Showdown on the Planet of the Slavers

by Helena Puumala

  “Yes, I understand,” Tarig was saying. “Yaroli will be back soon. He’s attending to something, and tell Murvis not to worry. Yaroli has a back-up plan for emergencies.”

  The Granda yanked Kati back to her body, just in time.

  A big, well-dressed man was conversing with the receptionist, and the two of them were throwing glances in Murra and Kati’s direction. Kati enhanced her hearing again.

  “Yeah, they’re the ones who want to talk to Yana,” she heard the receptionist say. “She’s been calling herself Captain Katerina, a Free Trader, and the last time she was here asking about carpets, Max Lordz, an old family scion from the Nord was accompanying her. Now she’s got that—thing—with her.”

  “She never did buy a carpet, as I heard,” the man responded. “But she wormed her way into Tarig’s knotting rooms, and apparently was recognized by one of the creatures Yaroli got from Gorsh to do the knotting. Gorsh, supposedly knew who she was and said that he’d get rid of her. Last I talked to Yaroli, though, he hasn’t been able to raise Gorsh on the communicator; all he gets are various people telling him that Gorsh is not available.”

  The receptionist shrugged.

  “I can’t wait for Yana to call them in,” she said. “That—thing—gives me the creeps.”

  The man turned to study Murra who was sitting stock-still beside Kati. Kati had The Monk record the middle-aged face, and the stocky, tall body, even while she ran through a quick fantasy of tweaking the receptionist’s nose.

  “Not good enough,” subvocalized the Granda. “She should, at the very minimum, get a good whack with a birch switch on bare buttocks!”

  “They don’t have any birch switches on Wayward,” Kati objected.

  “Not a problem when you’re fantasizing,” responded The Monk.

  Suddenly Murra’s psychic being was back in his body.

  “That man is the big boss in this place,” he informed Kati, mentally. “He’s greedy. Yaroli is not the only manufacturer who pays money to keep his standing with the Council even though he’s breaking rules.”

  “Sounds like this place ought to be investigated,” subvocalized the Granda.

  “That Yana woman is not so bad, but she’s scared,” Murra continued. “She needs her job; she’s got two kids and no husband. She works hard and tries to do what the boss expects of her. She won’t help us, nor will the workers in the other two offices; they’re men, hired by the boss man, and they feel beholden to him. The young woman at the desk in this room is a fool who believes anything she is told, like that my kind are not really human. Yana knows better, but, like I said, she’s scared that she might lose her job.”

  “Sounds like maybe Yana is the only one here who deserves to keep her job,” Kati subvocalized acidly. “Well, it sounds like we have got about everything we can hope to get from here, although we’ll see Yana, still, on the off chance that she’ll drop another tid-bit we can pick up. Make sure you’re making a nodal record, Murra; The Monk is doing one for me, but a second one is insurance.”

  *****

  “So did you warn Yaroli’s people that we’re on his trail?” Kati asked Yana, as soon as she and Murra had entered the woman’s office.

  The woman’s face paled.

  “How did you know?” she asked.

  “My young friend, Murra, and I know an amazing number of things,” Kati replied. “For example, we know that your boss is a corrupt individual who takes bribes from the likes of Yaroli.”

  Yana crumpled some sheets of paper on her desk with shaking hands.

  “Why are you telling me this?” she asked.

  “Because we also know that of all the people in this Office of the Council of Merchants you are the most honest one, although frightened for your job. And you know that those boys at Yaroli’s, just like my friend here, are beautiful human beings.”

  Kati drew a breath.

  “And I intend to tell that to the authorities who will be investigating this Office. I would suggest that you cooperate with the investigators. I’m not sure how the Council Members will react to the fact that their Office has been used to encourage unethical manufacturing practises, and to accept bribes.”

  She grabbed hold of Murra’s arm, and turned on her heels. She felt, abruptly, sick to her stomach, and desperately wanted to get back out on the street. Last thing she saw, as she glanced back, was Yana staring at her with fearful eyes.

