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“Bad,” Auerbach answered, as he usually did. He used an emphatic cough, and then several that showed nothing but infirmity. “Very bad. That hurts.”
“I believe it. It sounds as if it should,” Gorppet said. “A wound from the fighting, you told me?”
“That is right.” Auerbach nodded. “One of your miserable friends put a couple of bullets in me, and I have never been the same since.” He shrugged. “And some of your friends may limp on account of bullets I put in them back then. That is how things were. I only wish the male would have missed me.”
“I can understand that.” Gorppet liked Rance Auerbach, liked him better than he’d expected to like any Big Ugly. Auerbach was able to greet him and deal with him without rancor in spite of what had happened during the fighting. Gorppet thought he himself would have been able to do the same with the Soviet Tosevites he’d faced then. They’d all been doing what they’d been told to do, and doing it as best they could. How could you hate anyone who’d only been doing his best?
Auerbach said, “Come on. Let us go to the Boomslang. Penny and Frederick will be waiting for us.”
“All right,” Gorppet said. “I will listen to what all of you have to say.” He paused, then added, “I am less sure I would listen to the others if you were not with them.”
“Me?” Auerbach said, and Gorppet knew he’d startled the Big Ugly. “Why me? Penny found you. Of all of us involved in the deal, I am the least.”
Gorppet made the negative hand gesture. “No. You are mistaken. I understand you in ways I do not understand the female and the black-skinned male. We have been through many of the same things, you and I. It gives us something of a bond.”
“Maybe.’’ Auerbach didn’t sound convinced.
But Gorppet wanted to convince him. “It is a truth,” he said earnestly. “Did you never feel, back in those days, that you had more likenesses to the males you fought than to your own high officers and to the Tosevites who were not fighting?”
Rance Auerbach stopped walking so abruptly, Gorppet took a couple of paces before realizing the Big Ugly wasn’t with him any more. The male turned an eye turret back toward Auerbach. Hoarsely, the Tosevite said, “I had that feeling more times than I could count. I did not know it worked the other way.”
“Well, it did,” Gorppet said. “We were sent here, to a world about which, as it turned out, we knew less than nothing. We were told conquering it would be easy, a walk in the sand. We were told all sorts of things. Not one of them turned out to be truth. Is it any wonder that we were not always happy with those who led us and those who sent us forth?”
“No wonder at all,” Auerbach said with another emphatic cough. This time, he managed not to add any involuntary coughs of his own.
When he and Gorppet walked into the Boomslang together, the place got very quiet all at once. It was a dangerous sort of quiet. Having come from Basra and Baghdad, Gorppet knew that sort of quiet all too well. He let a finger slide toward the safety on his rifle. If anyone wanted trouble, he was ready to give plenty.
But then the black male named Frederick spoke in one of the local languages, and everybody else relaxed. “I greet you,” he called to Gorppet from the table he shared with the female with gaudy yellow hair. His accent was different from hers and Auerbach’s, more musical. “Come-have something to drink and we shall talk.”
“Good enough,” Gorppet said. The chair in which he sat was made for Tosevite posteriors, but he had survived such seats before and knew he could again. “I do not want that nasty brown stuff you two are drinking there-the alcohol straight from the fruit tastes better to me.”
“Wine!” Penny Summers called to the Big Ugly who served drinks, and Gorppet sipped from the glass with something not too far removed from enjoyment.
Rance Auerbach had some of the vile brownish liquor the Big Uglies seemed to enjoy so much. After he’d finished it and waved to the Tosevite behind the bar for a refill, he said, “Now. Down to business.”
“Down to business,” Gorppet answered. “You have ginger. I want it. If you can get it for me, I will pay you what it is worth and make it back by selling what I do not keep to taste for myself.”
As much ginger as I could ever want, he thought. He wasn’t sure there was that much ginger on all of Tosev 3, but he intended to find out. The reward he’d got for capturing Khomeini had included a credit transfer as well as a promotion. What was money for, if not for spending?
