The High Ground

by Melinda Snodgrass

  “Oh, okay. But I’m sorry, I sort of derailed you. Go on.”

  “My actions created a shortage of the commodity and the price has skyrocketed. D’Amante fell for it and has been skimming even larger amounts of gadolinium, and people are starting to notice. Realizing that he could be charged with corruption he switched from skimming and started buying up gadolinium with his own money. He assumed he would make a killing when he did sell, repaying himself and socking away enough money to fight any charges that might be brought. That’s what I was waiting for.”

  The Emperor’s forefinger hovered over the command key on his tap-pad. “So with one touch I’m going to flood the market with my gadolinium, driving the price into the toilet. Most of my supply will sell at the higher price, but by the time D’Amante can react he will be selling at a loss which will affect his fortune, but also the economy of Yggdrasil. At which point I’ll send in the Departamento de Justicia to investigate, D’Amante’s skimming will be revealed and he’ll be ruined.”

  “You said you were sending a message, but if you ruin D’Amante it’s more than a message isn’t it?”

  “Ah.” Her father tapped the side of his nose with his forefinger. “The message isn’t for D’Amante. It’s for any other member of the FFH who might think to ally with Musa. D’Amante is the object lesson.”

  “He or his advisors will see the sudden glut on the market. What’s to stop him from selling almost as quickly as you?” Mercedes asked.

  “That’s where SEGU will once again be useful.” He cast his eyes upward in a parody of piety. “I’m afraid there will be an interruption in the Foldstream services to Yggdrasil for about ten minutes.”

  A stranger was grinning at her. Her father continued, “I had considered hedging the currency as Yggdrasil is making the transition from their local currency, the Krone, to the Real, but adding to the misery of the local people was too risky. We’ve already taken their children, and given their major businesses to League citizens—we can’t destroy the economy as well.”

  She had known he was powerful. It wasn’t until this moment she realized just how powerful. The ruler of the Solar League could affect the lives of countless millions in order to punish one man. And someday she would hold this power. She shivered.

  Her father leaned back in his chair, and indicated the sell command. “Please, my dear.”

  “You want me…?” He nodded.

  Mercedes struggled to swallow. She reached out and sent the sell order. On the League Exchange, numbers began flashing. Within three minutes the crown had made a fortune and the price of gadolinium was plummeting. She struggled to untangle her roiling emotions. Excitement, a sense of power, joy at her father’s evident pride, and a bit of guilt, for she’d just helped destroy the patrimony of a boy with whom she had shared a pleasant dance back when she had been a carefree girl and not the heir to a throne.

  Her father stood and stretched. She heard a vertebra or two in his back pop. He smiled down at her and held out his hand.

  “And that, my dear, is how you wage war without firing a shot.”

  24

  KNOWING WHO YOUR FRIENDS ARE

  “I thought you were in trouble with your ship,” Tracy asked as Donnel skittered ahead of him. The alien’s three feet created an odd syncopation on the sidewalk. Here at the edge of the spaceport the air was redolent with competing smells—alien and exotic spices, ships’ sewer tanks being pumped into honey wagons, the harsh throat-catching scent of rocket fuel.

  “I’m in trouble with my captain, and my captain doesn’t leave the ship. Cara was modified for low gravity and can’t tolerate being on the surface, and aside from that, business is business. Cara’ot are happy to deal with me if I’m bringing a customer.”

  Alarm seized Tracy. “I thought you said I’d get a discount.”

  “And you will, sir,” Donnel soothed.

  A new worry swam into his head. “Donnel, do you think I need to buy presents for my classmates—well, some of my classmates. I mean the ones I like.”

  “That’s a relatively short list, sir.”

  Tracy bridled. “Meaning what? That I don’t have any friends? Gee, thanks.”

  “Well, who are we talking about?”

  “Hugo. Ernesto. Sumiko.” Tracy hesitated then added, “Mercedes.”

  “And what are you going to give to the heir to the Solar League that she doesn’t already have and can’t buy if she does want it?”

