Trader's World (43 page)

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?"

Her eyes had a full, liquid look, something that Mike had never seen before; they were like a pair of dark, crystal globes with internal reflections. After a few moments he realized what had happened. Li was crying; in free-fall, the tears remained on her eyes instead of trickling down her cheeks.

"I reward you with pain," she went on. "And I have done a still worse thing. I have disobeyed my own family's direct command, and I have betrayed my people in showing you this. But worst of all, I have placed you in an impossible position. When we land, my people will ask you under Trader Oath to say nothing of any of this. But I am begging you here, before we land, to pass that word, secretly, to all the governments of Earth. I know that if you do these things, you will be breaking Trader Oath, and you will lose your own family. But I ask you to do it. I am your worst enemy, Mike. In return for the gift of my life I am asking the destruction of yours."

Mike sat dry-eyed, gazing out at the monstrous tableau below them. Those endless miles of cultivated fields and neat channels took his breath away. But there were no tears in him, only resolution and a strange peace. The decision point that he had sensed before he began this mission was here. And the decision had been made easily, deep within him, without a microsecond of debate.

Prime Rule: Be a human being first.
At last he understood what that implied. Everything else in the Trader Rule Book offered advice, counsel, or warning, and drew the Traders closer together. Prime Rule was different; it alone demanded individual responsibility, offered freedom of choice, provided no advice, and gave no comfort.

"Do not cry," he said to Li, and he spoke those words in poorly pronounced Chipponese.

"I am doing an unforgivable thing." Her eyes had closed. "You will lose your family."

"No, Li. I will not."

And Mike did a terrible thing, too. Without any threat or coercion, he broke Trader Oath. He told Li Xia, a non-Trader, an outsider, a stranger to Trader customs, all about the Great Republic's fusion project. He broke Trader Oath, and did not think for a moment of asking for her silence.

And then he hugged her to him, a fainting woman who was still in many ways a stranger, and said many other things, in words that were old under the Sun and new above the Moon, words that belonged to Li alone and had no place in a Trader mission record. And he dried the tears in the corners of her eyes, was rewarded with a faint smile, and felt like a new-crowned king.

"You are right, Li," he said. "But you are also wrong. When I go back from here I will tell them I broke Trader Oath. I will be exiled from the Trader community. It is inevitable. But I can never lose my true family."

Li was slipping away into unconsciousness. Mike put his cheek next to hers. She was fiery hot. The radiation was deep in their bones, burning up their blood. He felt light-headed, dizzy, irrational. He squinted out of the port, peering down. The ship's jets beneath them burst into sudden, blue-white flame.

I know my family. I know my family now. And you know them, too, Li.
His burning throat could no longer speak, and she could not hear him. It did not matter. The litany of the first Trader training courses overflowed in his mind.

When the world was young, we rowed our galleys far to the West, past the Pillars of Hercules, to trade for tin in the Northern Islands; our caravans plied the Great Silk Road, braving deserts, bandits, and disease to carry goods from Cathay and Samarkand to Venice and Damascus; we lived and died for our work, trading for spices in the East Indies, tea in Serendip, slaves and ivory in the Congo, gold in Alaska, and silver in the high Andes. Our spiritual grandfathers sat and haggled in every sun-soaked, rug-filled store from Rio to Manila; our fathers wriggled on knees and elbows around the muddied, blood-filled shell craters of Verdun, crossing No-Man's-Land to swap cigarettes and candy for coffee and tinned beef . . .

They were descending steadily toward a bright cluster of buildings on the dusty surface. Touchdown was no more than a few seconds away. Mike did not have the strength to strap them in. He cradled Li's helpless body in his arms.

I know my family. Let them take away the Trader name, Li, and call us what they will. It does not matter. We—you, and I, and our children's children's children—we will survive, and flourish, as long as humans endure. And we will always be traders.

The ship touched down on the lunar surface, but Mike never knew it. He had slipped away with Li into the burning darkness.

