A Mind For Trade Part 19

Rip gave a short nod. "Again."

Jasper reached Rip's side, and in silence the two slid their gloved hands under Ali's armpits and lifted the unconscious engineer. They dragged him up the ramp and into the s.h.i.+p. Walking slowly, Dane followed.

His cast was off, which meant he could bend his knee- but sudden movements of any kind were agony.

The cargo-bay hatch slid shut behind them. So far, the Floaters had never tried to get inside the s.h.i.+p. Obviously Tooe and Kamsin had been watching this latest attempt at communication, and when they saw AH fall, and the others initially frozen, they'd come out to help.

Luckily Jasper, Rip, and Dane had broken out of the contact fast enough to see them coming.

Dane looked across the cargo bay at the two, who stood at the inner hatchway. Tooe's crest drooped, her huge eyes intent.

"Don't go out there," Dane said. "I know you wanted to help. Just because we've lived through contact doesn't mean you will."

"But they know you four by now, do not they?" Tooe asked. "You say they don't want to kill us-"

Rip said tiredly, "Tooe, I don't think they can tell any of us apart, any more than we can tell them apart."

Something flickered at the back of Dane's mind: Rip's words were important. Why? He tried to examine them, to focus, but his head ached in counterpoint to his knee.

Then he forgot both as Ali groaned and sat up, rubbing his temples. "d.a.m.n." He dropped his hand and winced. "Me again."

All three times it had been Ali who broke the contact. Not voluntarily, which made it all the more frustrating, Dane thought morosely.

Rip said, "Recap. Where did you feel yourself dropping out, Ali?"

Dane could have told him, but he kept his lips closed. Instead, he remembered the bond the four humans made, now always connected through the mental image of them floating on their rafts atop a calm sea. The Floaters worked hard to keep their images limited, but Dane strongly suspected that this was unnatural for them-the equivalent of trying to hold an important conversation with a two-year-old. Or with someone who knew just a few scattered words of a foreign language.

"I can't hold the image of us all when the images get to a certain level of intensity," Ali said, his voice hoa.r.s.e. He rubbed his hands through his fine hair, then looked up, his eyes bloodshot. "Look, how long are we going to keep at this? It's not working."

"We have to know why," Rip said, his manner detached. His dark eyes turned Dane's way. "What have you observed?"

"Same thing Kamil says." Dane rubbed gently at his knee. "We're trying to do two things-hold on to the bond, and concentrate on what the Floaters send us. It's too hard, like reading two screens at once."

Rip turned to Jasper. "Weeks?"

The Venusian had laced his fingers together, and was studying them as though the answer lay there. Now he glanced up, and said, "Just as Ali says."

"And?" Rip prompted.

Jasper shrugged his thin shoulders slightly.

"And?" Rip said again. "Jasper, you know something. I can tell that much. If I could read what it was, I'd say it myself."

Jasper Weeks went very still, so still he seemed to have stopped breathing. Dane sensed his deep reluctance to speak, and so to break the tension he said, "Shannon. What you told Tooe. Repeat it?"

Rip shrugged slightly. "It's nothing profound. I don't believe they can tell us apart-any more than we can tell them apart."

Dane got to his feet and hit the comlink. "Craig?"

"Right behind you." The medic appeared, carrying a tray of gently steaming drinks. "Something to fortify you. Drink up."

"Coffee," Ali said. "I want coffee. Strong, and lots. Not one of your vile medicinal concoctions."

"You're getting a concoction, but I hope it isn't vile. Frank infused it into a good strong soup he's had simmering all day. Or what pa.s.ses for day. Drink."

As he spoke he went around to each of them. Dane took his and sipped. The flavor was a blend of various vegetables- the fresh tomato of the hydrogarden being most prevalent- with an 'overlay of spice. He drank a big swallow, and then finished it. Almost immediately he felt energy flowing through his veins again.

Craig grinned at him. "You look less like a month-old corpse now."

"And more like a week-old croaker, eh?" Ali murmured. "That's what I feel like."

Tau ignored him. "Dane, you had a question?"

"You ran tests, right, on the Floaters? Infrared, sonic, whatever you had-have you discovered any distinguis.h.i.+ng characteristics for telling these things apart?"

"Nothing," Tau said. "I can't even tell you if the ones you touch are repeat customers, or are completely new."

Dane felt again that impulse that this was important, but when he tried to think, the impulse dissolved. Then he looked down at Jasper and felt it again-this time with a sense of urgency that made him say, "Weeks, you know something. What is it?"

Rip hunkered down next to the jet tech. "Jasper. We have to solve this. You know that. You've worked hard-at least as hard as any of the rest of us-"

"No I haven't," Jasper said in a low voice.

The interruption was so uncharacteristic that everyone was silent.

"I beg your pardon," Jasper said promptly.

"No. Speak." Rip stayed next to Jasper. "You haven't worked hard?"

"I have," Jasper said slowly-and then glanced over at Ali, who was gazing at him over the rim of his cup. "But it's not the right work. I-I know it."

