But I, a man whose academic degrees and professional honors had once filled an entire wall of my luxurious office on Westerworld, had stood complacently by while the cargo was unloaded before payment was made. What was the old wheeze? A lesson learned is a lesson cherished…
Five days out of Bountiful, somewhere in nullspace with barely enough money to refuel the Venture at her next planetfall, the computer roused me from a fitful sleep.
“I have a report.”
I knew this could not be good news. “Go ahead,” I muttered.
“Instead of exiting nullspace at Charon IV, fourteen light-years from Bountiful, we are about to enter the Icarus System, ninety-seven light-years farther along the Edelweiss Drift.”
“Dogwood has slipped away?” I demanded, my voice tight. Only nine months earlier the 3,000 imperial grandees from Gaveltry who had incautiously accompanied their Autarch to Lowry’s Landfall for his impending nuptials with the daughter of the Most Equal Elder, had vanished forever when the Landfall system had slipped from congruency. If Dogwood was also gone, this would be the first time that two systems had lost congruency in less than a single Terran year.
You didn’t have to be a senior facilitator with degrees in linguistics, economics, diplomacy, and advanced integration to discern a frightening pattern. Lowry’s Landfall had been the fourteenth system to fall out of nullspace contact in the last fifty years, but it was the ninth to do so in the last twenty. In the previous two centuries we had lost only four.
If Dogwood had slipped away, then we were seeing a pattern that, if continued, would eventually spell the ruin of Human Occupied Space, as well as disaster for the empires of the six alien species with whom we uneasily coexisted.
“Ninety-seven light-years off course,” I groaned. If Icarus too were to fall out of access by nullspace, then I would be marooned forever in this cosmic backwater. “Is Icarus within HOS? Can we refuel here?”
“Yes. It has one inhabited world: New Sonora.”
Worse and worse: Sonora was the name of a blisteringly hot North American desert. If the planet’s climate was similar to that of its namesake, New Sonora would not be an enticing planet. With growing concern, I threw myself into the command chair and tried to learn what I could of the approaching world.
New Sonora turned out to be both better and worse than I had feared.
Its gravity was a light .63 of the standard Terran norm, which meant that with my first steps down the boarding ramp I instantly felt as frisky as a teenager. And with a population of less than a quarter of a million human beings, landing formalities were comparatively few, which meant a welcome reduction in the landing fees, inspection charges, and all the other bureaucratic paperwork associated with more densely populated worlds.
Within a few minutes of establishing a communications link, the Venture had been directed to a barren patch of mountain-rimmed desert forty miles or so to the northwest of Saguaro, the planet’s only metropolitan area. Half an hour after the ship touched down I was in an aircar moving away from the jagged chain of mountains north of the spacefield. A harsh white sun blazed out of an intensely blue sky. The profiles of the distant mountains that defined the great basin in which Saguaro lay were as sharp in the clear desert air as if they were within arm’s reach.
As the view of the city grew larger in the aircar’s bubble canopy, I glumly calculated that the probability would be high that a society with a small population apparently dedicated to living in harmony with nature and adapting local materials to human needs, would generate little or no business for a trader such as myself.
My only realistic hope of finding some commercial opportunity would be to discover a biological agent or “cactus” by-product that might have a unique value elsewhere in Human Occupied Space. I was not optimistic. On Earth, the only commercial byproducts I had ever heard of that derived from the thousand or so varieties of cacti were prickly-pear jelly, tequila, and a variety of skin softeners, hardly the foundation for making my fortune, or meeting my next mortgage payment.
As the pale green cluster of succulents that made up the city of Saguaro grew closer, my eye was caught by a flicker of color against the deep blue sky. Moments later two small specks began to take on birdlike shapes, then suddenly became discernible as the giant butterflies that the ship’s computer had informed me were one of the more beguiling aspects of life on New Sonora.
On the back of each scarlet-bodied butterfly sat a human rider as nonchalantly as Lady Godiva steering her horse through the streets of Coventry, though these riders were swathed in white to protect themselves from New Sonora’s brilliant sun. As the aircar flashed past, they waved enormous sunhats.
Grinning, I waved back, my facilitator’s mind automatically estimating the surface area of the butterflies’ wings and running calculations to determine how such improbable creatures could possibly fly. When I factored in New Sonora’s barely more than half standard gravity coupled with an atmospheric pressure nearly double that of Earth’s, as well as the lift generated by the desert’s thermals and the fact that this was a planet settled by genetic engineers who could as easily rewire an indigenous life form’s DNA as a groundcar mechanic can change a flux coil, I understood how these fairytale creatures could soar so effortlessly through the New Sonoran sky.
I waved once more, then, as the butterflies fell behind, my thoughts again turned somber.
The butterflies were undeniably beautiful, but it seemed unlikely that I would be able to transport any of them alive to some distant zoo. Still, it was only early afternoon, time enough to check with whatever passed in Saguaro for a shipping agent to see if there was any hope of disposing of my cargo of crystal blocks on this uninviting and underpopulated world.
“Isaiah—what a curious name,” Cotita Lazzeri said with mild surprise when I introduced myself.
“It’s an old biblical name. I’m told it means salvation of the Lord.” Cotita Lazzeri pursed her lips and ran gnarled hands through her helmet of matted gray hair.
“The lord? Which one?”
“Take your pick. It doesn’t matter. It’s just a name.” I gestured at the small piece of brightly colored crystal that Cotita Lazzeri held in her hands. “What do you think?”
The New Sonoran factor put my sample down beside the holograms I had shown her of the shipment in the Venture’s cargo hold, then chuckled softly and shook her head.
“I’m afraid you’re not going to be able to sell your cargo here, Citizen Howe. New Sonora is where it came from in the first place. Didn’t you know that?” She broke off a thick, pulpy-looking piece of orange and white petal from a luxuriant flower growing in a pot on her desk and popped it into her fleshy mouth. As she chewed, the seams in her leathery face gradually relaxed into a euphoric smile. “Would you care for a piece? This is genuine Hillaton’s Favorite.”
I stared at Cotita Lazzeri in dismay. We were sitting in her small office high in the interior of one of the town’s ubiquitous giant succulents. The room was dark, moist, and cool, with two small round portholes of triple-paned glass looking out on the Yakabee Mountains to the south. The floor beneath my feet was a very pale green, firm but faintly yielding. It was, like the irregularly shaped walls and ceiling, an integral part of the living “saguaro” itself. The cool air caressing my face carried with it a feint, almost imperceptible odor of exotic spices. I waved my hand, refusing the fleshy petal in Cotita Lazzeri’s outstretched fingers. Now, if I were willing to transport unregistered euphorics… But no, I was already in enough trouble without getting involved in drug running.