Trader's World (23 page)

His next thought had nothing to do with the mission. Did Melly's lack of interest in him as a man, and her breathless fascination with Dominic Mantilla, represent her dedication to her job—or was it simple biology?

There was one easy way to find out: Mike could let his own interest in Melly show through. Easy in principle—but he was scared of the possible result.

He finished dressing hurriedly, looking forward now to the negotiation. It might be tough, but it was a certain cure for introspection and self-doubts.

* * *

Every tough negotiation had the same underlying structure, but no explanation to a trainee could quite say what it was. A person had to
experience
it. There was an interplay of the opposing parties in the real thing, almost like a formal and elaborate dance, a pattern of advance and retreat on individual negotiating points that must still be part of an overall progression. And there was an inner sense of how far the process was from completion.

The negotiation with Dominic Mantilla was all wrong. Mike could not say why. The usual process was superficially at work, with proposed payments by the Chipponese for the right to tether a Beanstalk in the equatorial Andes, and counteroffers from the Unified Empire; and there was the ceding of sovereign rights to a small piece of that Empire.

But it was all too casual. Dominic Mantilla seemed bored by the whole process, and he was prepared to make outrageously large concessions with no matching gain. Mike felt oddly irritated as he listened to Melly and Mantilla. She was doing fine, but this wasn't a negotiation! It was like fighting a small child, one who didn't want to fight at all.

"I don't like this," he whispered to Melly at the first chance they had to get outside the room for a quiet few minutes. "He's giving on every point—as though it doesn't matter what he agrees to."

"Maybe he learned the lesson when the Chipponese rejected his earlier terms?"

Mike shook his head. His own feelings went deeper than logic. Whatever Dominic Mantilla was, he was not a negotiator and never would be. So what had he done to persuade Eckart to accept the outrageous terms he had sent to the Chipponese?

"He hasn't learned anything. And believe me, Melly, we can't trust him an inch."

"But he seems to trust the Chipponese quite a lot." She sounded defensive of Mantilla—perhaps because he was behaving toward her with enormous gallantry, deferring to her on every point.

"Trust! He doesn't trust
them
any more than I trust
him.
Melly, where did you get that idea?"

"He said it! When you were arguing about length of treaty. He said that he felt sure that nothing unworthy of their high ethical standards would ever be proposed by the Chipponese Empire. Didn't you hear him?"

Mike stared in disbelief. "Melly, for God's sake, don't you recognize
sarcasm
when you hear it? He wasn't serious! Mantilla is convinced that the Chipponese are as crooked as he is, and that's just his way of saying it."

She stared at him with a surprised look on her face, but there was no opportunity to pursue it with her. The break was over, and they were heading back into the meeting rooms for the second half of the first round of discussions.

A negotiation of this importance ought to take several days. Mike had mentally prepared himself for a week's stay in Dreamtown. But in one more hour, it was finished. Not just the opening phase—the whole thing! Mike looked at the signed agreement, and his head spun. This one was as lopsided the other way—in favor of the Chipponese—as the earlier proposals had been in favor of the Unified Empire. The tether site would be made available for practically nothing, and the treaty was as near to unbreakable as any that Mike had ever seen. Maybe Melly was really an out-of-this-world negotiator.

And Mantilla seemed delighted! He was smiling a huge smile and patting Melly's hand possessively.

"Tomorrow morning," he was saying. He looked like a tall and skinny wolf, his dark eyes gleaming with poorly controlled lust. "Tomorrow if you wish you can return home. But tonight we celebrate! In two hours, the reception will begin. I hope you are prepared to enjoy yourselves enormously. I will come by your rooms myself, and be honored to serve as your escort." He leaned over Melly, clutching her hands in his. "And you, my dear, since this is your first visit here—but surely not your last—it is good that you will carry back a document to be proud of."

Mike looked again at the words sitting in front of him and felt terrible misgivings. This wasn't a treaty—it was a massacre. But how was a Trader supposed to say that the deal offered was just
too good
? Nothing in the Rule Books—formal or informal—prepared for that possibility.