  “I don’t know, okay?” He sounded defensive and angry. “Maybe your awesome Cara’ot traders will have something stellar.”

  “If it’s stellar you won’t be able to afford it.”

  “Christ, you’re just full of shitty little croakers today. What is your fucking problem?”

  Donnel sighed. “I guess I’m homesick. I hadn’t really thought about it until you mentioned needing Christmas gifts and I suggested I take you to a Cara’ot shop and then I found out the Equity was docked and I could do you one better and take you to the warehouse, but then I thought about my friends and family, and I realized it’s going to be another two and a half years before we get assigned to a ship—assuming you want me, of course—and suddenly I wanted to swim in eternity again.” The long meandering sentence left Donnel breathless, or perhaps it was the emotion he’d betrayed.

  “I didn’t know you were so unhappy,” Tracy said.

  “Most of the time I’m not. It’s just the fucking holidays. It reminds a person of what they don’t have.”

  “It’s not your holiday,” Tracy pointed out.

  “Don’t all conquered people ape the practices and traditions of their conquerors?”

  Tracy again had that flare of discomfort over the Cara’ot’s blunt statement, but then the alien laughed and added, “And it does make for some truly surreal experiences. One year we stopped to trade on Xinoxex and got invited to a shop owner’s home for dinner. The revered progenitor was in his time of torpor, standing in a pool of water and meditating or whatever the hell a Tiponi does in torpor. Anyway, the shoots had decked out the old stalk’s fronds with tinsel, lights and ornaments and were tooting out Christmas carols.”

  It was an irresistible image and Tracy laughed too. He also returned to his dilemma. “So what kind of things does your ship clan have for sale?”

  “Mostly luxury goods—unique foodstuffs, jewels, recreational drugs, art, exotic pets. It makes no sense to schlep ore or lumber, apart from sek wood, between systems—”

  “Why sek wood?”

  “Damn trees won’t grow any place but Cuandru. Even we couldn’t make it happen. Anyway, most settled systems have an asteroid belt and can mine whatever they need. We cater to people’s fantasies and passions.” Donnel hesitated then added, “We also carry medical teams and medicines.”

  “Legal ones?” Tracy asked.

  “Mostly,” Donnel said cautiously. He shook his big round head. “We really don’t understand you humans. We have the finest physicians in all the known worlds, but you won’t use us, and you’ve even made it illegal for us to care for the other species.”

  “Because you don’t heal, you corrupt and mutilate,” Tracy said, parroting what he’d been taught in school. “You force changes on creatures at a cellular level.”

  “Not true. We never force changes on any creature, and we mostly do it to ourselves. It’s a waste of energy and resources to change a planet to suit a people. It’s much easier to change the people to suit the planet.”

  “And that’s exactly what scares the crap out of us. It’s not natural.”

  “It’s our brains that figured out genetics. How is that not natural?”

  “God—” Tracy began and broke off. The churches had been trying for centuries to resolve the theology once aliens had been discovered. God made man in his image. So who made the Hajin and the Isanjo, the Sidones and the Flutes?

  “The two most valuable commodities in the universe are the creative genius—art, music, philosophy—of sentient bein
gs… and DNA. That’s what we trade in. We’d love to have some of what makes you humans so… so…”

  “So what?”

  “Aggressive? Opinionated? Determined? It’s hard to pinpoint. We’d love to know what makes you tick. On the most basic level. In your helix.”

  “And we can’t trust that you won’t change us. Subtly and over time, and then we wouldn’t be us any longer.”

  “You know from your physics class that this universe might be nothing more than a holographic projection.”

  “Meaning?”

  “How do we know anything is real? Much less us.”

  Tracy stared, puzzled at the alien. “You don’t sound like the guy who presses my trousers and sets out my shaving gear. You sound really… different.”

  Donnel gave a shake of his entire bulbous body like a dog emerging from water and laughed. “Sorry, going back among my people has made me rhapsodic or pedantic. Take your pick.”

  Scary, thought Tracy, but he didn’t say it aloud.