Ali Kamil hit the flat of his hand against the bulkhead. "Ident.i.ty," he said. "d.a.m.n it! It's ident.i.ty, isn't it?"

Jasper dropped his gaze again. "That's it. I think. We lost the contact because we're working so hard to maintain our ident.i.ties."

Dane drew in a deep breath, conviction making him almost giddy. "That's it. That's it. The Floaters don't have ident.i.ty. Not in any way we understand it. And that's what's holding us back."

Rip stood up, rubbing his jaw. "Ident.i.ty. But that's so basic-" He stopped, frowning. "When we're conscious, anyway. We've already learned that bleeding over into one another's dreams happens when we're unconscious. The ident.i.ty barrier seems to drop then."

"So we're supposed to do this contact thing when we're asleep?" Ali queried, then he rolled his eyes, and added derisively, "Wonderful news. This gets better all the time."

"I don't think that's possible," Dane said, working not to let Ali's sarcasm make him angry. "It takes too much focus to hold it. In our dreams we're all over the place-past, present, weird combinations of both."

Rip said, "Jasper?"

Weeks looked up again. "Image," he murmured. "If-if we change the image. Not us. On rafts." He licked his lips, and Dane felt a suffusion of pity. The discussion was obviously cr6ssing some kind of ingrained privacy barrier that upset the Venusian deeply.

"I see!" Rip exclaimed, looking enthusiastic. "You think, then, that the image of each of us on our rafts symbolically sets up the ident.i.ty barriers?"

Jasper nodded, his lips compressed.

Again Dane felt a spurt of pity. The Venusian was visibly upset-a rarity that ought to have warned Ali. Jasper just never showed emotion. Dane suspected that, given a choice, Jasper would rather be required to trade among the Sky-Born cult on Sarabbi II-where clothing of any kind was outlawed-than to be exposing his inner self even to crewmates. Maybe especially to crewmates, people he knew and had to live with.

Dane thought about the ribbing he'd taken from one of the inhabitants of Xecho, who thought it crazy for the Queen, which was not by any standards a s.p.a.cious s.h.i.+p, being further divided into tiny cubicles. But Dane had explained how humans needed the illusion, at least, of privacy. How much more profound a change would it be to lose those mental barriers?

Rip said, "Look. We've run out of time. Either we solve this, or lift."

No one spoke, but Dane saw that the other two were listening.

Rip said, "We've already proved that we can't do much on our own-that we all have to work together. If we use that image and let the Floaters drive our thoughts, it should minimize the. personal trespa.s.s."

Dane said, looking from Ali to Jasper, "We don't have any more time. Let's do it fast-and let's do it now."

Ali hit the bulkhead again, then wrung his fingers. "I suggest, my pilgrims," he said in the grand manner, "that we rejoin our waiting friends?"

Rip's relief was apparent only in the way his shoulders relaxed slightly. His voice was as calm as ever as he said, "So our image now is simply ocean. We're no longer going to make mental images of ourselves on rafts. We'll be in the ocean-not fish, or creatures, but part of the water itself."

Jasper jerked his head in a nod, and activated the outer hatch.

The fog was now so thick that Dane couldn't see the end of the ramp. He glanced up, and his nerves sang painfully. Despite the fog the Floaters were visible, or visible enough to hint at an incredible number.

At the ramp the four sat down in a square on the platform they'd laid out earlier, and clasped one another's shoulders. Dane closed his eyes, trying not to think about the touch of the Floaters. So far they'd avoided him; the others had not shown the effects, which meant the Floaters were aware on some level of the damage they'd done, and had worked to control it-but the body remembers pain, and his muscles tightened unbearably.

He forced himself to breathe deeply as he obediently called up the mental image of the ocean. Or tried. It was too hard to just imagine himself in the ocean, so he pictured his familiar raft, but this time visualized himself diving off and into the water. Deep blue water, cool and pleasant, with waving fronds.

He looked ahead, tried not to see the others. He knew they were there, but it was that sense of someone standing at your shoulder. No image! His mind said, and he steadied the blue of the water.

And with a sudden surge of terrific energy, his mind dived down not into the murky depths of his imagination, but into a vision so real he was utterly mesmerized. A tiny part of him watched the process-likening it to starting a s.h.i.+p on manual, one system at a time, until the autopilot takes over and lights up the control deck, launching the s.h.i.+p at the same time.

Control was now out of his hands, but it was right to be so. He closed out that last part of his ident.i.ty, and- -And he was the ocean.

The bond between the four menhad been a faint candle to the sun of this worldwide awareness. For that was what he was now part of. Dane saw it, lived it, felt it. He was the Floaters, drifting between the islands in the short summers, sifting the pollen of the trees from the air, raining the metabolites like silver threads to the sea far below, nouris.h.i.+ng the vast kelp beds which were farmed by the other sentient species, arthropodal bottom-dwellers.

