Trader's World (30 page)

The gale had arrived in full force and it was blowing away the world. It beat at him, rocked his scorched body, cradled him, crooned to him, told him to relax. He closed his eyes. He could sleep now, release his hold, fly forever into the quiet darkness . . .

The sound of voices from the roof did not rouse him. They were distant, far less real than the screaming wind. He hung there, batlike, until there was an exclamation from close to hand. "Grab him. Haul him in."

Mike clung tighter.

"We can't move him. His hands are locked. And burned to blazes."

"Move out of the way, then. Let me have a go."

Powerful arms reached out. Mike was lifted by the knees until his legs were dragged onto the roof and he was forced to release his handhold or dislocate his shoulders. He was lifted again, turned, and placed on his feet. He found he was gazing into the startled eyes of Old-Billy Waters. The deputy surveyed him from burned hair to seared feet.

"Gawd, you're a mess. What happened?"

Mike turned, searching the eastern sky. After a few seconds he saw it, a brighter spark of light against the stars. He pointed. "There they are. Jake Kallario and Martin Raincloud."

Waters followed the pointing arm. "The boss is up there, too? I wondered where he'd gone. He hasn't flown in a year." His eye traced the line of flight. "My God, what's he doing? They're flying due east. Where are they going?"

"Kallario is in control. Raincloud is just piloting."

"But he's flying smack into the air defense shield! I knew it, it's his own damned system, and he doesn't know the first thing about how it works. If they keep going that way—" Old-Billy Waters grabbed for his waist. He lifted the set to his mouth. Before he could speak there was a streak of mauve light on the eastern horizon, ending in a white magnolia blossom. The sound of the explosion took almost a minute to arrive.

Mike Asparian and Old-Billy Waters stared at each other while the wind howled across the roof. Finally Old-Billy shivered, turned east again, and rubbed his bald scalp. "He's gone."

"He has. They have." Mike swayed, straightened. "You're cityboss now, Old-Billy. You run Skeleton City."

"He's really gone. I can't believe it." Water's voice was quiet and introspective. He coughed, bowing his head into the wind.

"It's your job now." Mike saw the blackened remains of a female figure crumpled near the trapdoor. "All yours. What are you going to do?"

Old-Billy's brow was furrowed. He sniffed, straightened, and gestured to two of the men to help Mike. "I don't know. Not yet. But let's get below. If you're well enough, you and I have to talk about a deal."

* * *

"He's alive, and that's all I can say. I don't know how he held out as long as he did. He managed a meeting with Waters, did a data dump on the plane as he flew back, and collapsed. Now are you willing to admit that the mission was a fiasco?"

"Any mission where a Trader dies is a fiasco, Lyle."

"One dead, another half-dead in the rehab tank—with no sign of emotional responses. And what did we get out of it? Nothing worth having."

"False."
Daddy-O knew that Lyle Connery was overreacting, and was suitably mild in reply.
"We obtained many things: a new and better relationship with the Great Republic; a signed agreement between the Republic and the Strines. Perhaps, when Asparian is again willing to talk—"

"—if he ever is."

"He will be. I am monitoring his responses, and Jack Lester is working with him. When he can talk, we may have additional information about the arms buildup in the Republic. And we will also gain new understanding of Mikal Asparian himself; and, most important of all, we have furthered his development."

"Which we could have done right here, without Mike leaving Trader base."

"That is a beguiling notion, but unfortunately it is not true. 'Es bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille, sich ein Charakter in dem Strom der Welt.' "

"Eh?"

"The words of an old Community writer, penned over two hundred years ago. It means, approximately, that talent is built in peace and quiet, but character in the full flow of the real world. I knew that sending Mikal Asparian to the Great Republic might harm him; but it was also the only way to strengthen him."

"It killed Jake Kallario."

"There is always risk. As you were the first to notice, Kallario contained the seeds of instability long before we went on that mission."

"And you've not strengthened Mike. You're turning him to a lump of stone. Think of
his
feelings. Melinda Turak dies, and then Jake Kallario, and Mike blames himself for both deaths—and don't tell me it's illogical, it's still the way he feels. And it's damned cruel."

