The Charm of Commerce
Toby spent two days under lock in a small bunk room, subject to strict ship’s discipline. This meant that he saw nobody, knew nothing. Not even Quath could visit. The room wasn’t big enough, anyway. Food and study materials were all he got, so he boned up on math and history, listening to Isaac’s drone more than he ever had. He spent time doing exercises in the tiny cell. Cermo brought the chow, reluctantly keeping silence, following orders, even when Toby joshed him about it.
This meant that he didn’t get to attend the general education sessions, explaining how this place worked. Which rankled him so much he worked out his frustration on the room, doing servo’d exercises by rebounding from the ceiling, scuffing the walls, slamming into the floor and then back to ceiling again. He tried to figure out how this place worked by himself, using Isaac, but nothing made much sense as he reviewed it. The deepest mystery was how this impossible solid ground existed at all, whirling around the razor edge of a black hole.
After two days Besen wangled a visit somehow. Her hair shone with fresh highlights—something in the water here, she said—and she beamed. He held her in his arms, kissed her, murmured of his cares and worries . . . but something was wrong. He felt himself stiffen as she touched him provocatively, a palm sliding confidently up his thigh, nestling on his hip.
—slick skin sliding—
Her kiss seemed metallic, an oxidizing flick of her tongue.
—musky warmth spilling over her in the fitful dark—
And her hand fell leaden on him, inquiring into his hardness.
—light laughter as the two of them rolled, leg over leg—
He stiffened in her grip, found it tight and close and hot.
—startled yelp of pleasure and pleased surprise—
She frowned as he pushed away, slapped away her hand. “What, what—”
“I don’t feel like that right now.”
“Huh?” Stricken eyes.
“I’ve got things on my mind,” he said lamely, confused.
“Well, this sure isn’t like the Mr. Anytime I knew.”
“I guess not.”
“Toby, maybe if you talked some, we—”
“Look, I—come back tomorrow, okay? Something isn’t sitting right with me just now.”
She went, frowning, mouth quivering uncertainly. He felt sad and angry with himself the moment the door sealed. But then he started talking to Shibo about it and the whole thing didn’t seem so important anymore.
Besen didn’t come back. He exercised, slept, thought fruitlessly.
By the time Cermo unlocked the cell, Toby was going buggy. Besen was there to embrace him, giving a soulful kiss that promised more than talk ever could. This time it didn’t bother him . . . but it didn’t kindle much reaction in him, either. Not Mr. Anytime, no—and he didn’t know why.
First, he was in a mood to splash around in a shower—the natives here had tapped Argo into their own apparently plentiful supply—and get outside. The stubby city was more open than the ship’s helical corridors, and he needed spaces, range. He got himself spruced up as fast as he could.
He had expected to be summoned to see the Cap’n, but his comm line was silent. As he strode through the sloped corridors, fidgety from confinement and depressed in general, nobody seemed interested in talking to him. Teams worked to flush and fix up Argo; even in port, ship work was never finished.
When he struck up a few conversations, crew members discovered pressing business elsewhere. Finally he decided to not call Besen. She might not understand that he just wanted some distance for a while, a few hours.
As he approached the main lock something looked funny. There were a dozen of the dwarf natives talking to the watch under-officers, haggling and trying to cull favors—and they all stopped abruptly as he came near. The Lieutenant in charge stiffly told Toby that there was a hold on his movements. He wasn’t to leave the ship.
That got his back up, of course. He mulled over going to see Quath, to get the drift of what was happening, and then he remembered the damaged farm domes. In the big balloon-shaped dome devoted to grain crops, he had once tried to fix a small personnel vent that didn’t seal quite right. It probably still didn’t, but now there was positive pressure outside.
He got there without anybody paying any obvious attention. Sure enough, the vent popped free with just a little wrench work. Somehow the docking fields held the ship delicately isolated from nearby decks. Soft, but firm if you pushed on them. They brushed him gently aside, like a good-natured wind holding him aloft.
He slipped down, around the bulging slick skin of the dome, and dropped into shadows below Argo’s hovering hulk. Within moments he had made his way through the reception area, nodding to the bored attendants—and was out, away, into the gray city.
