The Unicorn Trade Read online

  Wariness congealed her. “What sum do you speak of?” she asked.

  “I’ve the coin right here, and a paper from banker Pandric to give the worth,” he blurted, while he fumbled in his pouch. “Four hundred aureates, ’tis.”

  Her world swooped around her. She stumbled against him. He upheld her. “Four hundred aureates!” she whispered.

  The moon sank west. Streets were deserted, save for the Lord Mayor’s patrols, or peasants carting their produce to market, or less identifiable persons. The sounds of their passage rang hollow beneath the stars. Hither and yon, though, windows were coming to life with lamplight.

  One belonged to the kitchen of Jans Orliand. Having slept poorly ever since he lost his wife, the chronicler was often up this early. He sat with a dish of porridge he had cooked for himself and read a book as he ate.

  A knock on the door lifted his attention. Surprised, slightly apprehensive, he went to unlatch it. If that was a robber, he could shout and rouse his son Denn—but it was a woman who slipped through, and when she removed her hooded cloak, she was seen to be glorious.

  “Vardrai of Syr!” Jans exclaimed. They had never met, but she was too famous for him not to recognize when they chanced to pass each other in the open. “Why, why, what brings you? Sit down, do, let me brew some herbal tea—”

  “I have heard it cried that you’ve a house for sale, a large one with many rooms,” she said.

  He looked closer at her. Cosmetics did not altogether hide the darknesses below her eyes, or the pallor of cheeks and lips. She must have lain sleepless hour after hour, thinking about this, until she could wait no longer.

  “Well, well, yes, I do,” he replied. “Not that I expected—”

  The wish exploded from her: “Could you show it to me? Immediately? If it suits, I can buy it on the instant.”

  Lona Grancy had also slept ill. The moon had not yet gone behind western roofs, and the east showed just the faintest silver, when she trudged from cottage to shed, lighted its lamps, and commenced work. “May as well,” she said. “Not that customers will crowd our place, eh?”—this to her cat, which returned a wise green gaze before addressing itself to the saucer of milk she set forth.

  The maiden pummeled clay, threw it upon the turntable, sat down, and spun the wheel with more ferocity than needful. It shrilled and groaned. She shivered in the cold which crept out from between her arrayed wares. The hour before dawn is the loneliest of all.

  A man came in off the street. “Master Orliand!” she hailed him. “What on earth?” The spinning died away.

  “I thought … I hoped I might find you awake,” the scholar said. Breath smoked ragged with each word. “I am pushing matters, true, but—well, every moment’s delay is a moment additional before I can seek out a, a certain lady and—Could we talk, my dear?”

  “Of course, old friend.” Lona rose. “Let me put this stuff aside and clean my hands, then I’ll fetch us a bite of food and—But what do you want?”

  “Your property,” said Jans. “I can give you an excellent price.”

  Again by herself, for her visitor had staggered off to his bed, Lona stood in her home and looked down at the coin. It covered her hand; its weight felt like the weight of the world; strange glimmers and glistens rippled across the profile upon it. Silence pressed inward. Wicks guttered low.

  So, she thought, now she had sold everything. Jans would not force her to leave unduly fast, but leave she must. Why had she done it—and in such haste, too?

  Well, four hundred aureates was no mean sum of cash. No longer was she bound to the shop which had bound her father to itself. She could fare elsewhere, to opportunities in Croy, for example; or, of course, this was a dowry which could buy her a desirable match. Yes, a good, steady younger son of a nobleman or merchant, who would make cautious investments and—

  “And hell take him!” she screamed, grabbed the coin to her, and fled.

  Arvel tried for a long while to sleep. Finally he lost patience, dressed in the dark, and fumbled his way downstairs. Lamps still burned along the street, but their glow was pale underneath a sinking moon and lightening sky, pale as the last stars. Dew shimmered on cobbles. Shadows made mysterious the carvings upon timbers, the arcades and alleys around him.

  He would go to the farmers’ market, he decided, break his fast, and search for a horse. When that was done, the shops would be open wherein he could obtain the rest of his equipage. By noon he could be on the road to Croy and his destiny. The prospect was oddly desolate.

