The Merchants' War Read online

  The Embassy had a hundred and eight on the duty roster—the Veenies were always after us to cut the number in half, but the Ambassador fought them off. He knew what those extra sixty people were there for—of course, so did the Veenies. I was maybe tenth or eleventh in the hierarchy, both because of my consular duties and my side assignment as Morale Officer. This meant that I was the one who selected commercials for the in-house TV circuits and—well—kept an eye on the other hundred and seven for Conservationist leanings. That didn’t take much of my time, though. We were a hand-picked crew. More than half of us were former Agency personnel, and even the consumers were a respectable bunch, for consumers. If anything, some of the young ones were too loyal. There’d been incidents. A couple of the Marine guards, just weeks before, had got a little too much pop-skull into them and flashed eye-resonating commercials at three of the natives with their hand weapons. The Veenies were not amused, and we’d had to put the Marines under house arrest for deportation. They weren’t present now, of course; the eleven o’clock briefing was only for us twenty-five or so seniors. I made sure there was a place next to me when Mitzi came in, late as usual; she glanced at Hay Lopez, sulking by the window, then shrugged and sat down to join the conversation.

  “Morning, Mitzi,” grunted the Protocol Chief, just in front of us, and went right on: “I used to have a Puff Adder, too, but pumping with your hands that way you can’t get the acceleration—”

  “You can if you put the muscle in it, Roger,” I told him. “And, see, half the time you’re stuck in traffic anyway, right? So one hand’s plenty for propulsion. You’ve got the other free for, well, signaling or something.”

  “Signaling,” he said, staring at me. “How long have you been driving, Tenny?” And the Chief Code Clerk leaned past Mitzi to put in: “You ought to try a Viper, with that lightweight direct drive. No pedals, just put your foot down on the roadway and push. Talk about get-up-and-go!”

  Roger looked at her scornfully. “Yeah, and what about braking? You can fracture your leg in an emergency stop. No, I say the foot pedal and chain drive is the only way to go—” His expression changed. “Here they come,” he grunted, and turned around to face front as the heavyweights came in.

  The Ambassador is a really imposing man, Media back on Earth, with that pepper-and-salt curly hair and that solid, humorous, dark-complected face. He wasn’t from our Agency, as it happened—the big ones took turns naming the top people, and it hadn’t been our turn —but I could respect him as a craftsman. And he knew how to run a meeting. First order of business was the Political Officer, fluttering anxiously over one more of the crises that plagued his days. “We’ve had another note from the Veenies,” he said, wringing his hands. “It’s about Hyperion. They claim we’re violating basic human rights by not allowing the gas miners freedom to choose their own communications media—you know what that means.”

  We did, and there were instant mutters of “What nerve!”

  “Typical Veenie arrogance!” The helium-3 miners on the moon Hyperion only amounted to about five thousand people, and as a market they’d never be missed. But it was a matter of principle to keep them well supplied with advertising—one Venus in the Solar System was enough.

  The Ambassador was having none of it. “Reject the note,” he rapped frostily. “It’s none of their damned business, and you shouldn’t have let them hand it to you in the first place, Howard.”

  “But how could I know until I read it?” wailed the Political Officer, and the Ambassador gave him the I’ll-see-you-later look before relaxing into a smile.

  “As you all know,” he said, “the Earth ship has been orbiting for ten days now, should be sending the shuttle down here any time. I’ve been in touch with the captain, and there’s good news and bad. The good news is they’ve got some fine stuff for us—a troop of ethnic dancers, disco and Black Bottom, as cultural exchange, Mitzi, you’ll be in charge of them, of course. They’ve also got ten metric tons of supplies—Coffiest, ReelMeet, tapes of the latest commercials, all the goodies you’ve all been waiting for!” General expressions of joy and satisfaction. I took the opportunity to reach out for Mitzi’s hand, and she didn’t withdraw it. The Ambassador went on: “That’s the good news. The bad news is, as you all know, when the shuttle takes off she’ll be taking with her one of our favorite members of our happy family here. We’ll say good-by to him in a better way the night before he leaves —but meanwhile, Tennison Tarb, would you like to stand up so we can show you how much we’re going to miss you?”

