*** Spoiler Alert ***
Below is the Prologue to The Discipling of Mytra. The verse quoted at the beginning of the Prologue teaches that God is more cunning and crafty than Satan. This shrewdness is displayed in Sarah’s labors: creative problem-solving worthy of a creative God.
Sarah’s opening prayer copies the famous supplication of John Knox: “Give me Scotland, or I die!” Sarah views herself as one in a long line of missionaries determined to further the Great Commission.
He catches the wise in their craftiness,
and the schemes of the wily are swept away.
Job 5:13
“Give me Laxalar or I die,” Sarah prayed. She slowed to a hover thirty meters above her parking spot, paused long enough to make sure everyone in the market got a good look at her spacecraft, then touched down quickly and quietly between a hand cart and a pick-up truck. Racing the crowd already forming, she pushed open the hatch, darted outside and posted her vender’s permit on a post in front of her booth. Sarah rushed back into her shuttle and began bringing out cages filled with animals, stacking them on her allotted tables.
The specimens had been chosen for variety: cats, dogs, lambs, and pigs; lizards, turtles, frogs, and snakes; crows, parakeets, peacocks, and ostriches. Sarah led forth her prize last of all: a chestnut thoroughbred snorting his displeasure at having landed on a strange planet. By now a mob had gathered before her stall. She heard the shouts of security guards trying to push their way through. Too late, Sarah thought with excitement. She yanked a seller’s shirt out of the saddlebag, pulled it over her head, leaped onto the horse, and shouted the merchant’s cry: “Comall, comall!” She was open for business.
Laxalar possessed little in the way of organized defense forces. The market did, however, employ its own private police force. Yet to what were these men accustomed? Arguments over prices, a seller refusing to give a refund, the occasional pickpocket. Nothing in their training or experience prepared them to make first contact with an interstellar visitor. As five of these officers finally approached Sarah’s stand, their eyes flitted rapidly between her merchandise, Sarah herself, and her ship – but always back to the animals making a ruckus in their cages. Sarah let out the seller’s call again and three of the guards jumped. Who would be the first brave soul to stand forth and purchase alien wares?
The security personnel drew their guns and the crowd began to inch back. Sarah herself carried no weapon, in obedience to the Fourth Rule. Her ship emitted a shield, but the police weren’t armed with starlight. She could have had robots escort her, but it had been her decision to make herself defenseless, the better to improve chances of a breakthrough. Of course, this also increased her odds of getting martyred.
What Sarah needed was a buyer. Laxalarans felt most at ease when doing business. They believed in “freedom for the buyer, freedom for the seller.” Yet as an isolationist society they also forbade contact with offworlders. By presenting herself as a businesswoman, Sarah pitted Laxalar’s two cardinal principles against each other. Which law would win out?
Sarah liked her superior vantage. From the horse she could stare down at the police officers. The whole crowd could study her. No guards had aimed their guns at her, at least. And they remained on the buyer side! To enter the seller’s space was almost sacrilegious to a Laxalaran. Sarah rejoiced that the men hesitated to pass the barrier. Perhaps these people really would own her as a merchant.
The police captain, wresting his eyes from her mount at last, got up his nerve. “Who are you?” he croaked, barely audible. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Who are you?”
“Can’t you read?” Sarah asked, carefully mimicking the smooth, confident voice of the seller. And do I have something to sell! She pointed to her permit, taped in front of the stall. The guard blinked at her in confusion. “I’ve got business to do today, if you don’t mind, and you’re getting in the way of my customers.”
The man clearly wasn’t doing well. In a stupor he glanced at Sarah’s permit, and then looked back up at her, sitting atop a creature that wasn’t supposed to exist. The horse stomped the ground and the guard took a step back, but his face hardened. “I demand you tell me who you are.”
“I am a merchant, as you can plainly see. Laxalar has no animals; my planet does. I have come here to sell these.” She motioned to her inventory with a grand gesture. The captain just stared at her stupidly.
Sarah rose in her saddle as far as a seventeen-year-old Chinese girl could. “I paid in gold yesterday to rent this stand. There’s my permit from the market administrator.” She spoke with annoyance and indignation, her voice rising so the crowd could hear. “I paid in gold last week for these animals, and here they are in the stall I rented, waiting for a buyer. I paid in gold last month for this spaceship, and now I am here, trying to recoup all the gold I’ve been spending! And maybe I’d be making a little of it back, too, if you weren’t standing in my way!”
There was risk in getting openly angry at these men, but they had to be near the breaking point, and in any event that’s what a real seller would do.
“You can’t be here!” the guard spluttered. “We aren’t allowed contact with other planets. It’s, it’s…wrong!”
Sarah shot back. “The contact’s already been made. You seem no worse for it, though I can’t say the same for my customers.” She glanced up and observed what had grown into an immense gathering, perhaps three or four thousand people, all desperate to see the offworlder who had come to sell.
