The Warlock Wandering (14 page)

"I meant really old. You Sapiens never even learned 'em!

... There! All neatly packaged. Roll over, pretty boy!" He flipped Thaler onto his back. "We don't trust you not to yell." He pinched Thaler where he had the most flesh available. The sergeant opened his mouth in a bleat of sheer surprise, and Rod jammed a handkerchief into it. Yorick grabbed Thaler's head and held it still, while Rod wrapped another handkerchief over his mouth and around behind his head, tying it with a square knot. "Sorry you're going to be feeling so dry, especially with all that beer just overhead. But don't worry, somebody's bound to find you, right after breakfast."

Yorick tucked his hands under Thaler's shoulders and nodded to Rod who caught Thaler's knees. They both heaved up and carried the sergeant over under the stairs, where it was nice and dark.

Gwen's thoughts sounded in Rod's head, disappointed: Didst thou truly need be so rough?

'Fraid so, dear. Rod thought back. Didn't you see what his psyche was doing when you woke him up?

Gwen was silent a moment. Then: Aye, indeed. The feeling of helplessness, of being totally without defense. Rod nodded. Psychologically, he can handle this much better than your mental knockout, with no visible means. This, he can comprehend; it's ordinary to him. He can deal with it. He shrugged. But we had to make it convincing. An thou sayest it. Gwen sighed. Shall I tell thee, then, what his thoughts were?

That, I'd like to hear. Rod strolled back toward her, beckoning Yorick, and sat down, with the length of the basement between them and Thaler. The Neanderthal settled beside him, and Rod breathed, "Aloud, but softly, so the big guy can hear, but his victim can't."

"What do you mean, my victim?" Yorick snorted.

"I kind of got the gist, while we were questioning," Rod went on, "but I missed the details."

"Oh, so that's what you were doing!" Yorick grinned.

"I wondered why you gave up so easily." Gwen just stared at him.

"I wasn't kidding, dear," Rod said softly. "We were being gentle."

"Relatively," Yorick agreed. "But then, everything is relative, isn't it? According to the anthropologists, I'm even a relative of yours."

"Removed," Rod said quickly. "Several times removed—but not far enough."

"Aw, you're just a stickler about the straight line of descent," Yorick groused.

"Sure." Rod shrugged. "It's mine. We've got a common ancestor—but you guys branched off into a dead end road that fizzled out."

"If you can call a hundred thousand years 'fizzling out,'" Yorick snorted. "As to its being a dead end—well, at least we left Terra in good shape, when we ran off."

"Gentlemen!" Gwen held up her hands, one palm toward each mouth. "Will it please thee to hear what our sergeant did outside the Wall, yestermom?"

"Yeah, that would be nice." Rod turned back to her, all attention. "He never went anywhere near the Sun-Greeting Place, did he?"

"Not by a league," Gwen confirmed, "nor a dozen leagues, for all that."

Yorick frowned. "Spare me the suspense. What was he doing outside the Wall?"

"He did perform the role of a courier," Gwen explained. r

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"The General-Governor had sent him to bear word to the Chartreuse tribe." She turned to Rod, frowning. "Tis an odd name for a color."

"Unchartered territory," Rod agreed. "So what was he telling the Chief?"

"Yeah." Yorick frowned. "Why the hell did he have to go out in the middle of the night?"

"For that," Gwen explained, "the Chartreuse tribe had borrowed a great sum from the General's—'bank,' did he call it?"

"Savings," Rod explained. "Think of embers banked, to be saved through the night, dear."

"Tis an odd word, yet an odder thought." Gwen turned to him, frowning. "Why do these folk not keep their money themselves? Wherefore must they give it to others to save for them?"

"Too much chance of thieves," Rod explained. "This way, instead of always worrying about robbers, they only have to worry about the banker—and they always know where Tie is."

"Almost always," Yorick qualified.

"Well, true," Rod admitted. "Anyway, it's much more efficient."

"An thou sayest it," Gwen sighed, "though I bethink me I'll comprehend thy 'gravity' sooner than thy banks."

"Just think how the Wolmen feel. So the Chartreuse tribe owes the Bank of Wolmar a lot, huh?"

"Aye, yet they did have the wherewithal to repay stored in the bank. Naetheless, they had sent to ask for the..." she scowled "... for the... 'interest rate?'... on the loan, as it did compare with the 'interest rate' they did receive, on their saved money." She frowned. "What is this 'interest rate,' my lord? Doth it denote the degree of attention the Chief doth pay to the Banker?"