  However, no doubt he would meet another girl somewhere, and—

  A small, sturdy figure rounded a corner, stopped for an instant, and sped toward him. “Oh, Arvel!” Echoes gave back Lona’s cry, over and over. Light went liquid across the disc she carried. “See what I have for you! Our passage to the New Lands!”

  “But—but how in creation did you get hold of that?” he called. Bewilderment rocked him. “And I thought you—you and I—”

  “I’ve sold out!” she jubilated as she ran. “We can go!”

  She caromed against him, and he wasted no further time upon thought.

  When they came up for air, he mumbled, “I already have the price of our migration, dear darling. But that you should offer me this, out of your love, why, that’s worth more than, than all the rest of the world, and heaven thrown in.”

  She crowed for joy and nestled close. Again he gathered her to him. In her left hand, behind his shoulder, she gripped the fairy gold. The sun came over a rooftop, and smote. Suddenly she held nothing. A few dead leaves blew away upon the dawn breeze, with a sound like dry laughter.

  —Poul Anderson

  BALLADE OF AN ARTIFICIAL SATELLITE

  Thence they sailed far to the southward along the land, and came to a ness; the land lay upon the right; there were long and sandy strands. They rowed to land, and found there upon the ness the keel of a ship, and called the place Keelness, and the strands they called Wonder-strands for it took long to sail by them.

  —Thorfinn Karlsefni’s voyage to Vinland,

  as related in the saga of Erik the Red

  One inland summer I walked through rye,

  a wind at my heels that smelled of rain

  and harried white clouds through a whistling sky

  where the great sun stalked and shook his mane

  and roared so brightly across the grain

  it burned and shimmered like alien sands.—

  Ten years old, I saw down a lane

  the thunderous light on Wonderstrands.

  In ages before the world ran dry,

  what might the mapless not contain?

  Atlantis gleamed like a dream to die,

  Avalon lay under faerie reign,

  Cíbola guarded a golden plain,

  Tir-nan-Og was fair-locked Fand’s,

  sober men saw from a gull’s-road wain

  the thunderous light on Wonderstrands.

  Such clanging countries in cloudland lie;

  but men grew weary and they grew sane

  and they grew grown—and so did I—

  and knew Tartessus was only Spain.

  No galleons call at Taprobane

  (Ceylon, with English); no queenly hands

  wear gold from Punt; nor sees the Dane

  the thunderous light on Wonderstrands.

  Ahoy, Prince Andros Horizon’s-bane!

  They always wait, the elven lands.

  An evening planet gives again

  the thunderous light on Wonderstrands.

  —Poul Anderson

  THE INNOCENT ARRIVAL

  The visiphone chimed when Peri had just gotten into her dinner gown. She peeled it off again and slipped on a casual bathrobe—a wisp of translucence which had set the president of Antarctic Enterprises, or had it been the chairman of the board, back several thousand dollars. Then she pulled a lock of lion-colored hair down over one eye, checked with a mirror, rumpled it a tiny bit more and wrapped the robe loosely on
top and tight around the hips.

  After all, some of the men who knew her private number were important.

  She undulated to the phone and pressed its Accept. “Hello-o, there,” she said automatically. “So sorry to keep you waiting, I was just taking a bath and—Oh. It’s you.”

  Gus Doran’s prawn-like eyes popped at her. “Holy Success,” he whispered in awe. “You sure the wires can carry that much voltage?”

  “Well, hurry up with whatever it is,” snapped Peri. “I got a date tonight.”

  “I’ll say you do! With a Martian.”

  “Hm?” Peri widened her silver-blue gaze and flapped sooty lashes at him. “You must have heard wrong, Gus. He’s the heir apparent of Indonesia, Inc., that’s who, and if you called up to ask for a piece of him you can just blank right out again. I saw him first!”

  Doran’s thin sharp face grinned. “I know what I’d like a piece of,” he said. “But you break that date, Peri. Put it off or something. I got this Martian for you, see?”

