The men did as they were told, rather quickly in fact.

Ted rushed out and let the men up almost instantly and I got an explanation about white flags and trade relations.

Walnut Grove had three hundred some residents, or so the men claimed. We had to travel sixty kilometers to reach the settlement.

The small vehicle only had four seats. The last two clung to the side. They would speed up to slow down and switch positions. Then speed back up in front of us as they led us back to their settlement.

Outside the settlement was the same table, chairs, and a pole with a white flag.

While we were in a strong trading position they had very little with which to trade.

Eventually the discussion transitioned to schema.

When I offered all the schema’s I had Ted asked to speak to me.

Three other times he had to take me off to the side to have conversations about things I’d said that I shouldn’t have.

He explained for a while, the two other men waiting on their chairs.

“I don’t understand,” I said, “they only take up storage space. We don’t loose them if we make a copy do we?”

“No,” Ted said slowly rubbing his face.

They might have a schema I could us, but Ted said I wasn’t to ask for any specific item or they would raise the price.

“This is taking too long,” I said.

I walked past Ted, who I heard sigh.

Both men looked past me at him before looking at me.

“We have an ammo printer. 9mm,” I said, it was something I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone.

“I want all your schema. We will give you all our schema. We have-” I realized I didn’t know what schema the people with me had.

“My people will sell you all their schema for 0 credits, then you will sell each of us all your schema for 0 credits. You will provide scrap for ammo and will will give you half of the ammo we’ve already printed.”

I looked at Ted and he shrugged.

“Thirteen thousand rounds, so six and a half thousand roughly,” he said.

That wasn’t what I was asking.

“My people will stay with the vehicle and go into your settlement in pairs. None of your people will approach the vehicle. If this is not acceptable I will fire the rail gun into your system settlement system, batteries, and solar panels. If anyone leaves, I’ll kill them.”

“What else did we have that was valuable?” I asked Ted.

“The fruit tree saplings,” he said, “vegetable seeds, ammo in various-”

“None of the ammo we can’t print,” I said, “a few seeds for every plant we have if we can spare them. Get seeds from them as well if they have some we don’t. What else?”

“Music files-” Ted began.

“Give all the music and get everything them have. Anything that’s data give them.”

“Maps and books?” Ted asked.

“Yes.”

Silence stretched. The two old men hadn’t reacted.

“Will they run or attack?” I asked Ted.

“They will send five or ten runners at the same time in different directions,” Ted said, “likely they have a dug-in bunker behind the vehicle already.”

I checked the map.

“Six people,” I said with a nod, should I kill them?”

“No,” Ted said calmly to me, “these men will approach those six and take them back to the settlement with them.”

“Will they trade with us?” I asked.

Ted sighed letting out a long breath.

“Do you have a council or a king?” Ted asked.

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“Council,” the men said after sharing a look.

“You,” I said pointing at one of the men, “go back. Explain to them what is going to happen.”

I took the mask off peeling it up and staring at them until one man tipped back far enough in his chair to fall over.

I waited for Ted to help him up and put him back in the chair.

I took the knife off from my belt, took my seat across from them, and cut into my forehead from mid forehead to the hair near my right ear.

Then I sheathed the knife while the white hot healing fire attacked the injury. Knitting the cut closed.

When I felt it stop bleeding I swiped my hand across the cut once in the hope they would better see the wound close.

I waited until they stopped staring at the cut and were alternatively meeting my eyes and looking away, clearly not sure where to look.

“If you kill any of my people,” I said as I stood, “I will destroy this settlement and kill as many of your people as I can. Do you understand?”

They both nodded.

“I’ll be in the woods,” I said to Ted. Then I paused.

“I can track your implants on the map,” I said to the men, “Yours is-” I read the man’s ID off and then did the same for the other man.

Their eyes widened a bit.

“Don’t send runners out,” I said, “I don’t want to kill them.”

I watched through the binoculars as Ted and John pulled the sled from vehicle 4 to the trade negotiation table.

The settlement had sent a man out there. The six beyond us were back in the settlement and I was watching the map more than I was looking through the binoculars.

There was an animated discussion where it looked like the man was screaming at Ted.

Ted didn’t react except to nod occasionally. The man finally tossed up his hands and stalked back to the settlement letting them haul the sled as they followed.