And then the microscopic seeds of the vast trees through the rest of the years, as the pods burst at long intervals between storms. For with those seeds came a lichen that proliferated in each Floater's upper skin, staining its vast upper surface reddish green, the energy thus extracted from Hes-prid's glaring sun enabling the creatures to float as natural aerostats through the night. They avoided the worst of storms by flattening out on the smooth rock atop the rock-dome islands, where the Traders would, of course, never see them.

Exhilaration slowly damped, to be replaced by the sense of wrongness pervading the world. Not a human wrongness- the humans seemed to have made about as much impression on the world's consciousness as harmless microbes did for Terrans. *"*

The wrongness was in the sea, and the air above it. The Floaters didn't know why the currents had changed, slowly shrinking the belts of fog they lived in. Ordinarily that was not a problem, but the End Times were indeed coming.

Guided by the consciousness, Dane saw the growing fury of the planetary elements as Hesprid's sunspot cycle reached its fervid peak, watched as quakes and the howling winds toppled vast trees in'windrows, shrank away from the sky-spanning lightning that ignited the islands into the flaming h.e.l.l of heat that was the only trigger the seeds knew for growth.

The forest was reborn in fire, while the Floaters waited far out at sea in their protective fog bank.

But not this time. The Floaters did not know the precise data-and their sense of time was difficult to grasp. But the humans knew, and the impact of that knowledge shook the bond that linked them for a moment.

For a moment Dane's mind lifted back into individuality. Two days to doomsday. Doomsday for us, too, unless we trade. Then he felt ashamed. The Traders faced only financial ruin; the Floaters faced extinction. With an effort, he let himself fall back into the sea, become one again with the water, with his friends, with the Floaters.

The aliens accepted the knowledge of their time of death without emotions-at least none that Dane could discern- but in fact, with them all sentience on this world would die. Without the Floaters and the pollen metabolite, the kelp would die, and the sea life that it sheltered-including what the Floaters thought of as the singers-of-the-water-and the arthropods would starve.

Singers-of-the-water? Another sentient race? Dane thought, and he felt the question echo through the other three.

It was the tragedy of Hesprid IV that sentient life was confined to the archipelago rich in cielanite, and the piezoelectric emissions that underlay the ecology of the trees.

Now he felt emotion, knew it to be the very human reactions from his three crewmates.

Becoming aware of their reactions made him more aware of them. The image of the world changed again, this time showing in a weird blending of time the Queen and the Ariadne secured to the island. But the images did not include humans or humanoids-it was as if they didn't exist. The images focused on the s.h.i.+ps, more specifically the vapors given off by the exhaust vents.

Salutary, came Ali's thought, wry and clear-a kind of rusty red. We seem to rate the importance of the gra.s.s we tread on at home- Through that came Jasper's thought. Vapor! They want the vapor.

And Dane felt his own emotions radiate out, like golden sunbeams. He could have laughed aloud, for suddenly he knew what was needed.

Jan Van Ryke had told Dane often enough that a good Free Trader traded with whatever was at hand-even if, as had happened once, the item wanted was nothing in the cargo hold, but.grew in abundance in the hydrolab for the delectation of the s.h.i.+p's cat.

Now facing him was perhaps the greatest challenge for a Trader-to work with beings who did not speak, who did not seem to know the concepts of owners.h.i.+p or possessions. but who had a need.

He projected his own images, strong and sure, and felt the other three sensing his direction and backing him up, quick as electric current. Perhaps the intensity of the connection aided him; he saw, clear as a vid, the mining slugs following veins of cielanite, shown in the image as a blue-glowing stone in a dark matrix. He watched them excreting the cielanite eggs, the crews of the two s.h.i.+ps working hard to gather them, the tide was.h.i.+ng them away. Dane tried to convey their need, not knowing if even that emotion was clear.

He then visualized the crew picking up the ore and stowing it on the s.h.i.+p-and last, he formed images of the s.h.i.+ps making vapors that stayed in the air.

At once a kind of electric current zapped through the bond.

Dane felt it as a physical shock, recalling the trauma of his initial contact, and he felt his consciousness dissolve.

But as he faded out he felt the triumph of the other three, and Rip's inner voice, green and clear: They got it!

Chapter Twenty.

Dane was dreaming.

He swam in a storm-lashed sea, but the water was warm, and sunlight shafted down through the waters. He wanted to dive down, and keep exploring, but he knew he needed to return to the surface. More air? No, he had air. he had gills. he looked down, about to dive.

Suddenly there came the sense that he was not alone. Ali!

Where's the comlink?

Dane looked around, sure that Ali Kamil had called him, but there was no other figure visible in the water. A weight anch.o.r.ed him, curiously comforting.

Again the call, and he looked toward the surface, saw the bright sunlight- And woke up. On his chest Sinbad sat curled up, his eyes slitted, his body vibrating gently with his purring.

"Come on, man," Ali said with heartless impatience. "On your feet. You have a lot to see before you get to work."

Dane worked his mouth, which felt like the inside of a shoe after a fifty-kilometer hike. "Unh," he said.