Hardin replied, “I know – but I trust he won’t return until you and I are safely and cozily dead!”

  The Traders

  134 F.E. (12202 G.E.)

  1.

  TRADERS–... AND CONSTANTLY IN ADVANCE OF THE POLITICAL HEGEMONY OF THE FOUNDATION WERE THE TRADERS, REACHING OUT TENUOUS FINGERHOLDS THROUGH THE TREMENDOUS DISTANCES OF THE PERIPHERY. MONTHS OR YEARS MIGHT PASS BETWEEN LANDINGS ON TERMINUS; THEIR SHIPS WERE OFTEN NOTHING MORE THAN PATCHQUILTS OF HOME-MADE REPAIRS AND IMPROVISATIONS; THEIR HONESTY WAS NONE OF THE HIGHEST; THEIR DARING...

  THROUGH IT ALL THEY FORGED AN EMPIRE MORE ENDURING THAN THE PSEUDO-RELIGIOUS DESPOTISM OF THE FOUR KINGDOMS...

  TALES WITHOUT END ARE TOLD OF THESE MASSIVE, LONELY FIGURES WHO BORE HALF-SERIOUSLY, HALF-MOCKINGLY A MOTTO ADOPTED FROM ONE OF SALVOR HARDIN’S EPIGRAMS, “NEVER LET YOUR SENSE OF MORALS PREVENT YOU FROM DOING WHAT IS RIGHT!” IT IS DIFFICULT NOW TO TELL WHICH TALES ARE REAL AND WHICH APOCRYPHAL. THERE ARE NONE PROBABLY THAT HAVE NOT SUFFERED SOME EXAGGERATION....

  –ENCYCLOPEDIA GALACTICA

  LIMMAR PONYETS WAS completely a-lather when the call reached his receiver – which proves that the old bromide about telemessages and the shower holds true even in the dark, hard space of the Galactic Periphery.

  Luckily that part of a free-lance trade ship which is not given over to miscellaneous merchandise is extremely snug. So much so, that the shower, hot water included, is located in a two-by-four cubby, ten feet from the control panels. Ponyets heard the staccato rattle of the receiver quite plainly.

  Dripping suds and a growl, he stepped out to adjust the vocal, and three hours later a second trade ship was alongside, and a grinning youngster entered through the air tube between the ships.

  Ponyets rattled his best chair forward and perched himself on the pilot-swivel.

  “What’ve you been doing, Gorm?” he asked, darkly. “Chasing me all the way from the Foundation?”

  Les Gorm broke out a cigarette, and shook his head definitely, “Me? Not a chance. I’m just a sucker who happened to land on Glyptal IV the day after the mail. So they sent me out after you with this.”

  The tiny, gleaming sphere changed hands, and Gorm added, “It’s confidential. Super-secret. Can’t be trusted to the sub-ether and all that. Or so I gather. At least, it’s a Personal Capsule, and won’t open for anyone but you.”

  Ponyets regarded the capsule distastefully, “I can see that. And I never knew one of these to hold good news, either.”

  It opened in his hand and the thin, transparent tape unrolled stiffly. His eyes swept the message quickly, for when the last of the tape had emerged, the first was already brown and crinkled. In a minute and a half it had turned black and, molecule by molecule, fallen apart.

  Ponyets grunted hollowly, “Oh, Galaxy!”

  Les Gorm said quietly, “Can I help somehow? Or is it too secret?”

  “It will bear telling, since you’re of the Guild. I’ve got to go to Askone.”

  “That place? How come?”

  “They’ve imprisoned a trader. But keep it to yourself.’’

  Gorm’s expression jolted into anger, “Imprisoned! That’s against the Convention.”

  “So is the interference with local politics.”

  “Oh! Is that what he did?” Gorm meditated. “Who’s the trader’? Anyone I know?”

  “No!” said Ponyets sharply, and Gorm accepted the implication and asked no further questions.

  Ponyets was up and staring darkly out the visiplate. He mumbled strong expressions at that part of the misty lens-form that was the body of the Galaxy, then said loudly, “Damnedest mess! I’m way behind quota.”

  Light broke on Gorm’s intellect, “Hey, friend, Askone is a closed area.”

  “That’s right. You can’t sell as much as a penknife on Askone. They won’t buy nuclear gadgets of any sort. With my quota dead on its feet, it’s murder to go there.”

