Trader's World (14 page)

Rule 30 from the Traders' informal Rule Book:
Assume everyone is lying for his own reason—including me.

Was
anyone
telling Mike the whole truth?

Not Fathom, that was certain. Last night, when she believed Mike to be sound asleep, she had risen and moved across to his scattered heap of belongings. What she found there apparently satisfied her. She had returned to his side after a few minutes. The detox pill that Mike had taken before they ate, as a precaution against drugging or poisoning, was highly effective, but it produced a side effect of insomnia. He had remained fully awake, wondering. Other than the recording disk, he was carrying nothing to interest anyone; and the messages on that were unreadable to anyone except the Traders.

Mike thought back now to the abos he had just seen, and wondered again about the new Dulcinel Protocol. If it had been developed and used in the Strine Interior, it was not being used in this area. Lyle Connery had told of a technique that would shrink malignant growths and regrow tissues; but the abos' disfiguring tumors had been obvious, and many were missing fingers and toes.

Fathom had finally finished with her intent exchange of messages. She stood up and came to the rear of the cabin, where Mike was sitting in deep thought.

He looked up at her. It occurred to him how little, despite all the briefings and study, he knew of Strine culture. What was their music, their dance, their literature? What were their motives and ambitions in life? He had little idea. But how could he be an effective Trader if he didn't know what the group he was dealing with most wanted out of life? Back in Trader Headquarters, it was easy to say "Strine" and imagine that the single noun described the whole group. But now it was obvious that the Strines were many groups, fiercely independent and competitive with one another. And it was only in the face of a greater threat—from some other region—that the Strines would combine their arsenals and behave as a unit.

Fathom squatted easily in front of him. She smiled and shook her ash-blond head. "Bad news. I've been on the blower to the stations north of here. The brickfielder extends a long way, right past The Musgrave."

"Can't we fly right over it? What's the altitude limit on the aircraft?"

"Ninety thousand feet. Sure, we can fly
over
it easily enough—so long as we don't try to land. But I can't bring us down in The Musgrave without ruining my plane's engines. You don't know this dust—it's like grinding powder on machined surfaces."

Mike stared out of the window. The red wall was nearer, towering from ground to heaven just a few miles away. "So what do we do? Wait here—or head north on foot, like the abo warriors?"

Fathom smiled again and reached out to rub her hand along his cheek. "Wouldn't mind waiting here with you, sweetie-pie. But I can't spare the time. And don't ever suggest trying to go with the abos out into the Interior deserts. There's no food or water there."

"They seem to manage all right."

She gave him a strange, half-amused look. "Yeah. Know why? They manage north of here because anything they find— anything at all—is food and drink." She massaged his arm, feeling the muscles of biceps and triceps. "You have a nice body, Trader Asparian. I appreciate it. So would they. Out in the wilds you'd be a nice long drink and ninety pounds of convenient protein. You're safe here, because they're programmed not to touch anyone near the airfields. That doesn't apply in the outback. Forget the idea of going anywhere on foot."

"It's already forgotten. But what will we do?"

"Take off and fly right over the top, on past The Musgrave. The dust storm ends short of Alice. We can stay above it and land at my home base. Then we can come
south
again overland, following the tail of the storm." She stood upright. "Come and sit forward when we take off. You'll see something worth seeing when we reach Alice."

The wind at the airstrip was rising steadily, hitting the plane in hard gusts. The aircraft took off to the north and at once set into a tight upward spiral, gaining height rapidly. The dark-red wall of the brickfielder at first looked topless, only a few miles away.

At five thousand feet, Mike suddenly saw the sun again. It was rusted and weary, sitting in a boil of brown-red smoke. At ten thousand feet they were well above the storm. They turned to fly north over a flat, featureless plain of wind-borne dust stretching away endlessly in front of them. Only the airspeed indicator told them they were speeding at Mach Four across the Strine Interior.

