Science Fiction: The Year's Best (2006 Edition). Аластер Рейнольдс

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СКАЧАТЬ had reached maturity in an environment that surrounded him with gentle music, decorous parties, and amiable personalities. Alajara had been one of the pleasantest cities in the asteroid belt—a mansion inhabited by ten thousand people who were all employees of his family’s business. Sabor mastered three musical instruments, pursued his hobbies and enthusiasms with equipment that would have made most professionals groan with envy, and dallied with his choice of concubines when he reached the appropriate age. His mother and his older sisters took care of the details that generated the family income.

      There had been a time when many visionaries thought the fabricator would make bankers obsolete. Press the right buttons and your magic box would generate a fully cooked roast on demand. Press another combination and it would extrude furniture for your dwelling place, clothes for your body, and toys for the idle hours it had bestowed on your life. Why would anyone need money?

      Fortunately, it hadn’t quite worked out that way. Fabricators had been universal household appliances for two centuries and Sabor’s family was still engaging in its traditional business. The introduction of the fabricator had disrupted Earth’s economic system for approximately two decades. It had triggered a catastrophic massive deflation. Prices and wages had tumbled by seventy percent, by most calculations. But when the turbulence had subsided, Sabor’s family had still been negotiating loans and pulling profits out of microscopic variations in interest rates.

      Fabricators could provide you with the basics at a ridiculously low cost but they still needed energy and raw materials. They needed programs that directed their operations and time to run the programs. And there were commodities that couldn’t be manufactured by the best machines available. Fabricators couldn’t manufacture social status. Fabricators couldn’t engage in the genetic manipulations and the years of post-natal management that produced personalities like Purvali and Choytang. Above all, fabricators couldn’t manufacture expertise and imagination. They couldn’t design their own programs. They couldn’t visualize the new products that would make consumers lust after the programs that would produce them.

      Money, Rali Haveri liked to remind him, was essentially irrational. It had value because people agreed it had value. She had placed two million yuris in Sabor’s account when he had established his residence on the Carefree Villa and everyone on the starship had agreed he could use it to buy goods and services and make loans. They had accepted it as money through three rests and four awakes and they had continued to accept it when he had landed on Fernheim. They even accepted the additional numbers his mother had radioed him since he had landed on the planet. The fact that every message had to travel for twenty-two years made no difference. Human societies needed some sort of monetary system and he was the son of a woman who could obviously bless him with any sum he could reasonably desire. The financial system in the solar system even recognized the numbers he transmitted when he paid his mother the interest she charged him.

      “I would be avoiding my maternal responsibilities if I didn’t demand interest,” Rali had lectured him across the light years. “I’m only imposing the same discipline on you that I would try to impose on myself—the same discipline the solar financial system imposes on me.”

      Sabor reentered the boathouse and dropped into a corner two minutes after the captain returned their boat to the main channel. Purvali ran a test on the boathouse fabricator and ordered pharmaceutical drinks that would moderate their emotional stress. Colonel Jina’s immobilized soldiers were being relieved of their armor and weapons and placed on the deck of the other boat. The boat itself would be turned around and sent back upstream under its own control.

      The Primary Coordinator had already advised Colonel Jina he could pick up his soldiers’ equipment in two days. There would be no request for ransom or damages.

      “We try to maintain good business relations with Colonel Jina,” the Primary Coordinator had explained. “We usually use his services when we hire guards for our more valuable shipments.”

      Purvali swayed toward Sabor with a drinking cup in her hand. He held up three fingers as she bent over him.

      “We have three projects we have to advance simultaneously,” Sabor said. “We have to organize our fellow bankers into a united front, we have to find a weakness we can exploit, and we have to prepare for a sojourn in the splendors of the unterrestrialized wilderness. I’ll start work on number one. I want you to work on the others. Assume we’ll embark on our wilderness holiday as soon as we’re properly equipped.”

      Purvali checked her display. “They only have eight widemounts in the whole commune.”

      “Try to purchase four. I’d like to pack a few comforts.”

      The effects of the drink flowed through Sabor’s muscles and nerves. His display projected his own image in front of him and he observed his delivery as he created his message to his three colleagues.

      “I regret to tell you that I have just fended off an armed attack financed by Possessor Kenzan Khan. I believe we should immediately suspend all dealings with Kenzan Khan. I will be taking other actions shortly but I believe an unequivocal display of unity is absolutely essential.”

      He paused the recording and took another swallow of his drink. Purvali had flavored it with banana and coconut—an aroma he had treasured since he had first savored it sometime around his fifth birthday.

      “Kenzan has become obsessed with his long term feud with Possessor Dobryani. He wants to mount an armed occupation of the land around the mouth of Winari Brook. Kenzan and Dobryani have both been eyeing that area and Kenzan has convinced himself Dobryani is preparing to seize it by force. He wants me to finance the purchase of one hundred soldiers. I have decided I have to refuse. I’ve been subsidizing his excesses since he first took control of his possession. I have reached my limit. Firm action is absolutely necessary.”

      The attachments included a statement by the Coordinator of Galawar, visuals of the encounter with Colonel Jina’s force, and a copy of the message from Kenzan Khan that had convinced Sabor he had to evacuate his primary apartment in Tale Harbor.

      There was no room in Kenzan Khan’s worldview for a simple clash of desires. The heart of his message was a long flood of denunciations. Possessor Dobryani wasn’t opposing him merely because she wanted the same thing he wanted. She was a malevolent spirit with a compulsion to control every patch of terrestrialized land on the planet.

      “We all know what she is, Sabor,” Kenzan had proclaimed. “I’ve been defending myself against her attacks since the year I succeeded my uncle. The days when you can wiggle and sidestep and make your little jokes are over. Give me what I need or I’ll take it. And everything else you have with it. Money isn’t the only form of power.”

      Kenzan had framed his message so his face would appear to be crowding against the person who received it—a juvenile trick, but it was Kenzan’s childishness that made him dangerous. Kenzan’s parents had apparently believed an imposing frame still had its advantages. Kenzan was over two heads taller than Sabor, with bone and muscle in proportion. Lately, he had been neglecting his physical maintenance. He had compensated by costuming himself in ornate belted robes that hid his paunch. A tangled black beard obscured his jowly cheeks.

      The robes were a convenient wrapping for a sexual impulsive. Sabor had witnessed the advantages of Kenzan’s turnout during a tediously elaborate lunch. Kenzan could simply grab the nearest concubine who appealed to him, untie his robe, and indulge himself without any bothersome need to undress.

      Kenzan’s uncle had been a methodical, patient man who drew his deepest satisfactions from the steady expansion of his wealth. If the uncle purchased the genome for a new type of fruit tree, he sold a hundred fruits for every bite he СКАЧАТЬ