  “Can’t get out of it?”

  Ponyets shook his head absently, A know the fellow involved. Can’t walk out on a friend. What of it? I am in the hands of the Galactic Spirit and walk cheerfully in the way he points out.”

  Gorm said blankly, “Huh?”

  Ponyets looked at him, and laughed shortly, “I forgot. You never read the ‘Bood of the Spirit,’ did you?”

  “Never heard of it,” said Gorm, curtly.

  “Well, you would if you’d had a religious training.”

  “Religious training? For the priesthood?” Gorm was profoundly shocked.

  “Afraid so. It’s my dark shame and secret. I was too much for the Reverend Fathers, though, They expelled me, for reasons sufficient to promote me to a secular education under the Foundation. Well, look, I’d better push off. How’s your quota this year?”

  Gorm crushed out his cigarette and adjusted his cap, “I’ve got my last cargo going now. I’ll make it.”

  “Lucky fellow,” gloomed Ponyets, and for many minutes after Les Gorm left, he sat in motionless reverie.

  So Eskel Gorov was on Askone – and in prison as well!

  That was bad! In fact, considerably worse than it might appear. It was one thing to tell a curious youngster a diluted version of the business to throw him off and send him about his own. It was a thing of a different sort to face the truth.

  For Limmar Ponyets was one of the few people who happened to know that Master Trader Eskel Gorov was not a trader at all; but that entirely different thing, an agent of the Foundation!

  2.

  TWO WEEKS GONE! Two weeks wasted.

  One week to reach Askone, at the extreme borders of which the vigilant warships speared out to meet him in converging numbers. Whatever their detection system was, it worked – and well.

  They sidled him in slowly, without a signal, maintaining their cold distance, and pointing him harshly towards the central sun of Askone.

  Ponyets could have handled them at a pinch. Those ships were holdovers from the dead-and-gone Galactic Empire – but they were sports cruisers, not warships; and without nuclear weapons, they were so many picturesque and impotent ellipsoids. But Eskel Gorov was a prisoner in their hands, and Gorov was not a hostage to lose. The Askonians must know that.

  And then another week – a week to wind a weary way through the clouds of minor officials that formed the buffer between the Grand Master and the outer world. Each little sub-secretary required soothing and conciliation. Each required careful and nauseating milking for the flourishing signature that was the pathway to the next official one higher up.

  For the first time, Ponyets found his trader’s identification papers useless.

  I Now, at last, the Grand Master was on the other side of the Guard-flanked gilded door – and two weeks had gone.

  Gorov was still a prisoner and Ponyets’ cargo rotted useless in the holds of his ship.

  The Grand Master was a small man; a small man with a balding head and very wrinkled face, whose body seemed weighed down to motionlessness by the huge, glossy fur collar about his neck.

  His fingers moved on either side, and the line of armed men backed away to for a passage, along which Ponyets strode to the foot of the Chair of State.

  “Don’t speak,” snapped the Grand Master, and Ponyets’ opening lips closed tightly.

  “That’s right,” the Askonian ruler relaxed visibly, “I can’t endure useless chatter. You cannot threaten and I won’t abide flattery. Nor is there room for injured complaints. I have lost count of the times you wanderers have been warned that your devil’s machines are not wanted anywhere in Askone.”

  “Sir,” said Ponyets, quietly, “there is no attempt to justify the trader in question. It is not the policy of traders to intrude where they are not wanted. But the Galaxy is great, and it has happened before that a boundary has been trespassed unwittingly. It was a deplorable mistake.”

  “Deplorable, certainly,” squeaked the Grand Master. “But mistake? Your people on Glyptal IV have been bombarding me with pleas for negotiation since two hours after the sacrilegious wretch was seized. I have been warned by them of your own coming many times over. It seems a well-organized rescue campaign. Much seems to have been anticipated – a little too much for mistakes, deplorable or otherwise.”

  The Askonian’s black eyes were scornful. He raced on, “And are you traders, flitting from world to world like mad little butterflies, so mad in your own right that you can land on Askone’s largest world, in the center of its system, and consider it an unwitting boundary mixup? Come, surely not.”