Mike leaned forward in his seat, making sure that the recording disk on his shirt had a good view of the landscape through the forward window. Despite Fathom's promise, he was finding the view rather boring. There was simply nothing to see. And as he was reaching that conclusion a dramatic change occurred. The dust cloud below them vanished, cut off cleanly along an east-west line.

Mike leaned to his right and peered out of the side port. He could see the ground again. The dusty, treeless terrain that had persisted beneath the aircraft all the way from their Strine entry point at Eucla to their recent unplanned stop was gone. In its place Mike saw a pattern of textured bluish-green circles, their centers laid out on a regular triangular grid.

"Know what those are?" Fathom asked. She was turning toward him, leaning back in her seat with her eyes half-closed.

Mike shook his head. "My first thought was a plantation of trees, with us looking down on their crowns. But then I realized how high we are. Each of those circles must be half a mile across. And it looks bone dry down there."

Fathom smiled, but it was somehow directed inward, for herself and no one else. "Your first guess was right."

"Trees? That big?"

"Trees. They were developed here, in my labs, and they grow nowhere else. Multiple trunk, like a banyan, but much more productive. Food and timber. We're flying over a Double-X plantation. Average trunk diameter is thirty yards, maximum eighty."

Mike realized that Fathom had changed. Previously there had been an underlying tension, well controlled but always there. He had been unaware of it before, because there had been no basis for comparison. But now, seeing her fully relaxed, the difference was obvious. Fathom was back in her own territory, in an environment where she was in full control.

"Double-X?"

"Shorthand." Fathom had hit a new control sequence, and they were dropping off altitude at an alarming speed. "Stands for 'Xerophytic Xyloids'—male tech-talk, gobbledygook for plants that can get by without much water and produce lots of wood. You'll see them close up when we head south again. They grow right down to the border with The Musgrave."

Mike nodded but did not speak. "Male tech-talk." Was that a significant comment, even if an unintended one, on the Strine interior? Did males do all the technical work in the biolabs—as well as providing all the human test subjects for experiments?

While the aircraft was landing and skidding to a halt, Mike recalled one of Lover-boy Lester's less cheerful pronouncements: "Don't get an inflated idea of your own value, boyo. Here, you're nothing. And be damn careful. In the Interior, the mommas use men as trading tokens. And torture is considered as one of the fine arts."

He surreptitiously retested the communication link with Daddy-O and Jack Lester. Still jammed. There was nothing but static.

Mike was on his own.

* * *

When the world had seemed ready to end in all-out nuclear war, the Strines sought safety underground. Once established, that taste for below-ground accommodation had never left them. Deep structures permitted better temperature and humidity control, and that was important in the Strine Interior to everyone except perhaps the haploid abos.

Although Mike knew the facts, it still came as a surprise to look out at a region apparently populated only by scrubby acacias, wattles, and grass trees, and learn that he was seeing the main biolabs and residential area of Alice.

He was given no time to explore the underground. Fathom had paused in Alice only long enough to collect a beetle-browed, powerfully built guide known as Banjo, then they were in a ground car and heading south. After an hour's drive the car stopped and Fathom climbed out.

"I won't be coming the rest of the way," she said to Mike's surprise. "Banjo will take care of you and get you to the transfer point. I'll see you on the way back, when you're all finished."

Her manner to Mike had changed. It was cool, with no trace of affection. Was that for Banjo's benefit? Mike had no way of knowing. He settled back in his seat and stared around him.

They were speeding along a straight asphalt road that ran through an avenue of the Double-X trees. Each of them was like a full grove, towering five hundred feet above the sun-baked plain. No other plants grew in their shade, and the ground beneath them showed no pattern of sunlight diffracting through leaf spaces. The tree structures had been genetically designed. They captured every available erg of incident solar energy and used it to produce polysaccharides—starches, sugars, and cellulose.

As the giant tree farms finally petered out, giving way to a land scorched and barren in the hot sun, Mike wondered. Who was Fathom's chief bioengineer, the genius behind the Double-X trees? Banjo could not say—or would not. Communication with him proved almost impossible. Mike forced a few monosyllables from him in answer to some of his questions, and that was the best he could do.

