by Allen Steele
“Don’t blame me.” Beneath his robe’s hood, Ash’s expression was neutral. “I’ve told you what I can do and what I can’t, and I can’t—”
“Like hell! I’ve seen you do it dozens of times.” Morgan glared at him. “So help me, if you’ve been drinking…”
“No, but after putting up with you all morning, I need a stiff one.” Ash headed for the stairs leading to the gallery, no doubt to retrieve the jug of bearshine from his bedroom. I hoped that no one would wonder how it had made its way from the Pride to our quarters.
Morgan started to go after him, then seemed to think better of it. Instead, he placed the cloth-wrapped object on the lunch table, then slumped in an armchair. Putting his face in his hands, he let out a long, depressed sigh. “I’m ruined,” he muttered. “God, I’m ruined…”
“Calm down.” Emily poured a cup of coffee and carried it over to him. “Just tell us what happened. Did the negotiations go bad?”
“Hell, yes, they went bad! You think I’m happy about this?” Raising his head, he regarded her as if she was an idiot. “Worst goddamn deal I ever made! We were screwed the minute we walked in there, all because that alcoholic son of a…”
“It’s not my fault!” Ash’s voice came as an angry shout from the gallery above us. Looking up, we saw him standing at the railing. He’d pulled back his hood, and there was an uncorked jug in his hand. “I did the best I could, but I can’t…”
“Back off, both of you.” Ted rose to his feet. “Mr. Goldstein, get a grip. And you”—he glared at Ash—“put that thing away, or so help me I’ll put it under lock and key and you’ll be dry until we get back home.”
Ash stared back at the captain. Apparently realizing this wasn’t an empty threat, he reluctantly jammed the cork back in the jug. “That’s better,” Ted said, then turned to Morgan. “Right…now how about telling us what happened, without any accusations.”
Morgan let out his breath. Before he could begin, though, my curiosity got the better of me. “What’s this thing?” I asked, reaching across the table toward the wrapped object he’d brought in with him.
“Don’t touch that!” Morgan snatched it away from me, then seemed to reconsider. With a resigned shrug, he put it back on the table. “Aw, what’s the point? Go ahead, open it up. Doesn’t matter…you’ll be seeing plenty more like it soon enough.”
I picked up the object. For something little more than twelve inches tall, it was fairly heavy. Carefully unwrapping the cloth, I found myself holding what appeared to be a small black obelisk. Carved from opaque, unreflective stone and attached to a matching square base, it resembled a rectangular pylon that had been given a ninety-degree twist at its center.
“What is this?” Vaguely amused, I hefted it in my hand. About ten pounds or so, I reckoned. “Some sort of paperweight?”
“It’s called a gnosh.” Morgan studied me. “Do you like it?”
“Well…yeah, I guess so.” Actually, I did like it. A lot. The gnosh fit smoothly within my palm, its surface warm to the touch. A small thrill raced down my back that was pleasant, almost sexual. “Can I have it?”
Morgan shook his head. “That’s my sample. I’ve give you one later…Lord knows I’ll have plenty to spare.” Another sigh of dejection. “Two thousand, to be exact.”
“Two thousand of…” Ali stared at the gnosh. “These things? In exchange for…?”
“That’s right.” Morgan picked up the cloth in which the gnosh had been wrapped. “This is what we’re getting in trade for our cargo.” Carefully draping the cloth over his hand, he reached for the obelisk. “Jules, if you’ll please…?”
I found myself reluctant to give it up. Morgan was insistent, though, so I surrendered the gnosh to him. The moment it left my hand, the ecstasy I’d felt left me. “Wow,” I mumbled. “That was interesting.”
“What in the world are you talking about?” Rain looked first at me, then at the gnosh. “Let me see that.”
“Oh, no you don’t.” Ted shook his head, then turned to Morgan. “What is this thing? What does it do?”
“So far as I can tell, it’s an emotion enhancer.” Morgan swaddled the gnosh within the cloth, then placed it on the table. “Touch it, and it gives you pleasure…or at least if you’re in a neutral frame of mind, as Mr. Truffaut was. Since I’m rather pissed off just now, I’m being cautious about handling it. Otherwise, I might be tempted to strangle Drunko the Clown up there.”