"Indeed it is."
Daddy-O generated a sigh.
"Lyle, Traders have accused me of being heartless fourteen thousand seven hundred and eighty-three times. Each was, of course, technically correct. However, there is a promise for you: there will be only two more missions for Mikal Asparian; after that, I expect to take no part in any of his assignments. Will that satisfy you?"

"I suppose it has to." Lyle Connery cut contact. He was marginally satisfied for only a moment. Good enough. But was it? Fourteen thousand seven hundred and eighty-three times Daddy-O has been accused of heartlessness. And how many times had the computer been accused of low cunning?

* * *

". . . of course, I would never have left her alone if I'd known. When I came back in, she had it out of the packet. She was holding it in her hand, pointing it out of the window, and looking down one end. So I tried to grab her—"

"Where am I?" Mike had been aware for some time of the voice in his ear, but it had only just begun to make approximate sense.

"Haven't you been listening, then?"
The aggrieved voice, Mike realized, was Lover-boy Lester's.
"Well, that's a pain—why did yer keep making grunting noises? Waste of my time hooking in to you. How yer feeling?"

"I'm not feeling, Jack." Mike found that he had no sensations at all. And it went beyond the physical. He felt no stir of emotion. "Nothing at all."

"Then you must be all right. Don't you know where you are? You're in the tank, boyo, next to mine. Don't you remember coming here?"

Mike tried to move his hands up to touch his face. Nothing. He tried to shake his head. Nothing. "The last thing I remember is shaking hands with Old-Billy Waters and climbing into the aircar. I guess we made it back. Am I badly hurt?"

"Hurt? Nah! Just scratches. I've been banged up worse than that fightin' in bed. You'll be out of the tank in a couple of weeks. You did all right, boyo. Don't you remember giving Daddy-O a data dump on the plane?"

"No. Not a glimmer of it. What did I tell him?"

"About the Fly. What it was, how it was made."

"But that's impossible. I don't
know
how it was made."

"You don't think you do. But you must have known it subconsciously, because you gave Daddy-O all the pieces: what was in Sabrina Vandermond's library, and what you heard her say in her apartment, and then what she said later to the cityboss. And you kept saying in the plane, 'you have to start on the
other side.'
Daddy-O interpreted all that, and put things together."

"You mean you know how the Fly brain was made?" Mike's own brain was dull and numb.

"It wasn't."

"Wasn't what?"

"Wasn't made.
The brain. Not mechanically, the way we usually think. The brain was too small—even the Chills can't make machinery that operates down below the molecular level. The Chills call it the molecular barrier."

"I knew that."

"So there's no way you can get past that barrier with
mechanical
methods. You try to make things smaller and smaller, but then you find you've hit quantum levels, trying to manipulate single molecule layers. So how can you possibly build something smaller than that? There's only one answer, the one you gave Daddy-O: you have to
start on the other side of the barrier.
You have to be a
chemist,
and a microbiologist, not an engineer, and you have to use chemical processes that build from the atoms
upward
to the molecules, using tailored chemical reactions—just the way the enzymes in living tissues do it. Remember the program library you saw: inorganic solid state lattice theory, side-by-side with enzymatic processes for living tissue. The Fly's brain wasn't made, Mike, it was
grown,
chemically, like an organism, using methods developed by that woman Sabrina Vandermond, with her brother's help on the engineering."

Mike remembered that elegant head and those smiling gray eyes. "She was an amazing woman."

"Good-looking, was she? You sound as if you'd fancy a little bit there."

Lover-boy never changed. But instead of irritation or amusement, Mike felt only weariness. The memory of an elegant head
flowed
, to become a nimbus of flaming hair, then a vision of a blackened skull, soft cheeks burned away by jet exhausts to show white, grinning teeth beneath. "I cannot think of her in that way, Lover-boy. She and the cityboss were psychopaths—they didn't care what happened to anybody else. That was the thing that drove Jake crazy and made him so desperate to escape. He knew that Sabrina was going to inject those crystal seeds into our brains, and she would do it coldly, without thinking twice. Once it was done the Yankees could control us completely—we'd have been smart, mobile information sources."

