“And what does it have to do with the greenskins’ plight?” Captain Chen asked.
Nadab opened and closed his hands several times. “Are you all blind?” he said, in the local language this time. He returned to Trade English. “Think: what restrictions have applied to us greenskins since the one we never name slew Peleg and fled under cover of darkness?”
“That’s why they don’t let you out at night!” Carver said.
“Yes, of course,” Nadab said impatiently. “Can you not answer a question without being diverted down a double hand-no, excuse me, you would say half a dozen-sidetracks? “
Carver threw the greenskin a curious look. He saw he was not the only one doing so. Always before, on Ephar, he had felt himself more able, more sophisticated than the locals. Now, though, Nadab seemed in control of things, not any human. Taking turns, Carver and his companions spelled out the prohibitions greenskins had to endure: no intermarriage, no owning land, all the rest.
“Enough,” Nadab said at last-yes, he was in control.”What sort of lives do we lead, then, as a result of all this?”
“Narrow ones,” Carver told him. “Forgive me, but that is the truth as we humans see it. You are restricted to a tiny handful of trades among the many in the empire, and insecure in your hold on those because you are so vulnerable to the blues.” The rest of the people in the control room nodded. Carver pointedly added, “As the events of the day have shown.”
“All true, but all, I fear, superficial,” Nadab said. “The key is in the sort of-”
The chime of the phone from the weapons turret interrupted the greenskin. Like all weapons officers, Anastas Shumilov always stood his watch there rather than in the control room so he could aim the guns by hand if the electronics were damaged. Shumilov said, “Captain, forgive me for interrupting, but a fair-sized mob is coming this way.”
No one had been paying attention to the view panels. “Oh, dear me,” Michaels said, or words to that effect.
“I guess that blue guard wasn’t just running away,” Patrice added. Her comment, though less colorful than Michaels’s, was as inadequate.
Blues with torches, blues with clubs, blues with spears were streaming out of Shkenaz toward the Enrico Dandolo. Carver started to worry when he saw locals in bronze helmets: if soldiers were part of the crowd, it all too likely had official sanction. His concern doubled when he saw blues hauling stout timbers of the sort they would think able to batter down the outer cargo bay door, and doubled again when he spotted Baasa near the rear of the mob-official sanction, indeed.
Nadab said, “If you thwart them over me, they will surely turn on my people’s village.” Carver was sure bitter experience informed the greenskin’s words.
“No, they won’t,” Captain Chen ground out. She spoke to Shumilov: “Wait until the front-runners are within fifty meters of the ship, then hit ‘em with the searchlight.”
“Aye, aye.” The weapons officer wasted few words. A minute later, the view panels lit up bright as day. Suddenly the blue’s torches seemed feeble and insignificant, not the frightening harbingers of fury they had been, blazing in the darkness. The locals came to a ragged halt.
Captain Chen clicked on the outside speakers. “Go back to your city,” her amplified voice roared. “The greenskin Nadab is under our protection. We will not let him be harmed.”
That blunt announcement set the blues screaming again. They started to surge forward. The captain said, “Do you need to be reminded of what our weapons can do?” The surge collapsed.
Tradeships had used their guns a couple of times on Ephar. The most recent occasion had been seventy-five years before. After that, imperial authorities forbade attacks on offworlders. They were too expensive to be worthwhile.
But the locals were still anything but happy. “Give us the greenskin!” they shouted. “Let us finish him!” Searchlight or no, weapons or no, the blues hauling the makeshift ram began moving forward.
Captain Chen’s jaw tightened. Carver understood her dilemma. Opening fire on the mob not only would ruin the Enrico Dandolo’s trading mission, it also would cause endless red tape when the ship got back to civilization. Not opening fire, though, would be seen as weakness… and there was always the horrible off chance the locals really could break in. Not every ship got back to civilization to worry about red tape.
While the humans watched the head of the mob, Nadab spotted several blues slipping away from the rear. “As I thought,” he said. “They will avenge me upon my village.”
“What? No, they won’t.” Relieved at finding an action she could take, Captain Chen snapped an order to Shumilov: “Give me a few rounds of tracers. Shoot to miss, but show them they can’t have the greenskins.”
“Tracers, aye.” Machine guns hammered. They made an ideal weapons system on pretechnological worlds, being both raucous and spectacularly lethal. Lines of glowing red reached across the night. The locals abruptly lost interest in going any closer to the greenskin village. The blues with the ram looked to be having second thoughts, too.
Baasa’s retinue pushed through the mob so the local governor could confront the Enrico Dandolo. He seemed dubious about the honor of that, but spoke up as boldly as he could: “Send Nadab the greenskin out to us and we will go home. Having broken our strongest law, he must face justice.”
“No,” was all Captain Chen said.
Carver gestured for the mike. The captain gave it to him. He said. “The toughs outside the village deliberately kept Nadab from returning in good time. What’s more, I’d guess they did so at your orders. Now you say he has broken the law. How do you have the crust to call that justice?”
“It is our ancient way, by which we and the greenskins have always lived. The excuse is nothing, the act all. If Nadab was out of his village, he must atone for his guilt.”
“As I predicted he would say,” Nadab told Carver.
Rage ripped through the black man. He spoke into the microphone again:”It is not our ancient way, and we do not accept it. Go back into Shkenaz; leave us-and Nadab-at peace. You have seen we own the power to enforce our demands. Go back to your homes, all of you. There is nothing for you here.” Carver switched off the mike.
Captain Chen eyed the view panel. Hardly any of the blues outside were going home, but they were not advancing on the Enrico Dandolo, and they were not heading for the greenskin village: the tracers had effectively discouraged that. “Good enough,” the captain said. For Shumilov she added, “Use the guns to keep them where they are, but don’t fire into the mob itself without my order.”
“Aye, aye,” the weapons officer said, and fell silent again. He talked as if he were afraid his pay would be docked for every surplus word he used.
The blues kept milling about without doing anything much except beginning to argue among themselves. “Stalemate,” Captain Chen said, sounding pleased with herself. “Eventually they’ll get bored and leave us alone.” She turned to Nadab. “Where were we when that mess started?”
“They will not get bored. They will not go away,” the greenskin said, in much the same tone, Carver thought, as he would have said, The sun will come up tomorrow. Nadab went on. “As for where we were, I was remarking that the key to our problem lies in the sort of occupations in which we are permitted by law to engage.”
Carver admired the way Nadab instantly repaired the broken thread of conversation. The trader started to tick off greenskin jobs on his fingers: “Scribe, banker, jeweler, shopkeeper-”
“You need not go through the entire catalog,” Nadab said with a sting in his voice that Lloyd Michaels might have envied. “Far simpler to notice what they have in common.”
Again Carver-and, he saw, his companions-danced to the greenskin’s tune. Carver rubbed his chin as he thought. Before anything occurred to him, Patrice said, “We were talking about this a while ago, Jerome, remember? More than any other locals, the greenskins live by their wits.”