“It is not quite so simple,” Frederick said. “We have to be certain you are not a decoy for the Race.”
“In theory, I understand this,” Gorppet said, making the affirmative gesture. “In practice, it is absurd. I want the ginger for myself and my comrades and friends. If I were a decoy, the males handling me would take the herb. They would get it all, and leave me with nothing. I want more than nothing.”
“So you say,” Penny remarked. “We have to be sure we can believe you. The Race does not like Tosevites who sell ginger.”
“It does not like males of the Race, or females, either, who buy it,” Gorppet pointed out. “We all run risks here.”
Rance Auerbach spoke up in a local language. Gorppet understood not a word he was saying. He returned to the language of the Race: “I told them I think you are worth trusting-and I thought they were addled when this scheme began to take shape.”
“I thank you,” Gorppet said. “I also do not believe you are tools of the Race, aiming to entrap me.”
“I should hope not!” exclaimed the female with the yellow hair. “The Race has entrapped us before, but we would never entrap anyone for the Race.”
Gorppet wondered if she was protesting too much. What would his superiors do to him if they found out he’d spent his reward to buy ginger? Nothing pleasant-he was sure of that. But how could they do anything worse than demoting him to simple infantrymale and sending him back to Baghdad for the rest of his days? As far as he was concerned, they couldn’t. And, but for a minor difference in rank, how was that different from what he would have been doing had he not recognized the fanatic called Khomeini? Simple-it wasn’t. And so…
Gamble, he thought. Why not? If you lose, you only go back to what you were before-the Race does not have so many trained infantrymales that it can afford to imprison one for a crime that has nothing to do with combat effectiveness. And if the gamble pays off it will make what your superiors paid you look like nothing but the money you would use to buy a narration to make the time pass by.
He’d never really thought ab
out being rich before. What infantrymale did? None that had any sense-except the few sharp fellows who’d got into the ginger trade early on. But if the chance for riches came his way, was he fool enough not to turn his eye turrets toward it?
“If we do this,” he said slowly, “how do you want to be paid? I have heard it is difficult for Tosevites to use our credit, though I know there are ways around this.”
“Oh, yes, there are ways,” the dark-skinned male called Frederick said. The other two Big Uglies made the head motion that was their equivalent of the affirmative hand gesture. Frederick went on, “But we do not want your credits. We want gold.”
He spoke the word with as much reverence as Khomeini gave to his imaginary Big Ugly beyond the sky. And, by the way Rance Auerbach and Penny Summers said, “Truth,” in a sort of crooning whine, they were as reverent as the other Tosevite.
Gorppet understood that. The Tosevite economy was far less computerized than that of the Race. Money wasn’t just an abstract concept here; it was often a real thing, traded at a standard rate of value for other real things. And gold was the principal medium of exchange here.
“I think that can be done,” Gorppet said.
“I know a male Tosevite who will take your credit and give you gold for it,” Frederick said.
“Not so fast,” Gorppet told him. “First, let us settle on a price in credit. Then let us settle on a rate of exchange between credit and gold. And then let me make my own quiet inquiries and see if I can find a dealer with a better rate than your friend.”
“This is not a good way to do business,” Frederick protested. “It shows no trust.”
“There is no trust.” Gorppet stressed that with an emphatic cough. “There is only business. Business that deals in lots of ginger and money is dangerous to begin with, in the middle and at the end. Anyone who thinks different came from his eggshell addled.”
Frederick started to say something more-probably another protest. But Rance Auerbach spoke first: “This is also truth. If we get through this dealing without trying to kill one another, we shall be ahead of the game.” He swung his head toward Frederick. In his rasping, ruined voice, he went on, “This is what we all have to think: my share of what we get here is enough. Do you understand what I am telling you? You could try for all. Penny and I could try for all. Gorppet here could try for all. Someone might win. But, more likely, everyone would lose.”