  Ponyets winced without showing it. He said, doggedly, “If the attempt to trade was deliberate, your Veneration, it was most injudicious and contrary to the strictest regulations of our Guild.”

  “Injudicious, yes,” said the Askonian, curtly. “So much so, that your comrade is likely to lose life in payment.”

  Ponyets’ stomach knotted. There was no irresolution there. He said, “Death, your Veneration, is so absolute and irrevocable a phenomenon that certainly there must be some alternative.”

  There was a pause before the guarded answer came, “I have heard that the Foundation is rich.”

  “Rich? Certainly. But our riches are that which you refuse to take. Our nuclear goods are worth–”

  “Your goods are worthless in that they lack the ancestral blessing. Your goods are wicked and accursed in that they lie under the ancestral interdict.” The sentences were intoned; the recitation of a formula.

  The Grand Master’s eyelids dropped, and he said with meaning, “You have nothing else of value?”

  The meaning was lost on the trader, “I don’t understand. What is it you want?”

  The Askonian’s hands spread apart, “You ask me to trade places with you, and make known to you my wants. I think not. Your colleague, it seems, must suffer the punishment set for sacrilege by the Askonian code. Death by gas. We are a just people. The poorest peasant, in like case, would suffer no more. I, myself, would suffer no less.”

  Ponyets mumbled hopelessly, “Your Veneration, would it be permitted that I speak to the prisoner?”

  “Askonian law,” said the Grand Master coldly, “allows no communication with a condemned man.”

  Mentally, Ponyets held his breath, “Your Veneration, I ask you to be merciful towards a man’s soul, in the hour when his body stands forfeit. He has been separated from spiritual consolation in all the time that his life has been in danger. Even now, he faces the prospect of going unprepared to the bosom of the Spirit that rules all.”

  The Grand Master said slowly and suspiciously, “You are a Tender of the Soul?”

  Ponyets dropped a humble head, “I have been so trained. In the empty expanses of space, the wandering traders need men like myself to care for the spiritual side of a life so given over to commerce and worldly pursuits.”

  The Askonian ruler sucked thoughtfully at his lower lip. “Every man should prepare his soul for his journey to his ancestral spirits. Yet I had never thought you traders to be believers.”

  3.

  ESKEL GOROV STIRRED on his couch and opened one eye as Limmar Ponyets entered the heavily reinforced door. It boomed shut behind him. Gorov sputtered and came to his feet.

  “Ponyets! They sent you?”

  “Pure chance,” said Ponyets, bitterly, “or the work of my own personal malevolent demon. Item one, you get into a mess on Askone. Item two, my sales route, as known to the Board of Trade, carries me within fifty parsecs of the system at just the time of item one. Item three, we’ve worked together before and the Board knows it. Isn’t that a sweet, inevitable set-up? The answer just pops out of a slot.”

  “Be careful,” said Gorov, tautly. “There’ll be someone listening. Are you wearing a Field Distorter?”

  Ponyets indicated the ornamented bracelet that hugged his wrist and Gorov relaxed.

  Ponyets looked about him. The cell was bare, but large. It was well-lit and it lacked offensive odors. He said, “Not bad. They’re treating you with kid gloves.”

  Gorov brushed the remark aside, “Listen, how did you get down here? I’ve been in strict solitary for almost two weeks.”

  “Ever since I came, huh? Well, it seems the old bird who’s boss here has his weak points. He leans toward pious speeches, so I took a chance that worked. I’m here in the capacity of your spiritual adviser. There’s something about a pious man such as he. He will cheerfully cut your throat if it suits him, but he will hesitate to endanger the welfare of your immaterial and problematical soul. It’s just a piece of empirical psychology. A trader has to know a little of everything.”

  Gorov’s smile was sardonic, “And you’ve been to theological school as well. You’re all right, Ponyets. I’m glad they sent you. But the Grand Master doesn’t love my soul exclusively. Has he mentioned a ransom?”

  The trader’s eyes narrowed, “He hinted – barely. And he also threatened death by gas. I played safe, and dodged; it might easily have been a trap. So it’s extortion, is it? What is it he wants?”

  “Gold.”

  “Gold!” Ponyets frowned. “The metal itself? What for?”

  “It’s their medium of exchange.”

  “Is it? And where do I get gold from?”