Mike paused. He was running down, running out of energy, sinking into lethargy. He could not stop thinking of Sabrina Vandermond, and somehow her memory was pulling into his mind old and long-suppressed thoughts of his childhood in the Hives. He began to shiver.

"Mike? Are you all right?"

"Except that you're not all that smart with that seed in you." Mike's voice had thinned to a faint whisper. "You go from being a fairly bright man to a near-moron."

"You mean it wipes out your brains?"

"No abstract thoughts any more, no complex emotions. No fears, no longings. It knocks your intelligence way down."

"Does it? Gor."
Even Lover-boy sounded subdued.
"What would it feel like, Mike?"

Mike was silent for a long time. "I don't know," he said at last. "I wish I did."

CHAPTER 13

Dearest Mikal,

Once upon a time there was a princess who lived in a land where everything was perfect and beautiful. She was beautiful, too, and when she grew to womanhood many local princes tried to win her favors. Lots of them succeeded for a while (she was pretty easy—I know you won't like that bit), but she always grew tired of them. After a couple of weeks she sent each of them away, heartbroken.

She knew they were heartbroken (they told her so) and she was a kindhearted girl, so she worried and worried trying to decide why they had become boring to her. Finally she had the answer. They were handsome and intelligent and accomplished, but they were
local
princes. What she wanted was a foreign prince, one who would ride in from far away, vanquish all suitors in fair combat, and take her for his own.

When she had almost given up hope that it could ever happen, a foreign prince arrived. He seemed to like her as much as she liked him, and they had a wonderful time for a couple of months. But then he left. It was her turn to be heartbroken, and to wonder if he would ever return.

He did, years later. But now he was badly injured. He had been in a terrible battle, over on the other side of the world, and for a while she thought she could do nothing to help him. He had no energy, no happiness, no enthusiasm.

Finally, the princess had an idea. She thought he might find interest in the local versions of the battles that he had fought so far away. Even if he lost, it might prove a useful therapy. And it might help him to recover some of his strength.

He didn't want to do it, but she worked on him. Finally, after much persuasion, he entered a tournament.

It was a massacre. He was still terribly weak, and badly injured. But he beat the local champions, one after another, so easily that it was never a contest. It was like a man fighting infants. His strength and energy quickly came back to him. No one could stand against him.

Mikal, you tell me you would have to be crazy ever to go back to being a Trader. You can make such a good living here in the Community, and so easily.

Let me tell you another fairy story. Two hundred years ago, a country north of here had a king who was certainly crazy. Instead of spending his time fighting wars and winning territories, King Ludwig of Bavaria built wild castles, all over the countryside. He built them at the tops of mountains, and down by rivers, and in places that even the goats found hard to reach. He had outrageous tastes, and he built soaring towers, and jagged battlements, and magnificent formal gardens. The other kings of the region all laughed at him; by the time he died, his treasury was exhausted and the whole country had been dotted with fairy-story castles.

They are still there, most of them. You and I have even visited a couple. And everything that all the other kings did has been long forgotten.

You have to go back, Mike. I may fool you for a while, but one day you'll realize that I'm not for you. I'm intended for the homegrown princes, with their paper armor and cardboard swords. You are not like them. Even when you were weak and sick, you beat them so easily that there must have been no pleasure for you in the victory. There is not a negotiator in the whole of the Economic Community that you could not best while you were drunk or sick or half-asleep. I've seen you do it, and it frightened me. If you can manipulate others like that, what could you do to me if you tried?

I'm made of paper, too—deny it, I hope you will—but until you came I didn't know it. I have learned it in the past three months. You burn too brightly for me. You would consume me, destroy me. It has already begun. You don't realize it yet, but you've recovered from your wounds, and now you are itching for another big challenge. I can't provide that. You have to go back and fight your real dragons, and build your great castles around the world, and be the greatest Trader that the Earth has ever seen.