"Nuclear missiles!" The scene panned across a plain filled with gray and silver rockets. "Battle lasers!" At Raincloud's shout, arrays of long tubes turned to point to the sky. "Ha, ha! Projectile defenses! Point protection!" Mike and Jake found themselves looking at thousands of high-velocity artillery units, crouched ready to send a hail of shells from horizon to horizon.
"Impregnable, indestructible, invincible!" Raincloud swiveled around in his chair, grinning in excitement. "We are invincible. Every one of these weapons is under my control, ready to fire at my direction. When you go back, tell this to the Traders—and let them tell the world! The Great Republic is the most powerful region on Earth. And we are the rightful leaders of the world!"
Rule 77: Don't debate lunatics—you might not win.
Mike and Jake waited, and the outburst ended as suddenly as it had begun. Raincloud leaned back in his seat and smiled sunnily. "Very good," he said. "It is now time for my singing lesson with Robin Songbird. Is there anything you need before you begin your negotiation? If so, please tell me, and Waters will take care of it."
Mike gave Jake a nod.
Jake caught the cue. "Nothing we need for the moment. We've had a long trip, now we'd like an hour or two to unwind. Could we take a look around Skeleton City, and begin the main meetings this afternoon?"
Raincloud looked at Old-Billy Waters. The deputy nodded. "Certainly, whatever you want. I'm available." He turned to the Traders. "Come on. I'll take you down."
The ascent had been bad. The descent was worse. On the way up Mike had been able to focus on the path ahead. Now he was forced to look down. He was suspended in midair, hovering over a two-thousand-foot drop with nothing to support him but the frail strand of the staircase. It bent beneath his feet. He could see past its open mesh of metal, down, down, to the tiny dots of buildings and cars below. The wind buffeted from every side in unpredictable gusts that pushed him always toward the edge.
Mike paused and huddled in to the side of the building, hands on the wall. His feet had frozen.
"Hey." Jake was right behind. "Move it. I don't want to be up here all day." Under pressure from their surroundings, Jake was letting his feelings about Mike show through.
Mike forced himself to slide forward along the wall fixing his eyes on Old-Billy Waters's back. If the Yankee had heard the dislike and contempt in Kallario's voice, he ignored it. He was ambling along in front, his artificial leg clattering on the metal of the stairs. "Don't get too upset by what you heard up there from Raincloud," he said, turning his head to look at Mike and Jake, but still walking down the winding staircase. Mike could hardly bear to watch. "Cityboss talks tough, but he barks more than he bites."
A man hoping to convince himself?
"Even when it comes to weapons?" Jake asked.
"Ah, well, maybe that's the exception. The weapons he showed you are the genuine article—enough to blow us all to Chippoland. I'll be honest, they scare the hell out of me." Old-Billy stepped onto the escalator, still facing back toward the other two. His right foot was no more than two inches from open air and a sheer drop of seventeen hundred feet. "But I pray we'll never use 'em—Raincloud likes to play with the displays, but thank God he doesn't know most of the control sequences." He looked around, then at Mike and Jake. His voice dropped to a whisper. "I'll say this when we're out here in the open, with only the wind listening, but don't ask me to repeat it. Raincloud's right off his head, and getting worse. You realized that, didn't you, when we were in there?"
Could this all be a deep plot, with Martin Raincloud as master schemer? Mike found that hard to believe. Raincloud really seemed to scare Old-Billy as much as he scared Mike. But could Waters be worked with? "You don't share his view of Traders, then?"
"I don't hate you, if that's what you mean. Not at all. Raincloud loathes Traders; if he had his way he'd kill the lot of you."
"And he doesn't try to hide it," Jake said. "So why on earth did he agree to let us come here?"
"Beats me." Waters rubbed his liver-spotted pate. "Three months ago, he swore he'd had it with Traders. He was frothing at the mouth. We'd seen the last of 'em, he said, screw 'em all, we'll have no more like that in the Great Republic. Two weeks ago, he tells me, hey, guess what, I changed my mind. We're going to have some Traders here. We
need
Traders. And then yesterday I'm pulled off other duties and told I'm
it
—the principal interface with you two. Without advance notice."
"Come on now. You're the deputy. You must be involved with everything that goes on here."
