"I—"Damn. An expert, using the very best invasive probes, couldn't see that much about another's attitude. Larson was just guessing—or the localizers were even more a treasure than Pham had thought. Pham's awe and caution were tinged with anger. The other was mocking him. Well then, truly: "In a sense, yes. If you accept the trade I'm hoping for, you will live just as many years as I. But I am Qeng Ho. I sleep decades between the stars. You Customer civilizations are ephemera to us."There. That shouldraise yourblood pressure.
"Fleet Captain, you remind me a little of Fred down there in the pool. Again, no real insult intended. Fred is aluksterfiske. " He must be talking about the creature that Pham had noticed diving near the waterfall. "Fred is curious about lots of things. He's been hopping around since you arrived, trying to figure you out. Can you see, right now he's sitting at the edge of the pond? Two armored tentacles are tickling the grass about three meters from your feet."
Pham felt a shock of surprise. He had thought those werevines. He followed the slender limbs back to the water...yes, there were four eye stalks, four unblinking eyes. They glittered yellow in the waning light of Trygve's sky arch. "Fred has lived a long time. Archeologists have found his breeding documents, a little experiment with native wildlife just before the Fall. He was some rich man's pet, about as smart as a hund. But Fred is very old. He lived through the Fall. He was something of a legend in these parts. You are right, Fleet Captain; if you live long enough you see much. In the Middle Ages, Dirby was first a ruin, then the beginning of a great kingdom—its lords mined the secrets of the earlier age, to their own great profit. For a time, this hillside was the senate of those rulers. During the Renaissance, this was a slum and the lake at the bottom of the hill an open sewer. Even the name ‘Huskestrade'—the epitome of high-class modern Dirby addresses—, once meant something like ‘Street of the Outhouses.'
"But Fred survived it all. He was the legend of the sewers, his existence disbelieved by sensible folk until three centuries ago. Now he lives with full honor—in the cleanest water." There was fondness in the old man's voice. "So Fred has lived long, and he's seen much. He's still intellectually alive, as much as aluksterfiske can be. Witness his beady eyes upon us. But Fred knows far less of the world and his own history than I do from reading history."
"Not a valid analogy. Fred is a dumb animal."
"True. You are a bright human and you fly between the stars. You live a few hundred years, but those years are spread across a span as great as Fred's. What more do you really see? Civilizations rise and fall, but all technical civilizations know the greatest secrets now. They know which social mechanisms normally work, and which ones quickly fail. They know the means to postpone disaster and evade the most foolish catastrophes. They know that even so, each civilization must inevitably fall. The electronics that you want from me may not exist anywhere else in Human Space—but I'm sure that equipment that good has been invented by humans before, and will be again. Similarly for the medical technology you correctly assume we want from you. Humankind as a whole is in a steady state, even if our domain is slowly expanding. Yes, compared to you I am like a bug in the forest, alive for one day. But I see as much as you; I live as much as you. I can study my histories and the radio accounts that float between the stars. I can see all the variety of triumph and barbarism that you Qeng Ho do."
"We gather the best. With us it never dies."
"I wonder. There was another trading fleet that came to Trygve Ytre when I was a young man. They were totally unlike you. Different language, different culture. Interstellar traders are simply a niche, not a culture." Sura argued that, too. Here, in this ancient garden, the quiet words seemed to weigh more heavily than when Sura Vinh spoke them; Gunnar Larson's voice was almost hypnotic. "Those earlier traders did not have your airs, Fleet Captain. They hoped to make their fortune, to ultimately go somewhere else and set up a planetary civilization."
"Then they would no longer be Traders."
"True; perhaps they would be something more. You've been in many planetary systems. Your manifest says you've spent a number of years at Namqem, long enough to appreciate a planetary civilization. We have hundreds of millions of people living within a few light-seconds of each other. The local net that spans Trygve Ytre gives almost every citizen a view on Human Space that you can only have when you come to port....More than anything, your trading life between the stars is a Ruritania of the Mind."