  “Wherever you can. Listen to me; this is important. Nothing will happen to me as long as the Grand Master has the scent of gold in his nose. Promise it to him; as much as he asks for. Then go back to the Foundation, if necessary, to get it. When I’m free, we’ll be escorted out of the system, and then we part company.”

  Ponyets stared disapprovingly, “And then you’ll come back and try again.”

  “It’s my assignment to sell nucleics to Askone.”

  “They’ll get you before you’ve gone a parsec in space. You know that, I suppose.”

  “I don’t,” said Gorov. “And if I did, it wouldn’t affect things.”

  “They’ll kill you the second time.”

  Gorov shrugged.

  Ponyets said quietly, “If I’m going to negotiate with the Grand Master again, I want to know the whole story. So far, I’ve been working it too blind. As it was, the few mild remarks I did make almost threw his Veneration into fits.”

  “It’s simple enough,” said Gorov. “The only way we can increase the security of the Foundation here in the Periphery is to form a religion-controlled commercial empire. We’re still too weak to be able to force political control. It’s all we can do to hold the Four Kingdoms.”

  Ponyets was nodding. “This I realize. And any system that doesn’t accept nuclear gadgets can never be placed under our religious control–”

  “And can therefore become a focal point for independence and hostility. Yes.”

  “All right, then,” said Ponyets, “so much for theory. Now what exactly prevents the sale. Religion? The Grand Master implied as much.”

  “It’s a form of ancestor worship. Their traditions tell of an evil past from which they were saved by the simple and virtuous heroes of the past generations. It amounts to a distortion of the anarchic period a century ago, when the imperial troops were driven out and an independent government was set up. Advanced science and nuclear power in particular became identified with the old imperial regime they remember with horror.”

  “That so? But they have nice little ships which spotted me very handily two parsecs away. That smells of nucleics to me.”

  Gorov shrugged. “Those ships are holdovers of the Empire, no doubt. Probably with nuclear drive. What they have, they keep. The point is that they will not innovate and their internal economy is entirely non-nuclear. That is what we must change.”

  “How were you going to do it?”

  “By breaking the resistance at one point. To put it simply, if I could sell a penknife with a force-field blade to a nobleman, it would be to his interest to force laws that would allow him to use it. Put that baldly, it sounds silly, but it is sound, psychologically. To make strategic sales, at strategic points, would be to create a pro-nucleics faction at court.”

  “And they send you for that purpose, while I’m only here to ransom you and leave, while you keep on trying? Isn’t that sort of tail-backward?”

  “In what way?” said Gorov, guardedly.

  “Listen,” Ponyets was suddenly exasperated, “you’re a diplomat, not a trader, and calling you a trader won’t make you one. This case is for one who’s made a business of selling – and I’m here with a full cargo stinking into uselessness, and a quota that won’t ever be met, it looks like.”

  “You mean you’re going to risk your life on something that isn’t your business?” Gorov smiled thinly.

  Ponyets said, “You mean that this is a matter of patriotism and traders aren’t patriotic?”

  “Notoriously not. Pioneers never are.”

  “All right. I’ll grant that. I don’t scoot about space to save the Foundation or anything like that. But I’m out to make money, and this is my chance. If it helps the Foundation at the same time, all the better. And I’ve risked my life on slimmer chances.”

  Ponyets rose, and Gorov rose with him, “What are you going to do?”

  The trader smiled, “Gorov, I don’t know – not yet. But if the crux of the matter is to make a sale, then I’m your man. I’m not a boaster as a general thing, but there’s one thing I’ll always back up. I’ve never ended up below quota yet.”

  The door to the cell opened almost instantly when he knocked, and two guards fell in on either side.

  4.

  “A SHOW!” SAID the Grand Master, grimly. He settled himself well into his furs, and one thin hand grasped the iron cudgel he used as a cane.

  “And gold, your Veneration.”

  “And gold,” agreed the Grand Master, carelessly.

  Ponyets set the box down and opened it with as fine an appearance of confidence as he could manage. He felt alone in the face of universal hostility; the way he had felt out in space his first year. The semicircle of bearded councilors who faced him down, stared unpleasantly. Among them was Pherl, the thin-faced favorite who sat next to the Grand Master in stiff hostility. Ponyets had met him once already and marked him immediately as prime enemy, and, as a consequence, prime victim.