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analog SCIENCE FICTION/SCIENCE FACT
May-August 1968
Vol. LXXXI, Nos. 3-6
Custom eBook Created By
Jerry eBooks
June 2018
First of Four Parts.
The Trader Team of van Rijn’s Spice & Liquors Company
found a new use for an old planet—
twenty billion years or so dead and frozen—
which meant a fortune so vast interstellar politics suddenly
twisted sidewise . . . into violent trouble!
ILLUSTRATED BY KELLY FREAS
Elfland is the new section of Lunograd. So it is written, and, therefore, believed by the computers of administrative authority. Living beings know better. They see marvels, beauties, gaieties, a place for pleasure and heartbreak. They experience a magic that is unique.
But in the old town underground, the machines are always working.
Near a post on the frontier between these two universes, David Falkayn halted. “Well, my love,” he said, “here’s a pleasant spot for an adios.”
The girl who called herself Veronica lifted one hand to her lips. “Do you mean that?” she asked in a stricken voice.
A little taken aback, Falkayn regarded her closely. She made enjoyable looking anyhow: piquant features, flowing dark hair in which synthetic diamonds twinkled like stars, spectacular figure in a few wisps of iridescent cloth. “Oh, not permanently, I hope,” he smiled. “I simply had better get to work. Shall I see you again this evenwatch?”
Her mouth quivered upward. “That’s a relief. You startled me. I thought we were strolling, and then with no warning you—I didn’t know what to imagine—were you getting rid of me or what.”
“Why in the galaxy should I do any such ridiculous thing? I’ve known you, let’s see, just three standard days, isn’t it, since Theriault’s party?”
She flushed and did not meet his gaze. “But you might want a lot of variety in women, as well as everything else you’ve missed in space,” she said low. “You must realize you can take your pick. You’re the glamour man, the cosmopolitan in the real sense of the word. We may follow the latest gossip and the newest fashion here, but none of us girls has traveled past Jupiter. Hardly any of the men we know have, either. Not a one of them compares to you. I’ve been so happy, so envied, and so afraid it will come to a sudden end.”
Falkayn’s own blood beat momentarily high. Smugness tempted him. Few indeed had won their Master Merchant’s certificate as young as he, let alone become confidential associate of an uncrowned prince like Nicholas van Rijn, or served as fate’s instrument for entire planets. He reckoned himself fairly good-looking, too: face rather snub-nosed, but high in the cheekbones and hard in the jaw; eyes a startling blue against tanned skin; curly yellow hair bleached by foreign suns. He stood an athletic one hundred ninety centimeters tall; and he might be newly arrived from the outermost bourn of known space, but Luna’s best clothier had designed his pearl-gray tunic and gold culottes.
Whoa, there, son. An animal alertness, developed in countries for which man was never meant, stirred to life within him. She isn’t performing for free, remember. The reason I didn’t tell her in advance that today I return to the job, still holds good: I’d prefer not to have to worry about prearranged shadowings.
“You flatter me outrageously,” he said, “especially by giving me your company.” His grin turned impudent. “In exchange, I’d love to continue outraging you. Dinner first, though. Maybe we’ll have time for the ballet, too. But dinner for certain. After my long while outside the Solar System, exploring wild new planets, I’m most anxious to continue exploring wild new restaurants”—he bowed—“with such a delightful guide.”
Veronica fluttered her lashes. “Native scout glad-glad servem big captain from Polesotechnic League.”
“I’ll join you soon’s I can manage after eighteen hundred hours.”
“Please do.” She tucked an arm beneath his. “But why part at once? If I’ve declared myself on holiday—for you—I can keep on with you to wherever you’re bound.”
His animal showed teeth. He must remind himself to stay relaxed. “Sorry, not possible. Secrecy.”
“Why?” She arched her brows. “Do you actually need theatricals?” Her tone half bantered, half challenged his manhood. “I’m told you stand high in the Solar Spice & Liquors Company, which stands high in the Polesotechnic League, which stands above planetary law—even the Commonwealth’s. What are you afraid of?”
