Free I Am Crying All Inside and Other Stories by Clifford D. Simak Page B

little competition was exactly what Central Trading needed. And here was that competition—a competition that had not a hint of ethics. A competition that sneaked in behind Central Trading’s back and grabbed the market that Central Trading needed—the market that Central could have cinched if it had not fooled around, if it had not been so sly and cynical about adapting the podar crop to Earth.
    Just where and how, he wondered, had Galactic Enterprises found out about the podars and the importance of the drug? Under what circumstances had they learned the exact time limit during which they could operate in the podar market without Central interference? And had they, perhaps, been slightly optimistic in regard to that time limit and gotten caught in a situation where they had been forced to destroy all those beautiful machines?
    Sheridan chuckled quietly to himself. That destruction must have hurt them!
    It wasn’t hard, however, to imagine a hundred or a thousand ways in which they might have learned about the podar situation, for they were a charming people and really quite disarming. He would not be surprised if some of them might be operating secretly inside of Central Trading.
    The native stirred. He reached out a skinny hand and tugged at the sleeve of Sheridan’s jacket.
    â€œYes, what is it, friend?”
    â€œYou will stay with me?” the native begged. “These others here, they are not the same as you and I.”
    â€œI will stay with you,” Sheridan promised.
    â€œI think we’d better go,” said Gideon. “Maybe we disturb him.”
    The robots walked quietly from the barn and left the two alone.
    Reaching out, Sheridan put a hand on the native’s brow. The flesh was clammy cold.
    â€œOld friend,” he said, “I think perhaps you owe me something.”
    The old man shook his head, rolling it slowly back and forth upon the pillow. And the fierce light of stubbornness and a certain slyness came into his eyes.
    â€œWe don’t owe you,” he said. “We owed the other ones.”
    And that, of course, hadn’t been what Sheridan had meant.
    But there they lay—the words that told the story, the solution to the puzzle that was Garson IV.
    â€œThat was why you wouldn’t trade with us,” said Sheridan, talking to himself rather than to the old native on the floor. “You were so deep in debt to these other people that you needed all the podars to pay off what you owed them?”
    And that must have been the way it was. Now that he thought back on it, that supplied the one logical explanation for everything that happened. The reaction of the natives, the almost desperate sales resistance was exactly the kind of thing one would expect from people in debt up to their ears.
    That was the reason, too, the houses bad been so neglected and the clothes had been in rags. It accounted for the change from the happy-go-lucky shiftlessness to the beaten and defeated and driven attitude. So pushed, so hounded, so fearful that they could not meet the payments on the debt that they strained their every resource, drove themselves to ever harder work, squeezing from the soil every podar they could grow.
    â€œThat was it?” he demanded sharply. “That was the way it was?”
    The native nodded with reluctance.
    â€œThey came along and offered such a bargain that you could not turn it down. For the machines, perhaps? For the machines to send you to other places?”
    The native shook his head. “No, not the machines. We put the podars in the machines and the podars went away. That was how we paid.”
    â€œYou were paying all these years?”
    â€œThat is right,” the native said. Then he added, with a flash of pride: “But now we’re all paid up.”
    â€œThat is fine,” said Sheridan. “It is good for a man to pay his debts.”
    â€œThey took three years off the payments,” said the