While she was talking Mike was already busy with his calculations. This was what he had been trained for, and there was nothing better calculated to calm and at the same time sharpen his mind. Her offer sounded simple, but it had implications. First of all, the Chip tastes in vice were well known. Their visitors to the Unified Empire would be looking only for recreational drugs and gambling, not for sex, sadism, high-risk games, executions, cannibalism, or any other of the most expensive services. And chances were that the Chipponese would leave a lot of money behind them when they left. They were excellent gamblers, but the Greasers were the best. The Traders
would
have been the best, Mike thought, but Traders didn't gamble—not in that way.
Second, everyone at the table knew that most of the energy being offered in contract to the Unified Empire would not be used there. It would be traded to the Great Republic, to the north, whose agricultural programs called for huge energy investments in irrigation and in fertilizer production. And some would go south, to Cap City, in return for electronic equipment. The Chills were high-level energy users. To evaluate the Chipponese offer, Mike had to know the balance of trade levels between the four groups over the next two years. And he had to add in one variable that the Chipponese knew nothing about: the Great Republic's fusion program, and their new ability to achieve self-sufficiency in energy production.
"Counteroffer," he said. "The Chipponese presence in the Unified Empire will be as Li Xia has stated. But the delivery will be for thirty-five gigawatt-hours, with a three-to-one day/night ratio, and no Southern Hemisphere winter increase." He was admitting by that last statement that most of the power would be delivered to the Yankees in the northern hemisphere. That was no bargaining loss, since the Chips surely knew it already.
The four Chipponese leaned forward across the table, busy at once with their own calculations. While they did so, Mike had time for a look at Li Xia. He felt a new pity for her. Not only was she betrothed to frogfaced old Ando, but she and all the Chips were soon going to lose their prime market. The Great Republic bought most of the Chips' energy, and the Chips in turn relied on them to provide nine-tenths of their food supplies. What would happen if the Yankees suddenly had ample power of their own and didn't need Chipponese energy inputs?
Mike shrugged off that worry. It was not his business, and if history were any guide, the Chips would get by. They had survived when all their homelands became uninhabitable, even though they had to leave Earth to do it.
"Counteroffer," said the man opposite Mike. His name was Wang Tanaka, and he was unusually heavyset and full-faced for a Chip. Mike suspected an Ainu ancestry, traced back to Hokkaido.
"Thirty-two gigawatt-hours," the man continued. "But an access contract for one hundred and twenty Chipponese citizens for a period of two and a half years. There will be restricted transfer of energy delivery, with not more than thirty percent going to the northern hemisphere."
The negotiation was off and running. That restriction on delivery showed more clearly than anything that the Chips knew the real game as well as Mike did. And underneath
that
real game lay the other agenda. Somehow, sometime on this trip, Mike had to visit the station energy facilities and make his own evaluation of them. But this came first.
After seven hours they were still arguing, but there was evidence of convergence. At that point Wang Tanaka called for a two-hour recess, "to allow our visitor to take a well-earned rest"—which meant, to let the Chips put their heads together and decide the next move. Li Xia's relatively junior role was confirmed when Mike was told that she was at his disposal, to show him anything that he might want to see on the station, or to tell him more about the whole Geosynch Ring.
Mike could have used the time for his own thoughts on negotiation, but the offer was too good to refuse. Before any other alternative could be proposed he was leaving, with Li trailing along behind. After a ten-minute scratch meal of hot noodles, fried pork dumplings, and tea, they were heading at his request for a tour of the upper wheel.
"Good progress on the negotiations," Li said as they moved into the central spindle.
"Excellent. We are already close to an agreement."
She turned to face Mike with a free-fall maneuver he had not yet mastered, and gave him a little smile. "You say we are near agreement, but I do not think that you believe that statement."
Mike hid his surprise. That sounded like a definite indiscretion on her part, and one her bosses would be horrified by. She was not supposed to be so honest with him about the status of the talks.
Unless there was an ulterior motive? But he could not think of one.
"It depends what you define as 'near agreement,' " he said. "I believe that we are exactly where I expected us to be at this time. We have several days of negotiation ahead of us, but we have made good progress."
And
that
, he thought, was certainly not what he was supposed to say to her—mainly because it was true. Before they were finished they would have half a dozen cases of 'near agreement,' then one party would introduce a new complication that seemed to kill the deal. They would inch forward, then backward, and eventually reach agreement—and that was what negotiation was all about. But no professional negotiator would mention how far along he thought they had come—it revealed too much about his own position.
Mike worried over the exchange of comments as Li led the way through the spindle to the upper wheel. Her indiscretion may well have been planned—but
his
had not. He had better learn to hold his tongue until he understood his own motives.
With his mind elsewhere, he missed a handhold as they moved away from the station axis. He began to turn end-over-end. Li reached out effortlessly to correct his attitude, and to do that she pivoted her hip and shoulder across his chest.
It was like meeting a skeleton, thinly clothed with skin. With all the other Chips around, Mike had almost stopped noticing how emaciated she looked. Now he was reminded of it, and suddenly saw himself through Li Xia's eyes: oversized, fat, and clumsy, with an outsize nose and hairy skin. The new perspective was shocking and unwelcome.
They were at the axis of the upper wheel. The overall layout was familiar to the Traders, and Daddy-O had provided a detailed plan as part of the briefing. Now the trick was to make sure that Mike saw the appropriate sections for energy generation.
He had no illusions about what he would and would not see. The Chipponese energy production facilities were scattered through every element of the Geosynch Ring, as a mixture of nuclear and, rarely, solar power plants. Here on this station he would find only nuclear generators, and those only of medium size. It would be no more than a snapshot of the overall energy supply situation, but it would still be better than anything else available to Old-Billy Waters and the planners of the Great Republic. Mike had one other card to play. During his stay at the station the Strines, by agreement with the Yankees, would briefly double their power demand. Mike, in a position to see how the extra load was met, might be able to make a guess at the available capacity of the whole system.