It was a shock. Rather than the glum, sour streets he remembered, these thronged with life—stalls and shops and incessant chattering that ricocheted from every avenue. This showed how stilted and planned their reception had been before, all part of their bargaining strategy.
Toby wandered, stunned. He had spent days worrying and fretting, and now all that seemed to drop away. It had been many years since he had simply let himself go, ambling aimlessly. Then it struck him—not since the Citadel. Not since the spring celebration when his grandfather Abraham had financed a ball-throwing contest between the generations, at a sports booth in the Citadel Square. Sweaty work, cheering and catcalls, itchy dust from many feet. And there had been hot, piping sweet-churns in paper bags, cool drinks, laughter, grins.
The memories made him bite his lip, and he plunged into the busy crowds. A few people gave him startled looks, but most ignored his size and strange jumpsuit. It took a while to get used to markets, deals, the quick calculus of value. What Toby thought of as just plain things had a special word, making them somehow better—“goods.” You got “goods” with money, then had to make some other “good” to replace the money you spent. He wondered how you got a “bad” or maybe a “better,” but nobody spoke of such things.
He had credit, it seemed, from a first payment the judge had given all Bishops days before. He minded it wisely. This wasn’t like the bartering between Families he had known back on Snowglade. There you could get a syntho-shirt in trade for two of your self-made, gleaming carbon-steel knives, say. Then you had to find somebody who needed knives before you could get something else. Money was easier, really—you just decided whether the “good” was worth so many of the little round coins, or not. Simple.
But the bustle this conjured up here! The place was aswarm to bursting with shopkeepers and hawkers, fortune-tellers, merchants, the nimble-fingered and sadly wise, peddlers, grifters, senso artists, back-alley investment counselors, doxies of sullen smiles, men and women with “goods” hidden in their shirtsleeves or ballooning pantaloons, and “bads” alike in their hearts. You could buy anything, from a yellow powder that addicted you for life inside of two minutes, to a strange, luminous alien glassware—which proved to be the alien itself, when he touched it.
Some had learned how to beg for ready cash, too. Sitting in a back alley eating a treat, he watched a one-eyed woman who saw better than most could with two. She was getting dressed for her trade and, for a small coin, let Toby watch. Smooth-faced, she daubed on makeup, adding hideous blue hollows under the eyes. A light, comfortable sheath slid over her calf, making her spider-walk like a cripple.
Toby watched her set up shop on a busy corner. People threw her coins and looked away. Somehow the illogic of it—surely there were treatments for such ailments?—didn’t rob the trade of a jot of its credibility. Toby couldn’t fathom why, but then glimpsed a possibility. She was providing a form of ego-boosting entertainment. Looking at her miserable self, passersby could feel a rush of gladness: troubled they might be, but not that badly. She was in show business.
These weren’t the demigods who made the Chandeliers, no.
There was a sprawling tangle of streets designed to separate people looking for amusement from their cash. Games, booths, things to throw at for a prize—and others where somebody got to throw at you. Dance halls open eternally, fever-bright, with syntho-music that wound around on a long loop, filming the air with prickly scents and startling pheromone-triggers. Toby lingered in one, and then in a brief moment when the effects turned off (required by law), he saw what was happening to him and his pocket change. He went back to wandering the streets, which was at least cheaper, though his nervous system kept trying to make his feet circle back.
There were science games and events, operating right next to fortune-tellers, a tribute to humanity’s ability to believe two contradictory things at once. Hawkers of wonders. Gambling. Feats of strength (care to try?). Dispensers of drugs and even alcohol, all legal and heavily taxed to offset their probable social effects. Soft drink stands, one offering an ancient dark bubbly fluid that Toby hated and threw away, shocking some kids. They seemed insulted that he hadn’t liked the authentic folk treat, Koca-Koola, rich and true. But the paprika was enough to turn his tongue.
He began to get the sense of a city again, after years on the move. Citadel Bishop had been a rambling, dusty pueblo on a canyon floor. It had water-starved gardens and one broad plaza—nothing compared with this. He had seen ruins of a lesser Arcology at a distance—the mechs were stripping it for materials at the time—and this place resembled that.