If she’s trying to provoke me, me, flashed through Falkayn, might be worth provoking right back at her. “The League isn’t a unity,” he said as if to a child. “It’s an association of interstellar merchants. If it’s more powerful than any single government, that’s simply because of the scale on which star traders necessarily operate. Doesn’t mean the League is a government, too. It organizes cooperative, mutual-benefit activities, and it mediates competition that might otherwise become literally cutthroat. Believe me, however: rival members don’t use outright violence on each other’s agents, but chicanery is taken for granted.”
“So?” Though a lecture on the obvious was perhaps insulting, he thought the resentment that flickered in her expression came too fast to be uncalculated.
He shrugged. “So, with all proper immodesty, I’m a target figure. Right-hand man and roving troubletwister for Old Nick. Any hint as to what I’ll be doing next could be worth megacredits to somebody. I have to watch out for, shall we say, commercial intelligence collectors.”
Veronica released him and stepped back. Her fists clenched. “Are you implying I’m a spy?” she exclaimed.
As a matter of fact, Falkayn thought, yes.
He wasn’t enjoying this. In search of inner peace, he let his gaze travel past her for a second. The setting was as lovely and not altogether real as she was.
Elfland was not the first unwalled community built on the Lunar surface. But on that account, its designers could take advantage of previous engineering experience. The basic idea was simple. Spaceships employ electromagnetic screens to ward off particle radiation. They employ artificially generated positive and negative gravity fields not only for propulsion, not only for constant weight inside the hull at every acceleration, but also for tractor and pressor beams. Let us scale up these systems until they maintain a giant bubble of air on an otherwise empty surface.
In practice, the task was monumental. Consider problems like leakage, temperature regulation, and ozone layer control. But they were solved; and their solution gave to the Solar System one of its most beloved resorts.
Falkayn saw a park around the girl and himself, greensward, arbors, flowerbeds that were a riot of rainbows. In Lunar gravity, trees soared through heights and arcs no less fantastic than the splashing fountains; and people walked with that same marvelous bounding lightness. Behind the crowds, towers and colonnades lifted in fanciful filigree multitudinously hued. Birds and elevated streets flew between them. Perfumes, laughter, a drift of music, a pervasive murmur of engines wove through the warm air.
But beyond and above stood Luna. Clocks ran on GMT; a thousand small suns hanging from bronze vines created morning. Yet the true hour neared midnight. Splendid and terrible, darkness struck through. At zenith, the sky was black, stars icily visible. South swelled the cloudy-bright-blue shield of Earth. A close observer could see twinkles on its unlit quarter, the megalopolises, dwarfed to sparks by that least astronomical distance. The Avenue of Sphinxes gave a clear westward view to the edge of air, an
ashen crater floor, Plato’s ringwall bulking brutally over the near horizon.
Falkayn’s attention went back to Veronica. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Of course I don’t intend anything personal.”
Of course I do. I may range in the galactic outback, but that doesn’t mean I’m an especially simple or trusting soul. Contrariwise. When a lady this desirable and sophisticated locks onto me, within hours of my making planetfall . . . and obliges me in every possible way except telling me about herself—a little quiet checking up by Chee Lan proves that what vague things she does say are not in precise one-one correspondence with truth . . . what am I supposed to think?
“I should hope not!” Veronica snapped.
“I’ve sworn fealty to Freeman van Rijn,” Falkayn said, “and his orders are to keep everything below decks. He doesn’t want the competition to get in phase with him.” He took both her hands. “It’s for your own sake too, heartlet,” he added gently.
She let her wrath fade. Tears came forth and trembled on her lids with what he considered admirable precision. “I did want to . . . to share with you . . . more than a few days’ casual pleasure, David,” she whispered. “And now you call me a spy at worst, a blabbermouth”—she gulped—“at best. It hurts.”
