She was right. Li had ordered a chilled white confection, almond-flavored, that was served in a broad, shallow bowl of frosted glass. But Mike was not sure how he was supposed to eat it—there was no spoon. He looked at it, picked it up, and looked again.
Li noticed his confusion. "Like this, Mike."
She raised the bowl close to her mouth, extended a long, slim, pink tongue down into the glass, and licked at the frozen white dessert. Her big, dark eyes watched him over the rim of the cup. The operation looked perfectly easy and perfectly natural, like a graceful butterfly delicately drawing nectar from a white blossom.
Mike tried to imitate her action. His tongue didn't seem long enough. While she watched, he pushed his face farther into the bowl and came away with almond dessert on his nose, eyebrows, chin, and forehead—anywhere except in his mouth.
Li looked at him. She put her hand over her own mouth. First she giggled, just a little. Then she began to hoot, and after thirty seconds she collapsed. She leaned farther forward until her forehead was resting on the smooth table top and shook with helpless laughter. Mike sat motionless for a few more seconds. Then he reached forward and put his hand gently on her mop of dark hair.
And he decided, in a moment of black thought that came from nowhere, that he hated Ando Jia-Chi and the Chipponese system of parentally assigned marriage.
* * *
The next day it was more negotiations; business as usual—almost. But Mike had a couple more worries to add to his list.
The first had come at the very end of the previous evening, when they were outside her room and about to say good night. Li had reached up, placed her hand on his lips, and said: "Trader Oath?"
Mike stopped in his tracks. "Do you understand the significance of that?"
She nodded calmly. "I believe I do. If you accept, then the information that I give you cannot be revealed to anyone. Let me add that I am acting for others on this, as well as for myself."
It was a difficult decision. Mike already had his hands full, but whatever the Chips wanted, it surely would not be a job done here—it would be something back on Earth.
He nodded. "I accept. What you say to me tonight will be under Trader Oath."
There was no discussion of price—not yet. That would depend on the nature of the task, and it would have its own negotiation.
Li stepped close and lowered her voice. Her breath was warm on Mike's cheek. "You have had dealings with the Great Republic. We know that you are familiar with their agricultural production system; but are you also familiar with the way that their economy depends on the supply of energy from us?"
Mike's brain did cartwheels, while his face was held rigid. Did the Chipponese already know about his mission for the Yankees?
"Li Xia, you appear to have some misunderstanding of Trader Oath. It means that I will
accept
confidential information—not that I will give it."
She smiled serenely. "Ah. Let me begin again. It is of great importance for us to know the degree of dependence of the Great Republic's economy on the continuous supply of energy from Chipponese power sources. What would happen if such energy were not available? We also wish to know how other groups on Earth would be affected should the economy of the Great Republic run into serious difficulties. We are unable to determine such information for ourselves. But you could discover it easily, upon your return to Earth. We would like to employ you for that purpose."
Given the battered, beat-up appearance of the energy generation equipment that Mike had seen earlier in the day, Li Xia's comments had an ominous ring. Mike's own feeling was that Earth's whole economy might fall apart if the Great Republic went belly-up. All the talk of regional independence was fine, but everyone relied on everyone else. The balance of industries had been established over many years. It was workable, delicate, and might not survive a major upheaval. In a few years' time, when the Yankee fusion system came on-line, things might be different. But not today. A billion people would be affected. And that left Mike no choice.
Prime Rule: You are a human being first, and a Trader second.
He had to follow this at least a step or two farther. "I agree. Subject to future negotiation, I will attempt to do what you ask. But I need to know more. Why do you anticipate problems in continuing the energy supply to the Great Republic?"
She stepped back and shook her head. "I cannot answer your question tonight. My task was only to seek a general agreement between us. Tomorrow, perhaps, I can take this further." She opened the door of her room, stepped inside, then turned and took his hand. "But this must be good night, Mike Asparian. The day is over. May you sleep like a child and have pleasant dreams."