  Donnel turned down a narrow street lined with boxy buildings with large roll-up garage doors, and small doors of various sizes and shapes to either side. They went halfway down the block, and Donnel knocked on a small triangular door. It was opened by a creature that looked like a cross between a centipede and a ferret.

  “What the hell world was he modified to fit?” Tracy blurted. The creature gave a silvery laugh. “Okay, not a he,” Tracy added. He felt awkward and rude and completely out of his element.

  “Among our people you would say, ‘What world was Cara modified to fit?’” the creature said in the same bell-like tones.

  Tracy gave Donnel a questioning look. “We change gender as well as form on a pretty regular basis and sometimes we’re even hermaphrodites,” the batBEM said. “So we have a gender neutral pronoun—Cara.”

  “Cara explained it perfectly,” the creature said, looking up at Tracy. Its body was only a few inches above the floor of the warehouse so it had raised the front half of its articulated torso. That’s when Tracy realized that what he’d taken for multiple legs were actually arms with tiny hands. He shuddered.

  “So what have you got for us?” Donnel asked.

  “Come. We’ve set out an array of products for your human, appropriate to his financial status.”

  “Broke?” Tracy snapped.

  “We will work with you. You are Donnel’s.”

  Feeling like he’d been relegated to the status of “pet” Tracy followed the creature as it undulated across the floor. There were resin steel crates on all sides with pathways through the stacks. Tracy glanced down all of them. Most were empty, but in a few other equally strange-looking creatures were working. One was carefully removing glittering gems from a lined case and inspecting them with its grotesquely large and distended eyes. They weren’t normal gems found on almost any planet, but rather phantasm gems that had been grown in the gizzard of a female flying lizard that could only survive on a particularly poisonous world in the Sidone system. Down another row a stork-like Cara’ot was busy framing an exquisite oil painting of a serene pool, the water showing a multiplicity of shades of blue and a profusion of red and yellow flowers on the banks of the pond.

  Donnel clattered past Tracy and held a quiet conversation with their guide in a lilting language unlike any he’d ever heard.

  “Is that Cara’ot?” he asked.

  There was again the glockenspiel laugh. “Cara’ot are the people.” The “silly” was unspoken, but Tracy knew it was there.

  “The language is Caratolian,” Donnel explained.

  “I’ve never heard it before.”

  “Because we don’t speak it outside our communities, or allow it to be learned by outsiders,” the Cara’ot trader explained. “As traders it’s required that we know all the known languages, but now we primarily use English and Spanish. Almost all of the races do. You humans have a singular ability to… dominate any conversation, shall we say.”

  “But you used Caratolian just now,” Tracy objected. “And I’m an outsider.” His eyes narrowed. “You very deliberately want me to know that you’re keeping something from me.”

  Donnel cocked all four eyes at his companion. “Told you,” he said simply.

  Again Tracy had that feeling that unseen currents were flowing around him, and that he was caught in the undertow.

  They reached a table covered with a black velvet cloth. Arrayed on it were various graceful jars, razors, and a knife with a slim handle that glimmered like grey pearl. It rested in a silvery sheath. There were medallions that Tracy recognized as decorative zipper pulls, and a few single earring studs that looked like banded onyx in shades of red and grey.

  The centiferret swarmed up a leg of the table and began to pick up items using eight of its front hands. “A depilatory that removes the necessity for shaving. Shaving cream that causes the skin to tighten so you get a closer shave if you prefer the old-fashioned method. This razor’s handle—” the creature pressed it into Tracy’s hand and he felt it begin to morph until it conformed to the shape of his hand “—designed to perfectly fit your grip, and the blade will adjust to the shape of the face.” The Cara’ot picked up the sheathed knife. “Boot knife. Same theory as the razor. It and the sheath adjust to paper thinness for greater comfort. It expands.” The creature drew out the blade and it shifted into a silver glitter.

  Tracy tested the edge with the pad of his thumb at the same time Donnel shouted, “Don’t!”

  Tracy gave a shout of pain as the blade sliced into his skin. He sucked at the welling blood. “Shit, that’s sharp!”