Old-Billy Waters offered Mike an incredulous glare. "When did you ever hear of a deputy knowing half of what his boss was doing? I'm the
last
to know. Robin has more idea than I do, and she's just his bedwarmer. You ought to be here when he has one of his 'singing lessons' from her." He sniffed. "I tell you, there's a lot of things I don't know, and a lot I don't
want
to know. As for being a negotiator, when I hardly know what one does . . ."
They had finally reached the bottom of the escalator. Mike stepped onto solid ground with unconcealed relief. Waiting for them on the roadway stood a tall, fat man with an enormous domed head. His small mouth was framed by a long, drooping moustache, and red stubble covered multiple chins in a two-day growth of beard. A gray cloak was swept around his body from neck to ankles. A flat-topped black hat, one size too small, perched above the great brow.
He nodded past Waters, to Mike and Jake.
"Vandermond." The word was a pronouncement. A thick hand emerged from beneath the cloak.
Mike stared at him in astonishment. Sabrina?
"Sebastian Vandermond," Old-Billy Waters said. His bird-like look darted from Mike to Jake, then back to the man in front of them. "These are our Trader visitors, Sebastian."
"Obviously." Ice-blue eyes swept over them. Mike saw in that look disdain and enormous impatience. He recalled the definition of a psychopath: an individual unable to recognize the reality of other humans.
"What can we do for you, Sebastian?" Waters asked. The other man towered above the rest of them.
"Martin Raincloud promised us an hour with the visitors." Vandermond's tone held an Olympian indifference to Old-Billy Waters.
"Did he?" Old-Billy raised his eyebrows. "Well, I was getting ready to show them around the city."
"Good. Then I will do it instead." Vandermond moved to interpose his body between Waters and the two Traders. "Come." The tone commanded more than the word. "We need to talk with you."
Mike and Jake were shepherded away. Old-Billy Waters stood nonplussed behind them. "We begin negotiation in two hours," he shouted.
Vandermond ignored him. "First, a quick survey of Skeleton City," he said. "And then, home. We have an important meeting there, and little time."
Vandermond's idea of a tour was simple. He hurried them along, walking, pointing, holding his hat on with one hand, and saying little. That suited Mike. He needed to see for himself. As usual, Daddy-O's briefing began to seem most notable for what it had neglected to mention. He followed Vandermond's pointing finger and understood Raincloud's domain for the first time.
Skeleton City stood in the eastern foothills. Thirty miles to the west, the cordillera that ran the length of the Great Republic rose snowcapped to fourteen thousand feet. The builders of Skeleton City had drawn their inspiration from those mountain heights. It was as if they had taken the original city on this site, a place not tall by Yankeeland standards, and
stretched
it. Like drawn sugar, each structure had thinned as it was pulled higher. The new cloud-capped palaces, buildings a third of a mile high, measured no more than three hundred feet across at the base. Even with the strongest materials from the Chipponese space factories, each building was unstable against compressive buckling and wind loads. The crosswalks, doubling as pathways and cables, provided the support that was needed. Skeleton City measured no more than half a mile across at ground level, but it existed as fully in three dimensions as other cities did in two.
Vandermond pointed out and named the more important centers: Communication was high up in that building, Transportation down near the ground in this one, Agriculture all the way out at the edge of town. He did not consider worthy of note the groups engaged in casual conversation on the crosswalks, hundreds of feet above them. The wind was strengthening, and the slender pathways swayed and stretched in the varying gusts. The people did not seem to notice, adjusting automatically to the changing wind pressure.
Mike forced his attention back to ground level. No wonder Martin Raincloud was a madman, and his assistants little better; anyone who lived in a place like this needed to be mad.
Sebastian Vandermond.
Sabrina
Vandermond. Was it the result of a sex-change operation? Shades of Cinder-feller. It took a major effort of imagination on Mike's part to transform the towering colossus of Sebastian Vandermond to a female form.
The tour went quickly. Within fifteen minutes they had returned to their starting point at Martin Raincloud's headquarters. This time, to Mike's relief, they went
down.
From an entrance at ground level they descended three floors to a pair of wide doors. Sebastian Vandermond swung them open and ushered Mike and Jake through.