  Well, I hadn’t expected it. It was one of the great moments of my life. There is no applause like the plaudits of your peers, and they gave it unstintingly—even Hay Lopez, though he was frowning as he clapped.

  I don’t know what I said, but when it was over and I was back in my chair I was surprised to find I didn’t have to reach out for Mitzi’s hand again. She had taken mine.

  In the afterglow I leaned over to whisper in her ear, meaning to tell her that I’d fobbed the Polar Penal Colony trip off on Hay, and so we could have the whole suite to ourselves that night. It didn’t get said. She shook her head, smiling, because the Ambassador had sneaked the new commercial tapes down early in the diplomatic pouch, and of course we all wanted to be quiet while we watched them.

  It never did get said. I sat there, dumb and happy, with my arm over Mitzi’s shoulder, and it didn’t even strike me as worrisome when I noticed Hay’s eye on us, glum and resentful—not until he edged his way over to the Ambassador and began whispering in his ear as soon as the films were over. And then it was too late. The son of a gun had thought it through. As soon as the lights went up he came grinning and nodding toward us, all cheer and good-fellowship, and I knew what he was going to say: “Hell, Tenny boy! The damnedest thing! I can’t take that PPC sortie for you. Big huddle with the Ambassador tomorrow—know you’ll understand how it is— hell of a thing to make you do in your last days here—”

  I didn’t listen to the rest of it. He was right. It was a hell of a thing to make me do, and I did understand. I understood real well that night, fretfully trying to pillow my head on the uncomfortable seat-back of the supersonic flight to the Polar Penal Colony. It would have been a lot easier to get my head comfortable if I hadn’t been so dismally sure that I knew exactly where Hay Lopez was pillowing his.

  II

  At eight o’clock the next morning I was sitting in the conference room of the prison, across from the Veenie Immigration and Passport Control bureaucrat. “Nice to see you again, Tarb,” he said, unsmiling.

  “Always a pleasure to meet with you, Harriman,” I answered. Neither of us meant it. We’d sat opposite each other every few months, every time a prison ship came in from Earth, for four years, and we knew there was nothing nice or pleasurable to be expected.

  The Polar Penal Colony wasn’t really “polar” exactly, because it was up in the Akna Montes, about where the Arctic Circle would have been if Venus had had one. Naturally it wasn’t arctic. It wasn’t even appreciably less hot than the rest of the planet, but I guess the first Agency survey ships thought it would be. Otherwise why would they claim some of the least desirable real estate on Venus? It was Earth property, precariously established before the Veenie colonists were strong enough to do anything about it, and retained out of habit, like the foreign compounds in Shanghai before the Boxer Rebellion. At the moment we were on Veenie territory, in one of the few aboveground buildings at the perimeter of the PPC itself. The Veenies had rigid roofs over valleys. The prisoners—greks, we called them—had caves. The whole Polar Prison Colony was right outside our window, but you couldn’t see it. Here, too, since the kiln-dried Venusian rock was easy to dig, the prison had been dug.

  “I ought to tell you, Tarb,” he said smiling, but the tone was ominous, “that I’ve had some criticisms aimed at me since our last meeting. They say I’ve been too flexible. I don’t think I can be as accommodating this time.”

  I responded to the ploy in
stantly: “Funny you should say that, Harriman, because I’ve had the same thing. The Ambassador was furious over my letting you take those two credit delinquents.” Actually the Ambassador hadn’t said a word, but then neither had Harriman’s bosses. He nodded, acknowledging the end of the first round with no decision either way and began to roll the dossiers.