“Keep it up, and I’ll show you my next trick.” Ash was making his way down the stairs. At least he’d put away the jug, but not before he’d sneaked one last slug of bearshine; I noticed that he carefully held the banister as he descended.
“Steady, gents.” Ted bent down to study the gnosh. Although it was safely wrapped again, he was prudent enough not to touch it. “So what else has Fah offered us?”
“What else?” A short, humorless laugh. “That’s it! Two thousand of these stupid things.” Again, Morgan shook his head. “Oh, did I get screwed…”
“What did you expect?” Ali picked up the gnosh, gave it a casual inspection. “We just brought them two and a half tons of weed, for heaven’s sake. What did you think you were going to get for them? The key to the galaxy?”
“Yup…that’s exactly what he thought.” Ash was visibly swaying as he reached the bottom of the stairs. He shuffled toward us, his breath reeking of booze. “Morgan believed that he could get something for nothing…faster-than-light drive, advanced nanotech, some other kind of miracle technology, all for just a few bales of hemp.” He grinned and shook his head. “Manhattan for a handful of beads and trinkets…but this time, the injuns outfoxed the white men.”
“Ash…” Morgan’s eyes were cold. “I’m warning you, don’t…”
“Don’t what? Disclose the details of your sleazy little deal?” Ash reached beneath his robe, pulled out the squeezebulb I’d given him. It was half-full of bearshine; apparently he’d filled it before leaving the jug in his room. “Give up already,” he went on as he unsealed the nipple. “There’s nothing you can do about it now.”
He took a drink, then turned to look at me. “Get this,” he said, as if none of the others were around. “Morgan brought me aboard…brought me along, that is…’cause he thought I might give him an inside edge. I mean, what could be better than to have a telepath at your side when you’re doing business? That way, you can tell what the other guy is thinking when you’re trying to drive a bargain. Great idea, really…except there’s just one catch.” A pause. “C’mon, Jules, you’re a smart lad…what do you think it is?”
He was clearly waiting for an answer. I thought about it for a moment. “Umm…you don’t know hjadd?”
“Bingo!” Ash almost tripped over the hem of his robe as he wheeled away from me. “I can read their minds, all right…but it doesn’t mean a goddamn thing if I don’t know what they’re thinking!”
“That’s not what you told me.” Morgan’s face was red. “You said you could…”
“No. I told you that I could pick up their emotions. No problem there.” Snickering beneath his breath, he sauntered over to Rain and flung an arm around her shoulders. “In fact, you wanna know how they feel about your boss?” Ash confided to her in a stage whisper. “They think…well, not think exactly, but y’know what I mean…he’s a fool for even trying to pull something like this.”
“Look who’s talking.” Rain irritably peeled his arm from her.
Ash didn’t seem to notice. He sailed away once more, taking another mighty swig of corn liquor. “But what they actually think…well, damn if I know! They don’t know Anglo, really…they just use those…those whatchamacallits…to translate our language into their own, and vice versa. Their coga…congi…cognitive processes are in their own tongue. And believe me, Fah and Jas were real careful not to even think about any of the few words of our language that they actually understand.”
“So you couldn’t read their minds.” Ted had raised a hand to his fac
e, and he was trying to hide his smile behind it.
“You got it, Cap’n.” Ash propped himself up against the back of a chair. “Y’know, just between you and me…I think they’ve dealt with telepaths before. ’Cause as soon as Fah saw me comin’, he…heshe, I mean…put up a mental wall, and the only thing I could make out was the vague impression that heshe needed to pee.”
“The Order of the Eye.” I hadn’t meant to blurt that out, but at that moment it seemed pointless to keep it a secret any longer.
Morgan stared at me. “How did you know about that?”
