A Time of Changes

44

We had passed the test. They would give us what we wanted. After the sharing of love came the haggling. We returned to the village, and in the morning our bearers brought out our cases of trade-goods, and the three chieftains brought out three squat clay pots, with the white powder visible within them. And we heaped up a high stack of knives and mirrors and heat-rods, and they carefully poured quantities of powder from two of the pots into the third. Schweiz did most of the bargaining. The guide we had brought from the coast was of little value, for, though he could talk these chieftains’ language, he had never talked to their souls. In fact the bargaining inverted itself suddenly, with Schweiz happily piling still more trinkets into the price, and the chiefs responding by adding more powder to our bowl, everyone laughing in a sort of hysterical good nature as the contest of generosity grew more frenzied. In the end we gave the villagers everything we had, keeping only a few items for gifts to our guide and bearers, and the villagers gave us enough of the drug to snare the minds of thousands.

Captain Khrisch was waiting when we reached the harbor. “One sees you have fared well,” he remarked.

“Is it so obvious?” I asked.

“You were worried men when you went into this place. You are happy men coming out of it. Yes, it is obvious.”

On the first night of our voyage back to Manneran, Schweiz called me into his cabin. He had the pot of white powder out, and he had broken the seal. I watched as he carefully poured the drug into little packets of the kind in which that first dose had come. He worked in silence, scarcely glancing at me, filling some seventy or eighty packets. When he was done, he counted out a dozen of them to one side. Indicating the others, he said, “Those are for you. Hide them well about your luggage, or you’ll need all your power with the Port Justiciary to get them safely past the customs collectors.”

“You’ve given me five times as much as you’ve taken,” I protested.

“Your need is greater,” Schweiz told me.