“They say so.”
“Why have we never seen a female?”
“They say members of their opposite sex are mindless and incompetent, useful only for breeding and therefore confined to planetary life. We’ve never seen any, so I assume we haven’t found the planet where they’re kept, yet. We have learned this much through the use of translator devices.”
“Is there a translator built into the thing you’re trying to sell me?”
“In this case, it doesn’t matter,” muttered the Flagian, fingering a scar that cast a fuchsia shadow across the rose-pink expanse of his furrowed forehead. “This is an all-emissions record that needs no language. In expert opinion it dates some million standard years ago.”
“Ah, now. Come, come.”
“Madam, I guarantee your satisfaction.” He fretted through several pockets, plucking and sorting. “Here, my location code. Here, my bonding agency. Here, my registered genetic identity. I will refund if you are not fascinated.”
Questioner found herself liking him. “You’ve seen the Quaggi?”
He nodded his head, jowls flapping. “I have, yes. They look like large piles of rock with huge compound eyes and some manipulating palps in front. They sit in monumental circles on carefully leveled plains on otherwise lifeless planets. They barely move as they commune, who knows with whom or what. In payment for the botanicals we offer, they extrude small chips of gold, platinum, or other precious metals. Other than that, they do nothing. Some of their circles are millennia, perhaps even aeons old … “
The trader stared aloft and shrugged, both face and gesture conveying his awe at the inscrutability of the universe. “When I was last there, I witnessed an outsider Quaggi come before one of these circles. It offered a recording, similar to the one I’m offering you. The recording was passed around the circle, after which the newcomer tore off its wings and antennae and joined the circle. The record was thrown aside, as on a trash heap. When I stopped by the trash heap, I found this one unbroken recording.”
“What do you want for it?”
He named a figure. She laughed and named another. When they agreed, he handed over a peculiarly shaped and stoppered flask that contained, so far as she could tell, several large handfuls of coarse gray gravel.
“And what is this?”
“The recording. The Quaggi applicant brings this container, the members of the circle in turn swallow the crystals and excrete them back into the container. Evidently they read it internally. However, you can pour the stuff into a hopper, and read the same thing the Quaggi do.”
“What hopper?”
“The hopper of an EQUASER, an Electronic Quaggi Sensory Reconstructor, made by the Korm as part of a communications system for their ships.”
“Aha!” She grinned at him, all her teeth showing. “How remarkable. And I suppose you just happen to have at least one such device for sale!”
“Only because it is useless to me without the recording … “
“Useless, but, one presumes, not valueless?”
“Oh, no, Ma’am.” He echoed her grin with a gummy one of his own. “Not at all valueless.” He saw the annoyance on her face and took a deep breath. “Questioner, I would rather have you as a friend than an enemy. The BIT has always felt so. You have paid us well for the reports we bring you, those little things we see that local governments won’t tell you.”
“That’s true,” she murmured. “The BIT finds the truth of many things that governments deny.”
“So, I make an offer. You tell me a few things about yourself, I give you the Korm device for nothing.”
“You traders have a list of questions about me, too?”
“It isn’t a long list,” he said apologetically. “It would take you little time to respond perhaps to one or two little queries.”
She grinned, suddenly diverted. “Ask away.”
“We want to know … what are you like? How would you describe your personality?”
She stared at him. It was the last question she would have expected and one of the few for which she had no ready answer. “Let me see,” she said at last. “I suppose I am task driven. My stimulus comes from duty. I am singleminded, stubborn, terrier-like in my approach to whatever job is before me. Human people who work with me say that I am a stern taskmaster, and this is true, though I do have a sense of humor. Haraldson said no entities could do this job unless they had a sense of the ridiculous, and I am frequently amused, even at myself. While I have the senses needed for enjoyment, it is difficult for me to enjoy because I can not forget the amount of work that is awaiting me, and there never seems to be enough time to do it all.”