Chess With a Dragon by David Gerrold Read Free Book Online Page A

noncommittally. “Do we have any offers from Smallpox, Leprosy or Psoriasis?”
    â€œJust a moment,” said Kasahara, thumbing quickly through the stack of papers in front of him. “I’ll look—”
    â€œNori,” the Old Man reached over and put a hand on Kasahara’s arm. “That was a joke.”
    â€œA joke?” Kasahara blinked. “Oh. A joke.”
    â€œIt’s all right, Nori. You can look them up later. Please go on. Do you have any others to present?”
    â€œJust two more, sir—the Rhwrhm have inquired if our planet is available for colonization; payment proportional to the number of colonists allowed to settle. Uh, the Rhwrhm are carnivores, sir. Very large carnivores. They eat Dragons.”
    â€œYes, I see. And the other offer?”
    â€œThat’s from the Rh/attes. They’re suggesting something very unusual—unusual for the InterChange, that is. They don’t need any service that we can provide; nothing important, that Is—although they’re willing to buy a couple of million tons of corn per year; but that’s mostly a courtesy—a gesture of friendship from one mammalian species to another. What they’re suggesting instead is that we assume their indenture.”
    â€œI beg your pardon?—” The Old Man took off his glasses and began to clean them with his handkerchief. “I don’t think I heard you right.” He returned his spectacles to his face and peered owlishly through them at the younger man. His eyes seemed very large and bright. “There. That’s better. Now, try that on me again.”
    â€œThey want us to assume a piece of their indenture,” repeated Kasahara.
    â€œThat’s what I thought you said.” The Ambassador looked surprised. He glanced down the table to Miller, the head of Analysis Section. “Has your section had a chance to consider the implications of that?”
    Miller shook her head. “It doesn’t make sense to us. We’re in much bigger trouble than the Rh/attes. We can’t pay our own bills, let alone theirs. What do they gain here? Assuming we find a way to avoid defaulting, the only guarantee we can give them is that we’re not going to sell them to anyone for food, incubation, or sex; nor will we sell them for biological experimentation without their consent. I don’t see that that’s strong enough to justify putting their fate in our hands. They can guarantee that by themselves right now. We have no real use for them; apparently no one else does either. So, the alternative is that there’s some advantage for them to be indentured to a species that defaults.”
    â€œI’ll bet a nickel I know what it is,” put in Larson.
    The Ambassador looked down the table at her. “Yes, Anne?”
    â€œIt’s really very simple—if we assume their indenture, we assume the total burden of their debt. When we default, we have to work off their debt as well as ours—and they go free. It’s an easy way for them to wipe out their debt all at once.”
    â€œInteresting,” said the Ambassador. “And quite clever in its own way. Hm. Let me consider the other side of that question for a moment. Is there any advantage in it for us? Could we—excuse me for asking this—structure the deal so that we could . . . ah, create some advantage here?”
    â€œYou mean, could we sell them as food, fuel, slaves, sex or guinea pigs?” Larson shook her head. “The Rh/attes are considered almost as undesirable as we are by the reptilian and insectoid species. Their debt isn’t as large because they never downloaded as heavily as we did. On the other hand, neither have they ever come up with a service that the InterChange considers valuable; so they might be in just as tenuous a situation as we are. But they’ve been around for nearly five hundred years, so the real question is why