“Jas asked me if Ash belonged to them. When I visited himher in hisher quarters.” I hesitated, realizing that I’d said more than I should. “They knew about him already. How, I don’t…”
“So why didn’t you…?” Morgan stopped himself and shook his head. “Never mind. Doesn’t matter anyway.” He picked up the gnosh from where Ali had left it on the table, turned it over in his hands. “Two thousand tchotchkes,” he said quietly. “Well, maybe it’s not a total loss. If I sell them wholesale at two hundred colonials per unit, perhaps I can recoup the overhead costs.”
“We’ll get paid, won’t we?” Emily asked.
“Rest assured, I’ll abide by the terms of my contract. No commission, though, I’m afraid.” Then he looked at Ash. “As for you…”
“What?” Ash tipped back his head and held the squeezebulb above his mouth. He crushed it within his fist until the last drop of bearshine was gone, then tossed the empty bulb aside. “You’re going to fire me? You know better.”
I wondered what he meant by that, but before I could say anything, Ted let out his breath. “Well, there it is. We’ll load up the…paperweights, or whatever…and go home. Maybe next time we’ll get a better deal, but for now…” He shrugged. “At least it’s a start.”
The start of what, he didn’t say. No one else was willing to speculate, either. All I knew was that not even feeling up a gnosh could have made anyone feel better just then.
V
I went upstairs and lay down, intending to take a nap. But I had just dozed off when Ted knocked on my door. Fah had appeared again, this time to inform him that the shipment of gnoshes was packed and ready to be put aboard the Pride. Since the captain wanted to return home as soon as politely possible—we still had the reception to attend that evening, but he’d scheduled our departure from Talus qua’spah for 0900 in the morning—he needed Rain and me to load the cargo that afternoon.
No problem, so far as I was concerned. Rain didn’t voice any objections either, so we headed back to the saucer. As we were leaving the guest quarters, though, Ali asked if he could join us; he was bored, and wanted to watch the load-in from the ship. Couldn’t blame him very much. Ash had passed out on the downstairs couch, and from behind the closed door of Morgan’s bedroom I could hear him discussing something with Ted and Emily—the details of the deal he’d made with the hjadd, I assumed. So there was nothing for our pilot to do. At least Rain and I were keeping busy.
Once we returned to the Pride and suited up again, we found Duh and hisher minions waiting for us in the hangar. The sled was loaded with square metal crates, each four feet wide on a side. I opened one before we put it aboard and found that it contained fifty gnoshes, each individually sealed in plastic, stacked and separated from one another by removable dividers. Either the hjadd had packed the crates in a hurry, or else they’d decided what they wanted to give us in exchange for our cannabis long before we got there. I wondered if Morgan was aware of this.
So Rain and I spent the next four and a half hours loading the crates aboard the Pride; there were forty in all, and once again we alternated between Cargo One and Cargo Two, making sure that the mass was evenly distributed on either side of the ship. The hjadd ’bots did much of the work for us, carrying the crates from the sled to the cargo hatches, where either Rain or I would take possession of them and push them over to the inside decks to be lashed down. Once this was done, she and I carefully counted the crates, using light pens and datapads to maintain inventory control. Unless the hjadd had decided to put rocks inside some of those boxes, we had exactly two thousand gnoshes to take home. I hoped Morgan was as shrewd of a businessman as he claimed he was, or otherwise he’d be stuck with a whole lot of paperweights.
Rain and I cycled through the airlock for what we hoped was the last time, but when we left the ready room, we discovered Doc Schachner waiting for us at the airlock. Apparently Ali had decided that he’d had enough of extraterrestrial hospitality; with Ted’s permission, he’d elected to remain aboard the Pride for the remainder of the trip, taking over for Doc as watchman. Which was fine with our chief engineer; he wanted to see Talus qua’spah for himself. So we escorted him down the tunnel to the decontamination facility and waited for him while he endured the strip-and-jab procedure.
Another tram ride, which by then had become almost dull, and we were back at the library. Ash was still crashed out on the couch, although someone had rolled him over so that he wouldn’t snore so much. The door to Ted and Emily’s room was shut, so I figured they were spending some quality time together. I was thinking about taking a siesta when Morgan appeared at the gallery railing. Would I please come up for a private meeting? It didn’t sound like I had much choice, so I went upstairs to his room.
