The Merchants' War

  Just a harmless jocularity, right? Wrong. Dirty Berthie’s little jokes are always nasty. It’s “How’s organized lying today?” for a hello, and, “Well, I mustn’t keep you from peddling some more poison baby food,” when she says good-by. We aren’t allowed to do that kind of thing. To be fair, most of the native Veenies don’t, either, but Bertha is the worst of both worlds. Our official policy on Bertha is smile and say nothing. That’s what I had done for all those long years, but enough was enough. I said—

  Well, I can’t defend what I said. To understand it you have to know that Bertha’s husband, the one she gave up her star class job on Earth for, was a pilot on the Kathy-to-Discovery airline, who lost part of his right leg and an unspecified selection of adjacent parts in a crash the year after they were married. It’s the one thing she’s sensitive about. So I gave her a sweet, sweet smile and said, “I was just trying to do Carlos’s work as a favor to him, but I got the wrong house.”

  My joke wasn’t very funny. Bertha didn’t even try for one in response. She gasped. She pushed free of my arms, stood stock-still in the middle of the dance floor and cried, loud and clear, “You bastard!” There were actual tears in her eyes—rage, I guess.

  I did not have a chance to study her reaction. A beartrap grip closed on my shoulder and the Chief of Station herself said politely, “If I can borrow Tenny a moment, Bertha, there are some last-minute things we have to settle …”

  Out in the corridor she squared off, head to head. “You ass, ” she hissed. Sprinkles of saliva like snake venom ate pits in my cheeks.

  I tried to defend myself. “She started it! She said—”

  “I heard what she said, and the whole damned room heard what you said! Jesus, Tarb!” She had let go of my shoulder, and now she looked as though she wanted to take me by the throat instead.

  I backed away. “Pam, I know I was out of line, but I’m a little shook up. Don’t forget somebody nearly murdered me today!”

  “It was an accident. The Embassy has officially listed it as an accident. Try to remember that. It doesn’t make sense any other way. Why would anybody bother to murder you when you’re on your way home?”

  “Not me. Mitzi. Maybe there’s a double agent among the spies she’s recruited, and they know what she’s doing.”

  “Tarb.” There was no snake venom this time and no hiss, not even anger. This was just an icy warning. She looked quickly around to make sure no one was nearby. Well, of course I shouldn’t have said anything like that while there were Veenies in the building—that was Rule Number One. I started to say something, and she raised her hand. “Mitsui Ku is not dead,” she said. “They’ve operated on her. I saw her myself in the hospital, an hour and a half ago. She hadn’t regained consciousness, but the prognosis is good. If they wanted her dead, they could have done it in the operating room and we never would have known it. They didn’t.”

  “All the same—”

  “Go back to bed, Tarb. Your injuries are more severe than we realized.” She didn’t let me interrupt, but pointed toward the private rooms. “Now. And I’ve got to get back to my guests—after I stop in my office to add some remarks to an efficiency report. Yours.” She stood there and watched me out of sight.

  And that was the last I saw of the Chief of Station, and almost the last I saw of anything at all for quite a while—two years and a bit— because the next morning I was hustled out of bed by two Embassy guards, bundled into a station car, hurried to the port, packed into a shuttle. In three hours I was in orbit. In three hours and a half I was lying in a freezer cocoon, waiting for the sleepy drug to put me out and the chill-down to start. The space liner was not due to start its main engines for another nine orbits—more than half a day—but the Ambassador had given orders to get me put away. And get me put away they did.

  The next thing I knew I was being eaten alive by fire ants, that unbearable arm’s-asleep feeling you get when you’re first thawed. I was still in the cocoon but I was wearing an electrically warmed skinsuit with only my eyes exposed, and bending over me was somebody I knew. “Hello there, Tenn,” said Mitzi Ku. “Surprised to see me?”

  I was. I said I was, but I doubt that I managed to express just how surprised I was, because the last thought I remembered, just before the whirly-down sleepiness took over, was rueful regret that I hadn’t had that last farewell appearance in Mitzi’s bed, and was not likely ever to get a chance to make it up.

