“I’m afraid that’s the only alternative,” I agreed, then manhandled Xavier Xerxes to his feet. “Tell them it’s a deal.”
“Isaiah,” Rebona called after me, “you really do have a plan, don’t you?”
“A terrific one. Don’t worry about a thing.”
Now all I had to do was convince the Bagpipes of that. One of the aliens manipulated a preprogrammed net panel to call for an aircar, then dropped the forcefield when the flier approached. During the brief trip to the Venture he kept a duplicate of the glassy egg-shaped weapon that had killed Dolf MacKay pointed at me. If the police noticed the flier leaving, they didn’t bother to give chase. I suspected that the officers on early morning watch were busy chewing a few petals of their own.
Once inside my ship I laid Xerxes on the bunk, checked his pulse and breathing, and found them apparently normal. At least I didn’t have a corpse on my hands. Yet.
Turning back to the Bagpipe that I had named Black-Ringed Tubes, I saw that his weapon was still firmly centered on my chest. Ignoring it as much as possible, I led him to the control console where the two crystal bands were still wired in place. In a show of bravado, I snatched the nearest one and yanked it over my head. Seconds later I was back in virtual space. This time, however, along with the millions of stars, wavering before me was a stylized representation of Black-Ringed Tubes.
“Humans have an institution called trade or barter or bargaining,” I began, “all of which are subsets of negotiation.” I conjured up mental pictures of one person pushing a basket of fruit across an open space and of another person pushing a domestic animal back. Then I moved on to the more difficult concept of money After a long pause Black-Ringed Tubes conveyed the impression that although his knowledge of human culture was sparse at best, he had managed to grasp these basic concepts of commerce.
“Xerxes doesn’t care about the crystals for themselves,” I tried to tell him, “he only sees them as a way to obtain money. If there were another way to obtain money, Xerxes would leave the crystals alone.”
“You will give him this concept you call money?”
“No, you will trade something to Xerxes that will be more valuable to him than the crystals. He will then get money from what you give him and, in exchange, he will leave the crystals alone.”
“I/we have no money. Trick?”
I wasn’t sure if the Bagpipe was asking if I was tricking him or if I was proposing that a deceit be practiced on Xerxes.
“No, but you have something that is worth money, the device that makes your shield, the forcefield you set up around the plant where you are now living. That device is unknown in human culture. The ability to manufacture and sell such a machine would be more valuable to Xerxes than the crystals. If you can show me how to manufacture it, then in exchange I can get him to give up the crystals. Can you do that?”
“A simple device. Easily constructed, well known.”
Did I detect a note of surprise that we humans didn’t understand something as simple as their forcefield generator? I also got the disquieting impression that to them it really was no more than a minor trinket. Just how advanced were these people?
No matter. For the moment, my concerns were purely short-term. I returned to the negotiations and eventually we seemed to reach an understanding.
The Bagpipes would turn over to me all of the technical information needed to build a forcefield generator. I would sell this technology as Xerxes’s agent. A portion of the proceeds would be used to obtain clear title to all deposits of Carson’s crystal on New Sonora. The deeds would be placed in an irrevocable trust with a local bank as trustee. The bank’s fee for the next one hundred years would be paid in advance. Sometime during that period the Bagpipes would return to New Sonora to advance another century of fees.
The moment the trust was established, I would give the Bagpipes my own cargo of crystals. In return, I would take from the remaining balance of the forcefield sale enough money to refuel and reprovision my ship. From what remained I would then take a fifteen percent finder’s fee. Xavier Xerxes would keep the rest. Even as I struggled to convey these mystifying concepts to the Bagpipe, another part of my mind was calculating that the miner’s income from the licensing fees would probably exceed 150,000 credits a year. And that fifteen percent of that would also be mine.
I took a deep breath and tried to focus on Black-Ringed Tubes’s wavering form. “And finally,” I said, “a few small points…”
I liked the concept of being the only human being in all of Human Occupied Space who could read the currents of nullspace. For a star-freighter captain it would be an asset of incalculable value. And, of course, someone had to be the duly appointed intermediary between the Bagpipes and Human Occupied Space.
Could anyone be more qualified to fill that role than Isaiah Howe?
An eternity later, Black-Ringed Tubes reluctantly conceded that the loss of a small piece of crystal two or three inches across wouldn’t cause irreparable harm to the creature in the Hormagaunt Hills. Once the blocks in my cargo hold had been put back the missing fragment would eventually regenerate itself. The Bagpipes would permanently install my piece of crystal inside the Venture’s control panel, where it would be connected to the two translation bands. I would then become the only human being in the Universe able to freely navigate the currents of nullspace.
In return for this, I generously agreed to meet with the Bagpipes at least once every six standard months and to act as their representative in dealing with any problems that might arise between them and the human race.
Wearily I pulled the translator band from my head. All in all it seemed a fair settlement—not, of course, that a formerly licensed Senior Facilitator such as myself would have been satisfied with anything less. The only remaining question was whether Xavier Xerxes would have enough sense to accept it as an alternative to the aliens carting him away and rearranging his brains for good.
Of course, matters would also have to be smoothed over with the colonel, but if neither Xerxes, Re-bona, nor myself were willing to testify, then there was no proof of any kidnapping. We would all swear that MacKay’s death was self-defense so there wouldn’t be much the colonel could do as long as we all stuck together, as I was sure we would. There is no better glue than money.
As I turned my eyes to Black-Ringed Tubes’s multi-appendaged body, I suddenly realized there was another question: Which of his dozens of tubes and tentacles was I going to shake to close the deal?
“Just when I was getting used to you without clothes,” said Rebona Myking lightly, “you had to go and put them back on again.”
“That can be easily remedied,” I grinned.
“Mmmm.” She shifted gracefully in the lead saddle of the butterfly we had rented early that afternoon. Beneath us, the ’fly torpidly drank from an enormous blossom. Rebona tossed her auburn hair over her shoulder and uttered an exhausted sigh. Though her face was haggard and her eyes weary, she still seemed lovely.
“Is it really over?” she murmured. “You’ve arranged everything with the Bagpipes?”
“Yes. Maybe five or six years from now we’ll discover that I completely misunderstood what they were saying and then we’ll have an intergalactic war after all, but for the moment I really think it’s over.”
“And Xavier Xerxes?”
“He’s going to be a rich man. The Dorado Conglomerate on Voreth III has been grappling with forcefield technology for decades now and getting absolutely nowhere. Even from here on New Sonora I ought to be able to conclude a deal by nullspace courier drone in a couple of weeks.”