3xT

by Harry Turtledove

  Normally, one thinks only of the light-sail catching photons. No one cares what happens to them afterward. Jennifer did not think normally. A corner of her mouth twisted—on that, no doubt, she and Greenberg would agree. She'd realized the light-sail could also act as a mirror, and, with the ship's robots trimming it, a mirror of very special shape.

  She'd been ready for more than a day. She was, in fact, reading when Greenberg called her, but she wasted no time getting things under way. The adjustment was small, tilting the mirror a couple of degrees so the light it reflected shone on L'Rau's moon instead of streaming past into empty space.

  As soon as she was sure the robots were performing properly, she went back to rereading "The Man Who Sold the Moon."

  * * *

  The wait seemed to stretch endlessly. The M'Sak were not going to pause much longer, Greenberg thought, not with their chieftain screaming "Lies!" every few seconds. Then golden light touched the edge of the moon, which should have stayed bronze and faint upwards of another hour.

  The light stayed at the edge only a moment. Faster by far than L'Rau's patient shadow, the radiant grasping-claw hurried to its appointed place in the center of the moon's disk, so that it became a celestial image of the emblem of T'Kai.

  The warriors of the confederacy suddenly pressed against their foes with new spirit. The humans had promised a miracle, but few, Greenberg knew, believed or understood. Asking a planet-bound race to grasp everything starfarers could do was asking a lot. But since the prodigy worked for them, they were glad enough to accept it.

  As for the M'Sak— "Flee!" Greenberg shouted into the translator. "Flee, lest the wrath of heaven strike you down!" The barbarians needed little urging.

  * * *

  "Hold fast!" V'Zek shrieked. A warrior ran by him. The warrior also shrieked, but wordlessly. All his eyes were on the moon, the horrible, lying moon. V'Zek tried to grab him. He broke away from the chieftain's grip and ran on. V'Zek swung a hatchet at him, but missed.

  The chieftain's mandibles ground together in helpless fury. Moments before, he had led an army fine enough to satisfy even him. Now it was only a mob, full of fear. "Hold fast!" he cried again. "If we hold, we will win tomorrow."

  "They will not hold," Z'Yon said softly. Even the shaman, curse him, had three eyes on the sky. "And tomorrow, there will be ambuscades behind every tree, every rock. We daunted T'Kai before. Now we will be lucky to win back to our own forests again."

  V'Zek's eyestalks lowered morosely. The shaman was likely right. The M'Sak had gone into every fight knowing these effete southrons could never stand against them. And they never had. But now—now the T'Kai, curse them, knew the very heavens fought for them. Worse, so did his own warriors.

  He turned on Z'Yon. "Why did you fail to warn me of this?"

  "My master?" Z'Yon squawked, taken aback. Too taken aback, in fact, for he blurted out the truth. "My master, I did tell you the moltings indicated the need for caution—"

  "A pestilence on the moltings!" Before V'Zek was aware of willing his grasping-claw to strike, the hatchet he carried leaped out and crashed through Z'Yon's shell, just to the left of the shaman's center pair of eyestalks. Z'Yon was dead almost before his plastron hit the ground.

  V'Zek braced and pulled the hatchet free. Killing Z'Yon, he discovered, solved nothing, for the shaman's words remained true. There was no arguing him out of them any more, either. And a little while later V'Zek, like his beaten, frightened warriors, fled north from D'Opt.

  Until the sky-f'noi began to relinquish its grip on the moon, the hateful emblem of T'Kai glared down at them. Forever after, it was branded in their spirits. As Z'Yon had foretold—another bitter truth—few found home again.

  * * *

  L'Rau's sun grew visibly smaller, visibly fainter in the holovid tank as the Flying Festoon accelerated toward hyperdrive kick-in. Jennifer waited eagerly for it to disappear. Civilization lay on the other side of the starjump. "Back to the university," she said dreamily.

  Bernard Greenberg heard her. He chuckled. "I won't miss L'Rau myself, I tell you that. Anytime you have to bring off a miracle to get out in one piece, you're working too hard."

