WE PURCHASED PEOPLE

by Frederik Pohl
Version 1.0

Jack Williamson and I have collaborated on eight or nine novels over the years. I've collaborated with a number of other writers, and so I know what I'm talking about when I proclaim that working with Jack, who is a wise and gentle human being, is as nearly painless as writing ever gets. Especially collaborative writing. Still, there are times when our interests diverge a little. As in all writing, there are occasions when one of us thinks up a scene or a situation that is too attractive to throw away but doesn't fit properly into the joint effort. When Jack and I were writing our novel Farthest Star, we each came up with one of those displaced bits. Jack's was a lovely sequence that dealt with an immense mountain called Knife in the Sky. The episode he had in mind did not fit into the novel, but he made it into a short story for Boy's Life. Mine was this one:

"We Purchased People. There are some themes that I seem to come back to over and over. The only way I realize that is by thinking the process over afterward, when it's history; I'm not usually conscious of it while I'm doing it. One of those themes is overpopulation- a theme on which, you will observe, I have played variations at least twice in this collection alone. Another is the idea of "possession. That appears not only in the two novels with Jack Williamson, Farthest Star and its sequel, Wall Around a Star, but in my solo novel Plague of Pythons (lately revised and rereleased as The Demon in the Skull) and several short stories- including this one. Why is this theme so permanently appealing to me over decades? I have a suspicion that there is a psychological basis for it. I wonder if it does not represent a metaphor for a deep-seated fear of manipulation from outside, of control by external forces that overrule our basic, instinctual decency and common sense.. . but I guess I will leave the resolution of that question to my shrink.

On the third of March the purchased person named Wayne Golden took part in trade talks in Washington as the representative of the dominant race of the Groom- bridge star. What he had to offer was the license of the basic patents on a device to convert nuclear power plant waste products into fuel cells. It was a good item, with a ready market. Since half of Idaho was already bubbling with radioactive wastes, the Americans were anxious to buy, and he sold for a credit of $100 million. On the following day he flew to Spain. He was allowed to sleep all the way, stretched out across two seats in the firstclass section of the Concorde, with the fastenings of a safety belt gouging into his side. On the fifth of the month he used up part of the trade credit in the purchase of fifteen Picasso oils on canvas, the videotape of a flamenco performance, and a fifteenth-century harpsichord, gilt with carved legs. He arranged for them to be preserved, crated, and shipped in bond to Orlando, Florida, after which the items would be launched from Cape Kennedy on a voyage through space that would take more than twelve thousand years. The Groombridgians were not in a hurry and thought big. The Saturn Five booster rocket cost $11 million in itself. It did not matter. There was plenty of money left in the Groombridge credit balance. On the fifth of the month Golden returned to the United States, made a close connection at Logan Airport in Boston, and arrived early at his home kennel in Chicago. He was then given eighty- five minutes of freedom.

I knew exactly what to do with my eighty-five minutes. I always know. See, when you're working for the people who own you, you don't have any choice about what you do, but up to a point you can think pretty much whatever you like. That thing you get in your head only controls you. It doesn't change you, or anyway I don't think it does. (Would I know if I were changed?)

My owners never lie to me. Never. I don't think they know what a lie is. If I ever needed anything to prove that they weren't human, that would be plenty, even if I didn't know they lived 86 zillion miles away, near some star that I can't even see. They don't tell me much, but they don't lie.

Not ever lying, that makes you wonder what they're like. I don't mean physically. I looked that up in the library once, when I had a couple of hours of free time. I don't remember where, maybe in Paris at the Bibliotheque Nationale, anyway I couldn't read what the language in the books said. But I saw the photographs and the holograms. I remember the physical appearance of my owners, all right. Jesus. The Altairians look kind of like spiders, and the Sirians are a little bit like crabs. But those folks from the Groombridge star, boy, they're something else. I felt bad about it for a long time, knowing I'd been sold to something that looked as much like a cluster of maggots on an open wound as anything else I'd ever seen. On the other hand, they're all those miles away, and all I ever have to do with them is receive their fast- radio commands and do what they tell me. No touching or anything. So what does it matter what they look like?