CHAPTER 18

"Here again."

"Yes."

"Again, and too often. You have become a regular guest of the Rehab Center."

"No more. This is my last time."

"Ah."
Daddy-O fell silent.

Mike waited. "Do you know why I came back?" he asked at last.

"When someone on the Moon refuses to communicate over the Chipponese remote circuits, it implies that a very private conversation is needed. When that someone is angry and depressed, I can surmise a reason for his presence here."

"I want out." Mike had been lying on the cot. Now he rolled off it and began to pace the bare hospital room. He was almost hairless, and his body beneath the loose white jacket and pants bore the purple-red scars of radiation overdose. "I never thought I would say this, but I want out of the Traders."

"Ah. I see. Out of the Traders—to do what?"

"I'm going to marry a Chipponese woman—if I can ever talk her family into allowing it."

"And after that?"

"I'm going to live with her on Luna."

"Very well. But those two events are not inevitably coupled. Many non-Trader wives and husbands have become part of the Trader community. If you move to Luna, what comes next? Life does not end with marriage. Why not apply for the admission of your bride to the Traders?"

Mike swore to himself. He had hoped to avoid this. But knowing Daddy-O, the discussion was inevitable. "Because I'm beginning to have a faint idea what Max Dalzell was feeling when he left that note to me. I'm tired of missions, I'm tired of Trader talk, I'm tired of fakery, and most of all I'm tired of
failure
."

"Failure. Indeed.
It would be instructive to me if you were to compare your own assessment of performance with my records. Please tell me, Mike. How well have you performed as a Trader?"

Mike frowned and flopped down again on the bunk. "I don't see why this is worth doing, but I'll play your stupid game. I think I started well. In the Darklands, I felt on top of things. I probably did better than anyone expected. I liked Rasool Ilunga, and I thought I understood him even when I knew I couldn't trust him. I also think I did a reasonable job in the Strine Interior."

"More than reasonable. Were it not for the Dulcinel Protocol, Jack Lester would still be a naked fragment floating in a life-support tank."

"And Li Xia and I would be dead. All right, so let's say I did well with the Strines. I won't grieve if I never see Cinder-feller again, but that's another matter. I wasn't unhappy with my performance. Things fell apart with Dreamtown, and Dominic Mantilla. I've looked back on that mission a hundred times, trying to see anything positive about what I did on it, and I can't. I didn't do a thing, and you had to save me."

Mike paused, expecting comment from Daddy-O. There was only a faint hissing from the speakers.

"I wanted to do well with Jake in Skeleton City, too," he went on, "and I don't blame myself for the fact that he died when he left me behind. But I never would have worked out for myself the construction of the Diamond Fly's brain."

"A Trader is not presumed to be infallible, Mike. You brought back the vital clues. Subconsciously, you may have already understood how it was done."

"I don't think so. And then there was the Cap Federation. I certainly made a mess of things there—with help from Max Dalzell. Seth Paramine is still down on the Cap."

"By his own choice. But you gave Old-Billy Waters enough proof that Paramine was at the Mundsen Labs to make his next negotiation with the Chills a favorable one. Old-Billy was delighted."

"Traders look at the end product—not at excuses for its absence."

"You were not expected to bring back Paramine."

"Maybe not—but
I
expected to do it. And then there was the last mission, out to the Geosynch Ring."

"And beyond. As the first Trader to go to the Moon, you should be pleased."

"Pleased? Pleased at breaking Trader Oath? Pleased at alerting the Chipponese so that the Yankee energy test failed? Pleased at coming back here a bald, burned wreck? What should I be pleased about?" Mike lifted his head to stare at Daddy-O's main sensor lens. "There's nothing more to discuss. I told you, I want out. I'm sick of being a Trader."