“Don’t you see what I have here?” Sarah shouted. “These are animals! Real animals! Perhaps you believe animals don’t exist anymore. But they do! All these kinds still live on earth – birds, reptiles, amphibians, mammals. They are precious and expensive, yes, but here they are – very much alive and very much for sale!” She wanted to tell the truth, that she had obtained her entire stock at a single pet shop for less than half a kilo of gold. But this was clearly a seller’s market. If she could get a king’s ransom for swine, it was proper that she do so.
The crowd started to inch forward. She had given her merchandise a name: animals. A word in children’s schoolbooks, nothing more. The lure was irresistible.
The police captain glanced at his compatriots. The Owner of the bazaar needed to come and deal with this crazed girl, but how could he summon him in time? Things were happening too fast; the man’s mind reeled. An alien come to market to sell animals? An alien who had rented a booth? The only way to restore control was for her to fly off the way she had come. “You have to leave at once!” he demanded. “Get back in that thing and leave!”
Sarah addressed the crowd again. “I have come to sell! There is my permit – all of you can see it. I paid gold to rent this stand. I have a right to sell my merchandise. Freedom for the seller, freedom for the buyer! That’s what you say on Laxalar. Or are you going to let these men tell you what you can and can’t buy? Surely you have money to spend! If so, then don’t you have the right to spend it as you choose? Look at these animals! Imagine giving one to your child! Ponder her fascination. Picture his joy. Consider well your young one’s amazement at receiving such a present! Is there no one here with gold?”
Sarah prayed for the commercial element of Laxalaran culture to prevail. But what if the isolationist strain asserted itself? How could she tip the balance in her favor? The idea had come while identifying the Second Lie. Laxalarans were taught that animals had been driven into extinction. Sarah’s merchandise repudiated that doctrine: clear proof that the planet’s Founders were liars. And if they had lied about animals…
An elderly woman stepped from the crowd, pushed between two guards, and leaned against one of Sarah’s tables. She sniffed at a snake, inquired, “A gift for my grandson, perhaps?”
“Ah, the blacksnake,” Sarah responded matter-of-factly. “Very special animal, the blacksnake. Every boy on earth wishes he had a blacksnake. But only a few do! I’ve spent a lot to obtain this particular one, but seeing as how you are my first customer on this world, I suppose I could beggar myself and sell it for three kilos. But then there’s the cage, of course. You can’t expect me to just throw that in. And what about food? Snakes don’t eat what you and I eat, you know. But of course you don’t know, now do you? You’re going to need an owner’s manual for sure. Happens I have a set of those just over here.” Sarah slid off her horse and kept talking. “First customer or not, you can’t possibly expect me to sell the whole package for anything less than three point six kilos.”
The woman rubbed her finger along the top of the snake cage, a look of revulsion upon her face. “This box is all but falling apart,” she said. “And what’s so special about a black snake? You should have brought a red one or a blue one. Now that would have been something worth buying. And food, you say? Look at the thing! It probably eats next to nothing – if animals even eat, and I’m not sure they do. I haven’t seen them eat a thing since you got here! No, I can’t possibly pay more than one point five kilos.”
“One-point-five kilos!” Sarah exclaimed. “Are you trying to send me home in poverty? The trouble I’ve gone through…” Sarah kept bargaining, but her mind stayed locked upon the crowd. They had been waiting for a signal, some sign either to flee in panic or celebrate with relief. Hearing the back and forth of seller and buyer had given them what they needed. Shoppers surged forward in anticipation and began ogling Sarah’s merchandise. The policemen looked at one another in despair and began slinking away.
“You!” Sarah shouted at the guards, her finger shot out at them for emphasis. “Where do you think you’re going? Don’t you dare leave me in this mob! In fact, one of you had better get more help, don’t you think? What if any of my property gets damaged – or stolen! I’ll insist the Market Owner reimburse me in full. Don’t think he won’t take it out of your pay. Look at this fine steed…” She patted it on the neck. “It’ll bring fifteen kilos if it brings a gram. Think of what’ll happen if the Owner has to pay me fifteen kilograms of gold!”
So it happened that within the hour, Sarah had twenty-seven Laxalaran guards protecting herself, her ship, and her inventory. The animals moved at fantastic prices, one after another, but there were always more for her to bring out and sell. The sun set at last and Sarah had no choice but to call it quits. It had been the most exhausting, and the most profitable, day of her life. Though the market was about to close, the throng had grown till it filled every corner of the bazaar. Over a hundred police shielded her. How many people in the multitude? Ten thousand? Twenty thousand?
“I will come back tomorrow!” Sarah shouted, and the crowd cheered. Turning to board her spacecraft, she at last allowed herself a tight, triumphant smile. Laxalar was an open world!
Rich Coffeen 