Rod had to swallow hard. "I suppose you could say that, dear. What it means, though, is how much the bank is paying the Chartreuse tribe for the use of its money." Gwen stared. "But why would the bank wish to use money?"

"Same reason any of us would," Yorick sighed.

"To invest, dear," Rod explained, "Say, to buy shares in a captain's trading voyage. He wants to make the voyage right now, not in ten years, which is how long it would take him to save up the money by himself."

"Then this bank will make more money from the cap-tain?"

"A lot more, and it'll deal with lots of captains, not just one."

Gwen frowned, eyeing him strangely, then sighed. "An thou sayest it. I ken the meaning of the words, but I do not ken the manner of thought that doth produce it." Rod said "I'm not certain about it, myself."

"Yet wherefore doth the bank pay the Chartreuse for the use of their money, whiles the tribe doth pay the bank for the use of its money? It doth but go about and about in a circle, my lord' It maketh no sense!"

"I'm not sure it does to me, either," Rod confessed. "But I think it works this way: if the Wolmen are getting twelve percent—twelve BTUs for every hundred—and are only paying ten percent for the money they've borrowed, they make two percent profit by keeping the money in the bank, instead of using it to pay off their loan." Gwen stared.

Then she took a deep breath, and said, "Yet the bank thereby doth lose this two percent thou speakest of! Wherefore doth it pay more than it doth receive?"

"I can't make sense of that one, either," Rod confessed.

"The only thing I can think of is that Shacklar must run the bank, and that he's willing to take the loss to make the Wolmen dependent on him. After all, if a man has all your money locked up, you're... not... too... apt to make war on him!" He stared, his eyes huge. "My lord! Of course!

He's buying them off!"

"Yet, then, if they send to learn of their money's interest,

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doth it not mean..." Gwen's eyes rounded, too. "Nay, certes! They did seek to recover their money, that they might be free to make war!"

"Without taking a loss on it," Rod said grimly. "Which is plenty of reason for Shacklar to send a courier out in the middle of the night. Just what was the message he carried?"

"That the interest rate was but now increased by five parts in a hundred."

"A five percent hike, on the spur of the moment?" Rod goggled, and Yorick whistled. "This Chartreuse chief knows how to bargain! Nothing like the threat of war to motivate the General into giving them a little extra profit."

"Very sharp," Rod agreed. "What did the Chartreuse tribe send back—a polite 'Yes,' or a withdrawal slip?"

"Sergeant Thaler did bear back word lauding General Shacklar for his honesty, and naught more."

"Which means they left their money on deposit." Rod drew a deep breath. "Y'know, Shacklar's not too bad a horse trader himself. What's five percent against forestalling a war? He may just have had the right idea, trying to bring the Wolmen into the modem world." But he wasn't sure that applied to Gwen.

"Here, then!" Cholly's voice called down the stairwell.

"Have a care, mister and missus! Here's one who wants t'

talk t' yer!"

Rod looked up, adrenaline thrilling through him. Chomoi came down the steps, face a bright pink.

Gwen smiled. "Thou dost seem newly scrubbed."

"Of course," Chomoi snapped. "Wouldn't you be?"

"Aw! I thought you looked good in that color," Yorick protested.

Rod relaxed, feeling the adrenaline ebb. "Yeah, it was the real you."

"Oh, stuff it!" she blazed.

Rod stared, taken aback for a moment. "What's the matter? Didn't you like being a Wolman?"

"What do you think?" she snorted. "It's not easy, being Orange."

Yorick pushed a crate over with his foot. "Sit. Tell us what's happening under the big open skies."

"Do not heed their impudence," Gwen advised. "Truly, within, they rejoice to see thee home and hale."

"They sure hide it well," Chomoi growled.

"Thanks." Rod nodded. "Now, tell us what happened out there."

Chomoi snorted, and dropped down on the crate. "Nothing. Absolutely nothing." They stared at her for a moment.

Then Rod sighed and leaned back. "We couldn't really expect anything more, anyway. But somebody must have come to the Sun-Greeting Place."

"Oh, he did—and it was Hwun, all right."

"But he smelled a rat?" Then Rod struck the heel of his hand against his forehead. "Of course—what's the matter with me? He knows every member of his tribe by sight!

Why didn't I..."

