Strange Trades (54 page)

Did these backward, unsophisticated folk realize the wonder of their world, of any world? Did they know how lucky they were just to inhabit such a bountiful globe, out of all the charred and dead and frozen ones the Factor had seen? For a brief moment the Factor almost envied them their uncomplicated primitive existence. They were so unlike the aloofly superior humans who had ventured Inward. The Factor felt a paternal care for these primitives envelop him. He was glad to be able to provide such a focus for their simple lives.

It did not matter to the Factor then that he had been engineered to feel just such an emotion. After all, considered rationally, every creature, whether organic or not, was engineered to feel certain things.

And this charming divertissement, the Days of Festival! What a lot of work and preparation had gone into this Mill Valley Mardi Gras! As a proportion of the Gross Planetary Product, expenditures for this affair were quite significant. The Factor directed his gaze all about, careful to record everything, since he knew that when he returned to his human motivators his memories would be minutely and exquisitely probed and analyzed and correlated by those cryptic beings, for whatever they could extract and utilize in their enigmatic schemes.

One of the Master Luminaries, the Factor suddenly realized, was addressing him. The Factor turned to face the man, as the group continued their traditional promenade among the booths, for the purpose of allowing everyone to circumspectly gape at the Factor and ascertain his awesome unchanging immortal reality for themselves.

“Factor,” said the man, who had short grizzled hair and a thick jaw, “we realize it is late in the day, but perhaps we can still make a tour of the mill of your choice, so that you can see that we continue to abide by the old ways of production.”

The Factor, after a fractional hesitation while he matched facial image to memory, replied, “Indeed, I think we can fit the tour in, Master Otterness. As I recall, I visited the mill of the Red Stalkers last year. This year.…”

The Factor considered his choice. It would be well, he thought, to pay an honor to this very man, who had a record of being one of the Factor’s staunchest partisans. “This year, let it be your mill, the Blue Devils.”

Watching the man swell with pride, the Factor congratulated himself on the political wisdom of his choice. It was good to sow envy and contention, for it raised the levels of creativity.

Hearing the Factor’s decree, the Luminaries now directed their course toward the distant Mill. They soon reached the edges of the crowd. Ready to strike off down the path to the Mill, they were halted by Otterness’s sudden darting escape back into the crowd, from which he dragged forth a young man to join them.

“Factor,” said Otterness, “you remember my assistant, I hope.”

“Certainly. Charley, how are you?”

The young man tugged at a short-billed cap he wore and inclined his head respectfully. “Very well, Factor. Very well. I— we’re all glad of your return.”

Nodding beneficently, with an air of much wisdom, the Factor said, “We are all part of a master plan, Apprentice Cairncross, and I merely fulfill my part.”

The Luminaries expressed their appreciation of this sentiment with various wordless sounds.

After their mutual cooing was over, Otterness spoke the next words of the ritual. Chosen as host by the Factor, he could request the presence of one other member of his mill on the tour of inspection.

“Factor, I wish to nominate as the extra member of our party my protégé, Charley Cairncross. After all, someday he will stand in my place, and might as well become accustomed to his future duties.”

The other Luminaries harrumphed and coughed, jealous of the extra attention focused on the Blue Devil mill. But such unexpected shifts and seeming favoritism were necessary to keep this little hive of humanity humming. (The Factor even recalled, in his secondhand way, how one of the mills—not by far the strongest today—had been given reason to once name itself Factor’s Favorites.)

“Of course, Master Otterness. I fully approve your choice.”

Not daring to contravene or protest, the other Luminaries settled down to a ruffled acquiescence, and the group, enlarged by one, left behind the noisy, exuberant crowd and entered the shadow of the Mill.

The tour of the strangely silent mill took several hours. In the elfinlit twilight the little party moved from section to section, among the resting hulking machines: carding, gilling, doubling, twisting, roving, spinning.… They ended up in the weaveroom, inspecting the unfinished lengths of lambent cloth. The Luminaries were all eyes, eager to see any secret blends Otterness might have carelessly left in the open. But the resident Luminary wore such a look of self-satisfaction that they knew any such things would have been hidden well in advance, in anticipation of just such a visit. After all, had they not taken just such precautions themselves?

At last the tour of inspection was over. The Factor signified his approval of all he had seen, and the group rejoined the crowd outside. Now it was early evening. Odors of cooking drifted among the huge bonfires that had been lit. The material for these pyres, the Factor knew, was partially composed of discarded household items contributed by each family, in a ceremony of renewal that intrigued him. How easy if burning the old were all that was required to create the new.…

The Factor was now brought to a long table draped with a piece of luxcloth that added its glow to the light from lamps and fires. He was seated at its middle, with eight Luminaries on either side. They all fell to eating. The Factor pretended to enjoy his food. Meanwhile he watched the crowd. There were no tables for the common workers, only scattered benches, and they took advantage of the constant movement of the crowd to circulate past the Factor’s table, watching him eat as if it were the most marvelous thing in the world.

A familiar figure caught the Factor’s eye some distance away, and he magnified his vision. It was Charley Cairncross, with a group of people that the Factor surmised must be his relatives: a young wife with a toddler, an elderly couple that had to be his parents, a thin graceful youth and another young woman, whose resemblance to Charley made them his two siblings. Everyone in the little cluster seemed tense, the focus being the father. Charley, standing, bent over the seated patriarch in a cajoling fashion. The older man wore a sour face and stubbornly stared into the middle distance, apparently refusing to listen to his son. The Factor boosted his hearing and ran through several filter sequences, finally managing to extract a bit of their conversation from the general hubbub.

“Da, try to be more cheerful. Alan, Floy, tell him he’s acting like a senseless old bull. There’s nothing to account for such an attitude. It’s Festival, after all, and we’re here to celebrate.”