But when he finally asked why Fathom had not come with them, he received a roar of laughter and Banjo's longest speech of the trip. "Fathom Five Lavengro! Ha-ha—to cross the border with The Musgrave? Man, that's real funny. You know what Cinder-feller would do if Fathom came inside that territory? Cut her up for dingo dinners, that's what." He slapped a scarred brown arm on the car's steering-wheel. "Them two don't see each other anymore—
ever
. Didn't you know it, sport? They hate each other's guts. Just look ahead there. That's to hold 'em apart."

The trees had all gone now, and they were approaching a barbed wire fence with a solid gate where the road ran to meet it. Another ground car sat waiting at the other side of the gate. Two haploid abos stood about a hundred yards away, looking at each other from opposite sides of the fence. As the car approached they both ran with incredible speed to the gate and stood quietly by it.

"All right, man, here we are." Banjo stepped down from the car slowly and carefully, gesturing to Mike to do the same. "Take hold of this piece of leather, rub your hands on it, and let 'em have a good look at it. It's your identification. Carry it with you. I'll come as far as the other car, to make sure the driver is all ready for you—should be a young woman, name of Sweet Pea. Don't try to talk to her, 'cause it's a waste of time. She's a deaf-mute, works directly for Cinder-feller. I'll be waiting here for you when you come back. If you're gone more than two days, have one of Cinder-feller's people send a message back here."

The abo guard took the identification that Mike held out to him, rubbing it between his finger and thumb. He shuffled all the way around Mike, sniffing at his feet, genitals, and hair. After doing the same to Banjo he opened the gate. The haploid at the other side repeated the procedure, sniffed again at the leather fragment, then led them to the car. Banjo nodded his greeting at the dark-haired woman sitting within and allowed himself to be escorted back through the gate.

The new car bore on its side a peculiar insignia like a quadruple interlocking helix. Mike climbed into the passenger seat and stared curiously at the driver. Sweet Pea was young, no more than his own age, with a flawless, ivory-white complexion and shining black hair. She looked as out of place in the Strine Interior as Mike felt.

She nodded at him, smiling. After a few moments she suddenly pressed the accelerator to the floor. The car started in a cloud of brown dust, racing southward along another section of the same arrow-straight road.

The silence was fine with Mike. He wanted to wrestle with a puzzle of his own. According to Jack Lester and Banjo, Fathom Five and Cinder-feller Lavengro never went to each other's territory—were not even
safe
in each other's territory. If that were true, then Fathom had never intended to land the aircraft in The Musgrave—and would not have been allowed to do so.
Therefore,
her earlier statements about their travel plans must have been false. She could not have conveniently created the dust storm, but she could have known about it long before it happened. The Chips offered an expensive weather-monitoring system that gave at least seventy-two hours notice of major storms and wind patterns. So Fathom might have included the brickfielder in her advance plans. But
why
?

At that point Mike was stumped. Fathom was using him, he was increasingly convinced of it. But he could not see how.

Mike sighed to himself. Why, how—he was building up questions when he was supposed to be answering them. The inside of the car was very hot, and it had been a hard twenty-four hours. He thought of the rule that was not in the official Traders' Rule Book, but ranked high in the unofficial one:
Food, drink, sleep—take them whenever you have a chance.

He lay back in his seat and closed his eyes.

* * *

The Strine mission was over, and it had been a huge success. No trainee had ever done so well. After the triumphant return to the Azores and the final ceremony of induction to the position of full Trader, Mike had been given the key of the vacation lodge by Lucia Asparian. It lay high in the mountains of the Economic Community. When he looked out of the open window, it was at a succession of soaring white peaks. The air that blew in on him was clean and freezing cold. Too cold. Mike reached forward to close me window—and was suddenly awake.

It was deep dusk. The air-conditioning unit of the Strine car was set so high that it had pulled him out of a heavy sleep.

He sighed. No successful mission, no triumphant return—only a situation that looked more and more out of control. The car was slowing, turning off the smooth road. He stretched, moving his shoulders to ease cramped back muscles.