* * *
Li Xia's wish may have been well intended, but it was not realistic. Mike's nightly report to his built-in recorder did nothing to relax him. And when he did fall asleep, it was to disturbing dreams. He was back on Earth, but it was a warring, violent Earth which had severed all ties to the Chipponese group. The globe was aflame, as the regions exhausted their weapons' arsenals on one another. Mike was in the Trader training center, looking up at the wintry, dust-obscured moon. He could see Li Xia's face there. She was starving, and forever beyond his reach.
He woke up shivering, heart pounding, and blamed it on unfamiliar gravity. He wandered off to breakfast with little appetite. While he was eating, all the lights on the station went out for five seconds. He froze, his mouth full.
The lights flickered back on again before he had much time to dwell on air-lock failure and the long-ago doom of Station Twelve. Another negotiation tactic? Possibly. But it was still on his mind when the morning meeting began; he asked Wang Tanaka what it meant.
"Oh, the lighting?" The Chipponese negotiator was casual and relaxed. "Don't worry about it. Just a station reactor being removed for regular maintenance. It will be out of service for a couple of days. The remaining ones have more than enough capacity, and all critical systems have standby power sources."
Wang Tanaka sounded unperturbed and reassuring, but Mike saw that Li Xia's face was drawn and unhappy, the eye sockets like black holes in her skull. She had wished him pleasant dreams, but her own sleep period had certainly not been peaceful. Something was eating at her. But was it business, or a personal matter?
The second day of negotiation ground on. They made progress, but Mike noticed one oddity. No matter what offer he made to the Chip negotiators, they would not consider any deal that implied energy delivery for more than two and a half years.
Rule 9: Locate the non-negotiables.
To see how far he could push it, Mike began to hold out tempting tidbits for any contract that extended to three years, or even two and three-quarters. It was no good. Thirty months was a wall, an absolute barrier for the Chip position. Mike could offer them anything, but if it also implied a longer contract there would be polite rejection. He filed that away for future use.
The afternoon discussions were wearying. The Chips were working on him in pairs now, and after his restless night Mike was negotiating largely on instinct. Two other factors preoccupied him: a power generator was out of commission in an already ramshackle production facility, and an increased energy demand was on its way to this station from the Strines.
He
had
to take another look at the energy generation system, even if it interfered with the negotiation. A Chip reactor blowup was an "incident," a minor news item down on Earth; here on the station it would be an absolute disaster.
At the first chance for a break he excused himself and headed for the upper wheel. Li followed at once. She asked no questions, not even when he made a close inspection of the reactors and the power transmission facility—which was certainly no part of his official role on the station.
The situation was worse than he had thought. Radiation levels were high, there were sticky control rods, and the mechanical linkages were worn. Maintenance personnel were few and widely scattered.
Li Xia had been watching every action. When Mike finally stopped, stared around him, and shook his head hopelessly, she took him by the hand.
"Come," she said. She led the way upward, out past the reactors that produced power for Earth, on past the new and well-maintained equipment that gave power to the comsat network, on out to the extreme tip of the station's axle where a thin spindle jutted far beyond the uppermost wheel. They drifted up that long, straight corridor to its very end. There the spindle terminated in a spherical chamber about twenty yards across, with transparent panels on all sides. Photo shields cut off the most intense light, leaving a view of the Moon, half-full against a glittering star field.
They floated side-by-side for almost a minute. Mike was stunned by the view, and it was Li who broke the silence. "Mikal Asparian, I believe that you are a good man, as well as being a good Trader. What I am going to say to you is not under Trader Oath, and I am certainly not authorized to discuss it as part of the negotiation. But I hope that I can trust you."
Mike saw the agony on her face. "I think that you can trust me, Li Xia. Trader Oath is not necessary."
