“There are markets,” Gul Zarkun went on, “but with transportation costs and the competition from local products I would have to take a heavy loss. I’ve been holding onto them in the hope that something will open up.”
“I have a client who might be able to use them,” Darzek said. “Quote me a price on the lot.”
“The lot? All of them?”
“Of course. There’s no solvency these days in handling small orders.”
“No, indeed,” Gul Zarkun breathed. “All of them, you say? Well—” The magnitude of the proposition made him wary. “What—ah—financial arrangement do you propose?”
“Full and immediate solvency. It’s the only way I do business. I’ll want a certified inventory, but if I’m unable to consummate the exchange I’ll reimburse you for your trouble.”
“That’s fair enough. I’ll have the inventory made and send it to you with a quotation.”
For the next two days Darzek kept the transmitting relays sizzling with messages to his various connections, and when Gul Zarkun’s quotation arrived he was ready.
He did not even consider haggling over the price. The money meant nothing to him as long as his solvency credential covered it. What he desperately needed was a reputation.
“A hundred thousand solvency units,” he told Miss Schlupe. “Nice round figure, isn’t it?”
“How much money is that?”
“No idea. A quarter of a million dollars, at least. Keep your fingers crossed.”
With Miss Schlupe looking on nervously, he touched out the code that would transfer a hundred thousand solvency units from his account to Gul Zarkun’s. After several interminable seconds the board clicked and cleared itself.
“Is that all there is to it?” Miss Schlupe demanded.
Darzek nodded.
“And—you’ve paid Gul Zarkun the hundred thousand?”
Darzek nodded again.
“Unlimited means—unlimited!”
“We still don’t know that,” Darzek said, “but there’s no doubt that it means quite a lot.”
He hurried off a memo to Gul Zarkun informing him that the quotation had been met and applied himself to the tedious task of shipping the mosf skins.
A full term went by before his factors disposed of the last of the skins and transferred payment to Darzek. Totaling up his expenses, he found that he’d recovered little more than a quarter of the purchase price. Transportation costs were high, factors’ commissions took greedy bites out of the resale price, and he discovered to his consternation that galactic civilization was less beatified than he had supposed: there were taxes to pay, and assorted inspection and license fees.
A hurried calculation convinced him that he had lost, on this first business transaction, the equivalent of nearly two hundred thousand dollars.
He considered it a bargain. Gul Zarkun was overwhelmed. He came personally to pay his respects to Darzek, and he bragged to his friends—not about his own good fortune in disposing of a dead white elephant, but on Darzek’s astuteness in finding a profitable market none of them thought existed.
“If I’m not careful, that astuteness will ruin me,” Darzek told Miss Schlupe ruefully, but in truth he was elated. He paid for Gul Zarkun’s mosf skins with Jan Darzek’s solvency credential; when the skins were resold, payment was made to the Trans-Star Trading Company. He lost some seventy-five thousand solvency units he hadn’t known he had, and Trans-Star gained a third of that amount in liquid solvency.
His company was in business, it had solid assets—and he had acquired the reputation he so desperately needed.
He quickly ran up a series of similar transactions, in each instance making payment with his personal solvency credential and returning the—considerably smaller—receipts to the Trans-Star Trading Company account. On each transaction he lost a fortune and his company became richer. He had the dizzying sensation of having discovered, quite inadvertently, a philosopher’s stone of economics. In half a period he lost an enormous amount of solvency and became a millionaire.
Around Yorlq’s trading community his status quickly became legendary. He no longer had to surreptitiously snoop out potential business deals. The other traders came to him with their surpluses, and, because he wanted to be known as a brilliant businessman rather than a magician, he had to exercise restraint and become severely selective in the offers he accepted. He could easily have lost four times as much solvency and become four times as rich.
He hired several promising young undertraders from the lower reaches of his competitors’ organizations. His own radical ideas on how to run a trading company merely bewildered them, but left to their own devices they gradually developed a volume of business of a more prosaic sort, and Trans-Star began to show a modest profit.
He also expanded his staff of investigators, keeping that organization separate from his trading company and as anonymous as his ingenuity could make it. Its headquarters were a Trans-Star warehouse; certain alterations were effected before the trading company occupied the premises, and none of the trading personnel were aware that the building’s internal dimensions were somewhat smaller than they had been originally. The rooms thus concealed were easily accessible by transmitter but in no other way; and by transmitter only to those who knew what transmitters to use, and how. With a secret headquarters, and with a staff of trained investigators, he felt that he was at last ready to learn a thing or two about the Dark.
But his trading company still required a disproportionate amount of time and energy that he would have preferred to expend on more vital matters. He had his reputation, but it would quickly wilt if he did not keep it nourished.
On the day following Gul Azfel’s party, he sent for his first undertrader and flashed invoices on his ceiling screen until he found the one he wanted. “It says here,” he remarked severely, “that you have just purchased two shiploads of skruka-gum.”
“Yes, Sire,” Gud Baxak admitted humbly. “It seemed like a very good price.”
