Shaman (43 page)

The woman straightened, her facial hair standing out from her cheeks and muzzle and her crown of dark sagittal hair rippling—the Arkuit equivalent of a scowl. She started to open her mouth, but the storekeeper, whom Yoshi could just see past the woman's shoulder, uttered a rasping cough.

The woman glanced at him, her eyes narrowing.

“How pleasing to have you admire my wares,” he said, bowing slightly.

Yoshi took the next step. She reached out and brushed her fingers along the fringe of gleaming feathers. “Lovely!”

The woman made a noise that reminded Yoshi of her aunt Matsu's cat, Warble, hocking up a fur ball, and thrust the cape into her hands.

“I am satisfied,” she said gruffly, threw the storekeeper a last look and slipped past Yoshi into the street.

Yoahi raised her eyes to the storekeeper who smiled broadly. Then she crossed to his work counter and deposited the cape there.

“Here,” Yoshi said, “when woman comes back in, please return this. I can't take it.”

“But it is our way.”

“It is our way to return what is precious to another.” She hesitated. “Did you make cape?”

He exhaled a chuff of air. A laugh? “No. Neighbor make in trade for cloth, jewelry and such.”

Yoshi thanked him and scooted out the door and down the street.

What had possessed her to try that little bit of play-acting? She knew what it was—the same thing that had caused the Arkuit woman to clutch her cape: instinct. The implications made her dizzy.

o0o

“What are you saying, Yoshi?” Rhys asked when she'd spilled out her tale of the woman and the cape.

“The behavior of the children earlier bothered me because it hinted that the ‘what's mine is yours' philosophy was not ingrained. In children, that's not so meaningful perhaps, but in an adult.....The woman in the store instinctively protected her property when I admired it. The storekeeper had to remind her that giving was ‘their way.' I don't believe it is their way, Rhys. I think they're pretending it is for some reason. They're more sophisticated than they seem.”

Rhys turned to gaze down the main avenue of the village toward the great, out-of-place hall—a trade hall, he now knew. He surveyed their surroundings, fitting what the new information into the “lay of the land,” seeing how it meshed with everything else they'd observed—the abandoned smelters, the borrowed technologies, the way everything was calculated to be the easiest it could be...

“They use the crystals to cut the ore, but they don't build the machines that do the cutting.”

Yoshi uttered a soft sound. “They don't make the looms either. Another village makes them and when they break, someone from that village comes over to fix them. And they don't make their own clothes. I think we're looking at a more complex trading model than any of us suspected.”

Rhys gave a mirthless chuckle. “Asleep at the switch. I was so fixed on proving that they need the crystals and ore...”

“Do they?”

“Aye, they use the two in tandem. In fact, the villagers are pretty clear that more roesel would be beneficial, yet their leaders practically yawn when the subject comes up.”

He told Yoshi about the jeweler with his clever cutting tool forged in the belly of the sleeping mountain. As the words left his mouth, his eyes met hers and he knew that they were having the same thought: going into the body of a sleeping deity to “steal fire” was an awfully gutsy behavior for a supposedly goddess-fearing gentleman. Yet, at least one of the village elders knew about the behavior and thought nothing of it.

“Isvyerg,” said Yoshi. “When I asked what Isvyerg meant, Rasimet pointed at a yak.”

“A what?” asked Rick.

“Draft animal.” She pointed, herself, to one of the shaggy creatures tethered before the bake shop. “When the whole sacredness issue came up, I just assumed... well, some cultures worship animals. But I don't think this is one of them. The children were fighting over an effigy of one of the yaks. I just thought of it as an icon or idol, but I think Ivan had it right. He called it a ‘toy.' And if I'd been paying attention, I would have realized that that's the way the kids were treating it—like a toy.”

“I'm willing to bet this whole mountain spirit thing is fabricated,” murmured Rhys. He chuckled and shook his head. “Here I was concentrating so hard on protecting the natives from Tanaka that it never occurred to me I might have to protect Tanaka from the natives.”

“C'mon, professor, do we have to?” asked Rick. “Can't we just let Vlad and his ego get hoist by their own petard?”

Rhys eyed him wryly. “Do you even know what a petard is, Roddy?”

“No, but you're not going to let him get hoist by one are you? You're going to tell him.”

o0o

Telling Vladimir Zarber that he suspected the Arkuit of some sophisticated form of collusion got pretty much the response Rhys had expected: droll laughter followed by a scathing look delivered down the length of Zarber's monumental nose and accompanied by a pronouncement of incredulity.

“My God, Llewellyn, I must admit I thought you might make some last ditch effort to keep our dealings with the Arkuit from going forward, but this takes the biscuit.”

“I assure you, I'm not trying to derail your negotiations— merely keep them from backfiring.”

“This is a primitive people, Llewellyn, who have made a primitive request that we play by their rules and respect their culture and religion.”

“Yes? And what will you do if they decide your boring into the mountain is an insult to both?”

“Then we'll have to work harder to convince them they're reading the tea leaves wrong. You'll remain here for that effort as necessary, of course.”

“Aye. I suppose I will.”

Zarber fixed him with a wary gaze. “That was too easy. What are you up to, professor? Trying to send me down a false trail?”

“Trying to keep you from blundering into an ambush.”

“My dear doctor, your efforts to dissuade me are sadly lacking in subtlety. I am disappointed.”

Rhys felt his face going hot. “You may be more than disappointed if Yoshi's concerns are borne out.”

Zarber smiled. “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Isn't that the operative aphorism, Dr. Llewellyn?”

“No. I believe it may be ‘pride goeth before a fall.'”

