strange far-future universe, one filled with players expert in double-dealing and intrigue-and one where life itself rides on every bet.
Personally, I see nothing wrong in doing deals in a bar. Esteban always loved working out of Chuy’s. He wore the place like an old coat. Every barmaid was his foil and confidante.
We did a deal with a couple of Anglos just before Esteban went out on his last run. Twelve hundred pennyweight of morghium, bound for some ideology franchise in the Scatterhead. Whenever the negotiations got tense, Esteban would vow he didn’t need their money anyway. He could get enough to live on from Doctor Friendly, “the Spaceman’s Friend.” Then he would grab some nether part of himself and give a leer to the old tumor broker at the end of the bar-” What’ll you give me for this, huh?
The Anglos would look appalled. Martisela would look from Esteban to me in amazement, like Sleeping Beauty awakening in the wrong castle. “ This is what I sneak out of the convent for? High risk and low comedy?” And Esteban would grin at me, even as he pleaded with Martisela not to tell his wife.
Times like that don’t seem special until later, when you look up and suddenly realize they are over.
Tonight, I was back at Chuy’s. I was meeting the same Anglos, tying up loose ends with the same morghium deal. Only Martisela was back at the convent. She was through missing bed checks for a while. And Esteban?
My last conversation with Esteban, he was on this Bright Matter ship, the Hierophant. They were up in the dusky end of the Scatterhead Nebula, passing through a plume of tungsten ions left behind by some medium-sized supernova. Esteban had loaded the Anglos’ target isotopes onto the Hierophant’s starboard vane. He was calling me to double check their nuclear chemistry: Would perbladium transmutate into morghium under tungsten ion bombardment?
Really, they print this information on splash screens. I would have yelled at him for the price of the call. Except I knew the real reason he was calling. These pinche Anglos and their morghium job had him in sweats. He needed a little reassurance. I told him everything was all right. I promised him he wasn’t going to die, I’d see him when he got back.
Tonight, as I sat at our old table next to the tumor broker, I thought about that promise. All I had left of Esteban was a salvage ticket awarding me 900 pennyweight in unspecified isotopes. Not even a guess what these unspecified isotopes might be, or how long till they decayed to something else. Only that Esteban Contreras had entrusted them to me for the sake of his wife. And they were worth the price of a fleet of Bright Matter ships.
Chuy’s Last Load Lounge was hosting a wake for the crew of Esteban’s ship, the Hierophant. Chuy himself- Jesus Navarete to Anglos or ships’ officers-had worked on the Hierophant as a young man. Dorsal vane mechanic, he reminded his patrons proudly- “Where the money gets made.” A target shelf of hot phoellium had fused the fingers of his left hand into a flipper. A man of lurid humor, he had planed that load of glassified slag into a countertop, mounted it on dark azurewood and made it the centerpiece of his life as an innkeep. To this day, the counter glows from the isotopes embedded within.
Chuy was perfecting the head on a pitcher of French lager as I stepped up to the bar. Grief is thirsty work; three other pitchers extended to his left. Alpha particles from the bar passed through them, trailing arcs of delicate bubbles.
“Ah. Lazarus,” his voice slow with care for the beer. “Back from the dead to tell all.”
“Chuy.”
“I hear share prices for the Hierophant’s salvage rights have gone up 27 percent since the accident. I don’t suppose you’d like to take a little credit for that.” He never looked up from his task. In the best of times, there is antipathy between vane dogs like Chuy and mercaderos like myself. This was not one of those times.
I smiled. “You’re just saying that so I’ll buy the next round.”
He leaned forward to give me a malign squint. For one moment, an arc of quiet speculation seemed to spread out around the two of us. My life was, as they say on the Exchange, in play.
But the night was too sad for that sort of foolishness. He slapped my arm and gave me a snicker at once ugly and forgiving. The sort of laugh meant to be passed around between pinche cabrones like ourselves.