  I was startled at her appearance. Half her face was bandaged, only the mouth and chin exposed, with two little slits in the dressing for eyes. Of course, that was natural enough. Healing doesn’t take place when you’re frozen. Effectively Mitzi was only a few days out of surgery. “Are you all right?” I asked.

  She said sharply, “Sure I am. I’m fine! I mean,” she qualified, “I probably won’t be all fine for weeks yet, but I’m ambulatory. As you see,” she grinned. I think she was grinning. “When the doctors said I could leave the hospital I made up my mind that Venus had seen the last of me. So I tore up my reenlistment papers and they got me on the last shuttle. I stayed unfrozen for a while, until they could get the stitches out—and here I am!”

  The itching had dwindled to the almost bearable range. The world suddenly looked brighter, and I started to peel off the hotsuit. Mitzi nodded. “That’s the spirit, Tenn! We touch down on the Moon in ninety minutes— better get your pants on!”

  TARB’S HOMECOMING

  I

  To my surprise, the two deported Marines were on the same ship. That was a good thing. Without them helping me limp off I doubt I would have made it. Mitzi, all bandaged and broken, was fine. I was not. I was sick, and by that I mean, man, sick. I’ve always been susceptible to motion sickness, but it had never occurred to me that it was just as bad to be on the Moon.

  Venus is terrible, sure, but at least on Venus you weigh what you expect to weigh. The Moon isn’t that friendly. They say after the first six weeks you stop throwing your coffee across the room when you only want to put it to your lips but I’ll never know that for myself —I don’t like the place. If we’d come on a regular Earth rocket we’d have shuttled down to the surface right away, but it was a Veenie vessel and had to stop at quarantine.

  And that, really, was a farce! I’m not saying anything against the Agencies. They run the Earth very well. But the whole idea of quarantine is to keep Veenie diseases out, right? That includes the worst Veenie disease, the political pestilence of Conservationism. So you’d expect that on the Moon they’d give the Veenies a hard time in Customs and Immigration. In fact Immigration waved them past with no more than a cursory look at their passports. I don’t mean just the crew, who weren’t going anywhere but the nearest flopjoint anyway. Even the handful of Veenie business people and dips, transshipping to the Earth, got greased through in no time.

  But us Terrestrials—wow! They sat Mitzi and me down and magnetic-checked our papers and pried through our bags, and then the questions began. It was report all contact with Venusian nationals in line of duty for past eighteen months; give purpose of contact and nature of information communicated. Report all such contacts not in line of duty—purpose and information included. We were three hours in that sealed cubicle, filling out forms and answering questions, and then the interrogator got serious. “It has been ascertained,” he said—grammatically speaking the voice was passive, but the actual voice rang with loathing and contempt, “that certain Earth nationals, to secure easy admission to Venus, have performed ritual acts of desecration.”

  Well, that was true enough. It was just another typical lousy Veenie trick, like the Japanese making Europeans trample on Bibles centuries ago. When you got to the Veenie Immigration checkpoints you had a choice. You could go through four or five hours of close questioning, with all your belongings opened and most likely a body search. Or you could take an oath renouncing “advertising, publicity, media persuasion or any other form of manipulation of public opinion”; toss off a few slanders of your Age
ncy; and then, depending on how good an actor you were, breeze right through. It was a big joke, of course. I chuckled and started to explain it to him, but Mitzi cut in ahead of me. “Oh, yes,” she said, nodding earnestly, her expression as disapproving as his own, “we’ve heard that, too.” She gave me a warning look. “Do you happen to know if it’s true?”

  The Immigration man put down his stylus to study her face. “You mean you don’t know whether that happens or not?”

  She said carelessly, “One hears stories, sure. But when you try to put your finger on it, you just can’t find a single concrete bit of evidence. It’s always, no, it didn’t happen to me, but I heard from this person that he had a friend who— Anyway, I can’t really believe a decent Terrestrial would do such a thing. I certainly wouldn’t, and neither would Tennison. Apart from the plain immorality of it, we know we’d have to face the consequences when we came back!”

