You wanted something… something that you knew about that the rest of the universe didn't. And the only thing they knew about that the rest of the universe didn't was the exact nature of the Preciousness, and (at least as regarded the average trader) that they carried some sort of stsho psychological…
...event.
She punched in data with sudden energy and factored in political uncertainty and instability: stsho…
and even, thinking about Tahaisimandi Ana-kehnandian and his meddling personage…
instability: mahendo 'sat.
The computer silently worked and worked, and came up with a whole new set of projections. Under those conditions, a person wanted essentials in store and a government or a station wanted information and strategic necessities in greater abundance than ordinary. And it projected price rises and scarcities in different patterns.
The only difficulty with that scenario, the glaringly clear difficulty, was that inside information didn't do you a bit of good if the people making the decisions to buy weren't also privy to it. It was good for playing the futures game. But perfectly smart investments could bankrupt you if the secret stayed secret.
As, contractually, it was supposed to.
Strategic metals, strategic materials, and out of a place like Kita, which was a quasi-star of so new a generation it hadn't heavy elements and wouldn't exist except that it provided services and repairs, and that those services and repairs had employed people who wanted first food and then luxuries to ameliorate their barren lives, and then employees who served up the luxuries, and then food to feed the purveyors of the unnecessary, an ecosystem of elegant simplicity beginning to run to the baroqueries common to civilization.
All of which told you, as every trader knew, that Kita was a place that imported as much for its own use as it could afford to have, and exported surplus luxuries, which it might well have; surplus necessities, which it was more reluctant to release; surplus people, who wanted out of Kita Point; and finally the final layers on the developing economy of a new station, Kita served penultimately as a cheap warehouse for speculators to store what could be imported from its neighbors and unloaded at a more advantageous time, at a higher price; and most baroque of all, it manufactured things out of the pieces, parts, and materials which the speculators warehoused; and employed workers who in turn began to want luxuries, and so on, and so on…
Dreadfully crazed, a developing economy. But Kita did produce some of the damndest things, geegaws, items in incredibly bad taste, the product of idle minds and fertile imaginations, and occasionally, just occasionally, some product that actually had unanticipated popularity in some other port.
She scanned the lists for materials in future necessity, for materials all species tended to hoard in time of trouble, and idly, finally, for odd items that might prove an inspiration to some local merchant… least reliable: never, as a through-passing trader, gamble I heavily on fads.
But you never knew what might lurk there, and along with the life and comfort necessities… a methane-side curiosity, a compression-jewel that, exposed to oxygen and water… blossomed and ablated unpredictably.
Perhaps she'd been dealing with stsho too long. Perhaps she'd been speaking stshoshi too long.
But there was a word: niylji, art-by-irreproducible-chance.
The image of the exploded object was… white with pale mineral stains.
And the legend said you didn't know what you'd get until you uncased it. Or detonated it, as the case might be. An electronic fuse. Pull the tab to admit oxygen, and run for your life.
Art by explosion.
How big were the things? Palm-sized. The finished — pieces — were unpredictable. Some went to fragments. Some just puffed up to about the size of one's head.
Done on methane-side, under pressurized oxygen, they mostly eroded to a fist-sized mess. Done on oxygen-side, they absolutely… flowered. Somebody on Kita must have found it out the hard way, because it was certainly the first time she had seen the offering. The picture and explanation of the exotic was intriguing, although you could expect the entrepreneur who had actually dealt with methane-side (an accomplishment) to get the globes manufactured there, had picked the biggest of the lot.
Certainly worth a try… they had the franchise. It was a mahen company, trying to market them as geological curiosities, cross-listed under collector's market. They were willing to enter a partnership agreement with a company that could deal in a can lot… gods, that was no small number.
Inexperienced entrepreneur. They hadn't found any takers. Kita got mostly kif, tc'a, and, mostly, mahendo'sat in the trades associated with industrial companies, and traders, a lot of traders.
Callthe fellow. See if he'd deal.
The merchant ship, captain Hilfy Chanur, to Ehoshenai Karpygijenon. In exchange for exclusive trading franchise under your patent of creation we meet your price and will contract with you for future shipments based on sales and returns, patent holder to assume legal liabilities relating to manufacture and compliance with Compact safety codes. We are at dock for the next 12 hours.
That was a short time frame. But either the seller had the merchandise or he didn't. Either the seller had been waiting long enough with his funds tied up… or he hadn't. If it was inexpertly packed, they were making very low-g passage, for reasons other than that cargo, which most merchant carriers would worry about.
The merchant ship, captain Hilfy Chanur, to Tabi Shipping. Order for purchase: item #2090-986, 4
cans. Item #9879-856, 10 cans. Please confirm availability. Order valid for delivery within 12
hours or cancel.
That would hurry them. But it was a fair-sized order.
The merchant ship, captain Hilfy Chanur, to Aisihgoshim Shipping. Order for purchase…
And so on, with three more companies.
Thenshe called Haisi.
"Haisi?"
"I hear, pretty hani.”It was not a cheerful mahe. "What fine double-cross deal you got?"
"By what I can figure," she said, "you're right."
"What you mean 'right'? What mean, 'right'?"
Agitated, he was. "You know and I know you know. So let's not play games, Haisi. We're headed out, you know we are, and I've got a list of futures I'd recommend to you if you want to play the market."
"Want talk. "
"I'll bet you do. Safe voyage, Haisi. See you."
Drive him crazy, that would. She had not an inkling what Haisi knew. But aunt Pyanfar always said, If you're up against a smart opponent, make him think himself to death…
Com came live, an excited, effusively grateful Ehoshenai Karpygijenon, who spoke very little Trade interspersed with an obscure mahen dialect.
"Find same one time go bang I unload geo-logics, I say why not sell, lot people want like collect, like make go bang, like real lot many…."
And more like that. The entrepreneur in question was a dock worker who'd sunk his whole savings into buying this can of rocks from a tc'a trader and hiring tc'a to assemble them into tolerably high-pressure methane/nitrogen globes. Detonators came separate.