Departures

That was what Carver had in mind. The best way to help the greenskins, he had decided, was to change the society of which they were a part. It was slower than more open forms of aid, but in the long run much more certain.

Baasa was working through the summaries printed on the flyleaves of the books. “See what you think, Nadab,” he said, passing them on to his aide. He turned back to Carver. “Give me a price. The ideas may be interesting, though the style is rather flat.”

Carver winced. He hoped that was a ploy to knock down the price, but suspected that it was not. Some good linguists and computer people had put his translations together, but it took more than competence to be elegant in a language not one’s own. It took inspired genius, and Joseph Conrads did not come along every day, or every century, either.

Nadab read faster than Baasa. He set the books on the table in front of him. “Quite abstract,” he said. “Still, if they are affordable, perhaps you might seek to acquire them as curiosities.”

“Yes, perhaps so,” the governor agreed. “Curiosities they certainly are. Well, trader, what do you say to five measures of bulun powder apiece for them?”

“Your Excellency, who is esteemed throughout the empire for his generosity, is pleased to joke with me.” Carver was appalled for a couple of reasons. The first was the paltry offer. The translations had not come cheap; fifteen measures of bulun powder would not begin to pay off what they had cost him.

Even Lloyd Michaels, who had kept out of his fellow trader’s dicker till then, was moved to protest, “Surely savants throughout the empire should have the chance to learn of these ideas for themselves.”

“And you, your Excellency,” Carver said to Baasa, “and your assistant deserve the credit you will gain for being the first to pass this new knowledge on to your people.”

Baasa swung his head Nadab’s way. Nadab said quickly, “I deserve no credit. I am but a greenskin. All that I have I owe to my lord the governor. Without him I am as nothing, nor do I seek any acclaim for aiding him, in any way I can.”

The hell of it was, Carver thought, that he sounded as if he meant it. He would have been much easier to deal with were he only mouthing polite phrases.

Nadab’s self-effacement out of the way, Baasa proved a little more interested in dealing. He upped his offer to eight measures of bulun powder a book, then to ten, which was about half what Carver needed to break even. When at last he got up above ten measures, the haggling turned serious.

Baasa said, “Twelve measures, then, and four parts, and three parts of parts.”

“Twelve and three-quarters, by your reckoning,” Nadab said to Carver while the trader was still wrestling with the fraction that needed converting. He ruefully shook his head and stuck his calculator in his hip pocket. If Nadab felt like showing off, that was fine with Carver.

In the middle of the dicker, a servant poked his head into the chamber and said to Baasa, “Your pardon, Excellency, but the delegation from Asnah has arrived.”

“Oh, a pestilence! I did not expect them until tomorrow. I suppose I must formally greet them, as protocol requires.” The governor started to walk out, then turned back to warn Carver, “Think not that I shall forget where we stand: seventeen and three parts per volume, and I doubt you will squeeze another measure from me.”

“And a half, that is,” Nadab supplied as Baasa hurried away.

“Yes, of course,” Carver said abstractedly. He had Baasa gauged now, and did not think he would end up losing money. Nadab, though, was harder to figure. “May I ask a question without fear of giving offense?” he said to the greenskin.

“How can seeking to learn give offense?”

Carver could have named twenty different ways from twenty different worlds, but forbore. He said only, “I hoped you might see the advantage to your people of helping to spread enlightenment in the empire. That you do not surprises and disappoints me. If you have some reason I cannot see, I would be grateful for your telling me what it is.”

The greenskin was some time silent; the trader could make nothing of the steady gaze that met his. At last Nadab said, ”You tread on overgrown ground, outlander. Be careful lest you stumble.”

Carver waited.

Something like a sigh hissed through Nadab’s nostril slits. He picked up the adaptation of On the Origin of Species and turned it over and over in his hands. Again he was a long time finding words. When he did speak, he sounded as if he was choosing them carefully: “I did not know, oudander, that this notion of change over time was familiar to your people.”

Carver’s eyes slid to Michaels. His comrade was staring back at him. Of all the things he had thought he might hear, this was the last. He said, “I did not know the folk of the empire had come across it, either.”