  Murra’s mind seemed to be elsewhere as they walked down the stairs to the ground floor, and out on to the street. Then he was himself again, paying attention to the streetscape around them.

  “I stayed there for a moment,” he explained to Kati, “to see if the boss man would come in to talk to Yana. He did. She told him that she had done as he had asked her to, but did not add anything about what you said to her. He just nodded, told her to keep on doing her job, and left. Like I said, he’s not a nice man.”

  *****

  Cassi groaned when she saw the sign “School for Delinquent Children” on the building across the street from Farox’s Carpet Factory. Jaqui looked at her curiously. She was surprised at the older woman’s naiveté; of course crap like that was happening. Jaqui had seen plenty of it during her short lifetime. But then, she had lived in Salamanka, not Strone, and inside Gorsh’s compound, under his rules and regulations. Mind you, what she had heard about the Old Council of the Families had painted a grim picture of the rest of the Continent Nord, too, and that mess had been cleared up only in the last couple of years.

  Cassi noted Jaqui’s expression.

  “That’s just the sort of thing I’m busy trying to end in Strone and areas around it,” she said. “It’s disheartening to see how widespread it is, especially when my influence here in the Sud is pretty well nonexistent. Suderie is considered a progressive city; well, I guess the definition of that depends on who you are, and where you are in the local pecking order. I suppose that Nabbish is right, and this isn’t so bad, considering how bad it could be; nevertheless, I wish I could do something about it.”

  “Let’s do what we can, where we can do it; in this case, about the child slaves,” Jaqui suggested. “Nobody expects you, or me, to fix all of Wayward’s problems.”

  “You’re right, of course,” Cassi replied, with a sigh. “So we’ll do what we can. Which in this case is to persuade this Farox guy to help us free those boys.”

  They walked over to the Factory building, and Jaqui, observant as she had grown to be during her years on Gorsh’s compound, noted that the building was not particularly large. Farox’s operation was not a big one.

  “Come looking for a genuine hand-knotted carpets?” asked the man in the messy office, when they entered it. He fit Kati’s description of the fellow she and Max had talked to, even to the extent of seeming tired and discouraged.

  “You guarantee that they are truly hand-knotted?” Cassi asked, stepping over to the counter to examine a scanty pile of samples.

  “I certainly do,” replied the man. “You can come in the back, and watch my workers as they knot, if you wish. I have a half-dozen of the students at the school, next door, working right now. They’ll be going back to their lessons in the afternoon, and another half-dozen will take their place. That’s how I’ve arranged things with the school; don’t want to interfere with their studies too much. They’re not going to be able to knot carpets for the rest of their lives—well, the very odd, small-grown girl with nimble fingers could—so they need their schooling.”

  “Ah, yes, don’t mind if we take a look. Not every outfit, these days allows customers to check out the knotters.”

  “Yeah, that’s true.” The shop-keeper motioned them across the cluttered, dusty floor towards a door behind the counter. “I heard the gossip about Yaroli’s. That Tarig who runs the hand-knotting operation there, made the mistake of letting some fancy Nordlander and his pet Free Trader into the back, and it turned out that the Free Trader Captain knew one of the child knotters, and disturbed the work goin
g on.”

  He sounded rather pleased with the tale.

  “Now Yaroli is worried that the word will get out that he rented those kids from some infamous slave-trader on Continent Nord, and he won’t let anyone in the back. He claims that the children aren’t human, anyway; apparently they’re kind of odd-looking, all of them.”

  “What?” Jaqui couldn’t stop herself. “Not human?”

  “Weird-looking faces, so I was told. Never got to see them, though I went to the Council of Manufacturers Office to complain that Yaroli was undercutting my prices. Murvis, there, wouldn’t do anything for me, but then, he’s a shady operator, in my opinion.

  “Things have gotten better for me in the last short while, though. Customers are coming back to me, telling me that at least I run a fair operation, even if my prices are higher than Yaroli’s. I’ve gotten a number of new orders in the last days, so I’ve been able to put my students back to work.”

