~*~
They found Ronny in a small building nearby, busy counting oranges from the newly arrived cart. The sparseness of whiskers on his face showed him to be a young man, barely out of his teens, if that. He glanced up from his efforts when the androids, led by Ned, entered through the open doorway.
“Master Storyteller, is something wrong? You look worried.”
“No, nothing. Um, just a touch of illness, I suppose. Must have been those clams last night. It’ll pass soon enough, if you know what I mean.” He followed his hasty explanation with a weak, joking smile. MO-126 was impressed. Ned mimicked human behavior well. Tam always seemed a bit too stiff. Most of the trade androids did. The nursery androids definitely possessed a more human quality.
“This is Master Trader Tam,” Ned continued. “He’s interested in the tally thing you’ve come up with.”
“Master Trader Tam,” Ronny said. “I’m honored. I’m more than happy to show you. It might be useful to you as a way to help you keep track of your trades. That’s really all it is.” He motioned to a clay tablet on one of the tables. Other tablets lay in stacks on tables and shelves nearby.
“Every time someone brings something in, I make a mark on one of these tablets. Each person has a different one, a mark, that is. Then, I make a mark for what it is he brought. Different kinds of fruit and fish and stuff all have their own marks, too. Then, I just make marks for how many. I’m doing oranges now for Ernie. That’s his mark there, and next to it is the mark for oranges, and each line after that means ten of them. For anything less than ten, I make a dot for each one. Simple, huh?”
Tam scowled. “And you came up with this yourself, did you?”
“Yeah. I wanted to help. It was real confusing before and not really fair. This way, if you bring in a lot to trade, you can get more—”
“Are you saying the traders don’t bring enough for everyone?” Tam said accusingly.
“Um, no. Not that. The traders have always been more than generous. It’s just that, well, it seemed right, you know?”
“No. I don’t think I do. Villages provide things the traders want and the traders provide things the villagers need. We don’t count and nitpick about it. We see what is of value and we trade what has value. There is an underlying trust that adds to the purity of the things traded. This is how it’s always been and the way it should remain. Goods tainted by these—marks are stripped of their essence. They hold no value.”
“Is there something wrong, Master Trader Tam?” Sydon, the village headman entered the hut, which provided too little space for everyone among the shelves of clay tablets. Since Tam was already uncomfortably close to the unfortunate Ronny, Ned and the two android dogs shuffled to make room.
“I was walking by and I heard you talking in here. You sounded displeased about something,” the headman added.
Tam spun to face Sydon. “Displeased? Yes. And disappointed. You have tainted your fruit, Headman. The goodness of them has been stolen by lying marks.”
“I…I…I don’t understand.”
“These…things take meaning from the things they count. They mark down words that people don’t say. I sensed something wrong before, and now I know why.”
“But this is just a better way to count oranges,” Ronny protested. “It doesn’t harm anything. It just helps us remember—”
“And if someone eats the orange, does the mark that counts it disappear?”
“Well, no.”
“Aha! That means that something of it is still there. If it’s not the fruit itself, it must be something else. The essence of the orange has been taken from it and captured in the mark. And then, I suppose, you plan to use those marks to decide who gets the things traded for them. That gives them power over your village leaders who should be deciding such things using the wisdom of their years, not marks on clay. You’re giving these little scratches life and power over people. That is simply wrong.”
Before either of the two humans could object to this less than rational argument, Tam pulled the orange from his bag and tossed it to Sydon.
“You may have this back. It is worthless to us.”
He turned away and left the building. The other androids followed him out, leaving the two humans behind, speechless.
“That should do it,” Tam said. His face no longer showed anger or disgust or any other emotion other than, perhaps, satisfaction with a job well done. “How many others are helping Ronny with his number keeping?”
“So far, he’s the only one,” Ned said.
“We’ve probably caught it in time, then. Unfortunately, we’ll loose this trade. That’s a shame. Those are good fruits.”
They returned to the still packed wagon, and Tam readied to depart.
“Wait! Wait, Trader Tam.” Sydon ran toward him, waving. His anxiety was the only thing causing him to hurry. A gond pulling a large wagon could not possibly outrun him.
“Yes, what is it?”
“We have other things we can trade. Things not yet counted. Things that, um, still have their purity in tact.”
The trader made a show of considering this for a moment. “I will wait until the morning and you can show me what you have. I will make no promises.”
With that, he led the gond to the edge of the village to establish a temporary camp.
“I want no harm to come to Ronny,” Ned said.
“You know we don’t do that.”
“No, I suppose you don’t. Corporation protocols. But denying the trade is going to have consequences. Isn’t there something else you can do?”
“The standard mitigation strategy for situations like this clearly applies. I must follow procedures.”
“Don’t give me that—”
“My job here is to mitigate the fault as efficiently as possible,” Tam interrupted. “What the primitives do is not my concern unless it is likely to harm the project. I don’t see that happening here.”
“I’ll keep an eye on Ronny,” Ned’s partner, Moby, said.
That won’t be enough, MO-126 thought. If the villagers decided to take out their frustration on the young man, one android dog won’t be able to protect him without compromising himself.