave power to the comsat network, on out to the extreme tip of the station's axle where a thin spindle jutted far beyond the uppermost wheel. They drifted up that long, straight corridor to its very end. There the spindl
e terminated in a spherical chamber about twenty yards across, with transparent panels on all sides. Photo shields cut off the most intense light, leaving a view of the Moon, half-full against a glittering star field.

  They floated side-by-side for almost a minute. Mike was stunned by the view, and it was Li who broke the silence. "Mikal Asparian, I believe that you are a good man, as well as being a good Trader. What I am going to say to you is not under Trader Oath, and I am certainly not authorized to discuss it as part of the negotiation. But I hope that I can trust you."

  Mike saw the agony on her face. "I think that you can trust me, Li Xia. Trader Oath is not necessary."

  "Thank you. I am going to tell you what from your actions you may already suspect." She took Mike by the shoulder and swiveled their bodies in free-fall so that they stood face-to-face a few inches apart. "I must beg your silence. If my betrothed, Ando Jia-Chi, knew I was saying this to you, he would disown me."

  "Then perhaps I am sorry that he will not know."

  "Ah." She looked quickly away. "I understand. But you do not. It would not be Ando alone, it would be my whole family. I would become an outcast, a nonperson. Again, I beg your silence."

  "Li, you do not need to beg me. You command my silence."

  That earned the faintest hint of a smile, a moment of sunlight across a clouded face. "Ah, I like to hear that. But you must not say it. Not now, when I need all my mind on what I must tell you. Listen closely."

  She turned Mike again to look at the Moon. "Earth people do not understand Chipponese society, any more than we understand yours. You have no idea of the issues that occupy our attention. On the Moon today there is a great divisiveness among my people. One group says that Earth is part of the past only, and that its present welfare means nothing to Chipponese people. Who cares if the Unified Empire starves, they say, or the Cap Federation freezes, or the Great Republic blows itself up with its weapons? When we were forced to move to space, who on the Earth helped us? No one. What happens to Earth now is not our business. Another group, a smaller one, cannot accept such an attitude. We are all humans, they say, and the death of any human, anywhere, diminishes all of us. I am part of this second group."