Watching Melly batting her eyelashes at Mantilla, he felt like a total outsider. Just what the hell was going on?

* * *

The reception for Mike and Melly offered every product of the Unified Empire that a human palate could desire, from coddled rhea eggs to jellied tapir's foot to huanaco tongues in aspic.

Mike stood at the side of the hall and picked morosely at a handful of anchovy crackers while Dominic Mantilla, resplendent in crimson and black suit and cloak, led Melly through the great lines of the reception. She seemed to be enjoying herself greatly, which didn't help Mike's feelings one little bit. He felt very edgy, and he watched all the time for any sign of Wernher Eckart or Cesar Famares. Would they come at all? Would they try to avoid him? Suppose they came for only a few minutes?

If that happened, he must somehow pull Mantilla away so that Melly could perform the interference test.

Their behavior when they finally arrived was a complete surprise. They headed straight for Mike.

"Hi there." Cesar grinned at him. "It's been a while, eh? Let me introduce you to Wernher." His manner was as casual as if they were still in the Azores training camp and saw each other every day.

"Glad you made the party." Eckart shook Mike's hand. "When did you get here?"

Drugged? They didn't act drugged, and Eckart, at least, seemed in perfect health. Cesar was another matter. Like Mike and Melly, he must have had shots for height accommodation before he left the base—they were above thirteen thousand feet here. But sometimes the shots didn't work. Cesar's wheezing voice and shallow breathing told of fluid buildup in the lungs. His slurred speech and unsteady gait suggested severe cerebral edema.

"Got here just this afternoon," Mike said at last. He wondered how to get a detox shot into them without anyone noticing. "We'll be here for a day or two, then head back."

Eckart laughed and gave Cesar a knowing look. "I hear you. But you won't be saying that in a couple of days. Once you get used to it here, you won't
want
to leave—ever."

"Just like you two?" Mike reached across and casually picked up a filled glass, moving the palm of his hand over its top.

"You bet." Cesar accepted the shot of
testudo
liquor that Mike passed to him and threw it down his throat. He gasped as the iced liquid started its afterburn, and a look of ecstatic pleasure crossed his face. He beamed around the room. "Wonderful stuff. Wonderful place. Where else could you get a drink like that?"

Not many places, Cesar, if you want it exactly like that, thought Mike. For one thing, the detox formula was a Trader secret. He waited, watching for any change in behavior. Nothing happened. Cesar went on smiling, looking around the room with an air of total satisfaction. A shot in Eckart's glass produced no more effect. Mike gave it ten more minutes, then waited until he could catch Melly's eye, far away across the wide hall. She could be picked out easily, because of her companion's great height. Mike shook his head at her. Drugs were out. Time to test for surgical interference.

It took a little while for Melly to wander across with Dominic Mantilla in tow. His face was flushed, he had his hand on her arm, and they were standing very close to each other.

"Dominic and I will be leaving the reception soon," she said. "But I reminded him that he promised to show you around the special attractions of Dreamtown, and he will do it before we leave. Are you ready to go with him?"

Mike nodded. Following Mantilla out of the main hall, he was uncomfortably aware that he had not given Melly an answer to her earlier question: Should she go to bed with the man?

There ought to be another entry in the Rule Books. How to ruin a negotiation: Give a man an attractive partner, and let him spend more time worrying about her than about the mission.

The path that Dominic Mantilla took led down a steep staircase, away from the brightly lit and over-decorated reception hall. They descended until they reached a long corridor with thick carpet on the floor and sound-deadening tiles on the walls. The loud buzz of conversation upstairs was replaced by an unnatural hush.

Mantilla paused at the first of a dozen doors along the corridor. "This is under my control," he said softly, "but I take little credit for its functions. These are traditionalists—if I tried to change any element of the setting they would look elsewhere for their satisfaction."