“I did nothing of the sort. But what you don’t know can’t get you in trouble. Which is the last place I’d want you to be in.”
“But you said th-there wasn’t any . . . violence—”
“No, no, absolutely not. Murder, kidnapping, brainscrub . . . Polesotechnic League members don’t indulge in such antics. They know better. But that doesn’t mean they’re tin saints. They, or certain of their hirelings, have been known to use fairly nasty ways of getting what’s wanted. Bribery you could laugh at, Veronica.” Ha! Falkayn thought. “Jump at” is the correct phrase, I suspect. What retainer were you paid, and what’re you offered for solid information about me? “But worse approaches are possible. They’re frowned on, but sometimes used. Every kind of snooping, for instance; don’t you value your privacy? A hundred ways of pressure, direct and indirect, subtle and unsubtle. Blackmail—which often catches the innocent. You do a favor for somebody, and one thing leads to another, and suddenly the somebody has fastened the screws on you and begun tightening them.”
As you probably figure to do with me, his mind added. Wryly: Why shouldn’t I let you try? You’re the devil I know. You’ll keep off the devils I don’t know, and meanwhile provide me some gorgeous fun. A dirty trick, perhaps, for a cunning unscrupulous yokel like me to play on a naive city operator like you. But I believe you get honest enjoyment out of my company. And when I leave, I’ll give you an inscribed firestone bracelet or something.
She pulled loose from his grasp. Her tone stiffened again. “I never asked you to violate your oath,” she said. “I do ask not to be treated like a spineless, brainless toy.”
Ah, so. We put frost back in the voice, eh? Hoarfrost, to be exact. Well, I can’t argue for the rest of this week. If she won’t reverse vectors, forget her, son.
Falkayn snapped to virtual attention. His heels clicked. A machine might have used his throat: “Freelady, my apologies for inflicting my society upon you under conditions you appear to find intolerable. I shall not trouble you further. Good day.” He bowed, wheeled, and strode off.
For a minute he thought it hadn’t worked. Then she uttered almost a wail, and ran after him, and spent a tearful time explaining how she had misunderstood, and was sorry, and would never, never get off orbit again, if only he—
She might even be partly sincere.
It helped, being a scion of a baronial house in the Grand Duchy of Hermes, Falkayn reflected. To be sure, he was a younger son; and he’d left at an early age, after kicking too hard against the traces that aristocrats were supposed to carry; and he hadn’t visited his home planet since. But some of that harsh training had alloyed with the metal of him. He knew how to deal with insolence.
Or how to stick with a job when he’d really rather prolong his vacation. He got rid of Veronica as fast as was consistent with a reconciliation scene-, and proceeded on his way.
II
First he passed through a large sporting goods store on the other side of the park. He should be able to shake off any followers among the wares on exhibition. The vac suits and vehicles were less bulky than he had counted on. But then, a jaunt into the Lunar mountains, rescue flitters available within minutes of a radio call, was not like hiking off on an unmapped world where you were the sole human being for several light-years. The collapsible boats with their gaudy sails were more helpful. He wondered how popular they were. Lake Leshy was small, and low-weight sailing tricky until you got the hang of it—as he had learned beyond the Solar System.
Emerging from a rear door, he found a kiosk and entered the dropshaft. The few people floating down the G-beam with him seemed like ordinary citizens.
Maybe I’m being overcautious, he thought. Does it matter if our competitors know I’ve paid a visit to Serendipity, Incorporated? Shouldn’t I try to remember this isn’t some nest of nonhuman barbarians? This is Terra’s own moon, at the heart of the Commonwealth! The agents of the companies don’t fight for naked survival, no holds barred; essentially, they play a game for money, and the losers don’t lose anything vital. Relax and enjoy it. But habit was too strong, reminding him of the context in which that last bit of advice had originally been given.
