in0 (45 page)

“What should we speak about?”
Mark asked, trying not to let the big blue alien’s appearance intimidate him.

“Matters of mutual value. I would adjourn to yonder refreshment area if you are willing to
speak.”

“Very well. I have a few minutes to spare before I must return to my ship. Let us speak of that
which you wish.”

Mark found himself led to a large rectangular compartment where Voldar’ik gained sustenance from their bottle fruit. They did so by placing the fruit in their navel orifices and sucking on them until the skins were deflated husks. The Voldar’ik kept their feeding areas as dark as humans kept their expensive restaurants, possibly for similar reasons. The other members of their shore party had attended several

“dinners” with potential Voldar’ik clients. He had stayed in their quarters and surfed the aliens’

information net.

When the blue alien anchored his feet to the deck in front of one of the pedestals on which bottle fruit were placed before consumption, Mark followed suit. The stranger made a gesture that Mark did not understand and said,
“It is a shame that these tripod-sitters have nothing for us to eat or drink, or
else I would purchase you a libation.”

Mark gestured to his microgravity canteen.
“I carry my own libation.”

A clear bottle appeared in the alien’s hand from his belt pouch.
“As do I. Shall we drink to one
another’s health and prosperity?”

Mark smiled at the toast so close to the traditional “Live long and prosper.” Had the situation been different, he would have liked to travel the Sovereignty to see how widespread was the custom of drinking together. His limited experience -- first Sar-Say and now this blue fellow -- indicated that it was nearly universal among thinking beings.

“My time is short,”
Mark said after sipping water from the canteen. “
What can I do for you?”

“I understand that you people come from the other side of Civilization.”

“You understand correctly.”

“I am a trader like yourself. I would discuss an exchange of commercial information for our
mutual benefit.”

“What sort of information?”

“The local systems in which your people have sold goods, lists of that which sells best in each
system, customs that help the exchange of value between sapient beings. I will, of course, supply
you with what information I possess.”

“Yes, that would be good,”
Mark answered. In reality, of course, humanity had no such information to share. This being had no way of knowing that, of course. In addition, he presented them with another avenue for gaining information about the Sovereignty. If itinerate traders here were anything like those at home, they probably did not report everything they knew to the overlords.
“Perhaps we can come to an
arrangement. You can begin by telling me what sort of being you are. I am afraid that I don’t
recognize your type.”

The blue being took another long drink of whatever it was that he had in his flask. A whiff convinced Mark that it was not water. The blue alien looked at Mark with ruby-rid eyes and said,
“You must be
from a distant system indeed not to recognize a Taff trader when you see one.”

#

Mark blinked and waited for the sudden buzzing in his ears to dissipate. The danger signals in his brain had begun ringing at the alien’s revelation. He thought furiously about how to ask the question that most needed answering. Luckily, his past two weeks of practiced indirection served him in good stead.

When he spoke, it was with the caution of someone who has discovered that he has been strolling through a minefield for some indeterminate period.

“You are a Taff? I have heard of your kind, of course. I was under the impression that you looked
different. Is there another species that uses the same verbal label to describe itself?”

“I know of none. We Taff travel all over civilization to trade, so I suspect that I would have heard
of it if it existed. What did you think we Taff looked like?”

“It’s not important. I am happy to meet you now. Tell me more about this deal between us.”

“It is our custom to get to know those with whom we would do business before beginning
negotiations. Do you have the same custom?”

“We do.”

“Then perhaps you will tell me something of this Shangri-La system that you inhabit, and why I
have never heard of it.”

“Certainly. However, my people do not like to brag about their accomplishments before giving
their guests a chance to extol their own virtues.”

The blue Taff emitted a sound like a snort. He followed it with,
“Looking to take my measure first, are
you? That is acceptable. Let me tell you about my visit to…”

The alien proved garrulous. He told of his own exploits in a system named “Srenthon,” if Mark heard him right. He was a trader who gloried in obtaining “value” from merchandise that another species considered nearly worthless. His story reminded Mark of the sort of tale one traveling salesman would tell another.

When he was finished, Mark responded with a story of his own, largely fictional, about how his ship had found itself hopping from stargate to stargate in search of a bargain. The only system he mentioned by name was Vith, which was from where the
Ruptured Whale
had been sailing when the Broan Avenger had jumped it.

Somehow, Effril got him to talking about their arrival aboard Zal’trel station. Mark did not think he had been steered onto the subject, but the Taff had the air of someone who was expert at such things. The two of them each drank out of their mutual canteens, and if Effril knew that Mark was drinking water, he showed no signs.

Soon Mark found himself relating their first meeting with Zha, and how the Voldar’ik greeter had tried to charge them one-twelfth of their cargo as a port fee. This brought another fit of snorting from the trader.

“These Voldar’ik know value when they smell it,”
Effril agreed.
“What did the master trader do?”

“He told Zha to bring back the ferry so that we could return to our ship and leave this wicked
place.”

“Good for him. We traders must resist these extortionists wherever we find them. Then what
happened?”

“Then we made an offering to the local Broan master and discovered that there are none such on
Klys’kra’t at the moment.”

The snorting noise came again, this time louder and longer. Effril finished by saying,
“It would be a poor
overlord indeed who had this miserable pile of excrement as his sole possession. No offense
intended to our hosts or to you, honorable Mark Rykand.”

“Why would I take offense at your description of Klys’kra’t?”

“My impression is that your own world is not very central to Civilization. I would say that
Shangri-La also possesses but a single stargate and that you do not get many visitors.”

“What makes you think that?”

“The fact that my own species judges your world to be unworthy for trading … no offense.