  “Yes, we use a similar material in our scalpels. But even sharper.”

  “What’s the material?” Tracy asked.

  “Ah, that’s proprietary information,” the centiferret said. Tracy thought it was smiling, but it was hard to tell given the shape of its mouth.

  Donnel picked up one of the jars. Cool opalescent colors shifted in the light. “This cream is very effective at treating arthritis. I noticed your father’s hands, and thought this might ease him.”

  Tracy took the jar. Opened the lid. The smell was sharp, medicinal, but also pleasant. “It works?”

  “Guaranteed.”

  “Okay. I’ll take these zipper pulls.” He picked up two shaped like an abstract rune. “The cream, this earring, the razor, and the boot knife.”

  “Very good, sir.” The creature wore a ScoopRing on one of the middle legs. It curled into a ball, brought up a holo, figures flickered past, and a final amount settled and floated in front of Tracy. He eyed it, thought about his bank account, swallowed and nodded. It could have been a lot worse.

  His purchases were individually wrapped and placed in a clamshell-shaped carryall of gold with a silver ribbon for a handle.

  “Pleasure doing business with you,” the Cara’ot trader said.

  “And you.”

  Tracy and Donnel left the warehouse.

  “I figure the earring is for Ernesto, what about the rest?”

  “The two matching zipper pulls are for Hugo and Sumiko. I bought the razor for Jasper. Should help negotiate the scars.”

  “The depilatory cream would have helped more.”

  “Yeah, but he’d never use that. Wouldn’t show how tough he is.”

  “I didn’t think you liked him. Why buy him something?”

  “I don’t think he knows just how little I like him.” He looked down at the alien trundling along at his side. “And God knows I have enough enemies.”

  “True. And the knife?” Donnel pressed when Tracy remained silent.

  “For Mercedes. I figured that’s not too personal.”

  “And it might help keep her enemies at least a few more inches away,” the alien said dryly.

  * * *

  “Well, Merry fucking Christmas.”

  “Cipriana!”

  Mercedes hadn’t meant to sound so old-maidish, but for the most part she and her ladies had managed to avoid using th
e more coarse language that was heard at the academy. They were back in their quarters at The High Ground two days before Christmas.

  “Well, I guess this is what the military means when they ask for volunteers,” Sumiko said drolly, trying to lighten the mood. She then sighed and added, “I did so want to spend Christmas with Hugo and his family. It was going to be so warm and—”

  “And crass,” Cipriana snapped.

  “Cipriana!” Mercedes said again.

  “Now you’ve done it,” Danica said to Cipriana. “You’ve taken her from shocked to angry.”

  Cipriana rounded on the small girl who sat cross-legged on her bunk. “You’re taking this pretty damn placidly.”

  Danica shrugged. “What else can we do? Mercedes decided that she would show how dedicated she could be, and we had no choice but to come along.”

  Guilt seized her. “Look, I didn’t want to do this, but when the message came in my father and I talked it over, and…”

  “And he thought it would be a good PR stunt,” Cipriana said.

  If only I were a better liar, Mercedes thought. Then she could claim this was all her idea, but she knew she would never be able to pull it off. I need to work on that. I’m beginning to think lying is part of ruling.

  Honestly she had no desire to be sitting in the nearly empty academy for the next week and a half while others got to attend balls and parties, tour the display of lights, go caroling, and hear midnight Mass at the cathedral. Mercedes had wanted to watch the twins and Carisa tear into their gifts, and watch the delight on the face of one of the younger girls when they found the coin baked into the plum pudding at Christmas dinner.

  She had known when the message had arrived on her ScoopRing and five minutes later when she’d been summoned to her dad’s office what was about to come.

  “It’s a good move for you. It will show your dedication to defend the League.”

  “Against what? Oh, wait, my ladies, because they are going to kill me.”

  But he was He Who Must Be Obeyed (and she had to accept it was a good public relations move) so Mercedes and her attendants had returned to the cosmódromo earlier that day.