ship he has available-not the fastest in the fleet, but the captain can hold it to within a baby’s breath of light speed, right where relativistic time dilation effects are most acute. Who can say why these people come to you? The market sent them, that’s all.
One blurs the eyes and allows a market’s worth of greed and fear and quantum computing power to shape the gaps into recognizable outlines. This strategy works best when the market is calm and winners and losers can be neatly defined. Tonight, the market rode this Hierophant bubble. All bets were off.
Here are a few of the commodities rising with the shipwreck market:
Bright Matter was up, of course. The price of Vacuum 4 doubled in the time it took my eyes to adjust to the dark. Moving in tandem to the Vacuum 4 would be the market in large-scale power generation. Power generators loved Vacuum 4 for its steady flurry of magnetic monopoles. And gnodium, the baryonic cinder that separates Vacuum 4 from the rather fragile vacuum of our own universe. And, if you care to press a point, the market in high- priced legal insurance; vacuum traders are notorious for whiling away the hours in recreational litigation.
Someone was offering Tuesday afternoon illyrium, which would be thralium 442 by Wednesday morning (and sold as a separate commodity).
Someone else was dealing Vacuum 8 and lyghnium, a favorite combination to Anglo ship killers. Vacuum 8 for its cognizance of bright matter. Lyghnium for its dense neutron cross-section and spectacular binding energies.
Doing even better than the bright matter market were futures in single-bean Saint Elise cocoa, which is prized in the French Violet for that little kick that arsenic lends the aftertaste. Corn and soy futures were doing well, especially in the Four Planet Nation, where the variable star M. Exelrod had been turning up the heat lately, which was good for their growing season.
And then there were the franchised ideologies. Even cocoa couldn’t compare to the market in April Communism. Object-Oriented Socialism had suffered a huge debt write-off, but they continued to do well on the strength of their subsidiary interests in ergosphere mining. Of course, National Socialism is always looking to break out of the pack.
The only unease in all this giddiness lay with the Hierophant itself. After fifty hours, the silence from the salvage crews was growing worrisome. Traders try to be realists about shipwreck bubbles. Nobody expects to smash a violin and hear Schubert. But there should have been something. The ghost walls whispered rumors of tellolite nodules dug from the face of the starboard vane. A few had tested positive for Vacuum 6. Where was the mother lode to make this all worthwhile?
A new set of ghost walls opened-salvage reports from the port vane of the Hierophant. The port vane carried medical isotopes, which I do not invest in. Good thing for me.
Martisela stood on tiptoe as she read down the lists of salvaged isotopes. It was one of those unconscious gestures of anxiety, like me, whenever I pull at my mustache bangle. “Ave Maria purisima,” she said into her fingertips.
There were a few heart warmers among the wreckage-a bit of albatine, shielded by chance behind an isotope vault. A hundred kilos of medical-grade cobalt 60 dug from the wreckage of a collapsed targeting shelf. But that was as good as the news got.
Most of the stuff on the port vane had been poisoned by neutron flurries from the accident on the starboard vane. That, and heat and melted titanium and carbon and boron.
“Esteban was out in that,” Martisela said.
“This Hierophant market is going to tank if they don’t find something better than this,” I said.
Across the room, investors pinched their foreheads. They checked their currency markers, and turned on their catastrophists- there must be some mistake. Really, it was a ship accident after all. What were they expecting? I gloated at their naivete for a moment or so. Then I remembered my own little bit of paradise.
Martisela watched me watch the port vane assays drift away. She nodded toward the currency marker in my back pocket. “Go ahead,” she said. “You might as well know now.”
My 1.3 teratramos of unspecified Bright Matter had bucked the market. It had increased in value. It was now one-and-a-half teratramos of unspecified Bright Matter. A remarkable price for something that no one could name. Martisela looked dubious. Even I was uneasy. This business is far from infallible. We might have been chasing a qubit shadow. Maybe something as simple as too many investors, and too many quantum recognizers, not enough hard-eyed realists.
I pressed the market to give me some sort of decay chain. Any real baryonic commodity will break down into a sequence of isotopes. Even without knowing the parent isotope, the market will extrapolate a decay chain, complete with estimate of its market value, half-period, and purity.
My 900 pennyweight of unspecified wealth just sat there, grinning at me.
“It’s some sort of vacuum,” I reasoned. “Vacuum 6, maybe. They don’t figure decay plateaus for Vacuum 6.”
Martisela gave me a look I had seen entirely too often lately. She told me to sell my shares while I had that little bit of mystery at my back. “If nothing else,” she said, “option futures on the decay products. A market like this, people will bet good money you won’t get your unspecified Bright Matter to market before it decays into their unspecified isotope.”
She was probably right, of course. But we had a little while. The assay for the Hierophant’s dorsal vane would not be in for another eight hours or so.
“Let’s go talk to the neighbors,” I said. They would be out on the patio, plying their trade in the metallic plasmas and exotic vacuum states. She put her arm in mine, and we smirked at each other just enough to show we were not fooled by this arm-in-arm business, not for one minute.
The Bodega Linda opened onto a patio in those days, a view past the paraffin works and down to the bay. This is where the jaded gentry drank and sparred. It was more or less invitation only, and I had never, not on my most profitable week, been invited. But one-and-a-half teratramos in my pocket made me cocky. Even if it was for one night.
We were stopped at the door by a security guard. She remembered me. I could tell by her dubious expression. She asked if we had weapons, and studied a handheld field detector while we answered. My perbladium sample provoked discussion with two security people, as did Martisela’s grids. They passed on the perbladium, but Marti’s grids were deemed an insult to the Efficient Market economist who ran the patio. I could leave Marti at the door, but I know where my gifts lie. I was the salesman. Marti was the banker. I could succeed without her-I could travel in this range. But I needed her financial sense to deal with the patio crowd.
I was debating how to broach the delicate subject of a bribe when the gatekeeper stepped aside for a man in an open-weave scarab-skin suit.
He grinned. He made a show of palming his eyes to peer in at us. “You bring a nun to vouch for your character and still they won’t let you on the patio!”
I was tempted to ask Zuniga what he was doing here. His cuffs were open and rolled back to his elbows. As I looked closer, I could make out the vestiges of bifurcation grids, just paling-out against the backs of his hands. They were dense and strange, I couldn’t figure what he was working on.
He nodded toward Martisela. “Are you back with us now? Served out your exile or whatever that was?”
“I’m just helping out a friend.” She refused to catch my eye as she said this. She absolutely refused to smile. “You’re here for the shipwreck market.”
Zuniga put up his hands- What can one say? “I find myself chasing down a bit of vacuum.” He chuckled as he said this. We might have been discussing some embarrassing family secret. “I’ve bought out four vacuum traders already. They all know they’ve got hold of something, not one of them is smart enough to tell me what it is.” He cocked an eye at me. He looked sly. “You always like the hot stuff, don’t you? The exotic vacuum states? The strange matter? I’ve always admired your taste in risky investment.” He sighed. “Would you had a bit more liquidity…?”
“The heart of a vacuum trader.” I endeavored a smile. “The purse of a gallery slave.” I found myself holding my breath. This is the moment one discovers that religious bent that Auntie Gracia had always hoped for. Sure, I had come to the Botanica ready to meet my silent partners. But not Zuniga. Anyone but Zuniga.
Zuniga normally worked in decay futures, which is not necessarily the last refuge of a scoundrel, but it is no place to see people at their best. Everything was a fire sale to Zuniga. And if not, why not?
He studied me. “I’m giving everyone 620 megatramos per pennyweight,” he said at last. “I’ll give you 620 megatramos for whatever you’re holding. Just because I like you.”