But what kind of freaky creature is it that never says anything that is not objectively the truth, never changes its mind, never makes a promise that it doesn't keep? They aren't machines, I know, but maybe they think I'm kind of a machine. You wouldn't bother to lie to a machine, would you? You wouldn't make it any promises. You wouldn't do it any favors, either, and they never do me any. They don't tell me that I can have eighty-five minutes off because I've done sombout He doesn't like the way we've spoiled His planet, he croaked. "Says He told us what to do, and we haven't done it-we've messed everything up-

"Hell, shouted the President, "we can fix that up. Call Him back. We can make a deal. We'll give Him His own TV station so He can preach to the multitudes, let pilgrims come visit Him-anything He wants!

But the translator was shaking his head again. "He doesn't want that. He says He's going back with the space people. They've got a better-class zoo.

ear the Fleet.

And when, at the end of the War, Mazian hadn't surrendered, but kept on raiding shipping to keep the Fleet alive, there were certain few ships who, rumor had it, still tipped him about cargoes and schedules—and picked off the leavings of the raids, pirates themselves, but a small, scavenging sort.

And, no less despicable, some ships still reputedly traded with the Mazianni… ships that disappeared off the trade routes and came back again loaded. The stations, blind to what happened outside the star-systems, were none the wiser, and with the Union and Alliance governments limited by the starstations' lack of interest in the problem.

But deep-spacers whispered together in the bars, careful who was listening. And she regularly caught the rumors, and sifted them through a net of very certain dimensions—since stations claimed they didn't have the ability to check on every ship that came and went… since stations were mostly interested in black market smuggling of drugs and scarce metals and other such commodities as affected their customs revenues.

Very well. Viking didn't give a damn until the mess landed on its administrative desk. Viking certainly didn't remember what lay forty years in the past as Viking kept time. Viking wasn't going to call Corinthian and say there was a problem. Oh, no, Viking, like every other station, was busy looking for stray drugs or contraband biologicals.

And the fact that particular ship was on alterday schedule might give Sprite that much extra time to get into port before senior Corinthian staff realized they had a problem: their arrival insystem had to come to Corinthian off station feed, since a ship at dock relied on station for outside information—and how often did a ship sitting safe at dock check the traffic inbound?

Not bloody often. If ever. Though Corinthian might. Bet there was more than one ship that had Corinthian on its shit-list.

She owned a gun—illegal to carry it, at Viking or in any port. She kept it in her quarters under her personal lock. She'd gotten it years ago, in a port where they didn't ask close questions. Paid cash, so the ship credit system never picked it up.

Mischa hadn't figured it. Or hadn't found where she kept it.

But it was more than Austin Bowe that she tracked, not just the whole of Corinthian that had aided and abetted what Bowe had done, and there was no more or less of guilt. Nobody got away with humiliating Marie Kirgov Hawkins. Nobody constrained her. Nobody forced her. Nobody gave her blind orders. She worked for Sprite because she was Hawkins, no other reason. Mischa was captain now, yes, because he'd trained for it, but primarily because the two seniors in the way had died—she was cargo chief not because she was senior, but because she was better at the job than Robert A. who'd been doing it, and better than four other uncles and aunts and cousins who'd moved out of the way when her decisions proved right and theirs proved expensively wrong. No face-saving, calling her assistant-anything: she was damned good, she didn't take interference, and the seniors just moved over, one willingly, four not. The deposed seniors had formed themselves an in-ship corporation and traded, not too unprofitably, on their ship-shares, lining their apartments with creature-comforts and buying more space from juniors who wanted the credits more than they minded double-decking in their personal two-meter wide privacy. So they were gainfully occupied, vindicated at least in their comforts.

She, on the other hand, didn't give a running damn for the luxuries she could have had. She'd had room enough in a senior officer's quarters the couple of times she'd brought Tommy in (about as long as she could stand the juvenile train of logic), so she'd never asked for more space or more perks, and whether or not Mischa knew who really called the tune when it came to trade and choices, Sprite went where Marie Hawkins decided it was wise to go, Sprite traded where and what Marie Kirgov Hawkins decided to trade, took the contracts she arranged.

Mischa wouldn't exactly see it that way, but then, Mischa hadn't an inkling for the ten years he'd been senior captain exactly which were his ideas and which were hers. As cargo chief she laid two sets of numbers on his desk, one looking good and one looking less good, and of course he made his own choice.