  He spoke to her differently now; he had ever since she'd brought the Flying Festoon back to the planet. He'd kissed her then, too, where before he'd hardly seemed to notice her as anything save a balky tool. But I'm not balky any more, she realized: she'd proved herself a part of the crew worth having. A kiss of acceptance was worth a hundred of the sort men tried to press on her just because of the way she looked.

  "Speaking of miracles, that eclipse was visible over a whole hemisphere," Koniev said. "I wonder what G'Bur who've never heard of T'Kai made of it." He took a sip of ship's vodka. For once he was not complaining about it—a measure of his relief.

  "Giving the next generation's scribes and scholars something new to worry about isn't necessarily a bad thing," Marya said. She moved slowly and carefully, but X-rays said she had only an enormous bruise on her shoulder from a slingstone, not a broken collarbone. Left-handed, she raised her glass in salute. "Speaking of which, here's to the scholar who got us out." She drank.

  "And with a profit," Koniev said. He drank.

  "And with a civilization saved and a market for our next trip," Greenberg said. He drank.

  Jennifer felt herself turning pink. She drank, too. After that, even her ears heated. "Speech!" Marya called, which made Jennifer swallow wrong and cough.

  "A pleasure to pound your back," Greenberg said gallantly. "Are you all right now?" At her nod, he grinned. "Good, because I want to hear this speech, too."

  "I—don't really have one to make," she said with her usual hesitancy. "I'm just glad it all worked out." A moment later, she added, "And very glad to be going home."

  "Aren't we all?" Greenberg said. Koniev and Marya lifted their glasses again, in silent agreement. The master merchant also drank. Then he asked, "What are you going to do, once you're back?"

  "Why, go back to school, of course, and work on my thesis some more," Jennifer said, surprised he needed to ask. "What else would I do?"

  "Have you ever thought about making another run with us?"

  "Why ever would you want me to?" Jennifer said. She was not altogether blind to what went on around her, and a long way from stupid; more than once, she suspected, Greenberg must been been tempted to leave her on L'Rau.

  But now he said, "Because nothing succeeds like success. This little coup of yours will win you journeyman status, you know, and a share of the profits instead of straight salary. And with your, uh, academic background—" Jennifer guessed he'd been about to say "odd academic background," but he hadn't—quite. "—you'd be useful to have along. Who knows? You might come up with another stunt to match this one."

  "You really mean it, don't you?" She had trouble believing her ears.

  "Yes, I do," Greenberg said firmly.

  "We'd like to have you along," Marya agreed. Koniev nodded.

  "Thank you," Jennifer said. "Thank you more than I can say." She went over and kissed Greenberg. She found she didn't mind at all when his arm slipped around her waist. But she still shook her head. "Once, for me, is enough. I feel very certain of that. The university suits me fine."

  "All right," Greenberg said. "I'll see you get rated journeyman anyhow. You've earned it, whether you choose to use it or not."

  "Thanks," she said again. "That's very kind. I won't turn you down. Not, mind you, that I ever will use it."

  "Of course not," Greenberg said.

  She looked at him sharply. As a master merchant, he was used to—and good at—manipulating people to get his way. Not this time, you won't, she thought.

  THE ATHETERS

  III

  The tall fur crest above Gazar's eyes rippled slightly. With Atheters, Jennifer thought, that was supposed to mean they were going to get down to serious business. She hoped so. Gazar had shown her nothing but junk—well, not junk, but certainly nothing worth taking offw
orld—for the past two hours.

  As the Atheter merchant rummaged through his wicker basket, Jennifer wondered, for far from the first time, what she was doing sitting cross-legged on a fat tree branch dickering with an alien who looked like a blue plush chimpanzee with a prehensile tail. She'd firmly intended to teach Middle English literature after a single trading run gave her a taste of the life Middle English science fiction writers tried to imagine.

  That had been two trips ago, now. She still hadn't quite worked out why she'd signed up for her second trip. Had she really been that depressed about not getting the first teaching job she'd applied for?

  She stopped the useless worrying as Gazar's big golden eyes—his least-chimplike feature—went wide. He'd found what he was looking for, then. With a fine dramatic sense, he held whatever it was concealed between his six-fingered hands. He started squawking. The translator Jennifer wore on her belt turned his words into Spanglish. "Here, my fellow trader, is something not many will be able to show you."

