Vietnam and Other Alien Worlds (7 page)

—For yourself, perhaps.

—Pray continue.

—Our Council is meeting with the Lafitte this evening, with the hope of resolving this question about the mercantile nature of land. I would be embarrassed if you did not come too. The meeting will be at *ala'ang in the Council Building.

—I would not cause you embarrassment. But could it possibly be postponed?

He exposed his arms. —We are meeting.

He disappeared and I spent a few minutes translating *ala'ang into human time. The !tang divide their day into a complicated series of varying time intervals depending on the position of the suns and state of appetite and estrous condition. Came to a little before ten o'clock, plenty of time.

I could report Lafitte, and probably should, but decided I'd be safer not doing so, retaining the threat of exposure for use as a weapon. I wrote a brief description of the situation—and felt a twinge of fear on writing the word “Syndicate”—and sealed it in an envelope. I wrote the address of the Hartford Translators' Guild across the seal and bounced up to the courier's office.

Estelle Dorring stared at me when I walked into the office. “Ricardo! You look like a corpse warmed over.”

“Rough night,” I said. “Touch of food poisoning.”

“I never eat that Tang stuff.”

“Good policy.” I set the envelope in front of her. “I'm not sure whether to send this or not. If I don't come get it before the next shuttle, take it to Armpit and give it to the next Earth courier.”

She nodded slowly and read the address. “Why so mysterious?”

“Just a matter of Guild ethics. I wanted to write it down while it was still fresh. Uh…” I'd never seen a truly penetrating stare before. “But I might have more information tonight that would invalidate it.”

“If you say so, Ricardo.” She slipped the envelope into a drawer. I backed out, mumbling something inane.

Down to Slim Joan's for a sandwich of stir-fried vegetables in Syrian bread. Slightly rancid and too much curry, but I didn't dare go to the Council meeting on an empty stomach; !tang sonar would scan it and they would make a symbolic offer of bread, which couldn't be refused. Estelle was partly right about “Tang” food: one bite of the bread contained enough mescaline to make you see interesting things for hours. I'd had enough of that for a while.

I toyed with the idea of taking a weapon. There was a rental service in the pharmacy, to accommodate the occasional sporting type, and I could pick up a laser or a tranquilizer there. But there would be no way to conceal it from the !tang sonar. Besides, Lafitte wasn't the kind of person who would employ direct violence.

But if it actually were the Syndicate behind Lafitte, they might well have sent more than one person here; they certainly could afford it. A hitter. But then why would Lafitte set up the elaborate poisoning scene? Why not simply arrange an accident?

My feet were taking me toward the pharmacy. Wait. Be realistic. You haven't fired a gun in twenty years. Even then, you couldn't hit the ground with a rock. If it came to a burnout, you'd be the one who got crisped. Better to leave their options open.

I decided to compromise. There was a large clasp knife in my bag; that would at least help me psychologically. I went back up to my room.

I thumbed the lock and realized that the cube I'd heard playing was my own. The door slid open and there was Lafitte, lounging on my sofa, watching an old movie.

“Dick. You're looking well.”

“How the hell did you get in here?”

He held up his thumb and stripped a piece of plastic off the fleshy part. “We have our resources.” He sat up straight. “I hear you're taking a flyer out to Pa'an!al. Shall we divide the cost?”

There was a bottle of wine in a bucket of ice at his feet. I got a glass out of the bathroom and helped myself. “I suppose you charged this to my room.” I turned off the cube.

He shrugged. “You poked me for dinner last night,
mon frère.
Passing out like that.”

I raised the glass to my lips, flinched, and set it down untouched. “Speaking of resources, what was in that brandy? And who are these resourceful friends?”

“The wine's all right. You seemed agitated; I gave you a calmative.”

“A
horse
calmative! Is it the Syndicate?”

He waved that away. “The Syndicate's a myth. You—”

“Don't take me for an idiot. I've been doing this for almost as long as you have.” Every ten years or so there was a fresh debunking. But the money and bodies kept piling up.

“You have indeed.” He concentrated on picking at a hangnail. “How much is Starlodge willing to pay?”

