Trader's World (5 page)

"A Hiver! They don't even wash; he'll be a stinker, as well."

"He couldn't have got into this training program without being smart and reasonably presentable," Cesar said. "Calm down, Jake—it's bad news, but it's not the end of the world."

"He probably eats mud. What sort of screwup assigned him to
us
? I'm telling you, for Cissy to lose her place to some moron Hiver from the Lostlands—I won't take it."

"Calm down, Jake." Cesar gripped his friend's arm. "We can't do a thing about it."

"Can't we?" Jake Kallario's face had gone from red to white. "We'll see about that. I'm going to the instructor, to protest."

"No, you're not." Melinda took the other arm. "Remember, we're not even supposed to know anything about the teaming. All you'll do is get Cesar and Davy into trouble."

"And it wouldn't do any good complaining to Connery, even if the teams were officially known." Cesar Famares looked at Kallario's face, then slowly released his hold on his arm. "There's one other thing you don't know about Mikal Asparian. Connery is the one who brought him out of the Lostlands. Asparian is going to be his special pet, you can count on it. All you'll do if you complain is get on the wrong side of your senior instructor."

Jake Kallario shook his arm free of Melinda's hand and rubbed at the place where she had been holding him. "I don't understand you two. You seem all ready to put your arms round him and welcome him—just as though he were really from a Trader family. Well, I'm not. You know we compete for places. If it weren't for
him
, damn it, Cissy could be here with us." He stared at Mikal Asparian, who was still wandering along past the display of Trader photographs and souvenirs that covered the side walls. "Maybe you're right, it's useless protesting if he's Connery's private pet. But I won't work with a stinking Hiver. Just wait and see."

"Here, Jake, don't get any crazy ideas." Melinda put her hand on his shoulder. "Cesar and I came here to learn how to be Traders—we're not going to stand by and encourage you, while you spoil all our chances just because you're mad at Asparian."

"Don't worry, I'm not going to sabotage you." Kallario's face was grim. "I want to be a Trader, too, as much as you do. But I bet you Mikal Asparian thinks he's God's gift to the Traders, someone really special. Well, I intend to find out just how good he is. I'm going to get through this training as fast as I know how, and I'm going to test him all the way." He turned again to stare at Asparian as the trainees began to wander back to their places in the classroom. "Then let's see if he can stay the course."

And you may never know it, Melly, he thought, but if I get a chance I'll find a way to fix him properly.

* * *

"Trainee Asparian!"

Mikal froze at the low-voiced call from behind him. He had deliberately hung back when the others left, very aware that they were forming cheerful, chattering groups of three or four people. Everyone seemed to know everyone else. They had all arrived just a couple of days ago, but already most of them walked about Pico Island as though they owned it.

And while he felt confused, they apparently knew exactly what was going on. He had taken a copy of the Rule Book, but some of the trainees hadn't even bothered; they already had copies, and they acted as though they knew everything that was in there. He had done no more than glance at his own book, and he still had no idea where he was supposed to find that "informal" Rule Book.

Mikal turned to face the senior instructor. Everyone else had left. Was it forbidden to do what he had been doing, staying to look at the pictures on the classroom walls? He looked nervously at the man on the dais.

"Yes, sir?"

"Relax, Trainee. We're out of class now." Lyle Connery had eyed Mikal in the classroom with never a glint of recognition. It was as though they had never met—still less that Connery had rescued Mikal from the Lostlands. Now a trace of a smile appeared on the instructor's face, and Mikal found it hard to hide his relief.

"There's someone who wants to meet you," Connery went on. "Come on." He turned and walked through the inner door of the classroom. After a second's hesitation Mikal followed.

Connery led the way deep into the mountain, along corridors that Mikal had not known existed. They wound round and down for hundreds of yards, past a score of branching corridors and through a hundred closed and color-coded doors. Finally, when Mikal no longer had any idea of direction, Connery paused in front of a pea-green door and gestured Mikal to go on through.