  "Let me see—" Jennifer's soft, breathy voice didn't activate the translator. She tried again, louder. "Let me see it, please." The machine let out a series of raucous squawks and shrieks.

  "Here." Crest erect with pride, Gazar opened his hands. "This is carved omphoth ivory, which of course means it is very, very old."

  "Why 'of course'?" Had Gazar not made an issue of it, Jennifer would have taken him at his word. The ivory of the figurine was yellowed, the carving in a style unlike anything she had seen on Athet: it was vigorous, exuberant, unsophisticated but highly skilled. Back in civilization, collectors would pay a lot for it.

  "Surely any nestling knows—" Gazar began. Then he let out a high-pitched screech that reminded Jennifer of forks on frying pans. To him, it was laughing. He was, in fact, laughing at himself. "But why should you, from the treeless wastes between the stars? 'Of course' because as soon as my earliest ancestors bravely crossed the Empty Lands into this forest, they began to hunt the omphoth that roamed here. No omphoth has been seen alive in more than a thousand winters."

  "Oh." Jennifer was glad the alien would not notice her distaste. Humans, she was sure, had exterminated a lot more species than the Atheters, but they had also learned not to sound proud of it. Maybe, she thought, Gazar had an excuse. "Were these omphoth fierce animals, then, that killed and ate your people?"

  "They were worse!" Gazar's tail writhed like a fat, pink worm, a sure sign of agitation. "They ate the trees! Fruit, leaves, branches, everything!"

  That hit him where he lived, all right, Jennifer thought, in the most literal sense of the word. Atheters were arboreal by evolution and by choice. They only came down from their precious trees for stones and for copper and tin ores. Their domestic animals were as tree-bound as they were. No wonder they called the savannahs that alternated with their rain forests "the Empty Lands."

  "No wonder you hunted them, then," Jennifer said soothingly. "What would you want in exchange for this figurine?"

  "Ah, so here at last is something that interests you, then? I was beginning to think nothing did." Atheters understood sarcasm just fine. Gazar's tail twitched again, a different motion from the one it had made before; he was deciding how greedy he could be. "You must understand, of course, that because there are no more omphoth, the object is irreplaceable, and so doubly precious."

  "I suppose so," Jennifer said. The flat tones of the translator made sure she sounded indifferent. She'd hoped Gazar wouldn't think of that.

  "Oh, indeed!" Always raucous, his screeches were nearly apoplectic now. "In fact, I would not think of parting with it for less than half a dozen scalpels, two dozen swissarmyknives"—the Terran name came out in one squawked burst—"and, let me see, two, no, three bottles of the sweet tailtangler you humans brew."

  He meant Amaretto, Jennifer knew. The Atheters were crazy about it. She also knew he had decided to be very greedy indeed. She gasped. The translator turned the noise into a scream of rage worthy of—what was that ancient mythical ape's name?—King Kong, that was it. That was how Atheters gasped. They were a noisy species. Jennifer said, "Why not ask for our ship, while you are at it?"

  Gazar's grin exposed formidable teeth. "Would you sell it to me?"

  "No. Nor will I give you everything that in your extravagance you demanded. Are you trying to empty all our stores so that we cannot deal with anyone else here?" The haggling went on for some time. It started to grow dark outside Gazar's hut of woven branches. Eventually they agreed on a price. Jennifer rummaged in her backpack. "Here are your two scalpels and fourteen knives. I will come back tomorrow with the bottle of tangletail," she said.

  "I trust you so far," Gazar agreed.

  "Now I must go back to my ship, while there is still some light." Jennifer stood up. She was not very tall by human standards, but she had to stoop to keep from bumping the ceiling of the hut.

  Gazar scurried around to open the door for her, a courtesy she'd read of but one long obsolete on civilized worlds, where doors were smart enough to open themselves. "Until tomorrow," the Atheter merchant said.

  "Yes." Jennifer started down the chain ladder the crew of the Pacific Overtures used to reach the lower branches of the big trees on which the locals lived. The Atheters carved what they reckoned hand-, foot-, and tailholds into the forest giants' trunks, but for humans, who unfortunately lacked both opposable big toes and any sort of tails, prehensile or otherwise, ladders were infinitely preferable.

