Chapter 12
Losian to Finster, Finster to Thoth IV, Thoth IV to Woolamurra, Sisu went skipping around a globe of space nine hundred light-years in diameter, the center of which was legendary Terra, cradle of mankind. Sisu had never been to Terra; the People operate out where pickings are rich, police protection non-existent, and a man can dicker without being hampered by finicky regulations.
Ship's history alleged that the original Sisu had been built on Terra and that the first Captain Krausa had been born there, a (whisper it) fraki. But that was six ships ago and ship's history was true in essence, rather than fiddlin' fact. The Sisu whose steel now protected the blood was registered out of New Finlandia, Shiva III... another port she had never visited but whose fees were worth paying in order to have legal right to go about her occasions whenever, in pursuit of profit, Sisu went inside the globe of civilization. Shiva III was very understanding of the needs of Free Traders, not fussy about inspections, reports, and the like as long as omissions were repaired by paying penalties; many ships found her registration convenient.
On Finster Thorby learned another method of trading. The native fraki, known to science by a pseudo-Latin name and called "Those confounded slugs!" by the People, live in telepathic symbiosis with lemur-like creatures possessed of delicate, many-boned hands -- "telepathy" is a conclusion; it is believed that the slow, monstrous, dominant creatures supply the brains and the lemuroids the manipulation.
The planet offers beautifully carved gem stones, raw copper, and a weed from which is derived an alkaloid used in psychotherapy. What else it could supply is a matter of conjecture; the natives have neither speech nor writing, communication is difficult.
This occasions the method of trading new to Thorby -- the silent auction invented by the trading Phoenicians when the shores of Africa ran beyond the known world.
Around Sisu in piles were placed what the traders had to offer: heavy metals the natives needed, everlasting clocks they had learned to need, and trade goods the Family hoped to teach them to need. Then the humans went inside.
Thorby said to Senior Clerk Arly Krausa-Drotar, "We just leave that stuff lying around? If you did that on Jubbul, it would disappear as you turned your back."
"Didn't you see them rig the top gun this morning?"
"I was down in the lower hold."
"It's rigged and manned. These creatures have no morals but they're smart. They'll be as honest as a cashier with the boss watching."
"What happens now?"
"We wait. They look over the goods. After a while... a day, maybe two... they pile stuff by our piles. We wait. Maybe they make their piles higher. Maybe they shift things around and offer us something else -- and possibly we have outsmarted ourselves and missed something we would like through holding out. Or maybe we take one of our piles and split it into two, meaning we like the stuff but not the price.
"Or maybe we don't want it at any price. So we move our piles close to something they have offered that we do like. But we still don't touch their stuff; we wait.
"Eventually nobody has moved anything in quite a while. So, where the price suits us, we take in what they offer and leave our stuff. They come and take our offering away. We take in any of our own stuff where the price isn't right; they take away the stuff we turn down.
"But that doesn't end it. Now both sides know what the other one wants and what he will pay. They start making the offers; we start bidding with what we know they will accept. More deals are made. When we are through this second time, we have unloaded anything they want for stuff of theirs that we want at prices satisfactory to both. No trouble. I wonder if we do better on planets where we can talk."
"Yes, but doesn't this waste a lot of time?"
"Know anything we've got more of?"
The slow-motion auction moved without a hitch on goods having established value; deals were spottier on experimental offerings -- gadgets which had seemed a good buy on Losian mostly failed to interest the Finstera. Six gross of folding knives actually intended for Woolamurra brought high prices. But the star item was not properly goods of any sort.
Grandmother Krausa, although bedfast, occasionally insisted on being carried on inspection tours; somebody always suffered. Shortly before arrival at Finster her ire had centered on nursery and bachelor quarters. In the first her eye lit on a stack of lurid picture books. She ordered them confiscated; they were "fraki trash."
The bachelors were inspected when word had gone out that she intended to hit only nursery, purdah, and galley; Grandmother saw their bunkies before they could hide their pin-up pictures.
Grandmother was shocked! Not only did pin-up pictures follow comic books, but a search was made for the magazines from which they had been clipped. The contraband was sent to auxiliary engineering, there to give up identities into elemental particles.
The Supercargo saw them there and got an idea; they joined the offerings outside the ship.
Strangely carved native jewels appeared beside the waste paper -- chrysoberyl and garnet and opal and quartz.
The Supercargo blinked at the gauds and sent word to the Captain.
The booklets and magazines were redistributed, each as a separate offering. More jewels --
Finally each item was broken down into pages; each sheet was placed alone. An agreement was reached: one brightly colored sheet, one jewel. At that point bachelors who had managed to hide cherished pin-ups found patriotism and instinct for trade out-weighing possessiveness -- after all they could restock at the next civilized port. The nursery was combed for more adventure comics.
For the first time in history comic books and pin-up magazines brought many times their weights in fine jewelry.
Thoth IV was followed by Woolamurra and each jump zigzagged closer to the coming Great Gathering of the People; the ship was seized with carnival fever. Crew members were excused from work to practice on musical instruments, watches were rearranged to permit quartets to sing together, a training table was formed for athletes and they were excused from all watches save battle stations in order to train themselves into exhausted sleep. Headaches and tempers developed over plans for hospitality fit to support the exalted pride of Sisu.
Long messages flitted through n-space and the Chief Engineer protested the scandalous waste of power with sharp comments on the high price of tritium. But the Chief Officer cheerfully okayed the charge vouchers. As the time approached, she developed a smile that creased her wrinkles in unaccustomed directions, as if she knew something but wasn't talking. Twice Thorby caught her smiling at him and it worried him; it was better not to catch Grandmother's attention. He had had her full attention once lately and had not enjoyed it -- he had been honored by eating with her, for having burned a raider.
The bogie had appeared on Sisu's screens during the lift from Finster -- an unexpected place to be attacked since there was not much traffic there. The alarm had come only four hours out, when Sisu had attained barely 5% of speed-of-light and had no hope of running for it
The matter landed in Thorby's lap; the portside computer was disabled -- it had a "nervous breakdown" and the ship's electronics men had been sweating over it since jump. Thorby's nephew Jeri had returned to astrogation, the new trainee having qualified on the long jump from Losian -- he was a stripling in whom Thorby had little confidence, but Thorby did not argue when Jeri decided that Kenan Drotar was ready for a watch even though he had never experienced a "real one." Jeri was anxious to go back to the control room for two reasons, status, and an unmentioned imponderable: the computer room was where Jeri had served with his missing kid sister.