The room was a small one, furnished with just a table, a wheeled trolley, and four chairs. A woman sat in the room alone, facing the door. She stood up as Mikal entered. He looked at her open mouthed. It had been nearly four years since he last saw Lucia Asparian, and he still thought of her as huge, towering over him. Now they were about eye-to-eye, and she was much younger than he remembered her.

"Yes, it's me," she said. The door slammed shut. Lyle Connery had gone, leaving just the two of them. "What's wrong?" she continued. "Don't you remember me?"

"Of course I remember you. I'll always remember you. If it weren't for you and Instructor Connery, and what you did . . ." The rush of words petered out. All he could do was stand there looking at her.

She stepped forward, put her hands on his shoulders, and stared right back at him. "All right, Mikal
Asparian
." She placed great stress on the second word. "You've made it this far. Now stand right there and let me take a good look at you."

She surveyed his face and clothing for a few seconds, shaking her head, and then used her hold on his shoulders to move him slowly through a full turn. She ran one hand across the back of his head, tugged at the shoulders of his jacket, and put one finger inside his collar.

"You've grown a lot," she said at last. "And I think you'll grow a good deal more before you're finished. Lyle tells me that the school gave you a bit of education. We'll see. Let's sit down."

Mikal had stood uneasily through her inspection. "What am I doing here?" he blurted out as she stepped away from him.

"Doing?" Lucia raised one dark, pencilled eyebrow. "Well, take a look over there and see if you can guess." She gestured to the table, set for two people, with closed dishes of food already waiting on the trolley. "We're going to have dinner. And we're going to talk. All right?"

"Yes." Mikal gestured at the door. "But what about Instructor Connery?"

"Lyle? He'll be back later to pick you up. He's a stickler for the rules, and a senior instructor doesn't single out one trainee and have dinner with him on the first day of training. Me, I'm not an instructor. I've been away on long-term assignment, so I couldn't visit you when you were in school. But I can do what I like while I'm here." She gestured to the serving trolley. "How would you like to help me and you to some food."

"You mean, serve both of us?"

"That's what I said." She watched closely as he ladled out two bowls of thick mushroom soup, then shook her head as he fumbled with the cork in a bottle of wine. She held out a hand without speaking. Mikal, feeling all thumbs, looked on sheepishly as she took the corkscrew and opened the bottle with a couple of quick turns of her wrist.

"See that?" she said. "You asked me what you are doing here.
That's
what you're doing here. You're going to get a crash course on taking corks out of wine bottles, and serving food without spilling it all over."

Surely she wasn't serious. "But
why
?" Mikal couldn't help asking. "I don't even drink wine."

"You will, if you get to be a Trader. You'll learn to drink anything you are given—that's part of negotiation. As to why you have to do things well, good Traders do everything well. And there's an even better reason." She lifted her glass of wine and stared critically through the pale liquid at the overhead light. "You're not just going to be a Trader," she said without looking at him. "You're going to be an
Asparian
. Don't you ever forget that, Mike. I'm not going to have somebody using my name unless he's the best he can be. You have to make the family
proud
of you." She leaned forward to study him, her head cocked to one side. "I'll be leaving in a couple of days for the Cook Islands training center, and who knows when I'll be back here. So after I'm gone you'll have to work by yourself. You have to work on
everything
. How to make social conversation, how to meet people, how to dress, who to trust, when to talk, and when to listen. Did you ever have a girl friend?"

Mikal shook his head.

"Thought not. Here's rule number one: don't ever get a haircut like that again. Who did it?"

Mikal touched his hand self-consciously to his temple. "Well . . . I did it myself."

"Self-inflicted. I should have guessed. And you made your own clothes? Those trousers, and that horrible coat?"

"No. Of course not." Mikal looked indignantly down at his jacket. It had seemed just fine to him. "This was supplied at the trainee stores."

"I believe you. And tomorrow, you go right back there, and you make them give you a shirt that's a size larger at the collar, and a jacket that's a lot tighter across the shoulders, and trousers two inches longer in the legs." She shook her head. "I'm always amazed, the things they
don't
teach you in school. Did you like it there?"