He got off at the eighth sublevel and made his way along the corridors. Wide and high, they were nonetheless crowded with traffic: freightways, robotic machines, pedestrians in workaday coveralls. Their facings were in plain pastel tones, overlaid by an inevitable thin film of grime and oil. The doors opened on factories, warehouses, shipping depots, offices. Rumble and rattle filled the air, odors of crowded humanity, chemicals, electrical discharges. Hot gusts struck out of fenced-off grilles. A deep, nearly subliminal vibration quivered through rock and floor and shinbones, the toil of the great engines. Elfland was a pretty mask; here, in the industrial part of old Lunograd, were the guts.
Gagarin Corridor ended, like many others, at Titov Circus. The hollow cylinder of space, reaching from a skylighting dome where Earth and stars gleamed, down to the depths of excavation, was not as big as Falkayn’s impression had been from its fame. But it was built in early days, he reflected. And certainly the balconies which encircled it on every level were thronged enough. He must weave his way through the crowds. They were local people mostly, workers, businessmen, officials, monitors, technicians, housewives, showing more in their gait and mannerisms than in their bodies the effects of generations on Luna. But there were plenty of outsiders, merchants, spacemen, students, tourists, including a wild variety of nonhumans.
He noted that the prestigious stores, like Ivarsen Gems, occupied cubbyholes compared to newer establishments. Really big money has no need to advertise itself. Boisterous noises from the Martian Chop House tempted him to stop in for a mug of its ale, which he’d heard about as far away as Betelgeuse. But no . . . maybe later . . . duty was calling, “in a shrill unpleasant voice,” as van Rijn often said. Falkayn proceeded around the balcony.
The door he reached at length was broad, of massive bronze, decorated with an intricate bas-relief circuit diagram. Stereoprojection spelled SERENDIPITY, INC. a few centimeters in front. But the effect remained discreet. You might have supposed this outfit to have been in operation these past two centuries. And instead, in—fifteen years, was that the figure—it had rocketed from nowhere to the very firmament of the Polesotechnic League.
Well, Falkayn thought, in a free-market economy, if you see a widespread need and can fill it, you get rich fast. Actually, when Old Nick organized his trade pioneer teams, like mine, he set them to doing in a physical way what Serendipity was already doing in its computers.
A certain irony here. Adzel, Chee Lan, and I are supposed to follow up whatever interesting reports our robot probes bring back from hitherto unvisited planets. If we se
e potentially valuable resources or markets, we report back to van Rijn, very much on the QT, so he can exploit them before the rest of the League learns they exist. And yet I, the professional serendipist, have come to Serendipity, Inc. like any hopeful Earthlubber businessman.
He shrugged. His team had been overdue for a visit to the Solar System. Having arrived, they might as well see if the data-processing machines could free-associate them with an item that pointed in some profitable direction. Van Rijn had agreed to pay the fees, without bellowing very much.
The door opened. Instead of a lobby, Falkayn entered a room, luxuriously draped but miniature, from which several other doors led. A vocolyre sang, “Good day, sir. Please take Number Four.”
That led down a short, narrow passage to still another door and thus finally to an office. Unlike most chambers in Lunograd, this one did not compensate for lack of windows with some landscape film played on a wall screen. In fact, though the carpeting was deep and rich blue, walls azure, ceiling mother-of-pearl, air flower-scented, furniture comfortable, the total effect was somehow stark. At one end, a woman sat behind a large desk. The battery of secretarial gadgets around her suggested a barricade. “Welcome,” she said.
“Thanks,” he replied with an attempted grin. “I felt as if I were invading a fortress.”
“In a way, sir, that was correct.” Her voice could have been pleasantly husky, the more so when she spoke Anglic with a guttural accent that not even his widely traveled ear could identify. But it was too crisp, too sexless; and her smile gave the same impression of having been learned. “Protection of privacy is a major element of our service. Many do not wish it known they have consulted us on a specific occasion. We partners receive each client in person, and usually need not call on our staff to help.”
That better be the case, Falkayn thought, seeing what a whopping sum you charge just for an appointment.
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