“What have we got to celebrate?” the father demanded. “What but another year of servitude?”

“Da, don’t …,” said the brother, Alan.

“Don’t talk to me, you little catamite. You’re as bad as your sister.”

The Factor’s attention was distracted from this interesting display by the rising of the Master Luminary at his right, a skinny middle-aged man he identified as the overseer of the Landfish. The Master Luminary coughed several times until he had the attention of those closest to him. They fell quiet, and from them the silence spread among the workers, who began to draw in closely to the table. Soon the entire gathered populace, save for those at the very farthest extremes, was hushed and expectant beneath the watching stars.

The Master Luminary spoke loudly. “The Factor will now address us.” Then he sat down.

On cue, the Factor arose. He made the requisite internal adjustments, and when he began to speak his voice boomed out without distortion, carrying almost over the entire crowd. Of duty and reward and the happy unchanging durable nature of their lives the Factor spoke at length, varying his speech only slightly from previous years. The crowd seemed to appreciate it, in a sleepy fashion. But the Factor’s closing words caused them to grow alert.

“And now I call upon you—you lucky ones, who labor for worthy ends in the Mill, and share in the bounty of the system—to extend your generosity. I call upon you to arrange construction of a new addition to the glory of the Mill, so that more outsiders may share your humble, shining way of life, and cause the wonder of the luxcloth to spread even farther throughout the stars.”

The Factor ceased speaking. There was silence for a strained moment from the assembled listeners. Then someone vented a loud if dutiful huzzah, and soon the night air was split with calls and cries and whistles and yells. The bonfires blazed higher, and the crowd began to move again.

Sitting, the Factor received the congratulations of the Master Luminaries, all of whom pledged their best to hasten the construction of the new mill.

Curiosity subroutines moved the Factor to look for the Cairncross family once more, when the hullabaloo had died down a bit. But the affecting tableau they had formed was nowhere to be seen, broken up and dispersed like flotsam in a stream.

The night wore on. The Factor catalogued many more experiences in his unwearying way. Everything and anything might be of interest to his masters.

The first man to spot the fire break through the roof of the Mill ended the celebration. His sickened curdled shouts of “Fire! Fire in the Mill!” brought the Master Luminaries and the Factor to their feet.

All eyes now turned to the Mill, there to confirm the alarm.

From the roof of the immense structure licked as yet tiny tongues of flame, evilly alive against the dead hide of the stolid creature that was the nonsentient but ensouled Mill. Even as the dumbstruck people watched, the flames seemed to grow in strength and power.

Otterness broke the trance. “Get men down into the cellars!” he shouted, referring, the Factor knew, to where the hidden river could be reached. “We must form the bucket brigades!”

Otterness moved then as if to lead the rush to his threatened beloved mill, but the Factor restrained him. “There is no need to endanger your people. My ship is quite capable of ending this blaze. I will issue the commands from my pod.”

Shouts of “Praise the Factor!” quickly mounted. Otterness looked uneasy, however, but restrained himself. The Factor traversed the short distance to his pod and gave orders for the mother ship to drop and begin spraying.

He returned to the table of Luminaries. All the Masters looked nervous. The Factor noticed Otterness was missing. He asked where the man had gone.

“To the Mill,” replied the Landfish Master. “He and his Apprentice insisted on going in. We tried to stop them, Factor, but they would not listen. Honestly, they wouldn’t.”

The Factor considered. The substance his craft would soon begin spraying was a chemical flame retardant which might asphyxiate the men. He could not be responsible for their deaths. That was an integral part of his programming. His policy of benign neglect of their whole society was not consistent with this individual and particular loss of life.

“I will rescue them. Please insure that no one else tries such an irrational thing.”

Then the Factor was off.

Moving faster than any human could have, he covered the distance to the Mill in a blur.

At the entrance doors he looked up. Like a falling moon his ship had descended. Even now it was beginning to discharge the retardant. Without choice the Factor went in.

Here on the first floor the only signs of the fire were smoke and hot dead air. With crystal-clear memory the Factor summoned up the location of the stairs. In seconds he had gained the second floor; seconds later, the third.

A smoky crackling inferno greeted him at the head of the stairs. The incredible popping noise of destructing bricks resounded sharply at intervals. Heat assaulted his senses, and he could barely see. He switched to infrared. The loci of flames leapt out of the confusion. Stepping out onto the floor the Factor set out to find the men, who he was fairly certain would have rushed uselessly here, to the center of the disaster.

All the ceiling timbers above the Factor were ablaze. He heard the rain of chemicals descending, but knew that this third floor at least would definitely be lost, no matter what.

“Otterness!” bellowed the Factor. “Cairncross! Where are you? There is no need!”

The Factor’s supersensitive hearing seemed to distinguish faint calls from deep within the Mill. He pushed on, ignoring the flames that frequently lapped at him. Twice he had to lift a fallen flaming timber from his path.

Emerging from one such barrier into a relatively clear eddy, the Factor realized he had come upon the men.

Oddly, there seemed to be three. The Factor switched back to normal vision to resolve the discrepancy.

Yes, three men struggled in a mass. One was the elder Cairncross. He held a can of oil in his hands with which he fed the flames. Trying to restrain him were Charley and Otterness. But the wild man’s strength seemed indomitable, and he continued to sprinkle his oil like a satanic priest asperging his congregation of devils.

The Factor rushed forward and effortlessly scooped up Charley and Otterness like two weightless sacks, tossing them over his shoulders.

Charley’s father, now released, raked them all with a final frantic glare and, letting forth a tremulous soul-bursting scream comprised of years of pent-up inexpungable frustration and bitterness, hurled himself headlong into the nearest flames.