Mike was looking into a dimly-lit room containing one table with half a dozen chairs grouped around it. By each chair stood a small serving trolley holding tobacco and opium pipes, lacquered jars of rice wine, silver trays of finger-sized confections and sweetmeats, and piles of red and gold trading tokens. The players—four Chipponese and two Chills—did not look up at the newcomers in the doorway. Joss sticks perfumed the air, and clouds of smoke wreathed the intent figures of the players. The only sound in the room was the faint click of pasteboard cards on the table's dark green surface.

Mantilla stepped back from the doorway and headed along the corridor. "This room and eleven others, just the same, are for the most dedicated players. Did you know that one-thirtieth of the world's wealth changes hands at cards?"

He sounded bored. As they moved on to a turn in the corridor, Mike decided that Dominic Mantilla was certainly not a gambler himself. There had been not even a glint of interest in the card games, even though the stakes at the table were enormous. It was one more data point, of questionable value. After all, Traders did not gamble, either.

He followed Mantilla along a steadily darkening corridor, and they finally halted before a black door of heavy wood. "Another one for the traditionalists." Mantilla swung the door open. "Fully equipped."

The interior was deserted, barely lit by flickering wall torches. Mike recognized only half of the devices within, but that was enough.

"Surely this isn't
used
?"

Mantilla looked at him with raised eyebrows. "My honored guest, we are a commercial organization. Do you imagine that we would provide such facilities if there were no demand for them?" His tone was quietly ironic. "We provide the classical furnishings, and there has been a call for every unit within the past month. Eliminate any, and I would lose part of my clientele. They are sophisticated people who insist on both the equipment and the ambiance."

He began to walk along the center of the long room. "The rack, of course, is a standard feature; and the braziers and hot pincers. Also the thumbscrew, and the iron boot, with a furnace to produce the molten lead. But some of the others are perhaps less familiar. That is the parrot's beam, to hang by thumbs and fingers; and there is the
mala mansio
—the Little Ease. We have one client who comes here regularly, and is squeezed into it for ten days at a time. And then there is the press, with fifty-pound weights, and the
strappado
; there are the hot plates of the
lamina
, the bilboes, the barbed hooks of the
ungulae.
The Iron Maiden is here largely for effect, since it would undoubtedly be fatal. But we have had requests. If you would enjoy watching the equipment in live use, as I do, we will arrange to come here. The iron boot is the most spectacular."

Mike said nothing; he thought a great deal. He averted his eyes and followed Mantilla along the room and out into the next corridor.

The next room held just two people, facing each other across a gray cabinet. One was a Strine bigmomma, all leather and ceremonial sword, the other a Great Republic cityboss in paint and feathers. Each wore a headset that covered her down to the nostrils. Both were sweating hard, with perspiration trickling down their faces and necks. The panels on the side of the cabinet winked on and off in complex patterns.

"You know this one?" Mantilla asked.

Mike nodded. He had read the Unified Empire's list of attractions. The Strine and the Yankee were locked in life-and-death battle for the whole world. At their command, armies and armadas and missile squadrons swarmed over the globe, all simulated in detail in Dreamtown's master computer. The stakes were a good deal less than the whole world, but they were substantial. The cost of occupying the computer's maximum simulation capability, with sound, vision, and all tactile inputs, was so large that only the wealthiest could afford to play at all. Mike guessed that a year's output of a Strineland biolab probably hung on the war game's result.

"You designed this?" he asked Mantilla.

His companion shook his head. "To be honest, I find it boring. Who would play at conquering the world, when there is a real world to be conquered? Let us look at a more interesting pursuit."

They moved on and came out onto a balcony that overlooked a cubical room at least thirty yards on each side. The whole interior was filled with a maze of transparent tunnels and ascending and descending ramps, arranged so that it was impossible for a casual viewer to see any way from one side of it to the other.

The great room was empty. Mike looked questioningly at Dominic Mantilla. "Counterpoint," Mantilla said softly. His face was intent and alive. "Now you will see something worthwhile. Watch carefully. They are about to begin."

From one of a couple of dozen small doors scattered across the wall opposite, a black cat with white paws had emerged. It took half a dozen tentative steps forward, then paused. After a moment it jerked upright and moved forward again.