Trader's World

by Charles Sheffield

  "And so am I, although I am not Chipponese. Li, take comfort. You are not the only people with these worries. The Cap Federation is divided over the same question. We are all human."

  She nodded absently and was silent again, staring at the blind white disk of the Moon. Mike felt impatient, but he did not let it show. She must be allowed to take her time. She was feeling her way into this, looking for the strength to say something against the wishes of her family, fiancé, friends, and nation.

  "The Chipponese space systems provide the base load energy for the whole world," she went on at last. "That has been so for a generation, and there is a stability that everyone cherishes. But what would happen if this supply ceased? What if Yankee food products no longer were traded for our energy, or if the Chills no longer provided their microelectronics to other regions?"

  Mike took a deep breath and cursed to himself. At this point he should be telling Li Xia of the Yankee move to energy independence, but he was bound to silence by Trader Oath to the clients in the Great Republic. All he could do was nod his head.

  "It would be chaos," she continued. "Political chaos, and then perhaps the old curses of war, starvation, and sickness. There are people who do not worry about this. For their own group interests, they are willing to destroy stability. Unless everyone is warned of their plans, now . . ."

  She did know. She must know. She was talking of Old-Billy's ideas for energy independence.

  "If you already know so much—" Mike began. He was interrupted by an eerie wail, resonating through the walls of the chamber. "What the devil is that?"

  Li turned her head to look back along the corridor. "Energy demand overload," she said. Her voice was unconcerned. "The siren means that the shields will be going up as an extra safety measure. We should head back at once."

  Mike looked at his watch. If the Strines were beginning their increased energy drain on the system, they were a couple of hours early. And if this were some other, unpredicted call for energy, then when the Strines added their own load to it . . .

  "Li Xia." He spoke rapidly. "Call down to the main wheel control center from here—you can do that, can't you? Tell them that there will be a doubling of Strine energy demand, very soon, and they have to be ready for it. Do it now. Then we can head back ourselves."

  She didn't take even a moment to ask or argue. While she was at the message console, Mike had time for his own thoughts. Good-bye, one client. Old-Billy Waters would have every right to be angry. Mike was ruining the very test that he had been sent up to space to observe.

  Li took longer than he had expected to complete her message. She got through easily enough, but she seemed to have a credibility problem. She had to say the same thing several times to different people before she finally put the communications unit back onto its base.

  "Foolish bureaucrats," she said. "They seemed more interested to find out how I knew, than to act on the information. Quickly now. We should not have waited."

  With Li leading the way they skimmed back down the long tunnel toward the main wheel. When they were less than halfway there, Li caught a handhold and waited for Mike to reach her. She pointed at the tunnel wall, turned, grabbed Mike, and began to tow him back the way that they had come.

  Mike had caught one glimpse of the ambient radiation level shown on the wall monitor, and he needed no persuasion. Something in the energy shielding facility was not doing its job; the tunnel was a radiation hot spot.

  He looked at the flux monitor when they arrived in the end chamber. The digital display was flickering steadily to a higher and higher total dose. He pointed it out to Li. "In here, also. What now?"

  "Let me find out." Again she took the communicator while Mike looked all around the chamber. There were no additional radiation shields that could be placed in position, and no other ways back to the main wheels. If the failure were a bad one, they would fry.

  Li again replaced the communicator and floated across to him. "Not too bad," she said. "A partial failure of one reactor. The engineers used manual overrides and have cut power back to minimal supply levels. You were quite right about the energy demand, just after we warned them there was a doubling of Strine energy requests. That has been manually shunted off to three other stations. They can handle it."

  "What about the situation here?"

  "There will be no need to evacuate the wheels. But all personnel will move to the base of the lowest wheel for maximum shielding."

  That was good news—to everyone except Mike and Li Xia.

  "What about us? We can't get to the lower wheel. The tunnel is hot, and there are no more shields here. And the wall monitor agrees with my own sensor—there's an increasing flux of hard gammas."

  "We leave," Li said calmly. "As soon as we can." She went over to a wall cupboard, opened it, and pulled out two suits.

  "You mean we make a space-walk." Mike did not like the sound of that, whatever the incentive.

  "No. We take the lifeboat." She was holding one suit and looking at it critically. "There may be a problem here. These suits were made for someone smaller than you. You had better remove your clothing."

  It was no time for argument. She watched Mike strip to the skin, then looked dubiously at the suit. "It will still be a tight fit. Come on, I will help you. You will feel uncomfortable, but it will be for only a few minutes."

  By a combined effort they managed to stuff Mike in and zip him up. The suit was like a tight corset at his midriff. He swore that when this was over he would lose twenty pounds. Li slipped easily into her own suit, motioned Mike to follow, and moved to a door in the end chamber. It was not until they were through it that Mike realized it led to an air lock.