“Indeed.”

“Let me remind you of something. The Arkuit were informed of the Collective's respect for native cultures the moment the A-team was able to get the basic tenets into their language.”

Zarber frowned. “Yes, of course they were. It's obligatory. What does that have to do with anything?”

“Are you clear on the so-called ‘Santa Clause?'”

“I believe I am.”

Rhys shrugged. “Just thought you might want to study up.”

“Your concern is commendable, but misplaced.”

Rhys turned to let himself out of Zarber's quarters, then paused. Ah, hell, one last shot won't hurt. “You should know that the Arkuit were not the ones to raise the issue of sacred places. Yoshi was. Prior to that, they'd expressed no qualms about us digging around in their mountain.”

Zarber hesitated, but only for a moment. “Please, Llewellyn. I have work to do.”

Rhys knew he should give up. He'd warned Darrel Franks and Ivan Terezov; he'd warned Vlad Zarber; he'd even called Danetta Price-Bekwe and explained the situation to her. She, in turn, informed the Tanaka board of directors, who seemed uninterested. She refused to ask Rhys to stick his neck out further. He did anyway.

The day the laser awl began its work on the mountain, Rhys sought an audience with the Arkuit leaders and tried to negotiate directly with them, seeking to find out what rights they wished to hold in perpetuity if their sleeping deity permitted the operation to continue.

The Arkuit seemed pleasantly surprised by this move and responded favorably. They had begun to draft a set of such rights when Zarber somehow got wind of Rhys's activities. He put through a call to Harry Reinhold and Rhys found himself off the payroll.

Stubbornly, he marched up the mountain and met the Tanaka contingent in the shadow of their machinery. “Offer them the rights they've outlined, Vladimir,” he demanded.

“They're too generous, Llewellyn, as you well know. I can't give them all that.”

“Your involvement has been terminated, Professor,” Darrel reminded him. “You went behind our backs to treat with the Arkuit in secret. Did you think Tanaka Corp would tolerate that?”

“I tried to forestall what I expect will be a nasty surprise.”

“Worst case scenario, they decide their god shouldn't be awakened. We'll threaten to dismantle the module and deal with a different village.”

“Oh, that's hardly the worst case,” Rhys warned. “But you're right. My work here is officially done. Good luck to you. And don't say we didn't warn you.”

o0o

Over a month later, with the
Ceilidh
somewhere between star systems, Danetta Price-Bekwe contacted Rhys to give him an update on the Arkuit mission.

“You're smiling,” he observed as she appeared on the holo-display. “May I infer from that that the situation has resolved itself and our fears were all for naught?”

She laughed, and he realized that she looked more relaxed than he'd seen her in quite some time. “The situation has resolved itself pretty much as your fears predicted.”

Rhys glanced at Yoshi who sat beside him on the divan in the ship's commons. “What happened?”

“Well, the engineers started the bore, got the refinery module online, started mining ore, and —”

“And the Arkuit claimed the mountain spirit was offended and needed much appeasement in return for the effrontery?” Rhys guessed.

“Nooo, not exactly. They said the spirit was inclined to accept the mining, but had concerns about whether certain taboos were being broken. In order to make sure they weren't, the Arkuit insisted that their religious leaders be allowed to observe and understand every step of the mining process. And once they understood the process, they said that Isvyerg was satisfied... with the gift.”

“The gift—the entire operation?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And all the product?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Are they letting Tanaka build more refineries?”

“Isvyerg believes that would be too greedy of her. They're welcome to try other mountains, of course.”

“So, the shoe's on the other foot then, I take it—Tanaka's trying to negotiate a percentage.”

“The Arkuit don't seem to be at all interested in negotiating. The last time I talked to Mr. Franks, he asked how he could get in touch with you. No doubt you'll be hearing from him. Thought I'd give you a heads-up so you could think about whether you wanted to take the job.”

“Do you want me to take the job?”

Her smile widened. “I don't really give a flying hoot. Reinhold's on his own. I resigned last week.”

“I see. I'll, em, take it under advisement.”

Danetta signed off then, leaving Rhys and Yoshi to stare owlishly at each other.

“Are we going back?” Yoshi asked.

“Why? What could we accomplish, after all?”

“Maybe something...”

It was not Rhys's imagination that she looked a bit guilty. “What's wrong?”

“Well, there's something Rasimet told me about ‘their way' that I haven't mentioned.”

“Do tell.”

“She called it the Right of Substitution—and for all I know she may have made it up on the spur of the moment to cover my Lingua Franca—but it allows the giver to substitute an item of equal value to the person ‘requesting' the gift. Tanaka could simply substitute something of equal value for the laser bore and the refinery module. Of course, they could use whatever criteria they wanted to set that value—the Arkuit would have no way of knowing how accurate it was.”

Rhys frowned. “Is that guaranteed to work?”

“Well, no, but if the Arkuit leaders are going to continue to ply their—ah—business strategy with off-world partners, they can't exactly grin and say ‘kidding!'”

“Still,” said Rhys reflectively, “I'd hate to have Vladimir get his hopes up, only to have them dashed if the Arkuit chose not to honor ‘their way.'”

She grinned at him. “You're not going to tell them, are you?”

Rhys gave her a wide-eyed look. “Divulge trade secrets? Really, Yoshi, I'm surprised you'd even suggest it.”

“Sorry, si—...Rhys,” she corrected herself. “I don't know what I was thinking.”

Maya became addicted to science fiction when her dad let her stay up late to watch
The Day the Earth Stood Still
. Mom was horrified. Dad was unrepentant. Maya slept with a night-light in her room until she was 15.