“Last evening I overheard Gul Meszk remarking that he had three full shiploads of skruka-gum on the way from Sesnav. His unit price, delivered here on Yorlq, will be a full fifteen per centum under what you paid. His ships will be unloading in four days.”
Gud Baxak cringed with humiliation.
“I further find,” Darzek went on, “that these two shipments, Gul Meszk’s and ours, are the only supplies of skruka-gum likely to reach Yorlq in the next five terms. Does all of this suggest anything to you?”
“Yes, Sire. I shall divert my two shiploads to another world and salvage what I can from my stupidity.”
“You will not,” Darzek told him. “You will immediately post an anticipation of unlimited quantities of skruka-gum, availability within the half-term. You will invite bids, minimum price fourteen lurn-weights per solvency, which is at least ten per centum under what Gul Meszk could sell his for.”
“But that would be twenty-five per centum under what I could sell mine for!” Gud Baxak protested.
“Gul Meszk will of course divert his three ships and attempt to dispose of the cargos before knowledge of an unlimited supply of low-priced skruka-gum on Yorlq becomes general. As soon as you learn that he has done so, you will cancel your anticipation and announce that you could obtain only the two shiploads at a higher price. You should be able to dispose of the lot at current rates, which will give you a tidy profit of twenty per centum.”
Gud Baxak’s bone-ringed face underwent contortions of incredulity. “But I can’t post an anticipation unless we have an anticipation! And if we have one, there would be no need to cancel it!”
Darzek sighed and weighed the value of a small business coup against the possible suspicion that such sharp dealings might arouse. He doubted that it would be worth the risk. Gud Baxak was hard-working and no du
nce, and would doubtless salvage a small profit. “No,” he said regretfully. “You are quite right. Divert your two shiploads, and get the best price you can. And Gud Baxak—”
“Yes, Sire?”
“I want as few people as possible to find out about this little blunder of yours. Try to dispose of the two shiploads without posting availability or asking for bids.”
“Yes, Sire.”
Obviously relieved, Gud Baxak genuflected and hurried away.
Darzek sighed again, pondering the mysteries of interstellar business; more particularly, the mysteries of interstellar businessmen.
They were incredibly, unnecessarily, even disgustingly honest. They worked hard, of course—fanatically hard. Their knowledge was encyclopedic, and they strove incessantly to keep it that way. And they were utterly devoid of shrewdness and imagination, and seemed incapable of the slightest machination.
“There isn’t a one of them,” Darzek mused, “who would make a tenth-rate poker player. God knows they all have the faces for it, but they’re constitutionally incapable of the smallest bluff.”
When he searched for the cleverness behind a brilliant business coup, it invariably turned out that the trader had scored his success merely because he knew more, and worked harder, than his competitors. The traders not only told the truth, but they believed everything they heard. Implicitly. On Earth, the wealthiest of them would have gone broke in a matter of months.
Darzek could have become a multibillionaire in record time, but money was the least of his needs. His only concern now was for his reputation, and it wouldn’t do to have word get around that Gul Meszk had made an ass out of Trans-Star Trading Company’s first undertrader.
Irritably he got to his feet and paced back and forth. “If they’re so dratted honest,” he growled, “why did they lie to me about the oil?”
Mentally he ticked off the names of the traders who interested him: E-Wusk, Azfel, Meszk, Kaln, Rhinzl, Isc, Ceyh, Halvr, Brokefa. All of them had been routed out of peaceful prosperity by the Dark—E-Wusk four times, the others at least once. Their property had been confiscated, their businesses ruined.
A trader thus burned should have feared the fire—should have taken himself with alacrity to a remote part of the galaxy, putting as many light years between himself and the Dark as the more than ample dimensions of space permitted.
Yet all had gathered here on Yorlq, on the very threshold of the Dark, and carried on as if nothing had happened. Brokefa had joined a group of maf-cousins already established here, but there was no explanation at all for the presence of the others. They were flourishing, but they could have flourished as easily on the other side of the galaxy.
“Except for E-Wusk, they’re afraid of the Dark,” Darzek mused. “They won’t talk about it. If they’re cornered, they’ll lie to avoid even an indirect reference to it, and yet they remain directly under its shadow. When you consider that they won’t lie about anything else, not even to make money—when their lives are dedicated to making money—it becomes highly significant, or at least meaningful. I wish I knew what it meant.”
Miss Schlupe stepped out of the transmitter. She always did so with a look of surprise on her face, as though she never quite expected the blamed thing to work. “What did you do to poor Gud Baxak?” she asked.
“Shocked his moral fiber, I suppose.”
“You shouldn’t do that. The poor boy is half frantic.”
“Really? What’s he doing?”
“Working furiously. Checking references, getting messages off three a minute—”
“It’ll do him good. What’s that you have?”
She held out a long, narrow leaf. “What does it look like?”
“I haven’t the vaguest idea.”
“It’s tobacco.”
“No!” He stared. “It couldn’t be!”
“I’ve been visiting Rhinzl,” she said. “He’s quite a horticulturist. He has lovely flowers, and all kinds of strange plants. And I found this.”
“It couldn’t be anything like tobacco.”
“I’ll dry some, and see.”