  So grudgingly the man passed us, and as soon as we were outside I whispered to Mitzi, “You saved my tail—thanks!”

  “They just started doing that a couple years ago,” she said. “If we’d admitted taking a false oath it would go on our records—then we’d be in the stuff.”

  “Funny you heard that that was happening and I didn’t.”

  “I’m glad you can see the humor of it,” she said bitingly, and for some reason, I perceived, she was furious. Then she said, “Sorry. I’m in a bad mood. I think I’ll try to get a few more of these bandages off—then it’ll be time for the shuttle!”

  Earth! The birthplace of homo sapiens. The homeland of true humanity. The flowering of civilization. When we came to the shuttle in its lock and I caught a glimpse of its graffiti I knew I was home. “Everett Loves Alice.” “Tiny Miljiewicz has herpes in his ears.” “Rams all the way!” There’s nothing on Venus like our native Terrestrial folk art!

  So we came down from the sky, jolting and slamming; I worried about Mitzi’s healing scars, but she only mumbled and turned over to sleep. Out over the wide ocean, greeny gray with slime—clear across the wide, welcoming North American continent, with its patchwork carpet of cities glowing welcomingly up through the smog—then the sun we had left behind rising again before us as we skidded out over the Atlantic, made our U-turn to spill out the last of our altitude and speed, and touched down finally on the broad runways of New York Shuttleport. Little old New York! The hub the universe spins on! I felt my heart throbbing with pride, and with joy at homecoming … and Mitzi, strapped in beside me, had slept through the whole thing.

  She sat up drowsily while we were waiting for the tractor to hook on and tow us to the terminal. She made a face. “Isn’t it great to be back?” I demanded, grinning at her.

  She leaned over me to stare out the window. “Sure is,” she said, but her tone was a long way from enthusiastic. “I wish—”

  But I never found out what she wished, because she broke out in a fit of furious coughing. “My God!” she gasped. “What’s that stuff?”

  “That’s good old New York City air you’re breathing!” I told her. “You’ve been away too long—you’ve forgotten what it’s like!”

  “At least they could filter it,” she complained. Well, of course it was filtered, but I didn’t bother to correct her. I was too busy getting our stuff out of the overhead racks and lining up to disembark.

  It was seven A.M., local time. There weren’t too many people in the terminal yet, which was a plus, but the minus that balanced that in the equation was the lack of baggage handlers. Mitzi trailed sulkily after me to the baggage claim, and there I got a surprise. The surprise’s name was Valentine Dambois, Senior Vice-President and Associate General Manager, pink cheeks, twinkly blue eyes, plump figure jiggling as he hurried across to greet us.

  I told myself that I shouldn’t have been surprised—I’d done a good job on Venus, and I’d never doubted that the Agency would treat me kindly when I got back. But not this kindly! You didn’t get a star-class executive to welcome you home at that hour of the morning unless you were really special. So, full of cheer and great hopes, I stuck out my hand to him. “Great to see you, Val,” I began—

  And he went right past me. Right to Mitzi. Val Dambois was a tubby little man, and the fattest thing about him was his face; when he smiled he looked like a Halloween pumpkin. The smile he gave Mitzi was like a pumpkin on the verge of splitting in two. “Mitzi-wits!” he yelled, though he was only two feet away from her and closing fast. “Missed you, sweety-bumps!” He flung his arms around her and stood on tiptoe to give her a big kiss.

  She didn’t kiss back. She pulled her head back so the kiss only got as far as her chin. “Hello,” she said—“Val.”

  His face fell. For a minute I thought Mitzi had blown every chance of promotion she ever had, but Dambois did a great reconstruction job on his smile. By the time he put it back on his face it was as good as new, and he patted her rump affectionately—but hastily. He stepped back, chuckling. “You sure made yourself a killing,” he said warmly. “I take my hat off to you, Mits!”

  I didn’t know what he was talking about, of course. For a minute I didn’t think Mitzi did, either, because a swift shadow clouded her eyes and her jaw tensed, but Dambois was already looking at me. “Missed the boat, I guess,” he said good-naturedly—rueful good nature, that was, with just a slight shading of contempt.