I could see a crate, likely containing the ammo, as well as plants of some sort as well as an assortment of other things.

Before I entered the woods, while the men were explaining to the six that they had to give up the bunker and return to the settlement, I plugged into the three music boxes and copied the files over. They all had the same set of files already.

Sharing schema with the others was a bit odd. I learned that most of them couldn’t store more than four or five schema within their implants. While I had room to spare.

As such I was only waiting for the public and private schema prices to change to zero credits.

Ted was in the settlement, in a room with nine people with a cluster of others around it.

He told me that it would take a long time, hours he expected, to convince them.

It only took an hour before there was a job task on the settlement feed.

I accepted it. The task required me to upload all my schema for a reward of 0 settlement credits.

Nothing happened for a while, and then a list of files appeared and began to transfer.

I cleared the screen and checked the map. Everyone was clustering together in different buildings within the settlement.

I accepted the task to upload music. And the task to upload books, though it appeared I did not have any of those.

When it became available I accepted the download of all public and private data for zero credits.

It took five hours to transfer the data. Ted and John had returned to the trailer with a sled stacked full of items. Ted and Gary walked back to the trade table.

Two men from the settlement waited with them. They were talking freely but about what I couldn’t guess.

I learned how to prioritize data transfers.

They didn’t seem to have cyberware schema of any sort. Only weapons, solar panels, batteries, and ammo.

I downloaded all the books first. There were four-thousand and all of them transfered faster than a single schema had.

Most of the books were fiction, which meant the stories in them weren’t true. There were only a few hundred books that were non-fiction. Most of those seemed to be historic in nature, though there were books about gardening and working with lumber.

There was a four book series on furnaces and forges. And another about the history of flight. Ted was going to love that one.

When the transfer was finished I checked the map, and then edged up over the ridge I was behind using the binoculars to see what Ted was doing.

Ted and the two men from the settlement were sitting while Gary was telling some sort of story with his hands.

I gave it ten minutes, but no one moved.

I checked the map, moved farther into the trees and pointed the weapon up. I fired three times as quickly as I could. The weapon was powerful, could store a massive amount of energy, but it could not fire rapidly.

I checked the map as I moved to the backside of the trailer. The dots were moving, both of mine coming back while the other two were already in the settlement. They must have run.

The engine started while I climbed into the trailer.

“Stay in cover everyone,” Ted called out, “This is almost over with.”

Ted led me back to the spot I normally sat near the batteries.

I plugged in the the rail gun as I sat.

“That was,” he said slowly, “the best trading session I’ve ever been a part of. We got seeds and egg laying ducklings. They are the cutest little things. They thought they would receive twenty schema at the most,” he said with a small laugh.

“I’d have been happy being on the other end of that trade,” he said with a grin.

“They didn’t believe it by the way,” he said.

“The teeth, the red eyes, the healing- They didn’t believe it. Too many rumors of the demon gangs, the settlements where they worship demons. They believed the rail gun though. Someone had seen one before and saw yours with binoculars. If we trade like this again we might have to show overwhelming power first, or better yet not do it this way again. If you give me access to the storage you have I can trade with just that and the ammo. Telling them we have a printer was-”

He let out a long sigh and went about packing his pipe.

“I thought- think it is foolish. Even if you can kill them, they can still kill some of us first. I could have got the blankets, ducklings and seeds with half- a quarter of the ammo you gave them.”

“I do not understand that,” I said.

“Understand what?” he asked using a lighter to light his pipe.

“It cost us little and is very valuable to them. It would be one thing if it was ammo we could not replace but when it cost us so little-”

A gun shot rang out. I paused, switched to the map but saw no other dots. I pushed past Ted’s rising form needle revolver out of it’s holster.

People got out of my way, even though the interior of the trailer was packed full.

“I- I-” one of the men said, “it was an accident,” he said as the trailer lurched as it began to slow.

“I was cleaning- I thought it was empty,” he said glancing around as everyone gathered.

“I thought-”

“Is anyone hurt?” Gary asked as he reached the and took the pistol from his hands. A cleaning kit was set out on the crate in front of him.

“No. It went out the side,” he said pointing.

“I’m really sorry.”