I tried not to react. “How much is the Syndicate?”

“If the Syndicate existed,” he said carefully, “and if it were they who had retained me, don't you think I would try to use that fact to frighten you away?”

“Maybe not directly…last night, you said ‘desperate men.'”

“I was drunk.” No, not Peter Rabbit, not on a couple of bottles of wine. I just looked at him. “All right,” he said, “I was told to use any measures short of violence—”

“Poisoning isn't violence?”

“Tranquilizing, not poisoning. You couldn't have died.” He poured himself some wine. “Top yours off?”

“I've become a solitary drinker.”

He poured the contents of my glass into his. “I might be able to save you some trouble, if you'll only tell me what terms—”

“A case of Jack Daniels and all they can eat at Slim Joan's.”

“That might do it,” he said unsmilingly, “but I can offer fifteen hundred shares of Hartford.”

That was $150 million, half again what I'd been authorized. “Just paper to them.”

“Or a million cases of booze, if that's the way they want it.” He checked his watch. “Isn't our flyer waiting?”

I supposed it would be best to have him along, to keep an eye on him. “The one who closes the deal pays for the trip?”

“All right.”

On the hour-long flyer ride I considered various permutations of what I could offer. My memory had been jammed with the wholesale prices of various kinds of machinery, booze, candy, and so forth, along with their mass and volume, so I could add in the shipping costs from Earth to Armpit to Morocho III. Lafitte surely had similar knowledge; I could only hope that his figure of 1500 shares was a bluff.

(I had good incentive to bargain well. Starlodge would give me a bonus of up to 10 percent of the difference between a thousand shares and whatever the settlement came to. If I brought it in at 900, I'd be a millionaire.)

We were turning inland; the walls of the city made a pink rectangle against the towering jungle. I tapped the pilot on the shoulder. “Can you land inside the city?”

“Not unless you want to jump from the top of a building. I can set you on the wall, though.” I nodded.

“Can't take the climb, Dick? Getting old?”

“No need to waste steps.” The flyer was a little wider than the wall, and it teetered as we stepped out. I tried to look just at my feet.

“Beautiful from up here,” Lafitte said. “Look at that sunset.” Half the large sun's disk was visible on the jungle horizon, a deeper red than Earth's sun ever shone. The bloody light stained the surf behind us purple. It was already dark in the city below; the smell of rancid fish oil burning drifted up to us.

Lafitte managed to get the inside lane of the staircase. I tried to keep my eyes on him and the wall as we negotiated the high steps.

“Believe me,” he said (a phrase guaranteed to inspire trust), “it would make both our jobs easier if I could tell you who I'm representing. But I really am sworn to secrecy.”

An oblique threat deserves an oblique answer. “You know I can put you in deep trouble with the Standards Committee. Poisoning a Guild brother.”

“Your word against mine. And the bellbot's, the headwaiter's, the wine steward's…you did have quite a bit to drink.”

“A couple of bottles of wine won't knock me out.”

“Your capacity is well known. I don't think you want a hearing investigating it, though, not at your age. Two years till retirement?”

“Twenty months.”

“I was rounding off,” he said. “Yes, I did check. I wondered whether you might be in the same position as I am. My retirement's less than two months away; this is my last big-money job. So you must understand my enthusiasm.”

I didn't answer. He wasn't called Rabbit for lack of “enthusiasm.”

As we neared the bottom, he said, “Suppose you weren't to oppose me too vigorously. Suppose I could bring in the contract at a good deal less than—”

“Don't be insulting.”

In the dim light from the torches sputtering below, I couldn't read his expression. “Ten percent of my commission wouldn't be insulting.”

I stopped short; he climbed down another step. “I can't believe even
you
—”

“
Verdad.
Just joking.” He laughed unconvincingly. “Everyone knows how starchy you are, Dick. I know better than most.” I'd fined him several times during the years I was head of the Standards Committee.

We walked automatically through the maze of streets, our guides evidently having taken identical routes. Both of us had eidetic memories, of course, that being a minimum prerequisite for the job of interpreter. I was thinking furiously. If I couldn't out-bargain the Rabbit I'd have to somehow finesse him. Was there anything I knew about the !tang value system that he didn't? Assuming that this council would decide that land was something that could be bought and sold.