  Considering the mess in the front office, the orderliness of the workroom came as bit of a shock to the observers. Jaqui suspected that the children doing the knotting also took care of sweeping the floor, and perhaps even of some of the dusting. But the high windows, through which the summer sunlight poured in had to have been washed by an adult, she figured, so Farox must have had some kind of a stake in the cleaning.

  These children were somewhat older than the ones Gorsh had made a habit of snatching. Some of them looked up from their work at the three as they entered, a couple of them grinned at Cassi and Jaqui before returning their attention to the knotting.

  “They don’t mind the work?” Cassi asked.

  “We get paid,” piped up one boy, the oldest of the six, Jaqui guessed, but with slim, long-fingered hands. “And since we get our food and board at the school, we get to spend the money. Why would we mind?”

  “And the hours aren’t that long,” their employer added. “I’m not stupid enough to expect kids to work endless hours. I have children of my own, and I know how it goes. I had them working here, too, when they were younger, and my wife always told me to not make them work for too long, and to pay them a little bit. And you know what? My kids didn’t mind the work any more than these ones do. People of all ages just don’t want to be exploited, you know?”

  “Isn’t that the truth.”

  Cassi turned to return to the office. She really would rather have stayed in the workroom, since it was the cleaner place, but that was hardly fair to the young workers. They were probably paid by the piece, and had the right to earn their money undisturbed.

  “Mr. Farox,” she said when they had returned into the messy office, “you are Mr. Farox, right?”

  At the man’s nod, she continued:

  “We’re not here, actually, to make a purchase, but to ask for your help in putting an end to Yaroli’s exploitive business.”

  “You’re do-gooders, then?” Farox asked with a laugh. “Do-gooders who are actually out to accomplish some real good, and not just annoy legitimate businessmen?”

  “I don’t really know about that,” Cassi answered. “I suppose that you have already figured out that we’re Nordlanders?”

  Again, Farox responded with a nod.

  “Well, we know that those children knotting at Yaroli’s are slaves, snatched away from their home world by a Nordlander Slave Trader named Gorsh, who has met his come-uppance, and, possibly, his end.”

  Cassi went on to explain that a group from the Continent Nord had come down to Sud, because they knew that Gorsh had rented the slave children to Yaroli, and they wanted to free them. However, they were not certain what the situation in Suderie was; what was the attitude of people to child labour, especially child slave labour. So they had split up to explore different avenues of action.

  “Jaqui and I,” Cassi ended, “We’re to find out if the manufacturers who were the closest competitors to Yaroli would be willing to object to his methods. You seem to be the carpet-maker most affected by his actions, so we thought you might be willing to endorse our efforts, perhaps help us set up a public demonstration denouncing his methods.”

  “I certainly wouldn’t mind seeing Yaroli’s hand-knotting operation come to an end,” said Farox.

  He drummed his fingers on the counter he was leaning against.

  “Like I said, some of my customers have drifted back, putting in orders which we are filling right now. It’s possible that word of Yaroli’s methods has already spread, and not everybody approves of them.

  “I’m pretty certain that Yaroli has paid bribes to a few strategic people to overlook his unorthodox labour force. At least, when I complained about him to the Office of the Council of Manufacturers, I received no satisfaction, only promises that they would look into things.”

  “What about the Municipal Authorities?” Cassi asked. “Did you try approaching them with your complaints?”

  “Nah. Figured that if he had bribed the Council of Manufacturers, he would also have taken care of the strategic City people.

  “If you’re thinking of interfering with Yaroli’s profits by making a public scandal of his work force, I can put you in touch with a handful of do-gooders, who certainly will know others of their kind. It would be good, in fact, to encourage them to use their talents for creating a ruckus in a manner that even I can agree is positive.”

  He grinned, and crossed over to a cupboard filled with dusty stacks of paper. He rooted among the stacks for a while; then returned with a couple of sheets filled with names and addresses.

