“Sounds like a new convert to the trading lifestyle.”
“She’s still not quite in the same plane of existence with us, sometimes, but everybody is really good with her and many actually wait for her. She’s got more grit than me, I’ll tell ya that.”
I just continued eating. He was having too much fun to hurry him and I knew he would tell me what had him so excited—eventually.
“So, anyway, I asked her, if she was looking forward to selling her shawls or just selling. She giggled and said she had so much fun she wished she could just sell stuff. I asked her, ‘Doesn’t it bother you being in that crowd of people all day?’ She said no because when she was behind the table it was sorta like she was in the galley. Because people were coming to her, she felt in control.”
I began to have second thoughts about whether he actually would get to the point of this story, but I did not have anything else to do, so I did not interrupt.
“So, I knew we had that pile of stones in the locker. I also knew neither of us was going to get up there to sell ’em so I asked if she wanted to do it for us. I offered her booth commission on any she sold. I didn’t figure it would amount to much, and I was pretty sure you wouldn’t mind.” He stopped there and looked at me like it had been a question.
I was a little slow in noticing the pause, but said, “No, not at all. I was wondering just this afternoon about how we were going to deal with them.”
“What I meant is, do you mind that I offered her the commission? Ten percent?”
I shook my head. “Of course not, how much did she wind up with? Fifty creds?”
“Try four hundred.”
I do not think I could have been more surprised if he had hit me with the omelet pan. I blinked slowly in confusion. “She made four hundred creds in commission? In one day?”
He nodded with that big old grin plastered across his face. I knew he was telling me the truth but I could not quite process it. “But at ten percent she had to have sold,” and I lowered my voice to keep from screaming, “four thousand creds in a day? Less than a day, because I was up there with Brill around 15:00 and she wasn’t there then.”
Pip’s eyes dance in glee. “Yup.”
“Okay, you got my attention. Now back up and gimme the details.”
“You know how we thought there were about two hundred fifty or three hundred of them left? It was more like four hundred. The smaller ones kept falling to the bottom. In the end she sold just over four hundred of them in about six stans.”
“Gods, Pip, that’s about one a tic! For six stans?”
He just grinned, his head bobbing frantically in agreement.
The math fell into place then, too, and I practically yelled, “She got ten creds each!”
“Yeah, somehow. I have no idea how. I gave her the stones and leather stock last night and showed her how we were letting people buy the stones and then hack a piece of thong off the spool? Apparently she stayed up late and put a thong on every stone. She had some nice knot work to keep them together too. I saw them before she headed up to the flea with Rhon and the others. They looked good.”
“But ten creds a piece? You were getting five at the most.”
“When Rhon brought the pallet back, I asked her what was going on. Apparently our Miss Krugg is some kind of sales genius. She had bundled them into groups of fifty and stashed them in our cargo duffel. She would bring out a bundle and stand out near the edge of the booth and hawk them to the people walking by. She worked every angle, like the old get-em-while-they-last routine or calling them good luck stones. She hollered that they were fresh from the mines in Margary and just thirty creds each or four for a hundred. She even claimed they were blessed by a St. Cloud shaman. She had this whole bit going.”
“Wait! She was hawking them for thirty creds each?”
“Don’t look at me. She asked me what to sell them for and I just told her, ‘Whatever you can get.’ Rhon was killing herself laughing.”
“Where is she now?”
“She came in early and got some dinner, but she said she needed to get back to her shawls, so I suspect you’ll find her on her bunk. At the rate they’re going through yarn, I bet they’ll run out before we hit transition.”
“If you see Sean or Tabitha, you might tell them there’s a lot of really nice cotton yarn up in the flea. I bet they could shift to lacework and the mass on some of that cotton would be really low for the length.”
“Good idea. I’ll tell ’em.”
I sat there for a tick in stunned disbelief. “So, how much did we make?”
“We got two hundred fifty for the yarn we sold to the co-ed crochet team and three thousand six hundred twenty-five for the stones, after commission.”
I laughed. “That was money well spent! We’d have been lucky to make two kilocreds and it would have taken us three days!”
“That’s what I thought, too!”
“So, we’re clear on mass?”
“Yup.”
“We’ve got a balance on our partnership of over five kilocreds again?”
“Yup,” he said again.”Something close to it.”
“You know this is insane, right?”
“Like you being dragged out of Jump! by Alicia Alvarez isn’t?” He laughed some more.
“She didn’t drag me. I went willingly. But to remain on subject…trading…that is. You’re going to go talk to the batik guy? Chuck?”
“Yeah, I didn’t get a good sense of what that was on the digital, but what I saw was interesting.”
“I bought some samples. Brill liked it, too.”
“Okay, sounds good. You wanna go with me? I’ll wait until you wake up. I’ll want to go in the afternoon.”
”Better deals in the afternoon!” We chanted together and laughed.
It suddenly dawned on me that this was the first time Pip and I were not on opposite port-side watches since I had been aboard. In the past we never could leave the ship at the same time. Obviously it occurred to Pip first. “That could be interesting. I’ll see if Bev wants to go. She’s on night watch tonight, too.”
He went back to start evening cleanup while I finished the last of my spiced beefalo and rice. I had eaten most of it without noticing. Pip’s news was just so startling. I checked the tablet, just to make sure I had not missed any alarms from environmental, but I had only been gone about a quarter stan. It seemed much longer.
A small icon flashed in the corner of the screen, letting me know I had a message—not a standard intra-ship notification but an incoming one from the StationNet. I looked at for perhaps a full tick before I opened it. It read:
It’s beautiful. Damn, you’re good.
—AA.
It was another tick or two before I could close the message and take care of my dishes.
One thing bothered me about Sarah’s little performance. I stopped at my locker for a tick and pulled the two stones I had gotten from the pile and stuck them in my pocket before I headed over to deck berthing. Pip was right and I found her crocheting on her bunk. “Hi, Sarah,” I said from outside the quad.
She looked up and smiled. “Hey, there! Everybody on the ship is talking about you! I didn’t know you were a celebrity.”
I chuckled. “Well, I didn’t used to be. Things just got out of hand.” I stepped into the quad and leaned against Pip’s bunk. “I wanted to thank you for selling those stones today.”
She grinned. “Oh, you’re welcome. I had so much fun. People were so nice and I even had some patter that seemed to help. Patter? That’s the correct phrase?”
“Yes, that’s right. You learn fast.”
“Thanks!” Sarah beamed and seemed much younger than when we first met at the shuttle docks. Not physically. She still carried her age, but it looked almost painted on. I wondered how old she really was, but I was more than a little afraid to ask.