"I understand."
The voice from the speakers was soft, even subdued.
"I will not attempt to block your departure. But permit me, if you will, to offer a different perspective on events. I am telling you nothing new when I point out that Traders are specialists in negotiation. They are not presumed to be supermen and superwomen, nor are they specialists in martial arts. Traders are trained to do one thing superbly:
negotiate."

"And I did badly at that."

"You did very well. But did it never occur to you that your missions were unusual? You performed negotiation, certainly, no one could deny it. But you spent much of your time in danger of your life—running across the northern Strine desert; or diving down the slopes of Glissando with a platinum needle deep in your brain; or burned over half your body, clinging to a rail at the top of Skeleton City; or running through another wall of flame at the Mundsen Labs. And finally, coming close to death from radiation poisoning up in the Geosynch Ring. Think of those experiences, and ask yourself: do they seem like typical Trader negotiations? If they do not, then ask yourself,
why not?"

"What does that have to do with anything? Good Traders handle the missions they are assigned."

"You are being intentionally obtuse, Mike. Face facts: every mission that you were assigned, after the first one, was selected to provide both danger and difficulty. Each one had a high probability of failure."

"Hell, and I thought the decision to leave the Traders was
my
idea. It sounds like you were planning to drive me out from the beginning."

"That is correct."
Daddy-O was pleased to see—at last—a strong reaction. Mike had sat up on the cot, and he was quivering.

"That's unbelievable! You
wanted
me out? Then why the hell let me in in the first place?"

"Because I perceived that you were potentially something quite unusual. You wanted to be an outstanding Trader. You became an outstanding Trader. You
are
an outstanding Trader. You have learned the importance of our group, and what we do in the world. But I wanted more. I wanted you to seek to leave the Traders, and I wanted you to learn a truth that cannot be taught through any amount of formal instruction—a truth that few of our group will ever learn. This:
There are things in this Universe more important than Traders."

"Prime Rule."

"Prime Rule."
Daddy-O paused for an interval imperceptible in human terms. A crisis was approaching, the summation of half a century of planning.
"Prime Rule, which sets humanity
above
the Traders. And now, Mike, here is a chance to prove how smart you are. Tell me, if you can,
why
all this was done to you."

"Because—" Mike paused, thought, and shook his head. "I can think of only one reason. You want me to perform a mission that is not a Trader mission. That will serve a different group."

"Different?"

"Or larger."

"Continue."

Mike shook his head again. "I cannot."

"Then watch the display."

The screen in front of Mike lit to reveal a flat, open plain. From close to the camera, away to the distant horizon, the land was covered with armored vehicles. Before Mike could respond, the display changed . . . to a flotilla of aircars, bristling with weapons and racing across a cloud-filled sky . . . to a great shoal of submersibles, sweeping silently through a dark sea, torpedo and missile ports ready for action . . . to the violet-white fire of fusion explosions, many miles away . . . to a great army, hundreds of thousands of marching men, dense as waving blades of wheat, striding through a field.

"Images from my older memory banks,"
Daddy-O's steady voice said.
"They were taken just before the Lostlands War began. And now, see this."

Again the screen filled: marching men, exploding missiles, black, brooding submarines, nuclear fires, screaming aircraft, hissing laser beams.

"Not fifty years ago,"
Daddy-O said calmly. "This year.
Those are the defense systems of the Strine Interior, of the Great Republic, of the Cap Federation, and of the Unified Empire. All are ready for action. Each region has been building its defenses, to the point where the Lostlands War could break out again—tomorrow."

Mike stared in horror at the screen. Daddy-O was proposing the unthinkable. Everyone assumed, beyond question, that nothing like the Lostlands War could ever happen again.

"Can't you stop it?" Mike knew that was a dumb question even before he blurted it out. If Daddy-O could stop it, Daddy-O
would
have stopped it.

"I cannot."
There was a long pause.
"But perhaps
you
can. Mike, I have a task for you. I want you to do something that is simply stated, and has no second agenda. I want you to unify the Earth."