  “If you have the leisure to contact these people,” he said, “I’m sure you’ll find that the most enthusiastic of them will have organized themselves around you in no time.”

  *****

  Mikal had no trouble at all recognizing the broad sweep of the building that was the headquarters of Yaroli’s Fine Carpets, when he reached the appropriate tram stop, from the briefing Kati had given him. Before exiting the tram-car, he pulled up the hood of his tunic to hide the Borhquan wedge of hair. He had decided that there was no good reason to announce his foreignness; it would be better if Yaroli’s people assumed that the stranger come to ask after hand-knotted rugs was a well-heeled resident of the Continent Nord, rather than from off-planet.

  He found himself wondering how much information he could pick up simply by casting his recently acquired ESP-powers about the factory. That sort of thing, he had come to realize, could, sometimes, work remarkably well, especially if there were planetary spirits around to help. At other times, his ESP could seem almost useless; as Murra had explained to him during the tutoring sessions in the Citadel cellar, if a person was determined to keep secrets, he could do so. It took energy for a human to block mental access, but it could be done. Especially since most ESPers believed in the sanctity of personal privacy, and were unwilling to invade it, other than under exceptional circumstances.

  Everyone else who exited the tram at the stop were headed elsewhere, so Mikal felt that he could afford to be a bit of a sleep-walker, and allow his mind to wander through the low building, leaving only his node to mind his physical body. It would quickly alert him if his full presence was needed, he knew.

  Most of the ground level of the factory was filled with machines and the operators who ran them. Only a portion, consisting of a series of small rooms, had been turned into the hand-knotting operation; each room held three or four small boys who were busy knotting rugs. He sensed no dissatisfaction in the boys—Mikal was not probing to any depth, however—only sadness which tore at his heart. He marvelled that the adults overseeing the work seemed completely unaware of it.

  He wondered which of the boys was the one who had recognized Kati from Gorsh’s slave ship, but did not try to find out. Right now, the lad’s identity was not important.

  There was something else about the place that disturbed him, and for a few steps he tried to focus on it. It had something to do with the cellar underneath a portion of the building; what the heck did a broad factory building do with a c
ellar? Besides which, he thought wryly, cellars had been bad news lately.

  His mind slipped into this one; it was under the part given over to the hand-knotting. The place was the living quarters for the boys, he realized with a shock—Yaroli was keeping his labour force of child chattels sleeping on pallets in a basement! Had the man no shame?

  “Okay,” he muttered to himself at the building’s entrance, “Time to change gears. A little flirtation coming up.”

  His opening the door into the front office set off chimes somewhere in the room. Two young women looked up from their tasks behind the counter which bisected the room; they were the same two who had been working the day Kati and Max had visited. Kati had downloaded the name of one of them from The Monk’s copious memory: Taya.

  “Taya seemed to be the less senior one,” Kati had explained. “It was the other one, the one whose name we didn’t get, who went to ask Tarig if we could see the operations of the hand-knotting division; we got Taya’s name because the other one mentioned it when she asked her to attend to us while she was gone. Taya showed us the carpet samples which we looked at.”

  Yaroli liked to hire comely young women to grace his front office, apparently. Kati had not mentioned that fact, but then, she would have merely shrugged, and ignored it. Flirting with attractive women was always a pleasure, Mikal admitted; however, beauty in his targets could make his job more difficult. He had learned a long time ago that it was easier to impress an average-looking woman than her exquisite counterpart. A beautiful woman expected to be fawned over, whereas sincere attention paid to her less spectacular sister was likely to get a pleased reaction. It was not fair, but there it was, and an Agent learned the facts, and used them to his advantage.

  This time it looked like he might have to work hard; at first glance neither of the two beauties seemed in the least impressed by him. Well, he did not have the classic Waywardian looks; in fact, even with his Borhquan wedge hidden, he might look a little weird to the two young women, assuming that they had not travelled widely, even on their own home planet, which was not all black hair and olive skin, although the majority of the people did display that particular colouring.