“Fine. And then you can teach one of Gul Azfel’s pwisqs to smoke, to see if the stuff is poison.”
“Only yesterday you were threatening to buy a spaceship and send it to Earth for a load of tobacco. There’s nothing to lose by trying, is there?”
“I suppose not,” Darzek said absently. “Miss Schlupe, what would you do if you wanted a trading empire with a truly impregnable monopoly?”
“I couldn’t imagine wanting such a thing.”
“That’s because you’re pure in heart. I’ve been thinking about these worlds that the Dark has taken. One moment they were receiving food, raw materials, and processed and fabricated items from all over the galaxy. The next moment they were receiving nothing. What did they do?”
“They did without.”
“No, Miss Schlupe. They may have gone on trading with each other, but that’s by no means certain, and even then I doubt that they could make themselves self-sufficient. The Dark has created a considerable void in interstellar trade. I find that idea fascinating. I’m wondering if I could fill it myself.”
“You?”
“I’ll put it another way. I’m wondering if, by making motions at filling that void, I may find that someone has already thought of it. Someone whose name is E-Wusk, Azfel, Meszk, Kaln, Rhinzl, Isc, Ceyh, Halvr, or Brokefa. One, or several, or all nine. It would account for their unnatural silence on the subject of the Dark. In short—”
“I like the way you talk for an hour, and then say, ‘In short—’ Why don’t you start out with the short of it, so I can understand you.”
“Item,” Darzek said. “A revolution, a severance of relations, an eviction of foreigners, is unbelievable, staggering, incredible, inconceivable, and a number of other adjectives I can’t think of at the moment. It can’t happen. Since the worlds have complete autonomy, there’s no need for it to happen. Suddenly it does, on a massive scale. It’s so unimaginable that the only explanation anyone can think of postulates extra-galactic invaders armed with mind rays. It matters not that no one has ever seen one of these invaders, not even on the worlds that were revolting. When one rejects the possibility of their being invisible, which I do—”
“All right. Scratch the invaders. Where does that leave you?”
“With a question I should have asked myself months— excuse me, terms—ago. Who benefits? Certainly not the revolting populations. If they merely wanted to rid themselves of foreigners, they could have done so legally and at negligible expense, and monopolized their own trade. They gained nothing by severing relations, and they ruined their economies. So who does benefit?”
“I give up,” Miss Schlupe said patiently. “Who?”
“Consider this: the one goal in life for a trader is trade. Business. Accumulating solvency. Supposing it occurred to a trader that he could have much more of all of these, with considerably less work and risk, if he devised a way to eliminate his grubbing competitors. A trader or group of traders who could invent a little device called the Dark, and use it to establish a trading monopoly over a large number of worlds, would have achieved a trader’s idea of paradise. It wouldn’t satisfy them, of course. Being traders, they’d want more and more worlds. The Dark would keep moving.”
Miss Schlupe beamed at him. “That’s it! You’ve wrapped it up beautifully. It explains everything, even why they won’t talk about the Dark. Now all you have to do is figure out how they do it.”
“It doesn’t explain quite everything,” Darzek said. “There’s one small matter that it doesn’t explain at all. What are they afraid of?”
Chapter 9
At the edge of Yorlq’s capital city stood the Hesr, the Hill of Traders, an unsightly knob of earth crow
ned with tangled vegetation and a haphazard crowding of enormous dwellings. Darzek, standing where the steep slope leveled off, gazed meditatively out over the city of Yorlez and pondered this inclination of foreign traders to settle upon a strategically located height.
He wondered if sometime in the distant past the belligerency of natives everywhere had forced traders into the habit of placing their enclaves where they could be easily converted to citadels. Perhaps the Hesr had once bristled with battlements and overlooked a lovely town of winding, flower-trimmed streets and quaint buildings. If so, time had obliterated the battlements to the last stone, and no one remembered when the cities and towns of Yorlq had been lovely.
Neither was anyone aware of the monstrous eyesores they had become. Time and indifference had worked together like an insidious blight to lay waste to cities that continued to flourish amidst their own ruins.
The orderly pattern of streets and spacious boulevards was still visible in the inner city of Yorlez, but the thoroughfares were choked with a raging tangle of blotchy brown vegetation that reached high to obscure the outlines of buildings whose colorful plastic facades had long since been bleached to sickly gray. Looking down from the Hesr, Darzek could trace the precise moment when the transmitter had influenced the city’s growth. The buildings of the outer districts were arranged chaotically; the heaving sea of junglelike vegetation surrounded them and even lapped into narrow gaps where the buildings stood close together.
Studying the hideous thing that this city had become, Darzek felt a pang of apprehension for Earth. Yorlez had parks, circular oases of tamed greenery, but the few citizens who strolled there seemed not to notice the ugly, impinging jungle. The transmitter had turned their artistic vision inward. The external appearance of a building no longer mattered if no one saw it. No one could be concerned about the view from a nonexistent window. Would Earth, too, become a place where people lived out their lives in incubated comfort, surrounded by an unseen wasteland?
[Jan Darzek 02] - Watchers of the Dark Page 10