  “So? Since when has all Mars had as much spending money as one big-time marijuana rancher? Not to mention the heir ap—”

  “Sure, sure. But how much are those boys going to spend on any girl, even a high-level type like you? Listen, I need you just for tonight, see? This Martian is a whack. Strictly from gone. He is here on official business, but he is a yokel and I do mean hayseed. Like he asked me what the Christmas decorations in all the stores were! And this is the solar nexus of it, Peri, kid.” Doran leaned forward as if to climb out of the screen. “He has got a hundred million dollars expense money, and they are not going to audit his accounts at home. One hundred million good green certificates, legal tender anywhere in the United Protectorates. And he has about as much backbone as a piece of steak alga. Kid, if I did not happen to have a small nephew I would say this will be like taking candy from a baby.”

  Peri’s peaches-and-cream countenance began to resemble peaches and cream left overnight on Pluto. “Badger?” she asked.

  “Sure. You and Sam Wendt handle the routine. I will take the go-between angle, so he will think of me as still his friend, because I have other plans for him too. But if we can’t shake a million out of him for this one night’s work there is something akilter. And your share of a million is three hundred thirty-three—”

  “Is five hundred thousand flat,” said Peri. “Too bad I just got an awful headache and can’t see Mr. Sastro tonight. Where you at, Gus?”

  The gravity was not as hard to take as Peter Matheny had expected. Three generations on Mars might lengthen the legs and expand the chest a trifle, but the genes had come from Earth and the organism readjusts. What set him gasping was the air. It weighed like a ton of wool and had apparently sopped up half the Atlantic Ocean. Ears trained to listen through the Martian atmosphere shuddered from the racket conducted by Earth’s. The passport official seemed to bellow at him.

  “Pardon me for asking this. The United Protectorates welcome all visitors to Earth, and I assure you, sir, an ordinary five-year visa provokes no questions. But since you came on an official courier boat of your planet, Mr. Matheny, regulations force me to ask your business.”

  “Well … recruiting.”

  The official patted his comfortable stomach, iridescent in neolon, and chuckled patronizingly. “I am afraid, sir, you won’t find many people who wish to leave. They wouldn’t be able to see the Teamsters Hour on Mars, would they?”

  “Oh, we don’t expect immigration,” said Matheny shyly. He was a fairly young man but small, with a dark-thatched snub-nosed gray-eyed head that seemed too large for his slender body. “We learned long ago no one is interested any more in giving up even second-class citizenship on Earth to live in the Republic. But we only wanted to hire … uh, I mean engage … an, an adviser.… We’re not businessmen, we know our export trade hasn’t a chance among all your corporations unless we get some—a five-year contract—?” He heard his words trailing off idiotically, and swore at himself.

  “Well, good luck.” The official’s tone was skeptical. He stamped the passport and handed it back. “There, now, you are free to travel anywhere in the Protectorates. But I would advise you to leave the capital and get into the sticks—er-hum, I mean the provinces—I am sure there must be tolerably competent sales executives in Russia or Congolese Belgium or such regions. Frankly, sir, I do not believe you can attract anyone out of Newer York.”

  “Thanks,” said Matheny, “but you see … I … we need … that is.… Oh, well. Thanks. Goodbye.” He backed out of the office.

  A dropshaft deposited him on a walkway. The crowd, a rainbow of men in pajamas and cloaks, women in Neo-Cretan dresses and goldleaf hats, swept him against the rail. For a moment, squashed to the wire, he stared a hundred feet down at a river of automobiles. Phobos! he thought wildly. If the barrier gives, I’ll be sliced in two by a dorsal fin before I hit the pavement!

  The August twilight wrapped him in heat and stickiness. He could see neither stars nor even moon through the city’s blaze. The forest of multi-colored towers, cataracting half a mile skyward across more acreage than his eyes reached, was impressive and all that, but—he used to stroll out in the rock garden behind his cottage and smoke a pipe in company with Orion. On summer evenings, that is, when the night temperature wasn’t too far below zero.