Now Mischa was going to explain about Marie's Problem to poor innocent Thomas, and enlist his help to keep Marie in line? Good luck. Poor Thomas might punch Mischa through the bulkhead if Mischa pushed him. Thomas had his genetic father's temper and Thomas wasn't subtle. Earnest. Incredibly earnest. And not a damn bad head on his shoulders, in the small interludes when testosterone wasn't in the ascendant.

Predict that Mischa would want to deal with Tom, now, man to man, oh, right, when Mischa had ignored Tom's existence when he was a kid, when Mischa had resisted tracking him into mainday crew until Saja pointed out they'd better put a kid with his talent and his brains under closer, expert supervision. Every time Mischa looked at Tom, Mischa saw Marie's Problem; Mischa had a guilty conscience about younger sister's Problem, and Mischa was patronizing as hell, Thomas hated being patronized, and Mischa hated sudden, violent reactions.

Gold-plated disaster.

Best legacy she'd given Bowe's kid—awareness when he was being put upon. That, and life itself. End of her debt of conscience, end of her personal responsibility and damned generous, at that. So Tom was getting to be a human being. End report. Tom was on his own. Twenty plus years of tracking Austin Bowe, and she was here, free, owing nobody but that ship—a little before she'd wanted to be, but one couldn't plan everything in life.

It didn't particularly need to involve Tom. She'd acquired that small scruple. Leave Tom to annoy his uncle Mischa, if for some reason she wasn't around to do the job.

Nice to have a clear sense about what one wanted in life. Nice to have an absolute and attainable goal.

Mischa could never claim as much. But, then, Mischa forgave and forgot. Rapidly. Conveniently—if Mischa got what he wanted, and you could spell that out in money and comfort and an easy course, in about that order.

Not her style. Thank you, brother. Thank you, Hawkinses, every one.

Sprite might have come and gone peaceably at Viking for three, maybe four long rounds of its ports, exchanging loops with Bolivar, without chancing into Corinthian's path. That wouldn't have kept the data out of her hands—recent data, of Corinthian's current activities. Sprite and Corinthian never even needed to have met face to face in order for her to have what she wanted.

Watching Austin Bowe sweat? That was a bonus.

Her chief anxiety now was the surprise of the encounter—before she had enough of that most current data. The last thing she wanted was for that ship to spook out suddenly and change patterns on her. She wanted to be a far greater problem to Corinthian than that.

Still, she improvised very well.

Loosen up, Austin Bowe had told her, on a certain sleepover night. Adapt. Go with what happens. You're too tense.

Best advice anybody had ever given her, she thought. He'd meant sex, of course. But he'd meant power, too, which—she'd known it that night—was what that encounter had been all about, a teen-aged kid's conviction that she ran her own life, up against a thorough-going son of a bitch, not much older, used to his own satisfaction. That was the mistake in scale Austin Bowe had made. Her motives and ambitions hadn't been that important to him… then. She'd played and replayed that forty-eight hours in her head, and after the first few weeks, the rape itself wasn't as bad as having had to walk out that door, the physical act hadn't been as ultimately humiliating as her damned relatives, dripping pity and so, so embarrassed she'd been a fool going off by herself, relatives so upset—it was clearer and clearer to her—that she'd damaged the reputation of the ship, humiliated her relatives, gotten them all ordered out of port—and they were all so, so disappointed when she didn't shatter and come crawling to their damned condescending concern.

Hell, she got along fine after that, except their hovering over her and waiting for Marie to blow up. After mama died, Mischa took over the hovering, and Mischa had said to her and everybody who was interested that she'd be just fine if she ever found herself the right man.

That was funny. That was downright pathetically funny. Mischa thought if she just once got good sex she wouldn't want to kill Austin Bowe.

Or Mischa Hawkins.

Sex good or bad hadn't put Austin Bowe in charge of Corinthian. It might be gender, genes, family seniority, even, God help them, talent; but it sure as hell couldn't be his performance in bed, and damned if hers that night had measured Marie Hawkins' capacities, any more than Mischa's self-reported staying power in a sleepover meant he was fit to captain Sprite.

—iv—

DAMN COM BEEPED. INSISTENTLY. If it wasn't a screaming emergency, the perpetrator was dead.

Austin Bowe reached out an arm from under the covers, in a highly expensive station-side room, seeking toward the red light in the dark.

Which disturbed… whatever her name was. Who moaned and shifted and jabbed an elbow into his ribs as he punched the button.

"Austin.—What in hell do you want?"

"Sprite's inbound."

He blinked into the dark. Tho