Two centuries rolled away. They were standing at the threshold of a Victorian living room, complete with sideboard, overstuffed horsehair settee, potted aspidistra in one corner, and, in another, a hanging cage containing a large blue-black cockatoo with a red crest. At the center of the room stood five wooden-backed chairs grouped around a low table. On one of the chairs, quietly reading, sat a small, fair-haired woman.
She looked up. "You are late." Her voice was like a child's voice, but cool and precise.
"Yes. I'm very sorry." Sebastian Vandermond was awkward and apologetic, shambling forward to stand outside the circle of chairs.
The woman did not attempt to stand. Instead she gestured to the chairs. "If you please, be seated." Vandermond started forward with the other two. "Sebastian! Your
hat
."
"Oh, yes. I'm sorry, Sabrina, I forgot about it. I'll take it off at once." Vandermond hurried back across the room. His imperious voice had become subdued and placatory.
The woman smiled at Mike and Jake. "I am Sabrina Vandermond. May I offer you refreshment? Tea, perhaps?"
"That would be very acceptable," Jake said. The two men looked at the table surface. There was no sign of serving hatches or Chill robots.
"Good. Tea, then, Sebastian. For four." Sabrina placed the document she had been reading on the side table, leaned back, and smiled at Mike and Jake as Sebastian Vandermond hurried out. "He means well, you know, but he needs a firm hand."
"Is he your brother?" Mike asked.
"That's right. My little brother. But he
grew
." Hazel eyes, laugh lines prominent at their corners, beamed at the two Traders. She straightened the little corsage of blue flowers on her long dove-gray dress, sighed, and settled back in her chair. "Well, now, this is certainly a pleasure. It has been so long since we have had Traders visiting. You must tell me all about your travels, where you have been, what each of you has been doing. I want to hear
everything
."
Was anyone sane in Skeleton City—anyone at all? Mike found himself drinking tea from a delicate porcelain cup and locked in a polite but surrealistic conversation with an elegant, mild-eyed woman who wanted to hear every detail of Trader life. Sabrina Vandermond asked about their training, their missions, and their home base. She wanted to know what they ate, how they dressed, where they slept, what they did for recreation. She questioned them about Trader negotiation methods, Trader marriage, the Trader hierarchy, and Trader traditions. Every word they spoke seemed to fascinate her, and when they flagged she prompted them with endless questions. Finally, after an hour and a half, the cockatoo over in the corner flapped its wings and uttered a harsh squawk.
Sabrina looked at her watch, a delicate amethyst pendant on a silver chain around her neck. "Oh, dear. I'm afraid Lucifer is right. It is late, and I know you have other commitments. But this has been so very interesting, I quite forgot the time." She turned to Sebastian Vandermond. Through all the conversation he had sat slumped at her side, speaking only when she prompted him.
"Now, Sebastian, please take our guests back to Old-Billy. Unless"—she turned to Mike and Jake—"there is something that I could help you with here?"
Mike responded before Jake could make any comment. "Your home is delightful. I wonder if we might look around it more fully before we leave?"
"Why, I am
flattered
." Sabrina Vandermond stood up, revealing that she was indeed a tiny woman, the top of her head no higher than Jake's shoulder. "Come with me. Sebastian, if you will take care of the tea things while we are gone . . ."
She led them through half a dozen rooms, each decorated with the same care and taste. No piece of furniture spoke of the present century, and few of the previous one. Only the library told a different story. The long rows of walnut and mahogany bookcases held thousands of books and data cubes. Mike wandered along the well-dusted rows, eyeing volumes and indices. They described microengineering methods in elaborate detail.
"You are an engineer?" he asked at last. "From these references . . ."
That provoked a silvery laugh. "Good heavens, no." Sabrina Vandermond came to stand by his side. "Those belong to Sebastian. He is an engineer—some say a very good one. My own background is far less distinguished. I'm nothing more than a simple, struggling chemist and would-be biologist. See, my side of the library is over there." She pointed to a rack of high-density data cubes and a single display, and shook her carefully-groomed head. "Little of it, you see, and little to interest you. It is convenient to have our libraries close together, since my brother helps me when I find something beyond me; which happens, I fear, all too often."