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se device he reopens the folly with a play othello as a white skinned shiner among normal humans on opening night demifera is missing ordobat finds her captured by the thugs a peaceful man he can no longer avoid violence with demifera s help and his knowledge of the jungle he tricks the men into attacking him at the same instant ordobat s shockbelt detonates and kills them both ordobat concludes a deal with stenner saving his livelihood demifera becomes a planetary citizen and sues the company but they don t cooperate until ordobat gives evidence about the thugs the ruling council establishes a rate of exchange between cash and company scrip a key to the shiners eventual freedom in time demifera may have to pursue her quest on other worlds but they are together for now posted by joel sparks at 9 36 am no comments labels synopsis friday july 4 2008 chapter one ordobat s folly by joel sparks you too folly you i know that you will lay me low at last let be yet i fall fighting fighting still cyrano de bergerac edmund rostand sy 6610 city of recht elemar continent tisker s world ordobat awoke with a start shaking off tendrils of nightmare in the dream one of his towering brew vats had been heating over a maximum flame but with nothing inside helplessly he had awaited the explosion he threw off his light sheets damp with sweat and cursed quietly to himself on the wall an orange light flashed an alert from his datasphere agent he sat up rubbed his head shivered if the alert had been critical it would have come with a sound alarm so he had time for coffee mellinick ordobat master brewer and part owner of two taverns in the city of recht was not as young as he had once been his mother was ten years gone his father a tutor maintained his own existence around on the weather side of the hill and they seldom spoke ordobat had no recent lovers no compatriots except business associates for years he had countered such considerations with the peacefulness of his existence with his skill in the arts of brewing and with a sufficient if modest income but bringing truly fine ale to the palates of his fellow rechtians turned out to be more philanthropy than business if finances did not change soon he and his partner max would have to close the blue bell tavern and even the original blue spoon could not last so the datasphere alert annoying though it was was only responding to ordobat s frequent searching for ways to make the blue tavern group turn a profit returning late from the spoon the night before he d set the agent to combing the sphere and apparently it had found something that matched his criteria having secured a mug of fresh black brew seasoned with anise from coastal thrumbar he settled in his only comfortable chair and snapped his fingers at the display wall which flickered from its gentle topiary video to his personal data home a small sphere in one corner glowed mostly green indicating the state of the planetary datasphere a trivial network by galactic standards larger icons illustrated partnership finances in the way most intuitive for ordobat capital as a fluid moving between notional vessels a slow trickle of luminous income dripped into the general fund a shallow pool its faded glow showing the age of its diminishing contents thus the empty vat of his dream he realized thin pipes led from the central vat icon payments to himself and max kinnon each made only when the total rose to those outlets a certain amount of liquid boiled away over time as well inevitable costs of doing business such as rent on the taverns and the warehouse where he brewed bulk purchases of barley and spices from the elemar lowlands staff wages a separate bottle a bit over half full represented his personal savings a single weary glance told ordobat the overall state and the picture was grim once more he rang the changes looking for a break point an unexploited geometry an insistent finger thrust at the small group of icons blew them up into a three dimensional maze of translucent plumbing the blue tavern group at the center split into two beakers one for each tavern he jerked his thumb to the right and the flow sped up projecting into the future faint lines whipped by to demarcate the first day then the traditional seven day weeks the inconvenient 108 day tisker seasons by the standard year mark and long before the local 433 day year the blue bell vat was a dark hollow shell and the blue spoon was swiftly emptying itself the display doubled to show what happened if he kept his own savings sealed the whole apparatus going dark versus dipping into that bottle and siphoning off its contents the same result slightly delayed little meters measured the reliability of the results not perfect of course but high thumb left and the display collapsed into one rewinding to the present a chopping gesture severed the bell from the network running forward again the abandoned tavern s architecture rapidly decayed and vanished while the blue spoon sucked income into itself reliability wavered ordobat wanted to know best and worst case scenarios and the liquid levels separated into an opaque base of certainty and a transparent layer of hope he spun the view observing the box of the brewery operation and its connection to the tavern he squeezed the brewery down a quantum to its minimal size and drew the blue spoon s tanklike shape to the fore again one by one the thin pipettes of discretionary outputs broke off firing some staff reducing the menu opening for fewer hours the siphons of personal profit for himself and max slid higher and higher on the vat to one side his personal savings shrank still the income could not match the outflow zooming out he saw the entire city of recht displayed in terms of alcohol consumption the streets appearing as a system of dikes and channels funneling drinkers to their favored establishments forward through time long slow waves showed variation in seasonal consumption with periodic surges when a shipload of offworld tourists was expected spiked into the flow were nine tiny umbrellas each the center of a whirlpool sucking down far too much traffic leaving a thin wash to barely wet the street around the little blue spoon icon a fist paused the simulation an irritable hand wipe erased it from view simple facts the bell should be closed as soon as possible for the spoon to have even a slim chance and realistically barring miraculously improbable events they were out of business within a year then ordobat who had done nothing but perfect his brewing for fifteen standard years would have to seek work possibly even with the hated parasol swill mills where he would be junior to younger clumsier folks unacceptable there had to be a way to the agent s results instead a package patiently waiting at the top of his display at a finger poke it expanded text headers first newsline planetary local posted from sector d14 thrumbar interior precis gold rush economy surrounds mineral mud deposits deep in the jungles of thrumbar agent flag context extremely high prices for such goods as medicines water purifiers communications gear preserved food beer and insect repellent full text follows ordobat grunted in recognition high prices for beer that would be enough to snag his agent s attention he triggered the report and words rolled up the display as the datalink spoke them in the jovial tones of the basic user level offworld laborers of peculiar roots stream into the