Barrington Bayley - The Pillars of Eternity

He came slowly down the arcaded avenue that led from the landing ground. He was a blunt, stocky man encased in a modsuit, the ribbed, scruffy appearance of which might have caused some to think of him as an old trader who had grown careless about his equipment. They would have been wrong: though the modsuit was standard wear for shipkeepers, adaptable to a variety of gravities, he would have been happy to shuck it off like a torn jacket. His muscles were lithe and flexible, though now beginning to stiffen a little, for in his youth he had often scorned the use of a modsuit altogether, and he had trodden many worlds. His face was clearly unaccustomed to expressing emotion: impassive, square, pockmarked, jutting forward from the collar of the suit and surmounted by shorn grey hair. A perceptive person might have seen it as a face that masked suffering. This man, such a person might have said, has known pain, and has not overcome it. But there were unlikely to be such persons here in Hondora. A trader’s town, on a planet whose culture was all borrowed from other sources, had little room for sensitivity. Here people would notice only how much he could be induced to bend in price, would ask only where he had been, where he was able to go. They would take more interest in his ship than in himself.

His ship. They would do well, he might have said to himself, to look at his ship.

Joachim Boaz was how he named himself. Captain was how he styled himself, preferring the archaism over the more modern ‘shipkeeper’. There was a reason for this eccentricity. He did not see himself as his ship’s keeper. Quite the reverse.

The air had a balmy, lemony quality, like aerial sherbet. It was distinctive of class-C planets, and resulted from the overlarge yellow suns that abounded in the region, or more properly speaking from the mixture of secondary gases in the atmosphere, gases which such suns exuded when they expelled the material that was to form planetary systems. Captain Boaz drew the tangy breeze deep into his lungs. He cast a lingering glance at the luminous, sulphur-colored sky. He liked it here, to the extent he ever liked anything.

The arcade was fringed with fragrant tree blossoms. He pressed on, ignoring any who passed him on the avenue, and shortly came to the edge of the town. Youths and girls gazed languidly through the shaded entrances of service rooms. Stray wisps of conversation drifted to him, scarcely noticed by him but nevertheless recorded in his brain and simultaneously transmitted to his ship which stood parked a mile away. ‘ Choc me one more style …’ ‘… wild one …’‘… the rod gap’s closed up in Ariadne now … can’t get through …’‘… have you ever killed a girl like me before? …’

In the meantime his ship was transmitting subliminal signals to him, guiding him with unheard suggestions. He was prompted to enter a drum-shaped room where men in dhotis and togas sat on benches against the walls. Some drank, some sniffed yellow powder, some talked to breastless girls draped in loose shifts. Walls and ceiling were bare of ornament. They were the colour of chalk, except at the rear where an ochrous red tunnel gaped, serving robots shifting from foot to foot in its mouth.

In the center of the room was a circular table occupied by five men, four of them shipkeepers, by the signs on their chests. The other was a merchant with cargoes to be moved.

Pausing, Captain Boaz waited to be noticed. Eyes swivelled, saw his modsuit, his cargo carrier’s sign.

‘Will you join us, shipkeeper?’ called the merchant jovially. ‘The game is better the more the players.’

Idly Boaz thought: for you it is. He took a vacant seat, and spoke in a dour tone. ‘I can take a load Harkio way. Nowhere else.’

‘Harkio?’ the merchant squeaked in surprise. Boaz was breaking an unspoken rule of contract bargaining by stating his intentions at the outset like this. The other players gave him glances of disapproval.

‘Yes, I might have something in that quarter,’ the merchant said smoothly. ‘Will you sit this round out, then? We’ll come to it.’

Boaz nodded. He took a small deck of picture cards from his pocket and began to shuffle them in a habitual, self-calming ritual. Those present would recognize the cards and know him for a colonnader.

He relaxed, inspecting a card occasionally. Games were played with such cards once. That was long ago, when a card deck could be depended on to stay inert and not play tricks at the behest of its owner.

A slot in the center of the table disgorged the card pack’s equivalent: shiny cubes an inch on a side, guaranteed fully randomized by the house. The merchant was banker. He took a cube; the others each took one. They all examined the facets for the symbols that in a few moments appeared there.

Boaz ignored the proceedings and concentrated on his cards. No one seemed to know how game bargaining had begun; but shipkeepers were generally born gamblers and, after all, it was only a logical extension of haggling. The shipkeepers made bids that represented what they would be prepared to carry a cargo for. The merchant tried to drive them down by calling their bluff. In the last resort it was the cards that decided.

It could mean that a shipkeeper would have to carry a cargo for below cost. Or he could collect an exorbitant fee. Usually, however, matters worked out reasonably enough.

The merchant gave a grunt of satisfaction as he held up his cube, the signs flashing from it in pastel colors. ‘Excellent, Rodrige. You will be able to afford a holiday after this trip! Now, then. The Ariadne gap is closed up, I hear. For the time being I shall hold my Ariadne-vectored goods in store; perhaps the gap will open up again. Now let us see… Harkio!’ He looked up at Boaz. ‘Your name, shipkeeper?’

‘I am Captain Joachim Boaz,’ Boaz said.

‘Ah! How quaint! What is the load capacity of your ship?’

‘Two and one-fifth milliards.’

‘That should suffice. Let us play.’

Rodrige, who in fact had achieved a worse deal than he had hoped for, left the table with a sour face. Captain Boaz spoke again.

‘I do not wish to play; I am not in the mood for it. I will take your cargo for the cost of the fuel plus a point eight per cent for depreciation.’

The merchant’s face showed pleasure when he received this offer. The shipkeepers gave Boaz looks of malice. He was joyriding, taking a cargo simply to finance himself as a passenger on his own ship. ‘That might be agreeable… any other offers, gentlemen?’

‘What could there be?’ muttered one bitterly. They left, allowing Boaz to feel their dislike.

When they had gone a look of anxiety crossed the merchant’s features. ‘Your ship… is it sound? I do not know you. Are you qualified?’

The barest hint of a smile almost came to Boaz. He pulled an identibloc from his pocket. The merchant’s face smoothed out and became bland as he read it. ‘Ah yes… that should do…’

‘My ship is open to your inspection.’

‘I will rely on your experience, good shipkeeper – or should I call you “Captain”, eh? Ha ha! Well, then, Harkio. I have a consignment of Boems for Schloss III.’

‘Boems?’ said Boaz.

‘Something wrong, Captain?’ the merchant enquired.

A moral struggle ensued within Captain Boaz. He had always refused to take Boems before. Some philosophers classed them as sentient beings. In which case to traffic in them would involve him in slavery.

‘I am not sure I can do it.’

‘What? Ah, I see your problem. You are a colonnader, are you not? You follow an ethical code. Luckily I am a sceptic in gnostical matters. Well, you need not worry. These Boems have no conscious process. It has been scrambled out of them, if any ever existed. They would classify as corpses.’