A New Business, Part Two
I bought stock to fit the plan.
The standard was simple. All four limbs intact, but the body wrecked by a compound fracture, or burning with fever from an open wound. Or an illness like lung disease—beyond anything this level of civilization could treat, and yet curable on Earth with a simple drug.
Surveying the market taught me something else. Dental patients were classed as gravely ill, no different from fracture cases. Fair enough. In an age with no dentistry, a cavity was one of the things that could kill a man.
That was how I came away with ten slaves who met the mark well enough. The whole lot cost a mere seven gold.
Tending the sick ones could be left to the ISIS slaves. If I wanted them easy to use, they needed sorting too, so I named them, simply, ISIS-1, ISIS-2, and ISIS-3, and had them haul the slaves I'd bought out to the empty lot behind my stall.
They were injured, or spent from sickness. Strength came first. I set ISIS-1 and ISIS-2 to pitching a large ten-man tent behind the stall, laid the slaves inside, and put ISIS-3—the one with the broken leg—to boiling soup in a mess kit.
Feed them until they were full. Everything else could wait.
I dug through the instant food in the magic pouch. For something nourishing and solid, Korean food was still the answer, and the right thing turned up at once. I pulled out instant seaweed soup. Nothing restored a body like it. I added beef meant for soup stock as well. Anything stored in the pouch didn't spoil, so I'd been keeping grain, meat, and vegetables in bulk. It paid off now.
While the seaweed soup heated, I sliced a heap of beef, fried it in a pan, and tipped it in. Once a thick skin of beef fat had risen, I took out the rice and cooked it myself. I wasn't about to trust an ISIS man with a pot of rice. Over the gas flame I made a full pot, each grain standing dry and separate, then—since this was for recovery anyway—dumped the fresh rice into the soup and turned the whole thing into porridge.
I ladled the steaming beef-and-seaweed porridge out in great scoops and made every sick slave eat their fill. Those too far gone to feed themselves, I had the ISIS slaves spoon-feed. Sick as they were, they poured sweat as they worked through the hot porridge.
While they ate, I opened a wide pit beside the tent.
Dig
I bent the digging spell to cut the ground shallow and broad. Over the hollow I laid wood bought in the city market and set it alight, then used wind magic to feed the flame air so it would catch clean.
Fwoooosh—
The firewood bedded in the pit took and roared. I let it burn until the wood had gone to charcoal, then piled the heaped soil back over it, thick. After a short wait the earth above the coals grew pleasantly hot. I checked the warmth and layered blankets from the market over the spot, then called ISIS-1, ISIS-2, and ISIS-3, had them shift the tent onto the blankets, and move the sick slaves with it.
While the patients were being transferred, I opened the magic pouch and took out the medicine chest.
The necklace—Aphago—had been watching in silence. Now it spoke.
"I understand you mean to feed them well and let them rest first, but will that be enough? That female slave in particular looks to have a disease of the lungs. The blood on the front of her clothes is plainly where she coughed it up."
I knew. Tuberculosis, most likely.
"That's why she was cheap. If she were sound, you think I could've bought her at that price? Buy cheap, sell dear. That's the foundation of trade. Now I just have to fix them so they'll sell dear."
"A potion would cure them, yes. But as you know, if that's the plan, wouldn't you be better off simply selling the potion? You could comfortably ask ten gold a bottle."
A potion was a miracle drug. Drink it, and a mild illness vanished on the spot; even a gaping wound closed. The medicine itself worked magic, so of course it did. Even a low-grade potion ordinarily went for five or six gold at the least. Spend one on an injured slave and the garnish would cost more than the meal.
"How am I supposed to run a trade that doesn't pay? This is plenty."
I took a bottle of antibiotics from the medicine chest.
"And what is that? A potion of Earth?"
"Hardly a potion. If I had to liken it to something, call it herbs ground down, refined, and packed denser."
This world had its own knowledge of herbs. Skilled herbalists compounded them into prescriptions.
"It isn't a potion, but it has one advantage a potion can't touch."
"An advantage?"
"This. Mass. Pro. Duc. Tion."
"Mass production?"
"Yeah. Set your mind on buying, and you can buy all you want. And next to a potion, the price is a joke."
I opened the bottles of antibiotics, fever reducers, and painkillers, and had ISIS-1, ISIS-2, and ISIS-3 dose the slaves evenly. At this headcount I'd burn through them fast. I'd have to buy more the next time I went back.
Hot food in their bellies, and a pill with a sedative besides—the moment they lay down on the warm ground, they dropped straight into sleep. It was grassland, so the evenings ran fairly cold, but thanks to the charcoal they would sleep warm tonight. Eat well, sleep deep, and they'd be better for it.
I left them sleeping and called ISIS-1, ISIS-2, and ISIS-3.
"When you get hurt, where's the hospital you go to?"