For a race with limited exposure to human needs, the hjadd had furnished our rooms well. A bed, a desk, an armchair, and a private bath complete with toilet, sink, and shower: nothing fancy, but comfortable all the same. Morgan had turned his quarters into a temporary office; a comp was open on his desk, with papers spread out on either side of it. He closed the door behind us, then took a seat on the only chair in the room.
“Did the load-in go well?” he asked.
“Sure. No problem.” I shrugged. “Forty crates, fifty items per crate. Two thousand paperweights in all.”
He frowned. “I’d just as soon that you not refer to them as paperweights. Once Janus puts them on the market, they’ll be sold as alien artifacts…mood enhancers, most likely. What our customers do with them is their own business, of course, but ‘paperweights’ makes them sound trivial.”
“Sure. Whatever.” So far as I was concerned, he could call them Ol’ Doc Morgan’s Magic Elixir and pitch them as rheumatism cures. “Anyway, they’re aboard, safe and sound.”
“Uh-huh. Good.” He didn’t say anything else for a moment, but instead simply regarded me with what might have been a forlorn expression if it had extended to his eyes. But there was something in his gaze that was cold and ruthless, and I began to realize that whatever he wanted to discuss with me, it wasn’t good.
“Jules,” he said, after letting me stand there for a little while, “you’ve disappointed me. When I interceded on your behalf, it was because I thought you’d be a major asset. Indeed, I believed you’d be a good employee. But now…”
Morgan sighed, running a hand across the top of his shaved head as he glanced up at the ceiling. “What you’ve done…your conduct the last couple of days…has been nothing short of a betrayal of my confidence. At the very least, it was unprofessional. At worst, it undermined everything I was trying to achieve.”
“Huh?” I blinked. “What are you…?”
“I asked you to stay away from Mr. Ash, and not approach him without my permission. I explained to you that his…well, his talent…makes him sensitive, and that your dealings with him should be minimal. But instead, you chose to ignore my request, and…”
“So I spoke to him. Big deal.”
“No.” He scowled at me. “It’s worse than that, and you know it. You brought him bearshine from the ship, just when I needed his judgment to be unimpaired. And that…”
“Oh, no you don’t!” I snapped. “You’re not sticking this on me. I saw Ash this morning before he went into that meeting with you and Fah, and he was cold sober.”
“No, he wasn’t. He was hungover.”
“Maybe so…but that doesn’t me
an he was drunk.” I shook my head. “Either way, it didn’t matter. Ash couldn’t read Fah’s mind because he didn’t know hisher language. All he could get were vague impressions. He told you that himself.”
“Yes, he did. But you also kept from me the fact that Jas knows that Ash belongs to the Order of the Eye. This is something you should have reported to me at once.”
“Sorry, but I was under the impression that you wanted me to mind my own business.”
“When it comes to something like this, your business is my business.”
“In that case, Mr. Goldstein, you should pay closer attention to your business.” I couldn’t help but smile. “Funny thing about all those paperweights”—his left eyelid ticked as I spoke—“for something you bought just a few hours ago, they looked as if they’d already been packed for a while. Either the hjadd are really, really efficient, or they’d decided upon the terms long before we got here. If that’s the case, nothing Ash could’ve told you would have made any difference.”
An icy stare. “Don’t tell me how to negotiate a deal, son. I was making my first million when you were still in diapers.”
“Then maybe you shouldn’t rely on telepaths.” Something occurred to me just then, a thought that had eluded me until that moment. “Ash is a good guy,” I went on, “but as a reliable source, he’s got a lot to be desired. Did you know, when you got him to read my mind while I was in jail, that he got the facts mixed up? I didn’t betray my brother…he betrayed me. But that’s not what he told you, was it?”
“How did you…?” He stopped. “You talked to Rain, didn’t you?”
“She told me a little, yeah…but I didn’t figure out the rest until just a second ago. I thought your people had somehow managed to access my Academy files, but that wasn’t how you found out about my past, was it? Instead, you sent Ash to see me in jail.”
He shrugged. “So?”