  Li hadn't lied to him—not in her terms. They were not about to take a space-walk. But they did have to make a space hop, a short one, between the station and the lifeboat entry lock. Those fifteen yards felt to Mike like a couple of light-years. As the air puffed out he went floating helplessly, head toward Earth, staring along the length of the great wheeled station. Soon he was drifting outward, away into nothingness, with no control over his movements. If Li Xia was unable to help him . . .

  She grabbed him, stuffed him into the lifeboat, and began checking the atmosphere before he could turn right-side-up. She opened the face unit of her own suit and gestured to Mike to do the same. At once she went to the ship's communicator.

  Mike had left his translator back in his clothes. Now he had no idea what Li was talking about. The comments seemed to come mostly from station personnel at the other end. Suddenly Li gasped and began to strip off her whole suit. She gestured urgently to Mike to do the same. As soon as he was out of it she took them and dumped them into the airlock. Then she ran the lifeboat's radiation monitor over both their bodies. It chattered excitedly.

  "Very hot," she said. Her face was grim. "Much more radiation in the tunnel than we expected." She went again to the communicator for another, longer conversation. It ended abruptly when Li put the instrument down while the people at the other end were still talking. All the life had vanished from her face.

  "It's no good," she said. "We received a very high dose, beyond anything that can be handled on the stations of the Geosynch Ring. Mike." She moved to stand next to him, then collapsed into his arms. "Oh, Mike. They can do nothing for us. I am sorry. It was all my fault that we were in the station end chamber."

  A death sentence for Li Xia. But not perhaps for Mike? That thought provided him with no comfort. "Are you sure that nothing can be done? Your people are the experts on radiation overdose. If anyone can treat us, they can."

  "If we could get to the primary Chipponese decontamination center—that is the place with the best equipment and the most experience. But it is too far away. We would die on the way there."

  "Where is it?" Mike was grappling with his new idea. She gestured out of the lifeboat window. "On the Moon. I have already asked about the minimum-time trajectory."

  "How long would it take?"
r />   "Too long. Over three days."

  Mike was staring around the inside of the lifeboat. "Doesn't this ship have medical facilities of its own?"

  "Certainly. Over there. Quite good equipment, but it is intended only for standard problems, not radiation overdose."

  "That may not matter. It can handle blood transfusions. What's your blood type?"

  "Type O, Rh positive."

  "Perfect. So is mine. Go ahead and make the arrangements for a minimum time transit to the Lunar treatment center."

  "What are you doing?" She could see Mike already busy at the robodoc.

  "Giving us both a chance. We're going to have blood transfusions—in fact, we're going to share blood."

  "That will not help!"

  "It will." Mike sounded far more positive than he felt. "You have never heard of the Dulcinel Protocol, but it protects against radiation overdose. I never had a full treatment, but I was partly exposed to it. If you share my blood circulation, you'll get some benefit, too."

  "But to minimize radiation effects, we are supposed to be sedated."

  "Fine. We will be." Mike was programming the robodoc as they spoke. "What I'm doing can proceed just as well if we are unconscious. Call the treatment center, tell them we're on our way."

  Li was at the communicators. "For arrival in three days," she said. "Very well." There was another rapid exchange of Chipponese. "I will set up the ship for lunar approach and landing under automatic control, in case we are . . . not able to handle the landing ourselves."

  And if the spacecraft control system were no more reliable than the station's power production controls . . . It was not the best time for such a thought. Mike glanced around him. The robodoc had now been programmed. Spray injectors were in position, transparent tubing for blood transfer was coiled and ready, and all communications were completed. Mike took Li by the hand and led her across to the two bunks. They strapped in. He held out one arm for the intravenous catheter, and she did the same.

  "What else were they telling you?" he asked. "You seemed to cut them off before they finished talking."

  "I did." She managed to find her smile again. "It was nothing of importance—now. They wanted to know what you and I were doing out in the chamber at the end of the station. I chose not to tell them; but I know what they were thinking. I am sorry that it was not true, Mike. If this does not work, and we do not live to see the Moon, I want you to know something. Something very important to me."

  "What—" Mike began hoarsely. He was straining to hear her words when the spray injection hit. His last waking moment saw Li Xia smiling wistfully across to him while the injector moved over to her thin, fragile forearm.

  * * *

  He awoke slowly, with nausea, a sore throat, and aching joints. Li was still in her bunk, naked and unconscious. After a few confused moments Mike summoned the energy to loosen his strap supports and look around.

  The robodoc had apparently decided that it could do no more for them. It had retreated into its recess. The catheters were coiled away neatly, with no sign that they had been used except for the tiny wound in the bend of Mike's elbow.

  They were alive! They had made it.

  Or had they? Not to the Moon, that was for sure. They were still in free-fall.

  Mike went across to the medical facility and put his hand into the robodoc's wrist collar. The unit buzzed and whined, but that was all. Apparently there was nothing more to be done for them until they reached the decontamination hospital.

  On the other bunk Li was opening her eyes. Mike released her from the straps and floated her gently over to the med unit. He placed her bony wrist into the collar. The unit buzzed again, but it offered no treatment, not even nutrients. Li was far too thin, in Mike's judgment, and would be better if she could add forty pounds, but for a Luna-dweller she was apparently neither frail nor undernourished.