On the way to the perimeter of the upper wheel, Mike again wondered what the loss of Yankee energy markets might do to the Chip economy. The Chipponese had been forced into space by the fallout of the Lostlands War, and at that time it had been touch and go if they would survive. What would the loss of their main market do to them—and to other regions—today? One sobering thought: the Lostlands War itself had started with the economic collapse of a single nation.
They had reached the station sections containing the power systems, and suddenly Mike had a whole new situation to worry about.
The energy generation units looked totally wrong—wrong because they were
familiar.
The Traders' information on Chipponese power systems had been painstakingly collected over the years using official information and expensive espionage. That was a slow process, and the Chips were very careful people. The last big leak of design information had been over fifteen years ago.
Now Mike was looking at those same designs—which meant there had been no progress in Chipponese energy production technology for well over a decade. That was simply unbelievable. Even back on Earth, without the Chipponese focus on energy-producing systems, there had been a steady advance in fission and fusion reactors.
Mike examined the equipment more closely. Everything was fission systems, and the units were not merely old designs—they were old equipment. The fuel recycling machines bore the scars and pitting of long use, and the pressure vessel seams showed evidence of many repair welds. The Chipponese seemed to be generating energy for use on Earth with antiquated, beat-up production facilities.
While Li Xia moved them on farther, higher in the wheel, Mike struggled to make sense of the evidence.
Plausible assumption number one: this was all a setup, the inverse of Rasool Ilunga's scheme. The head of the Ten Tribes had wanted Mike to report an advanced technology that he lacked. Suppose the Chips wanted to
deny possession
of such a technology? Then if they had some secret agenda of their own, or if they knew of Mike's own hidden agenda, they might have arranged for negotiation to take place on a station with old equipment. Then they could show Mike everything, yet give nothing away regarding their technical progress and production capability.
Mike dropped that idea as soon as they reached the uppermost section of the wheel. It held a second set of power units, much smaller ones that served only to generate and beam power to the Chipponese communications satellites in the Geosynch Ring. And these units were new, compact, and far more advanced than anything that Mike had ever seen.
On the way back down to the lowest wheel, the final mystery presented itself. Mike had an opportunity to examine the system control units. They were old, poorly maintained, and were already running close to their limits.
That led to a series of questions that Mike could not afford to ignore. When the Strine power demand on this particular station suddenly doubled, what would happen? The system should have an automatic cutout if the call for power became too high—but would it work? The monitors looked even older than the primary power units. So what should Mike do? To alert the Chips to possible danger would give the game away completely and provide very poor service on the Great Republic contract. But to fail to warn the Chips, if something was on the way past danger point . . .
He puzzled the problem all the way back to the innermost wheel and on through five more hours of negotiation. Training and experience allowed Mike to haggle with the Chip negotiators at almost a subconscious level—he realized for the first time just how deep the Trader training had gone in him. At the same time, his forebrain remained preoccupied with the mystery of the out-of-date power systems.
The double effort strained him. When they finished for the day, Mike was a wreck, ready for nothing more than dinner and relaxation.
Twelve hours of haggling had left Li just as weary. She yawned her way to the dining area and ordered dinner for both of them without even asking. They slumped opposite each other at the smooth-topped table, too worn out to pretend alertness. They waited quietly for the food to appear from the hatches. Tonight the food selection was less exotic, with only beer and tea served as drinks.
By unspoken agreement this was Li's turn to talk. Mike learned of her family's history as wealthy industrialists in Shanghai, of the multiple shocks that came with loss of family wealth, and finally of the universal draft for the Unification program.
Her grandparents had been incredibly lucky. They were already in Japan as part of the Unification conquering forces when the war began. They had been on one of the first shuttle flights up from the Kyushu launch sites. The first years had been a desperate attempt to survive. Then there had been many more years to mourn lost friends and relatives, and to grieve over the fertile acres of the Yangtze river valley that would never welcome the return of Li Xia's family.
"Still, there is the dream," she said at last. "My grandfather cannot bear to look down on Earth, or to see pictures of others harvesting ripe crops."
The food and drink had slowly been restoring their energy and spirits. By the time that the final course appeared, they were talking of more personal and recent matters. Li asked if a Trader always married another Trader.
Mike shook his head. "There's no absolute requirement, even though it usually turns out that way. For example, I could marry a Strine woman, or a Yankee woman, or even a Hiver. But then I would have to ask the Trader council to accept
her
as a Trader, too. If they didn't agree—which has happened a number of times—I would either have to give up being a Trader, or give up on the idea of marriage. Usually, the Trader drops the marriage idea."
"You are not married now?" she asked. She had been looking down, running her finger around the top of her glass and collecting the little drops of condensation there. Now she raised her head and looked straight at Mike.
He felt a little shiver in his spine. Her eyes were so dark and serious; they seemed to stare right inside him.
"No. Not yet. But someday I hope to be. To be married, to have a family of my own . . . it makes a difference when you never knew your own mother and father. I would love to have a little daughter."
And again he felt surprise. He was saying words to Li Xia that he had never spoken before—thoughts he had never consciously
thought
before.
She was nodding gravely. "And I would give anything to have a baby son." She smiled. "Wishful thinking, maybe. But it is good for us to have dreams, no matter how unlikely."
After a long silence she reached over and squeezed Mike's hand. "I hope that one day you will have your daughter, and I, my son. But now we must not become sad, worrying about the future. Come—you are not eating your dessert."