I did have a couple of interesting proposals in my portfolio, that I'd written up during the two-week trip from Earth. I wondered whether Lafitte had seen them. The lock didn't appear to have been tampered with, and it was the old-fashioned magnetic key type. You can pick it but it won't close afterward.

We turned a corner and there was the Council Building at the end of the street, impressive in the flickering light, its upper reaches lost in darkness. Lafitte put his hand on my arm, stopping. “I've got a proposition.”

“Not interested.”

“Hear me out, now; this is straight. I'm empowered to take you on as a limited partner.”

“How generous. I don't think Starlodge would like it.”

“What I
mean
is Starlodge. You hold their power of attorney, don't you?”

“Unlimited, on this planet. But don't waste your breath; we get an exclusive or nothing at all.” Actually, the possibility had never been discussed. They couldn't have known I was going into a competitive bidding situation. If they had, they certainly wouldn't have sent me here slow freight. For an extra fifty shares I could have gone first class and been here a week before Peter Rabbit could have sewn up the thing and been headed home before he got to Armpit.

Starlodge had a knack for picking places that were about to become popular—along with impressive media power, to make sure they did—and on dozens of worlds they did have literally exclusive rights to tourism. Hartford might own a spaceport hotel, but it wasn't really competition, and they were usually glad to hand it over to Starlodge anyhow. Hartford, with its ironclad lock on the tachyon drive, had no need to diversify.

There was no doubt in my mind that this was the pattern Starlodge had in mind for Morocho III. It was a perfect setup, the beach being a geologic anomaly: there wasn't another decent spot for a hotel within two thousand kilometers of the spaceport. Just bleak mountain tops sprouting occasionally out of jungles full of large and hungry animals. But maybe I could lead the Rabbit on. I leaned up against a post that supported a guttering torch. “At any rate, I certainly couldn't consider entering into an agreement without knowing who you represent.”

He looked at me stone-faced for a second. “Outfit called A. W. Stoner Industries.”

I laughed out loud. “Real name, I mean.” I'd never heard of Stoner, and I do keep in touch.

“That's the name I know them by.”

“No concern not listed in
Standard, Poor and Tueme
could come up with nine figures for extraterrestrial real-estate speculation. No legitimate concern, I mean.”

“There you go again,” he said mildly. “I believe they're a coalition of smaller firms.”

“I don't. Let's go.”

Back in my luggage I had a nasal spray that deadened the sense of smell. Before we even got inside, I knew I should have used it.

The air was gray with fish-oil smoke, and there were more than a hundred !tang sitting in neat rows. I once was treated to a “fish kill” in Texas, where a sudden ecological disaster had resulted in windrows of rotting fish piled up on the beach. This was like walking along that beach using an old sock for a muffler. By Lafitte's expression, he was also unprepared. We both walked forward with slightly greenish cheerfulness.

A !tang in the middle of the first row stood up and approached us. —Uncle? I ventured, and he waved his snout in affirmation.

—We have come to an interim decision, he said.

—Interim? Lafitte said. —Were my terms unacceptable?

—I die. My footprints are cursed. I walk around the village not knowing that all who cross where I have been will stay in estrous zero, and bear no young. Eventually, all die. O the embarrassment. We want to hear the terms of Navarro's tribe. Then perhaps a final decision may be made.

That was frighteningly direct. I'd tried for an hour to tell him our terms before, but he'd kept changing the subject.

—May I hear the terms of Lafitte's tribe? I asked.

—Certainly. Would Lafitte care to state them, or should I?

—Proceed, Uncle, Lafitte said, and then, in Spanish,—Remember the possibility of a partnership. If we get to haggling…

I stopped listening to Rabbit as Uncle began a long litany of groans, creaks, pops, and whistles. I kept a running total of wholesale prices and shipping costs. Bourbon, rum, brandy, gin. Candy bars, raw sugar, honey, pastries. Nets, computers, garbage composters, water-purifying plant, hunting weapons. When he stopped, I had a total of only H620.