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"Not needful," Van Rijn said. "We make our profit
other ways. I have asked out the lady here about the
facts while we was en route, and she dovetails very pretty,
let me tell you. Vb . . . Joyce. . . you take over now. I
am not sure how to best get the notion across when they
haven't much chemical theory."
Her mouth fell open. "Do you mean-Nick, do you have
an answer?"
"Ja, ja, ja." He rubbed his hands and beamed. "I worked
that out fine. Like follows: My own company takes over
operations on t'Kela. You Esperancers help us get started,
natural, but after that you can go spend your money on
some other planet gone to seed. . . while Nicholas van
Rijn takes money out of this one."
"What, what are you thinking?"
"Look, I want kungu wine, and a fur trade on the side
might also be nice to have. The clans everywhere will
bring me this stuff. I sell them ammonia and nitrates
from the nitrogen-fixing plants we build, in exchange. They
will need this to enrich their soils-also they will need to:
cultivate nitrogen-fixing bacteira the way you show them
-to increase crop yields so they can buy still more am-
monia and nitrates. Of course, what they will really do
this for is to get surplus credit for buying modem gad-
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gets.. Guns, especial. Nobody with hunter instincts can re-
sist buying guns; he will even become a part-time farmer
to do it. But also my factors will sell them tools and ma-
chines and stuff, what makes them slowly more civilized
the way you want them to be. On all these deals, Solar
Spice & Liquors turns a pretty good profit."
"But we didn't come to exploit them!"
Van Rijn chuckled. He reached up to twirl his mustache,
clanked a hand against his helmet, made a face, and
said, "Maybe you Esperancers didn't, but I sure did. And
don't you see, this they can understand, the clans. Charity
is outside their instincts, but profit is not, and they will feel
good at how they swindle us on the price of wine. No more
standoffishness and suspicion about humans-not when hu-
mans is plainly come here on a money hunt. You see?"
She nodded, half dazed. They weren't going to like this
on Esperance; the Commonalty looked down from a
lofty moral position on the Polesotechnic League; but they
weren't fanatical about it, and if this was the only way the job
could be one-Wait "The Ancients," she objected. "How
will you conciliate them? Introducing so many new ele-
ments is bound to destroy the basis of their whole economy."
"Oh, I already got that in mind. We will want plenty of
native agents and clerks, smart fellows who keep records
and expand our market territory and cetera. ,That takes
care of many young Ancients. . . silly name. . . . As for
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the rest, though, maintaining the power and prestiges
of the city as a unit, that we can also do. Remember,
there are oil wells to develop and electrolysis plants to
build. The electrolyzer plants will sell hydrogen to the
ammonia plants, and the oil-burning operation can sell
electricity. Hokay, so I build these oil and electrolyzer
plants, turn them over to the Ancients to run, and let the
Ancients buy them from me on a long-,term mortgage. So
profitable and key facilities should'suit them very well,
nie?" He stared thoughtfully into a dark comer. "Um-m-m
. . . do you think I can get twenty percent interest, com-
pounded annual, or must I have to settle for fifteen?"
Joyce gasped a while before she could start searching
for Kusulongo phrases.
They went down the mountain toward sunset, with
cheers at their back and canlpfires twinkling below to wel-
come them. Somehow the view seemed brighter to Joyce
than ever erenow. And there was beauty in that illimitable
westward plain, where a free folk wandered through their
own lives. The next few weeks, waiting for the ship, won't
be bad at all, she thought. In fact, they should be fun.
"Another advantage," V an Rijn told her smugly, "is
that making a commercial operation with profit for every-
body out of thIs is a much better guarantee the job will be
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continued for long enough to save the planet. You tho!1ght
your government could do it. Bah! Governments is day-
flies. Any change of ideology, of mood, even, and poof
goes YOJlf project. But private action, where everybody con-
cerned is needful to everybody else's income, that's stable.
Politics, they come and go, but greed goes on forever."
"Oh, no, that can't be," she denied.
"Well, we got time in the car to argue about it, and
about much else." Van Rijn said. "I think I can rig a little
still to get the alcohol out of kungu. Then we put it in
fruit juice and have a sort of wine with our meals like
human beings, by damn!"
"I . . . I shouldn't, Nicky. . . that is, well, us two
alone--"
"You is only young once. You mean a poor old man
like me has got to show you how to be young?" Van Rijn
barely suppressed a leer. "Hokay, fine by me."
Joyce looked away, flushing. She'd have to maintain a
strict watch on him till the ship arrived, she thought. And
on herself, for that matter.
Of course, if she did happen to relax just the littlest bit
. . . after all, he really was a very interesting person.
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A loftier Argo cleaves the main,
Fraughtbwith a later prize;
Another Orpheus sings again,
And loves, and weeps, and dies.
A new Ulysses leaves once more
Calypso for his native shore.
-Shelley
THE MASTER KEY
Once upon a time there was a king who set himself above
the foreign merchants. What he did is of no account now;
it was long ago and on another planet, and besides, the
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wench is dead. Harry Stenvik and I hung him by the seat
of his trousers from his tallest minaret, in sight of all the
people, and the name of the Polesotechnic League was
great in the land. Then we made inroads on the stock-in-
trade of the Solar Spice & Liquors Company factor and
swore undying brotherhood.
Now there are those who maintain that Nicholas van
Rijn has a cryogenic computer in that space used by the
ordinary Terran for storing his heart. This may be so.
But he does not forget a good workman. And I know no
reason why he should have invited me to dinner except
that Harry would be there, and-this being the briefest
of business trips to Earth for me-we would probably
have no other chance of meeting.
The flitter set me off atop the Winged Cross, where Van
Rijn keeps what he honestly believes is a modest little
penthouse apartment. A summer's dusk softened the mass
of lesser buildings that stretched to the horizon and be-
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