However, if you had anything of value, you would have seen my kind before now. Also, if you
were a major world, you would not have had to send an expedition to the opposite end of
Civilization to look for species with which to exchange value.”

“I admit that we are small,”
Mark said, relieved at the trader’s misconception.
“However, we are
growing.”

“I will wager that you do not have an overlord of your own in residence.”

“That is also true. In fact, I am young and I have never seen a Broa.”

“Count yourself lucky, cub.”

“You have experience dealing with them?”

“More than any sane trader would like.”

“How are they to deal with?”

“They like their privacy. They also do not bargain. They will tell you what value they are willing
to give for your goods, and you accept their offer. Sometimes you come out ahead, sometimes
behind. But you do not bargain, not if you want your ship left in one piece.”

Mark took a deep breath and asked the question that he had been leading up to for much of the past half-hour.
“What do they look like? I hear they are ferocious beings who tower over ordinary
species.”

“Not at all,”
Effril said.
“In fact, they are only half my size. One should not let size influence one
when dealing with the Broa, however. When they are around, there is no disputing who is the
more powerful.”

“I believe that I must be the victim of my brood mates. Please describe a Broa so that I will know
an overlord if I see one.”

“You will know. Trust me. As for their appearance, as I said: They are small beings, usually brown
in color and covered with fur. They look a great deal like you, but smaller and with hands like
mine -- that is, six appendages rather then your five. Their ears are smaller than yours, and
protrude more toward the front. They have a muzzle of sorts, with rows of breathing holes along
each side. It is their eyes that one notices when dealing with them. They are yellow…”

Sar-Say was frightened. He hadn’t been this alarmed since that long ago day when an oversize biped floated into his compartment aboard this very ship and kidnapped him to a star beyond the edge of Civilization. Something had gone terribly wrong on the Voldar’ik station and he knew not what. It was the not knowing that gnawed at his brain. If only they would tell him what had happened, he would meet his fate with some degree of equanimity. As things stood, the only thing that stopped him from rolling into a ball and retreating from reality was that his captors were watching him via their holo-cameras.

Therefore, instead of withdrawing into himself, he hung from the overhead and turned his back to the camera as he contemplated the blank wall of his prison.

Things had been going so well! The humans used the hints he had provided to seek out Civilization. True, they found a system other than the one he had intended, but they had returned him to his home, which was the point of the exercise. He assisted them to make contact with the species in this system and for fourteen sleep periods, matters seemed to be progressing satisfactorily. Then, without warning, something had gone awry!

First came word over the command circuit that the shore party was returning to the ship. There were no explanations, no elaboration. One moment the universe had been in its place, the next, Captain Landon issued the terse announcement, “We are coming home. Make all preparations for departure.”

Sar-Say’s kind was susceptible to heart problems and he thought one or both of his hearts would stop when he heard those words. Then his monitoring circuit had gone dead and he found himself totally isolated. His cabin aboard the
Hraal
(in his mind, he still called the ship by its original name) did not even have a viewport to let him look outside. For more than four human hours, no one answered his calls, nor had the guard responded when he pounded on the hatch.

Two hours earlier, there were the hull-borne sounds of a ship docking. A few minutes later, acceleration alarms sounded, and weight returned. His weight built steadily to one-quarter of a standard human gravity as the normal space generators came online. It had been that way for nearly two hours now.

The continuous thrust told him all he needed to know about the humans’ intentions. They were en route to their compatriots in the Oort cloud. Had they merely been changing their parking orbit, thrust would have lasted but a few seconds. Even half an hour at this level of acceleration was sufficient to reach local Orpheus-escape velocity. If they were headed back toward the stargate, they were taking a high speed, hyperbolic orbit to get there.

For the hundredth time since that last terrible message reached his ears, he considered what could possibly have happened. His plan had seemed to be working flawlessly. The way the humans responded to him on a personal level proved that he had correctly grasped their psychology. He had even formed friendships with individual humans like Lisa. She kept him sane during the long months of captivity. That one could have alien friends was a new thought for Sar-Say. That he actually liked humans was a revelation. In many ways, they were an admirable species. Too bad about their foibles, but then, they would not be human without them.

Shortly after his captivity began, he had concluded that the best route to freedom lay in being friendly and helpful to his captors. He had been that and more. Had he not helped them camouflage their ships so that they would feel secure while penetrating deeply into Civilization? Had he not assisted them during their contact with the Voldar’ik? Through these services, he felt sure that they would eventually relent and allow him to join their shore party, which was the whole object of this nearly two-year-long exercise in diplomacy. He had been so close!

Now, however, his careful plans were in shambles. The humans were leaving Klys’kra’t at a speed that suggested they would never return. If only they would tell him what had gone wrong, perhaps he could help them put it right.

There was one worst-case scenario that fit all the known facts, a possibility that he did not like to think about, but which he faced squarely. That was the prospect that the humans had learned his carefully guarded secret. As he pondered the ultimate disaster, Sar-Say was surprised by an unbidden thought that floated up from his subconscious.

It was not very often such a thing happened to one of his kind. The thought was so surprising that he took a moment to consider its implications. There was a strategy - no, a ploy of desperation - that just might work if his worst fears were confirmed. The probability of success was low. In fact, his chances of carrying the day in the coming battle were about the same as winning one of the government-sponsored gambling pools of which the benighted bipeds were so fond. Still, there was a chance for victory if he took action and no chance if he did nothing. Merely thinking about the risk made him lightheaded. It would be the biggest gamble he had ever taken. Success would bring riches and power. Failure might cost him his life.