sweltering shadows of dense foliage known as the jungles of thrumbar here they subsist on the barest of amenities and suffer the lash of their cruel overseers the mineral mud lords hard souls whose eyes always reflect golden credit disks these taskmasters can hardly see the misery they cause the video showed a muddy field and a great many muscular strangely pale men digging in it with primitive hand tools yet the laborers do not complain here shoveling up river mud they can earn more caps in a day s backbreaking toil than they might win in a week or a month back home in the galaxy s cruelest slums and wastes even the fraction of the mud s value that trickles down to the shoveler is a trickle of gold to such a hopeless lot what makes mere mud so valuable time yes millennia of time undisturbed by humanity and its shovels and lasers eons for the unique life forms of thrumbar to evolve and die and lay down layer upon layer of earth enriched by their special chemical natures so that now the very soil itself is packed with wild and useful veins of virtues unseen in the larger galaxy here ordobat wincing paused the readout with a raised palm and pointed to the link for supporting statistical data colorful pie charts erupted as he pointed to each explanatory text appeared time stamps indicated that the data was very recent a team of geologists had entered thrumbar just seventy days ago with plans to chart a large scale history of tectonic changes to their surprise soil samples in certain areas had revealed high levels of ductile mineral content elemental aluminum to be precise quite valuable deposits in washes of silt and mud untouched by the continent s excavation style ore mining the peculiar essences of thrumbar life forms indeed played a role as well as geological action and the salts of the ocean swept in by floods preliminary results published in scientific journals stimulated an instant rush of interest in thrumbar s previously obscure mining companies such was the pace of business in the galaxy as sophisticated economics software analyzed the enormous volume of news data and calculated costs and benefits to a frighteningly precise degree profit went to those with the resources to respond quickly to changing opportunities the huge wealthy conglomerates those who had applicable expertise and those who were on the spot millions across the galaxy read about such opportunities with mingled fascination and envy ordobat hardly counted himself a market news aficionado yet he did feel an unreasonable disappointment whenever another boomlet came and went without him and now to have one appear on his own planet and to hear about it only by chance it was a shame he hadn t bought into a mining concerns years ago a thought arrested ordobat with his cup at his lips certainly the thrumbar mining companies were best positioned to profit from this boom they were on the spot familiar with the land and its exigencies with interstellar speeds limited to about sixty thousand seconds per light year news and equipment could only travel so fast the galactic concerns would be first to purchase data from incoming ships then prepare and launch their expeditions in a few days or less the more equipment and personnel that could be used locally the better ordobat pointed his way through another layer of analysis yes the necessary capital had come to tisker s world in the form of partnerships great distant conglomerates joining with local mining companies to extract the minerals as rapidly as possible ordobat opened a projection high profits in the next standard year then a little lower each year and then nothing barely a cap to be extracted once four years had passed text explained factors limiting long term profitability 1 probable depletion of major deposits see projection based on similar riparian silt deposit histories in wet ecologies 2 tendency of market strength to increase efforts at production and distribution of al by traditional high energy methods see comparison with similar market cycles 3 local council based government is unarmed but highly legitimate under original planetary charter potential stranglehold over import export activities probability of legal stricture crippling to market rises each year based on analysis of these main factors tenets of local moral code opposing forced labor and environmental exploitation likelihood of eventual galactic level enforcement based on planetary charter profit pressure applied via planet local mining companies see moving sum of forces projection 4 internal unrest of offworld labor see précis of historical activism so a brief window of fantastic profits while competition and the council struggled to bring it to an end those in a position to make money were as always the galactic conglomerates and their partners on the scene the mining companies would welcome this chance most had spent decades scraping out wet shallow mines of bauxite sparse petrochemicals and petrified wood for little profit thoughtfully ordobat examined the article a gold mine economy to use the ancient term with factors working to shut it down even before the gold in this case aluminum compounds became exhausted local moral pressure he understood well a tisker born and raised he knew by reputation that few galactics came up to the proper standards of behavior required by the council forced labor for example was surely impermissible he saw a video tag on the fourth point internal unrest of offworld labor and flicked an expanding gesture that way a full motion screen bloomed ranks of those strange workers their skin and hair a stark white like bleached paper and their expressions equally blank subtitles indicated the date a few standard years past and the availability of statistical analyses the men shuffled along an industrial corridor each picking up a pack of gear and ignoring a firm female voice that harangued them in accented galactic don t risk your life for a few minims when you see the red nodes leave them alone let the robots get burned the point of view rotated to show a smaller figure dimly lit it seemed to be a woman standing on a crate and shouting through an improvised megaphone of rolled plastic just as she lowered the cone the video ended and looped back to the beginning ordobat paused the playback bemused who were these strange looking folk colorless and morose some breed of albinos from an odd corner of the galaxy he pulled up the supporting data but he was no expert on sociometrics and the charts meant little to him from the summary both history and probable future held only a low steady level of discontent with little chance of any serious unrest that could mean harsh suppression but the council would never allow outright slavery on tisker s world perhaps it meant a small number of malcontents or troublemakers ignored by their fellows perhaps only one ordobat flicked back to the video rolled it to the end and froze the last image a few complex but habitual gestures enhanced the light and zoomed in on the face a woman s face snow pale like the others but with her white hand stopped in the act of brushing back coal black disorderly hair somehow the motionless image conveyed exasperation anger determination and pride at once in the set of her jaw in the twist of her mouth boldly red by contrast with the white skin and in her surprising ice blue eyes there was nothing in the data about the peculiar workers and nothing about the black haired woman though ordobat looked carefully ...