There was a message waiting for Tia when they returned to the main base at Central, with Doctor Haakon- Fritz still confined to quarters. A completely mysterious message. Just the words, 'Call this number,' a voice-line number for somewhere in the L-5 colonies, and an ID-code she recognized as being from Lars.
Now what was Lars up to?
Puzzled, she left the message in storage until Alex completed the complicated transfer of their not-quite prisoner, and accompanied him and duplicate copies of the records involving him down to the surface. Only then, when she was alone, did she make the call.
'Friesner, Sherman, Stirling and Huff,' said a secretary on the first ring. There was no delay, so Tia assumed that the office was somewhere in one of the half-dozen stations or L-5 colonies nearby. 'Investment brokers.'
'I was told to call this number,' Tia said cautiously. 'I, my name is Hypatia Cade...' She hesitated as she almost gave her ship-numbers instead of her name.
'Ah, Miz Cade, of course,' the secretary said, sounding pleased. 'We've been waiting for you to call. Let me explain the mystery; Friesner, Sherman, Stirling and Huff specialize in investments for shell-persons like yourself. A Mister Lars Mendoza at Pride of Albion opened an account for you here to manage the investments you had already made. If you'll hold, I'll see if one of the partners is free...'
Tia hated to be put on hold, but it wasn't for more than a microsecond. 'Miz Cade,' said a hearty-sounding male voice, 'I'm Lee Stirling; I'm your broker if you want to keep me on, and I have good news for you. Your investments at Largo Draconis have done very well. Probably much better than you expected.'
'I don't know about that,' she replied, letting a little humor leak through. 'My expectations were pretty high.' There was something about that voice that sounded familiar, but she couldn't identify it. Was it an accent, or rather, lack of one?
'But did you expect to triple your total investment?' Lee Stirling countered. 'Your little seed money grew into quite the mighty oak tree while you were gone!'
'Uh.' she said, taken so much by surprise that she didn't know what to say. 'What do you mean by total investment?'
'Oh, your companies split their bonds two times while you were gone; you had the option of cash or bonds, and we judged you wanted the bonds, at least while the value was still increasing.' Stirling was trying to sound matter-of-fact, but couldn't keep a trace of gloating out of his voice. 'Those bonds are now worth three times what they were after the last split.'
'Split?' she said faintly. 'I, uh, really don't know what that means. I'm' number='new at this.'
Patiently Stirling walked her through exactly what had happened to her investment 'Now the question you have in front of you is whether you want to sell out now, while the value of the bond is still increasing, or whether you want to wait.'
'What's happening on Largo Draconis?' she asked. After all, her investment had been based on what was going to happen in the real world, not the strange and unpredictable universe of the stock market And from the little she had seen, the universe of the stock market seemed to have very little to do with 'real' reality.
'I thought you'd ask that. Your companies have pretty much saturated their market,' Stirling told her. 'The situation has stabilized, just short of disaster, thanks to them. The bond prices are going up, but a lot more slowly. I think they're going to flatten out fairly soon. I'd get out, if I were you.'
'Do it,' she said flatly. 'I'd like you to put everything I earned into Moto-Prosthetics, preferred stock, with voting rights. Hold onto the seed money until I contact you.
'Taking care of it now, there. All logged in, Hypatia. I'm looking forward to seeing what you're going to invest in next.' Stirling sounded quite satisfied. 'I hope you'll stay with us. We're a new firm, but we're solid, we have a lot of experience, and we intend to service our clients with integrity. Miz Friesner was formerly a senior partner in Weisskopf, Dixon, Friesner and Jacobs, and the rest of us were her handpicked proteges. She's our token softie.'
'Token, Oh! You're all-'
'Shell-persons, right, all except Miz Friesner. Oh, we all worked on the stock, bond, and commodity exchanges, but as systems managers. We couldn't do any investments while we were systems managers, but Miz Friesner agreed to join us when we bought out our contracts.' Stirling chuckled. 'We've been planning this for a long time. Now we're relying on grapevine communications within the shell-net for those like us who want to invest, for whatever reasons, and would rather not go through either their Counselors, their Supervisors, or their Advocates.' He sent her a complicated burst of emoticons conveying a combination of disgust, weariness, annoyance, and impatience. 'We are adults, after all. We can think for ourselves. Just because we're rooted to one spot or one structure, it doesn't follow that all of us need keepers.'
She sent back a burst that mirrored his, with the addition of amusement. 'Some of us do, but not anyone who's been out in the world for more than fifty years or so, I wouldn't think. Well, I'll tell a couple of friends of mine about you, that's for certain.'