"Thank you. I am going to tell you what from your actions you may already suspect." She took Mike by the shoulder and swiveled their bodies in free-fall so that they stood face-to-face a few inches apart. "I must beg your silence. If my betrothed, Ando Jia-Chi, knew I was saying this to you, he would disown me."
"Then perhaps I am sorry that he will not know."
"Ah." She looked quickly away. "I understand. But you do not. It would not be Ando alone, it would be my whole family. I would become an outcast, a nonperson. Again, I beg your silence."
"Li, you do not need to beg me. You
command
my silence."
That earned the faintest hint of a smile, a moment of sunlight across a clouded face. "Ah, I like to hear that. But you must not say it. Not now, when I need all my mind on what I must tell you. Listen closely."
She turned Mike again to look at the Moon. "Earth people do not understand Chipponese society, any more than we understand yours. You have no idea of the issues that occupy our attention. On the Moon today there is a great divisiveness among my people. One group says that Earth is part of the past only, and that its present welfare means nothing to Chipponese people. Who cares if the Unified Empire starves, they say, or the Cap Federation freezes, or the Great Republic blows itself up with its weapons? When we were forced to move to space, who on the Earth helped us? No one. What happens to Earth now is not our business. Another group, a smaller one, cannot accept such an attitude. We are all humans, they say, and the death of any human, anywhere, diminishes all of us. I am part of this second group."
"And so am I, although I am not Chipponese. Li, take comfort. You are not the only people with these worries. The Cap Federation is divided over the same question. We are all human."
She nodded absently and was silent again, staring at the blind white disk of the Moon. Mike felt impatient, but he did not let it show. She must be allowed to take her time. She was feeling her way into this, looking for the strength to say something against the wishes of her family, fiancé, friends, and nation.
"The Chipponese space systems provide the base load energy for the whole world," she went on at last. "That has been so for a generation, and there is a stability that everyone cherishes. But what would happen if this supply ceased? What if Yankee food products no longer were traded for our energy, or if the Chills no longer provided their microelectronics to other regions?"
Mike took a deep breath and cursed to himself. At this point he should be telling Li Xia of the Yankee move to energy independence, but he was bound to silence by Trader Oath to the clients in the Great Republic. All he could do was nod his head.
"It would be chaos," she continued. "Political chaos, and then perhaps the old curses of war, starvation, and sickness. There are people who do not worry about this. For their own group interests, they are willing to destroy stability. Unless everyone is warned of their plans,
now
. . ."
She did know. She
must
know. She was talking of Old-Billy's ideas for energy independence.
"If you already know so much—" Mike began. He was interrupted by an eerie wail, resonating through the walls of the chamber. "What the devil is that?"
Li turned her head to look back along the corridor. "Energy demand overload," she said. Her voice was unconcerned. "The siren means that the shields will be going up as an extra safety measure. We should head back at once."
Mike looked at his watch. If the Strines were beginning their increased energy drain on the system, they were a couple of hours early. And if this were some other, unpredicted call for energy, then when the Strines added their own load to it . . .
"Li Xia." He spoke rapidly. "Call down to the main wheel control center from here—you can do that, can't you? Tell them that there will be a doubling of Strine energy demand, very soon, and they have to be ready for it. Do it now. Then we can head back ourselves."
She didn't take even a moment to ask or argue. While she was at the message console, Mike had time for his own thoughts. Good-bye, one client. Old-Billy Waters would have every right to be angry. Mike was ruining the very test that he had been sent up to space to observe.
Li took longer than he had expected to complete her message. She got through easily enough, but she seemed to have a credibility problem. She had to say the same thing several times to different people before she finally put the communications unit back onto its base.
"Foolish bureaucrats," she said. "They seemed more interested to find out how I knew, than to act on the information. Quickly now. We should not have waited."
With Li leading the way they skimmed back down the long tunnel toward the main wheel. When they were less than halfway there, Li caught a handhold and waited for Mike to reach her. She pointed at the tunnel wall, turned, grabbed Mike, and began to tow him back the way that they had come.