"Don't worry, I did." Chomoi's mouth turned down at the comers. "He's a Purple chief, so I was wearing Orange paint. And I staged it well: When he came up in the false dawn there, with the sky just beginning to glow in the east, he found me on my knees, weeping." Her eyes lost focus; she gave a slow, critical nod. "Yeah, I did it well.... He just stood there for a few minutes. I pretended I didn't notice. Then he reached down and grabbed my shoulder." She winced. "He grabs hard! Talk about a grip of steel..."

"I trust he did not hurt thee!" Gwen frowned, concerned. Chornoi shook her head. "I don't think he meant to, and I suppose he was sympathetic, by his lights. He said,

'Woman. Why you weep?'"

"Wait a minute." Yorick held up a finger.-^'Didn't he want to know your name?"

Chornoi shook her head. "No need. I was from another 110 Christopher Stasheff

tribe—that was all he needed to know. And that I wasn't trespassing—because I was on sacred ground, which is open to all. So I told him that I was weeping for the man who was killed yesterday morning. And Hwun said, 'But him not of your tribe.'"

"Oh, did he!" Rod lifted his head slowly. "That means the corpse must've still had his body-paint on when Hwun found him."

"Which means Hwun washed it off." Yorick frowned.

"Yeah, to hide the victim's identity." Rod scowled. "Why would he want to do that?"

But Chomoi was shaking her bowed head, waving her hands in front of her, palms out. "No! Hold it! Stop! You're both missing the main point!"

"Which is?" Rod asked.

"That Hwun wants to get all the tribes together, and the dead Wolman could be a very powerful common focus. But it'll work much better for that, if nobody can tell which tribe he came from."

They sat still for a moment. Then Rod nodded slowly.

"Yeah... that could be..."

"More than 'could,'" Chomoi snorted.

"Then he did tell thee thou wert not of the slain man's tribe?" Gwen said.

Chomoi nodded. "So why was I weeping? Well, I had to think fast, I tell you! But I did, and I told him I was weeping for all Wolmen, that I would weep for any, who died at the hands of the Colonists!" She frowned. "I was waiting for him to tell me to stand up, but he never did."

"And for him to warm toward a weeping woman?" Rod said softly.

Chomoi glared at him. "I told you, I don't fit their standards of beauty!" Rod didn't believe it. "Even so—you were female, and grieving. And you're young enough. You were waiting for something resembling a chivalrous response, weren't you?"

Chomoi held the glare a moment longer. Then her mouth twisted, and she admitted, "Yes, I was. But there wasn't any—not the ghost of a one."

Yorick grinned. "Well, you knew the Wolmen were a bunch of male chauvinists."

"Sure," Rod cut in. "Any primitive culture's going to be patriarchal."

"Not 'any.'" Yorick held up a palm. "But these guys are. Comes from imitating commercial fiction, no doubt." He turned back to Chomoi. "So you stood up anyway, huh?" She shrugged, irritated. "I was getting a crick in my neck."

"So you stood up," Rod inferred. "Slowly, sinuously, with a few discreet wriggles."

Fury flared in Chomoi's eyes, but she didn't answer.

"It didn't work?" Rod said gently.

The fury faded a bit. Reluctantly, Chomoi inclined her head. "All he did was start reasoning. He pointed out that I shouldn't take it so hard. As a bona fide female, I had more to gain'from the colonists than to lose." Rod scowled. "Was he being sarcastic or something?" Chomoi shook her head. "No... From his tone, he was just stating the facts of the case. As though it was a logical point, you know?"

"These subsistence cultures end up preoccupied with common sense," Yorick said. "So how did you answer that one? After all, there is a surplus of Wolman women, with the resulting polygamy." He frowned. "Odd, though—you wouldn't expect a leader to be quite so carefree about one of his people's women going to the men of his enemies."

"Well, that's just where I hit it. I put on the big indignant scene—that no true Wolwoman would want a man all to herself, if that man wouldn't be a Wolman, just a colonist. But Hwun just went on telling me, in that emotionless style of his, that it would make much more sense for me to have one man all to myself, if I could.

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Rod frowned. "I thought he was trying to get the Wolmen out of association with the colonists."

"So did I. I stepped a little closer, snapping that there would've been plenty of Wolmen to go around, if the colonist soldiers hadn't killed off so many of our men in the war. But Hwun told me that there are always two percent more female children surviving infancy than male.... I wonder who does his statistics?"