  Why did they tap me for this job? he asked himself in a surge of homesickness. What the hell was the Martian Embassy here for? He, Peter Matheny, was no more than a peaceful little professor of sociodynamics at Devil’s Kettle University. Of course, he had advised his government before now, in fact the Red Ānkh Society had been his idea, but still he was only at ease with his books and his chess and his mineral collection, a faculty poker party on Tenthday night and an occasional trip to Swindletown—My God, thought Matheny, here I am, one solitary outlander in the greatest commercial empire the human race has even seen, and I’m supposed to find my planet a con man!

  He began walking, disconsolately at random. His lizardskin shirt and black culottes drew glances, but derisive ones: their cut was forty years out of date. He should find himself a hotel, he thought drearily, but he wasn’t tired; the spaceport would pneumo his baggage to him whenever he did check in. The few Martians who had been to Earth had gone into ecstasies over the automation which put any service you could name on a twenty-four-hour basis. But it would be a long time before Mars had such machines. If ever.

  The city roared at him.

  He fumbled after his pipe. Of course, he told himself, that’s why the Embassy can’t act. I may find it advisable to go outside the law. Please, sir, where can I contact the underworld?

  He wished gambling were legal on Earth. The Constitution of the Martian Republic forbade sumptuary and moral legislation; quite apart from the rambunctious individualism which that document formulated, the article was a practical necessity. Life was bleak enough on the deserts, without being denied the pleasure of trying to bottom deal some friend who was happily trying to mark the cards. Matheny would have found a few spins of roulette soothing: it was always an intellectual challenge to work out the system by which the management operated a wheel. But more, he would have been among people he understood. The frightful thing about the Earthman was the way he seemed to exist only in organized masses. A gypsy snake oil peddler, plodding his syrtosaur wagon across Martian sands just didn’t have a prayer against, say, the Grant, Harding & Adams Public Relations Agency.

  Matheny puffed smoke and looked around. His feet ached from the weight on them. Where could a man sit down? It was hard to make out any individual sign, through all that shimmering neon. His eye fell on one distinguished by relative austerity.

  THE CHURCH OF YOUR CHOICE

  Enter, Rest, and Pray

  That would do. He took an upward slideramp through several hundred feet of altitude, stepped past an aurora curtain, and found himself in a marble lobby next to an inspirational newsstand.

  “Ah, brother, welcome,” said a redhai
red usherette in demure black leotards. “The peace that passeth all understanding be with you. The restaurant is right up those stairs.”

  “I … I’m not hungry,” stammered Matheny. “I just wanted to sit in—”

  “To your left, sir.”

  The Martian crossed the lobby. His pipe went out in the breeze from an animated angel. Organ music sighed through an open doorway. The series of rooms beyond was dim, Gothic, and interminable.

  “Get your chips right here, sir,” said the girl in the booth.

  “Hm?” said Matheny.

  She explained. He bought a few hundred-dollar tokens, dropped a fifty-buck coin down the slot marked CONTRIBUTIONS, and sipped the martini he got back while he strolled around studying the games. It was a good martini, probably sold below cost. He decided that the roulette wheels were either honest or too deep for him. He’d have to relax with a crap game instead.

  He had been standing at the table for some time before the rest of the congregation really noticed him. Then it was with awe. The first few passes he had made were unsuccessful, Earth gravity threw him off, but when he got the rhythm of it he tossed a row of sevens. It was a customary form of challenge on Mars. Here, though, they simply pushed chips toward him. He missed a throw as anyone would at home: simple courtesy. The next time around he threw for a seven just to get the feel. He got a seven. The dice had not been substituted on him.

  “I say,” he exclaimed. He looked up into eyes and eyes, all around the green table. “I’m sorry. I guess I don’t know your rules.”

  “You did all right, brother,” said a middle-aged lady with an obviously surgical nonbodice.

  “But—I mean … when do we start actually playing? What happened to the cocked dice?”

  “Sir!” The lady drew herself up and jutted an indignant prow at him. “This is a church!”

  “Oh … I see … excuse me, I, I, I—” Matheny backed out of the crowd, shuddering. He looked around for some place to hide his burning ears.

  “You forgot your chips, pal,” said a voice.

  “Oh. Thanks. Thanks ever so much. I, I, that is—” Matheny cursed his knotting tongue. Damn it, just because they’re so much more sophisticated than I, do I have to talk like a leaky boiler?