“Nightminster.” Donald murmured. Well this should prove to be entertaining. He was not forgetting the cold gleam in Nightminster’ eyes.
Nightminster moored his flying boat to a buoy fifty yards offshore and was rowed to one of the quays by a harbour tender.
“Good afternoon Donald,” he said, as he stepped ashore. Like Donald, he wore The Captain’s Best boots and brown overalls, although his had large, transparent pockets down the thighs. “I’m pleased you chose to come. Wait here whilst I arrange refuelling.”
The tall man loped away to the jetties, where he boarded the neat, black barge embarking the exotic surplus and exchanged some banter with the crew. Evidently the smart little ship was part of the Value System operation—although Donald could not fathom what pig farming and leather goods had to do with freighting surplus, unless it was that the barges would otherwise have sailed empty. From the barge, Nightminster strode across the apron, head tipped up, to disappear inside a windowless brick block. This was an odd structure, like a plinth for some gigantic statue never installed. Its form hinted at many levels hidden underground, full of secrets.
After a wait of about twenty minutes, Nightminster re-emerged and beckoned to Donald. Together they returned to the flying boat on a fuel lighter rowed by a team of a dozen in neat time. Donald followed the cat-like Nightminster in stepping across a yard of cold, brown Thames onto the port sponson of the flying boat and stooping through a hatch into a roomy cabin beneath the wings. This was the cargo hold (Nightminster informed him). It was directly under the wings to maintain the balance of the aircraft in flight.
“Get forward and make a pot of coffee,” Nightminster said, pointing at an oval door in the bulkhead. “We’ll be flying all night, so we’re going to need it.”
“Get forward and make it yourself.”
“Kindly make us both a pot of coffee, Donald. Please.”
“That’s better—where are we going?”
“Oban.”
“Oban? But—” Donald started laughing.
“Coffee please. Only one captain of this ship.”
Donald was momentarily irritated by this officiousness until he opened the door of rivetted metal. Its lightness and rigidity amazed him. It gave into a cabin rather like a gardener’s hut, with a couple of bunks and a compact galley. It had a window to each side that could be slid open. Donald lit the primus. A bit more exploration revealed a refrigerator made of aluminium sheet and cork. To judge from the smell and hot pipe leading through the roof, it burned oil to achieve its cooling. It was stored with coffee, black bread, boxes of sliced pork and butter.
Nightminster remained in the cargo bay operating a panel of valves that controlled the fuel flowing into the various tanks. A couple of crewmen on the fuel lighter hand-pumped for half an hour, until Nightminster signalled they stop. He unshackled the fuel hose and passed it back across. Donald was impressed to notice the flying boat sat noticeably deeper in the water.
“How much fuel does this thing carry?”
“Up to six tons, although today I only loaded two.”
Donald had no idea what to make of such remarkable information. Okeke had once told him the limousine weighed about two tons. It was beyond comprehension that such a bulk could leave the ground—and that was just the fuel, not the great structure of rivetted metal plates and four engines each as big as the body of a carthorse.
“How much does two tons of fuel cost? And how did you pay for it? I never saw any bags of gold.”
“You don’t need to know.”
“I’m interested though. Visiting the Newmans’ business made me realise I know absolutely nothing about how trade works.”
Nightminster hesitated, obviously wondering if he could be bothered explaining, or perhaps wary of what secrets he might reveal.
“In brief, it works like this. I want to buy two tons of mineral distillate fuel, the price is 150 ounces—of gold.” Donald registered surprise. The oil burned by his limousine cost only about one third of that. It was a mix of animal fat, vegetable oil and turpentine—and it smelled even worse. Presumably a flying boat demanded a finer vintage. “I go into that bunker over there. It’s called the Balancing House of Kronstein. I sign what’s called a bill of exchange, which Kronsteins put in a file. At the end of every week, the file gets sent into the Clearing Assembly of the Central Enclave. There are a dozen or so balancing houses scattered around London, some in the Enclave and some out in the asylums. Every month they carry out a vast adding up of all the transactions from all the trades of that period. 99% of the payments cancel out, because trade goes both ways. The remaining 1% gets shifted as physical gold to whichever balancing houses are owed it, then the process repeats in the next month.”
“You use paper money?”
“No! A bill of exchange is fully backed by gold, not fiat shit charmed from thin air. Businesses have to make use of bills of exchange, otherwise gold would have to be shifted about all the time to no purpose.”
There was an interesting point here. Nightminster’s Value System must leave a paper trail like the tail of a comet across the sky. The same must be true of any business including the sovereign households. If ever a person wanted to grab this whole society by the balls and twist, the means to do so lay in all the heaps of secrets lying within that squat bunker in the middle of the Port of Erith and in other balancing houses. This thought amused Donald, in an idle, day-dreamy sort of way.
Nightminster locked the cargo hatch and shooed Donald forward up a narrow set of steps to the cockpit. This was a broad and airy point of command. Windows occupied every direction except downwards. Outside,
