Shadow of Freedom

Westman frowned. He’d never seen this stranger before, and he couldn’t place the man’s accent. The fellow had just turned up in the office he maintained here in the Montana capital of Brewster, shown credentials identifying him as a purchasing agent for the Trifecta Corporation, and announced his interest in acquiring Montanan beef for export to the Mobius System. Given that Mobius was little more than a hundred and ninety light-years from Montana—about two T-months for a normal bulk hauler, but barely three T-weeks for the faster ships that served the passenger and perishable goods trades—the idea actually made quite a lot of sense. According to the purchasing agent, the cost of beef in Mobius, where livestock producers were few and far between and even genetically engineered cattle had adapted only poorly to the local environment, was about ninety Manticoran dollars a kilo, as opposed to considerably less than three dollars a kilo here on Montana. Mobian beef wasn’t especially good, either, whereas Montana’s beef had a galaxy-wide five-star quality rating (and quite a few gourmands would have given it six stars, if they’d been allowed to), and interstellar freight rates were ridiculously cheap. He could easily afford to pay Westman five or six times the spaceport delivery price on Montana and still show a five or six hundred-percent profit.

From what little Westman knew about Mobius, it seemed unlikely the typical Mobian was going to be able to afford prices like that. There were probably enough transstellar employees and their flunkies to make it a viable long-term proposition, though. And that wasn’t really his problem, either way, so he’d flown into Brewster to meet with the man. At which point the “purchasing agent” had sprung his surprise.

Question is, is he really as pig ignorant about my little dustup here on Montana as he’s pretending? Seems unlikely, if I’m s’posed to be willing to act as his introduction, but let’s be fair, Stevie. Montana’s not exactly the center of the known universe as far as people living somewhere else are concerned. Things might’a got just a little garbled in transmission.

The real problem, he admitted to himself, was that he had been played like a fiddle by “Firebrand,” the Mesan agent provocateur who’d offered to provide his own resistance effort with weapons for his campaign to prevent Montana from becoming part of the Star Empire of Manticore. He’d done some stupid things in his life, but right off hand, he couldn’t think of any which had been stupider than that one. For one thing, he’d been wrong about the Manties. For that matter, he’d even been wrong about Bernardus Van Dort, and that had been a really unpleasant pill to swallow. But what he found even harder to forgive himself for was accepting Firebrand at face value. When he’d discovered he’d actually been working with something as foul as Manpower, Incorporated…

Come on, Steve, he told himself. Even if this fella knows all about your bout of temporary insanity, nobody’d be stupid enough to try and suck you in the same way twice. Well, maybe they would if they really knew you, but assuming they’d figure you actually have a working brain, they wouldn’t try to set you up the same way all over again. But still, this whole thing sounds loonier than a tenderfoot trying to cross the Missouri Gorge on foot.

“’Scuse me for asking this, Mr. Ankenbrandt, but you said somebody gave you my name because I might ‘be willing’ to sort of introduce you around. Exactly why did whoever it was seem to think I might be willing to do any such thing? And what made ’em choose me over all the other lunatics on this planet?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know the answer to either of those questions,” the purchasing agent replied. “Except for the obvious, that is.”

“Obvious?” Westman chuckled sourly. “Pardon me for saying this, but nothing about this strikes me as ‘obvious.’”