  Gazar peered anxiously after her. "Be careful down there," he called. "The omphoth may be gone, but there are all manners of dangerous beasts."

  "I have my weapon that throws sleep," she reminded him. He smiled a big-toothed, reassured smile, then started screaming at the top of his lungs for customers. His shrieks were just a tiny part of the din; living as they did in an environment where they could rarely see far, Atheters advertised with noise.

  Jennifer was relieved to descend to the relative quiet of the forest floor. She took out her stunner; she knew Gazar hadn't warned her just for politeness' sake. The ground featured not just the usual assortment of large mammaloid carnivores, but also poisonous lizardy things that struck from ambush out of piles of leaves. The thick boots she wore to protect herself against them were one more reason not to use the locals' routes up and down trees.

  Being under those trees, Jennifer discovered, had other risks she hadn't thought of. Something whistled past her face, so close she could feel the breeze it raised, and smacked to earth just in front of her feet. She sprang back in alarm. Without her willing it, her finger went to the stunner's firing button.

  But, she saw, it was only one of the big, knobby, hard-skinned fruits that fell from the Atheters' trees. As she looked around, she saw two or three more similar fruits and a couple of scraggly saplings that were not doing at all well as they tried to grow in the gloom cast by their elder relatives.

  "A stupid seed," she muttered. Then she shivered. Stupid the seed certainly was, but had it fallen in a spot half a meter different, it would have smashed her skull. As she walked on, she cocked her head to look up every so often. Not just seeds fell from the Atheters' tree, but also rubbish the locals threw out.

  After a few hundred meters, she emerged from the forest into a large clearing, almost big enough to be an independent patch of plain. In the middle of it, sunset gleamed off the metallic bulk of Pacific Overtures. Jennifer blinked; after forest twilight, the crimson sun-reflections from the ship were dazzling.

  She hurried toward it. Less than a hundred meters away, she stumbled over something and nearly fell. As she caught herself, she saw she'd tripped on a stump completely overgrown by grass and low bushes. It had been a big tree once; now it was just a menace to navigation.

  She sighed with animal pleasure the moment she got inside Pacific Overtures. After the humid heat of the jungle, conditioned air was a blessing. She shook back her long, blond hair, frowned at how heavy and limp with sweat it was. As she had before, she thought about cutti
ng it short. But it helped the Atheters tell her apart from the other humans on Pacific Overtures, so she supposed it was worth the bother.

  She was into the common room before she realized how much like a trader she was starting to think. Annoyed, she kicked at the carpet.

  The scuffing noise made Sam Watson look up from the spice cones he was grading. His eyes lingered. That annoyed Jennifer all over again; hot, grubby, and none too clean, she felt anything but attractive. Men, though, usually seemed to think otherwise.

  The once-over ended soon enough not to be offensive. "How'd you do?" Watson asked. "Get anything interesting?"

  "As a matter of fact, I did." She took the ivory figurine from her beltpouch and set it on the table in front of him. "Have you ever seen anything like this before?"

  He reached for it, then paused. "May I?" At her nod, he picked it up. He was a medium-sized, medium-brown man in his mid-thirties, five or six years older than Jennifer. She suspected he wore his bristly handlebar mustache for the same reason she kept her hair long: to give aliens something by which to recognize him. She couldn't think of any other reason for him to want a black caterpillar in the middle of his face.

  The caterpillar twitched as he pursed his lips. "Can't say as I have," he said slowly. "That's an old, old style of carving."

  "I thought so, too, though I hadn't seen it before," she nodded. "Gazar—the merchant I got it from—says the animal whose ivory it comes from is a thousand years extinct."

  "I wouldn't be surprised, though I've never met a merchant, human or otherwise, who wouldn't stretch things for the sake of profit. Still, it's a pretty piece." He handed it back to her. "If it really is as old and rare as all that, it might even be museum quality."

  "Do you think so?" Jennifer felt her pulse race, as if Watson had said a magic word. In a way, he had. Private collectors had only private wealth with which to buy. Museums could draw on the resources of whole planets. If they started bidding against one another, they could make a trader rich for life.