  Harriman was a hardball bargainer, and sneaky. So was I. We both knew the other fellow was out to gain victories, straight mano-a-mano, the only difference being that the best victories were when the other fellow never found out what he had lost. Earth had emptied its jails and dumped the worst of the scum here. Murderers, rapists, credit-card frauds, arsonists were the least of them. Or the worst, depending on your point of view. We didn’t want the occasional mugger, for instance— didn’t want the expense of feeding him, didn’t want the task of keeping him in line. Neither did the Veenies. What the Veenies wanted out of each prisoner contingent was the vilest of the traitors. Conservationists. Contract Breach felons. Antiadvertising zealots, the kinds that deface billboards and short-circuit holograms. They wanted to make them full Venusian citizens. We didn’t want to give them up. They were the kind we used to brain-burn, sometimes still do, and if they were lucky enough to get away with five or ten PPC years from some soft-hearted judge we felt they should serve them out in full. Those people earned their sentences! Letting them go free into the Venusian population was no punishment at all. In practice, it came down to a horse trade. Both of us gave a little, took a little; the art of the bargaining was to reluctantly “give” what you were really anxious to have the other guy take.

  I plinked the display key and cursored the top six names. “Moskowicz, McCastry, Bliven, the Farnell family—I suppose you want those, but you can’t have them until they’ve served at least six months hard.”

  “Three months,” he bargained. They were all down as CCs—criminal Conservationists— just the kind of misfits the Veenies welcomed into their population.

  I said positively, “Six months, and I ought to hold out for a year. On Earth they’re the worst kind of criminals, and they need to be taught a lesson.”

  He shrugged, disliking me. “What about this next prisoner, Hamid?”

  “Worst of the lot,” I declared. “You can’t have him. He’s convicted of credit-card larceny, and he’s a Consie to boot.”

  He tensed at the epithet but inspected the printout. “Hamid wasn’t convicted of, ah, Conservationism,” he pointed out.

  “Well, no. We couldn’t get a confession.” I smiled confidentially, one law-enforcement officer to another. “We didn’t have any firsthand witnesses, either, because, as I understand it, his whole cell was picked up and liquidated some time ago, and he was never able to make contact again. Oh, and there’s some evidence ‘Hamid’ isn’t his real name— the technicians think his Social Security tattoo’s been altered.”

  “You didn’t prosecute him for that,” said Harriman thoughtfully.

  “Didn’t need to. Didn’t need to press the Conservationist count, either—we had him fair and square on credit-card. Now,” I said, rushing him on, “what about these three? They’re all Medicare malingerers, not a very serious offense—I could commute them right away if you want to take them in—”

  If there’s one thing Veenies hate, it’s being put in a position where their “ideals” tell them one thing and their common sense something else. He flushed and stammered. Theoretically the Medicare frauds were perfect candidates for Venusian citizenship. They were also old, and therefore liabilities in what is still, after all, a pretty rugged frontier society. It took his mind right off Hamid, as I had wanted it to do.

  Four hours later we were at the bottom of the list. I’d given him fourteen greks, six right away, the others over a matter of months. He’d refused two, and I’d held onto another twenty or so. We still hadn’t settled Hamid. He glanced at his notes. “I am instructed,” he said, “to inform you that my government is not satisfied with your compliance with the Protocol of ‘53. Under it we have the right to inspect this prison at yearly intervals.”

  “Reciprocally,” I corrected him. I knew the Protocol by heart; each power had agreed, ful-somely and generously, to let the other inspect all penal, corrective or rehabilitative institutions to assure compliance with humanitarian standards. Fat chance! Their Xeng Wangbo “retraining center” was in the middle of the Equatorial Anti-Oasis, and no dip had ever been allowed near it. Of course, what we did inside the PPC was none of their business, either. Veenie law insisted that every grek get his own bunk with a minimum of twenty-four cubic feet of space. That was no punishment at all! There were plenty of sales-revering consumers back home that never saw that much space. There was no use arguing about it, though. The Veenie building inspectors had insisted we build in that much space, but as soon as the prison was finished the warden just closed off a couple of bays and doubled everybody up.