  Now, I wasn’t too surprised by the way Dambois greeted Mitzi. There were little bits of gossip here and there about Mitzi and one or two star-level agency executives, Val Dambois included. It meant nothing to me. Hell, it’s a rough course you have to run if you want to get ahead in the advertising business. If you can help yourself along by giving a little joy to the right parties, why not? But she hadn’t said anything to me about a killing. “What are you talking about, Val?” I demanded.

  “She didn’t tell you?” He pursed his plump little lips, grinning. “Her damage suit against the tram company. They settled out of court— six megabucks and change—it’s all waiting for her right now in the Agency bank!”

  I had to try twice to say it. “Six—Six mill—”

  “Six million dollars tax-free and spendable, right on!” he gloated. The man was as pleased as though the money had been his own— maybe he had some idea of making it so. I cleared my throat.

  “About this damage suit—” I began, but Mitzi leaned past me to point.

  “There, that one’s mine,” she said as the bags began to come off the conveyor. Val leaped forward and, puffing, swung it off and set it beside her.

  “What I mean—” I began. Nobody was listening.

  Dambois said jovially, slipping a pudgy arm around Mitzi’s waist—as far around as it would go: “Well, that’s the first bag. Probably not more than another twenty or so, eh?”

  “No, that’s the only one. I like to travel light,” she said, and moved away from his arm.

  Dambois looked up at her reproachfully. “You’ve changed a lot,” he complained. “I think you even got taller.”

  “Comes from being on a lighter planet.” That was a joke, of course. Venus is only minutely smaller than the Earth. But I didn’t laugh, because I was puzzling over why it was that Mitzi had got herself a whopping chunk of change and I hadn’t—then that was driven out of my mind as I saw what was coming down the conveyor.

  “Aw, shit,” I cried. It was the bag I had marked Delicate Handling—the steamer trunk, with sturdy sides and a double lock. They hadn’t been enough to save it. The trunk looked as if somebody had run one of the spacecraft tractors over a corner of it. One side was squashed like a fallen soufflé, and it was leaking an aromatic slop of liquor, colognes, toothpaste and god-knows-what. Naturally I had put all the breakables in it.

  “What a mess,” Dambois complained. He tsked impatiently a couple of times and glanced at his watch. “I was going to offer you a lift,” he said, “but really—that stuff in my car would smell it up for weeks—and I suppose you’ve got other bags—”

  I knew my
lines. “Go ahead,” I said glumly. “I’ll take a taxi.” I watched them go, wondering a lot about why I hadn’t been allowed to get in on the damage suit, but actually wondering even more just then whether I should hightail it for the baggage claim office or wait for the rest of my stuff.

  I made the wrong decision. I decided to wait. After the last visible bag had long since been removed and the conveyor had stopped running I realized I had a problem.

  When I reported the problem the superintendent in charge of denying all responsibility for anything, ever, told me that he’d check out the missing pieces, if I wanted him to, while I filled out the claim forms, if I thought that was worthwhile—although it looked a lot to him, he said, as though the damage to my case was old stuff.

  He had plenty of time to check, because there was plenty to fill out. When I turned in the claims he kept me waiting only another half-hour or so. I called the Agency to say I’d be delayed. It didn’t seem to worry them. They gave me the address of the housing they’d lined up for me, told me to settle in and said I wasn’t expected until tomorrow morning anyway. It is nice to be missed. Then the claims superintendent reported that the rest of my bags seemed to have gone either to Paris or Rio de Janeiro, and in neither case was I likely to see them for a while.

  So, bagless, I joined the glum queue waiting for the next city subline.

  Half an hour later, finally at the head of the line, I realized I hadn’t changed any Veenie currency and so I didn’t have enough cash for the fare—found a cash machine, punched in my I.D., got a bodiless voice cooing, “I am deeply sorry, sir or madam, but this Kwik-Check One-Stop Anytime cash dispenser terminal is temporarily out of service. Please consult map for nearest alternate location.” But when I looked around the booth there wasn’t any map. Welcome home, Tenn!