They hesitated. They couldn't rebel, but they had no reason to show any real loyalty either. Times like this, you offer a carrot... except a carrot was wasted on trash like them.
I drew a baseball bat from the magic pouch.
"Figured as much. This is the only talk that works with you."
Terror took them, and they started to say something. Too late.
I put them face down and beat them in a line. Ten strokes each. ISIS-2, the first to give up the hospital's location and what he knew of it, was excused. The other two took another twenty.
The next morning, the ones with split backsides couldn't even lie down. They'd dozed in fits, groaning, and the skin under their eyes was black. I didn't care. I called all three and pulled out the three slaves in the best shape of the lot—broken arms, broken ribs. It was the first run, so I chose men who could still walk. I took out a cooler, packed it with provisions, and turned to the others.
"ISIS-1, ISIS-3. Look after them until I get back. If anyone's worse than they are now when I return, I'll tear the muscle off whoever was responsible and graft it into them. Do it right."
The threat landed. They shrank in on themselves.
I took ISIS-2 and the three slaves out to the outskirts, where the dimensional transfer point lay. They'd only been fed and put to bed for a day, but they already looked noticeably better. The medicine was taking. Then again, the only medicine they'd ever had in their lives was probably raw herbs off some herbalist. That was no match for an antibiotic made to enter the bloodstream and put its effect where it belonged.
Following ISIS-2, I found the hospital ISIS visited often. I ordered him not to run, and not to speak or write, then showed the injured slaves to the doctor. They stared as if everything were some wonder, but fortunately they only cowered at the thought that I was a mage, and said nothing strange.
Outdated equipment, filthy sanitation—and still the doctor's skill was considerable. Physical diagnosis and treatment come down to experience in the end, and a doctor who treats terrorists being incompetent would make no sense. He set the breaks, disinfected the open wounds, stitched and closed them. Where the flesh had rotted, he cut away the surrounding tissue and sutured what was left. Then he prescribed antibiotics in bulk. When he asked whether I wanted them admitted, I said they were fine and walked out.
The bill was cheaper than I'd expected. Surgery for three, plus all those antibiotics: six hundred and thirty dollars. In a country where income per person didn't even reach a thousand dollars, that was nearly half a year's wages for a grown worker. But if the three recovered and sold properly, I figured four gold coins a head—two hundred grams of gold. In won, roughly twenty-two million. Even counting the purchase price and the treatment, each one had cost me less than three million won. Nearly a sevenfold return. Drug running wouldn't clear more than this. A jackpot item, no question.
I had casts put on the men with the broken arms and ribs, and bought a heap of medicines besides—tuberculosis drugs and the like. Medicine wasn't cheap either. Another seven hundred dollars. An investment in yet more slaves, so I didn't mind it. I brought them back to Gaia.
For three days after our return, I made the trip to Earth with slaves another couple of times. I left the ones treated at the illegal hospital in Damascus with ISIS-1, ISIS-2, and ISIS-3, then boarded a plane alone and headed for Cairo again. Moving every time was a nuisance, but for now there was no help for it. The abilities I could actually use were limited.
Aphago, watching from beside me, slipped into a salesman's pitch.
"Must you go to all this trouble? Even now, why not accept the Archmage's legacy? Then the matter could be settled quite simply. Hehehe. Shall I bring the contract out?"
No. I wasn't about to throw away a year's grace. I could decide after I'd traveled Gaia to my satisfaction. What was so hard about a short flight...
Damn it.
I put up with the inconvenience and made for the Cairo transfer gate. There I passed through the usual goblin cave and climbed into the Humvee I'd left parked. Brush had grown in the meantime, but not enough to stop it. I smashed through low grass and shrubs and broke out along the forest track, and once I was on the highway that ran between the cities, I opened it up.
Vrrrrrnnn—
I pushed harder along the gravel, and after half a day of jolting down that road I was back in Ballard.
Modric's caravan was just preparing to depart. They'd sold what Ballard would take, and bought what they'd come to buy. One look at my slaves told me they weren't in any state to sell on the spot. I thought it over, then decided.
"I'm taking every one of them."
They wouldn't all fit in the Humvee, so I went back to Damascus and bought a cargo trailer meant to hitch behind a truck. I coupled it on and loaded the slaves I'd brought, along with ISIS-1 and ISIS-2. Not everyone fit. A few in worse shape rode in the back of the Humvee. ISIS-3, who'd worked hard the whole time while watching my mood, I put behind the wheel. Favor one man too much and the others lose their will. Better they keep an eye on each other and compete to catch mine.
Word came that Modric's caravan, preparations finished, was setting out. I dropped into the passenger seat and spoke to ISIS-3.
"Move out."
"Yes, Master!"
Vrrrrrnnn—
The Humvee rolled forward, slow, and the trailer hitched behind it jolted along in its wake. We followed the tail of Modric's column out of Fortress City Ballard. The caravan started east by north again, moving at an easy pace.