"I thought it was wonderful." Mikal felt easy in his answer for the first time. "Plenty of food, my own room, and interesting work. No crops to grow, no worries about defending yourself. Wonderful."

"Hmm. Make many friends?"

"I thought I had." Mikal looked surprised. "But I haven't heard from any of them since I got here."

"I believe it. This is a fast track. Not many get invited here, and some resent people who do. You'll have to make your friends among the trainees. Got any enemies?"

Mikal hesitated. He was all ready to say no, but during the classroom break he had studied every face, matching them with names and working hard at storing them away in his memory. All the other trainees were strangers to him, and their looks mostly skated right past him as though he were a photograph on the wall. But he had seen open and surprising hostility on the face of one of them, Jake Kallario, a dark-haired youth with angry eyes. "Maybe I've got an enemy," he said at last. "But I don't know why. I never saw him before today."

"Then that's going to be one test of how good a Trader you're going to be. You have to find out why he doesn't like you." Lucia Asparian was watching Mikal critically as he cut meat and speared it on his fork. "Then you have to try to change his mind. When you're a Trader you have to know how to turn an enemy to a friend. And you have to learn that some people won't be a friend, no matter what you do with them. Those, you have to learn to work around, push them out of the way if they won't budge. And when I say
work
, I mean it. These things aren't easy." She pushed her plate out of the way. "All right, we don't have much time. First, I'm going to talk about how you learn to work with the other trainees. Any questions before we begin?"

"You say I have to work at everything. How will I know if I'm doing well?" Mikal was feeling very self-conscious, but at the same time he was full of a warm sensation that he had never experienced before. It was strange to have someone
worried
over him, caring how he looked and acted. Was this what being a Trader meant, that other people were concerned about you? If so, it was the finest world he could imagine.

"Lyle Connery will tell you how you're doing," Lucia said. "He'll tell me, too. And I promise you this: the Asparian family owns a vacation lodge in the Economic Community, high in the Alps. It's the nicest place left on Earth. The day you become a full-fledged Trader, you'll get your own key to it. Visit it anytime. How does that sound?"

"It sounds wonderful. Too good to be true." Mikal could not resist adding his other thought. "But
why
? Why are you doing all this for me?"

"Because Lyle Connery and I probably saved your life when we brought you out of the Lostlands." Lucia sighed. "You'll understand that statement better in a few more years. Come on now, let's get to work. I don't have much time tonight. We'll start with something simple: eating. When you take a forkful, the object of the exercise is not to see how much food you can get in your mouth in one go. Watch me."

* * *

The sky was overcast and completely dark when Mikal walked back down the hill. It was a steep descent, and he kept his eyes on the guiding line of lights.

Near the cluster of buildings at the bottom, he paused. The dormitory was set apart from the other structures, half hidden from them by a great rock outcrop. A stone-flagged pathway curved down to it. A second path ran off to the right, to the dining hall, library, gymnasium, and recreation rooms.

Mikal had intended to go directly to the dormitory. He was conscious of the fact that he had yet to look at more than the first page of the Rule Book under his arm, and all his natural inclinations urged him to go to his room and study.

Yesterday he would have done it. But he could see that there were still lights in the recreation room, and he could hear the chatter of voices. Late as it was, some of the trainees were up. It was an opportunity for informal meetings.

What would Lucia Asparian want him to do?

He sighed. If there was anything he hated, it was meeting strangers. So how did he have the nerve to imagine he might make a good Trader? He steeled himself and headed for the recreation hall.

The Rule Book would have to wait. He had something to live up to now: his name.

CHAPTER 4

It was no day for an outdoor climb. Lyle Connery walked the long corridors to the innermost chambers of the mountain, then rode the elevator to the peak. The communication center on top was shaking in the grip of a midwinter sou'westerly, with the wind at full gale force. In the center's topmost room, seventy-five hundred feet above the foaming waters of the Atlantic, Connery sat down at a terminal and dialed an audio-video link to Daddy-O.