  He looked out of the side port and saw nothing but open space.

  Li was wide awake and watching him. "Not the Moon."

  "No." Her voice was husky; like Mike she was feeling the effects of radiation poisoning.

  "So I guess we have more problems."

  She coughed and cleared her throat. "Not the sort that you mean. We will make Lunar landfall in less than half an hour."

  "I thought we were supposed to wake up in the treatment center."

  "Those were my instructions." She sounded tense as well as hoarse. "Specific instructions—with my father's and grandmother's authority added to the message. You were supposed to be unconscious until we were inside the center. As I told you before, I am disobeying orders."

  From her tone Mike could guess the price of that disobedience. "Why?"

  "So that you can see something that has been our best-kept secret. The accident on the station was bad luck, but it gives you a unique opportunity. After that—" She shook her head slowly. "Whatever they do to me, there can be no turning back."

  She seated herself at the control console, adjusting the attitude gyros so that the ship turned slowly in space.

  "Back at the station I asked a question," she went on. "What would happen if the Yankees and Chipponese stopped trading food for energy? You saw the condition of the energy generators, but perhaps you thought it was no more than a temporary problem. That is not the case. Look out of the port."

  Swimming into view was the broad face of the Moon. They were approaching it, and soon they were so close that Mike felt they were heading for collision. They leveled out maybe ten miles above the surface, close enough to see every detail of the gray, pock-marked wilderness. He scanned for signs of Chipponese settlements. They were usually underground, but here and there he saw linear patterns of trails leading out from some central point—mines, or drill holes tapping trapped bodies of ancient ice and ammonia.

  It was something he had seen a dozen times in Trader briefings, and it was no more appealing now than it had ever been. He marveled again at the patience and persistence of the Chips, driven away from Earth and forced to rebuild their society in the barren rock of Luna, or out in open space.

  The ship was orbiting the Moon now, swinging around toward Farside. But there was no change in the terrain, only more wastes of dust and rock. He turned back to Li.

  "What do you want me to look at?"

  "Keep looking. Just keep looking."

  The first hint was a subtle change in the color of the light. Instead of the cold, gray-white spectrum of the lunar surface there was a growing hint of richer, brighter tone.

  And then it came.

  Mike was gazing down on a vast, geometric pattern. Endless miles of Farside lunar plain carried a regular, rectangular grid, and within each grid cell, beneath the soft blue-gray sheen of a continuous protective canopy, Mike saw the bright green of growing plants.

  Fields. The ship swept on over the surface, mile after mile after mile, and the pattern continued.

  "First harvest in four months," Li whispered. "Not a full harvest. There are still things that must be done."

  "It's impossible."

  "No. It is very difficult. Two generations' work—to prepare the surface, to borrow ideas from the Strines and modify their plant genetics, to drill for water, to add the protective canopy."

  Mike was stunned. The fields went on forever, marching over the horizon. "But the labor needed—and the resources! How could you ever do it?"

  "That was the worst problem. When our numbers went down from two billion to four million, there could be no army of patient workers bent over to tend every plant. Our fields are tended by machines, with Chill robot circuits to control them. No one regrets that change."

  Mike was still reeling mentally, trying to grasp the scope of what he was seeing. "Li, the amount of work, the sheer size of this—why do it? The Great Republic can supply all the food you need, and with a tenth of the effort."

  "Ah, they can indeed. But still you do not understand us. It is more than food, it is our whole existence. My people have lived close
to the land for seven thousand years. We have worked it, and lived on it, and loved it, and drawn our strength from the growing crops. How could we change just because we were driven away from Earth? How could we abandon the land? This work has used our best resources for a generation; our best minds, our best equipment. Everything connected with Earth has carried second priority. And now we are almost finished. In three more years we will be in full production. We will be self-sufficient in food—at last!"

  And then, at those final words, the excitement drained from her face. For a few minutes pride had overwhelmed everything else, but the effort of speech had tired her and now she was back in the present.

  "Self-sufficient," she repeated. "And then for some of us there is a new question that must be asked: what will happen to Earth? Are we destroying Earth, to make a garden of the Moon? That must not be permitted. That is why I called on you, under Trader Oath, to tell us what will happen to the Great Republic when we have our own food supply, when they have nothing to offer us in exchange for energy. What will happen?"

  Mike had the words to comfort her, the news that the Yankees were close to the point of energy sufficiency. But that information had been given to him under Trader Oath.

  They sat in silence for several minutes while the Moon's face skimmed past. Soon the ship's attitude would have to be changed to prepare for landing, and Li would have to take action.

  Mike was not sure she could do it. She sat with head bowed, holding the control console for support. He took her arm and turned her to face him. The wound where the catheter had been inserted stood out on her thin arm.

  She followed his look. "We share blood, Mikal Asparian. Your strength saved my foolish life. And how do I reward you?"