“Here,” he said, and passed me one on the house. As he did, he leaned in close. “A couple of gabachos looking for you.” He waved his flippered hand toward the room. “They’re around here somewhere. You keep your business quiet. I won’t be responsible, you start offending people’s sensibilities.”
Even as he spoke, I felt a presence at my side. In the mirror just past Chuy’s head, I saw a copper-haired Anglo with pouty lips and strawberried cheeks. I doffed my beer to him. “Mister Chamberlain,” I said.
He smiled. “Orlando Coria. And your friend, Contreras…?” He looked past my shoulder as if Esteban might be waiting in the crowd. No Esteban; Chamberlain lifted his eyebrows, well well well. “Damn shame,” he said. “Smart guy like that. And that nasty little nun?”
“Back at the convent.”
“Well,” he offered, “I’m sure you miss her.” He took my hand as he spoke. More than a handshake-I felt myself gently directed toward a quiet spot at the end of the bar.
Another Anglo waited there. This one sprawled across his chair, hips and shoulders cocked fashion-model style. A little smile played at his lips. This would be Chamberlain’s… “chauffeur?” These Anglos.
Chamberlain gave him a nudge that knocked his leg from the tabletop. “Bell, be convivial.”
Bell said, “Hey, Buddy.” They must have been bashful where Bell came from.
I made room under the table for my barter bag. It was mostly empty but for a couple of perbladium samples from one of Esteban’s little jobs. These gabachos had introduced themselves as perbladium speculators. I was curious to know if they would recognize real perbladium when they saw it. I was curious to know who they really were.
I set Esteban’s salvage ticket on the table and leaned back to take in their reactions.
Chamberlain studied the ticket over tented fingers. He might have been counting his money. He might have been adding up his crimes.
“That’s a lot of money for a bit of morghium,” he said.
“That was my thought as well. Have you seen what’s left of the Hierophant? Whatever you gave Esteban to turn, it didn’t transmutate into morghium.”
He gave his partner an expression of aggravation. “I told Seynoso to pay for this stuff outright.”
“That would have been awkward,” I said.
“When would it have been more awkward than right now?”
“About the time the Hierophant burned with all hands. Someone from the Mechanics’ Guild makes a point of looking up every registered investor.”
I was calling him a ship killer, is what I was doing. There were two possible reactions to this sort of slander. Horror and outrage, and this other one. More rueful, more considered.
Chamberlain pressed his fingertips a little tighter. “There’s a story behind this morghium deal. Things are more complicated than you think.” He waved his hand, the story was too complex to go into now. “I’m willing to buy these salvage rights from you, blind. I’ll pay you 10 percent market price. And before you laugh, consider the realities. You don’t know what you’re holding anymore than we do. You might be holding lead futures for all you know.”
I would have stood up to leave, except that Chamberlain was right. All I had in my hand was a market mirage. It was expensive as such things went, but all salvage looks good from a distance.
This was when I missed Martisela’s market expertise. She had three of the seven basic Thommist Catastrophes ingrained as quantum processors into the unused DNA of her hands. Wasn’t a decay chain she couldn’t follow. I had nothing to go on but my unscientific nose, which wrinkled considerably at these two.
“I’m not in a position to negotiate,” I lied. “This salvage claim belongs to Seсor Contreras’s family. Unless you’ve got some further claim, I am obliged to sell it at the market price.”
“ ‘Further claim?’ ” Chamberlain gave his compaсero a nudge, such language! “We have further claim,” he said. “We bought first position on your decay rights.”
He produced a futures contract for whatever isotopes might decay from Esteban’s unspecified salvage. I looked down till I found the signature of Esteban’s wife, Cynthia. I looked back and the two of them were grinning at me.
There is nothing illegal in optioning 900 pennyweight of pterachnium to one investor and then optioning its decay products to someone else. Martisela always warned me to cover those isotope futures in the contract. What had Cynthia been thinking?