  “It’s a matter of basic human standards,” he snapped. I didn’t bother to answer, only laughed at him silently—I didn’t have to mention Xeng Wangbo. “All right,” he grumped, “then what about commercials? Several parolees have testified that you’re in violation there!”

  I sighed. Same old argument, every time. I said, “According to section 6-C of the Protocol a commercial is defined as ‘a persuasive offering of goods or services.’ There’s no offer, is there? I mean, the things can’t be offered when they’re not available, and the greks can’t ever have such things. It’s part of their punishment.” The rest of their punishment, to be sure, was that they were continually bombarded with advertising for the things they couldn’t have. But that, too, was none of his business.

  The quick gleam in Harriman’s eye warned me I had fallen into a trap. “Of course,” I backtracked swiftly, “there are exceptions to the general rule, so trivial in nature that one need not even mention them—”

  “Exceptions,” he said gleefully. “Yes, Tarb, there are exceptions, all right. We have affidavits from no fewer than eight parolees stating that prisoners have been driven by the commercials to write their families and friends back on Earth for some of the advertised goods! In particular, we have evidence that Coffiest, Mokie-Koke and Starrzelius brand Nick-O-Teen Chewies have been included in prisoners’ Red Cross packages for that reason …”

  We were off. I abandoned all hope of catching the return flight that night, because I knew we would be haggling now well past midnight.

  So we were, with much consultation of “clarificatory notes” and “position statements” and “emendations without prejudice.” I knew he wasn’t serious. He was just trying to establish a bargaining position for what he really wanted. But he argued tenaciously, until I offered to cancel all Red Cross packages completely for the greks if that would make him happy. Well, obviously he didn’t want that, so he offered a deal. He dropped the question of commercials in return for early commutation for some of his pet greks.

  So I gave him slap-on-the-wrist, token ten-day sentences for Moskowicz, McCastry, Bliven, the Farnell family … and Hamid. As I had planned to all along.

  Harriman was all smiles and hospitality once I’d given him what he wanted—or thought he wanted. He insisted I spend the night in his pied-à-terre in the Polar town. I slept badly, having refused his offer of a nightcap or several—I didn’t intend to take chances on spilling information I didn’t want him to have. Also, all night long I kept waking up with that panicky agoraphobic feeling you get when you’re in a place that’s too large. Crazy Veenies! They have to fight for every cubic foot of living space, and yet Harriman had three whole rooms! And in an apartment he didn’t use more than ten nights a year! So I got up early the next morning and by six A.M. I was standing in line at the airport check-in counter. Ahead of me was a teenage Veenie with one of those “patriotic” tee shirts that say Hucks Go Home on the front and No *DV*RT*S*NG on the back—as though “advertising” were a dirty word! I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of looking at him, so I turned a
way. Behind me was a short, slim black woman who looked vaguely familiar. “Hello, Mr. Tarb,” she said, amiably enough, and it turned out she was familiar enough—a local fire inspector or something back at the port. She’d toured the Embassy a few times, checking for violations.

  She turned out to be my seatmate on the flight, as well. I had automatically assumed she was a Veenie spy—all the natives who got into the Embassy for any reason at all, we knew, were likely to file reports on what they’d seen. But she was surprisingly open and friendly. Not your typical Veenie crackpot at all. She didn’t talk politics. What she talked about was a lot more interesting to me: Mitzi. She’d seen the two of us together in the Embassy and guessed we were lovers—true enough then!—and she said all the right things about Mitzi. Beautiful. Intelligent. Energetic.

  What I had intended to do on the return flight was sleep, but the conversation was so congenial that I spent the whole time chatting. By the time we touched down I was babbling about all my hopes and dreams. How I had to return to Earth myself. How I wished Mitzi would rotate with me, but how determined she was to stay on. How I dreamed of a longtime relationship—maybe even marriage. A home in Greater New York, maybe out toward the Forest Preserve Acre at Milford … maybe a kid or two … It was funny. The more I said, the sadder and more thoughtful it seemed to make her.