Ongoing tragedy… For a moment the President was outraged. Lipinsky spoke about tragedy in the same pedantic manner he spoke of assets and infrastructure.
These people are not statistics, the President thought in fury. But then the fury passed, and he sighed. He was slowly growing used to his own impotence. He looked up at Lipinsky.
“The—the nuclear plant in Mississippi? This situation is being dealt with?”
“I am informed that General Frazetta will implement a—rather novel—plan at Poinsett Landing. An artificial island will be built around the reactor to stabilize it.”
They can do that? the President wondered. Well, he concluded, why not? “I want that problem neutralized,” he said. Meaning the political problem as much as any other. “The full resources of the government, you understand?”
“Indeed, sir.” Lipinsky, the President knew, understood the political dimensions of a nuclear catastrophe as well as anyone.
“And…” The President hesitated. “General Frazetta’s other problem? The water supply?” Lipinsky paused, the moment of silence adding gravity to his words. “Our HAZMAT teams are still testing the water, Mr. President. Any information is exceedingly preliminary.”
“And the preliminary reports indicate what, exactly?”
Another pause. Then Lipinsky just shook his head. “Preliminary reports are not at all encouraging, sir.” So, the President thought, it would get worse. Three million homeless, and it will get worse. Worse.
Charlie woke with a start in the middle of the night to the sound of the telephone ringing in his ear. He clawed for the receiver on the passenger seat, clutched at it, raised it to his ear.
“Hello?” he said. “Hello?”
He heard nothing, not even a hiss. Charlie looked at the phone in growing surprise. No one had called him. The cellphone had rung only in his dreams.
Charlie threw the receiver back on the seat. “Got to get a grip,” he advised himself, and opened the door to let some of the wine fumes out of the car.
He had been drinking the wine pretty steadily. It was the only food he had left. That and some hard liquor in a cabinet.
“Got to get a plan,” he muttered to himself.
He stepped from the car to let the cool evening clear his head. Pain stabbed at him from his injured leg. He wandered over to his oak tree, split right up the middle, and looked at the world from between its two halves.
He was a trader, damn it. He needed some way he could do his job. There had to be ways he could take advantage of this situation. He dealt in commodities all the time, and what everyone lacked at the moment was commodities. There had to be a way he could take advantage of that.
If only he had a place to start. A place where he could start trading. A market. When the idea came to him, it was so beautiful that he could only gaze in wonder at the picture that unfolded in his mind.
Charlie Johns, he thought to himself, you are a genius.
Charlie was back at the convenience store. In the twenty-four hours since he’d left with laughter ringing in his ears, the pile of canned goods had been reduced by about two-thirds. The cans remaining weren’t the most desirable: they were things like cranberries and pickle relish sauce.
The young man was behind the counter this time, his gun still at his waist. Behind the counter Charlie saw television sets, stereo systems, boom boxes, a few home computers. “You found some cash?” the young man said. “Or you got a TV set or something, we’ll take that, too.”
“What I’ve got, friend,” Charlie said, “is a way to get rich. What we need to do is establish a market.” The young man looked at him. “This is a market. Don’t you comprendo no English where you come from?”
“This is one kind of market,” Charlie said. “But what’s going to happen, mate, is that you’re going to run out of food soon. And then how are you going to make money?”
The young man shrugged. “We’ll get a delivery sooner or later.”
“But when?” Charlie said. “And how much is it going to cost you? See, the weakness is that you don’t know the answers to those questions, so your market isn’t stable.”
“Junior? What’s going on here?” The older man emerged from the back room, buttoning his jeans. He looked at Charlie, then scowled. “Oh,” he said. “The Limey.” Charlie turned to him. “I was explaining to your partner here—” he began.
“My son.”
“Your son,” Charlie said, “that the market for your goods is unstable, because you don’t know when you’re going to get a delivery, or how much it will cost.”
The older man reached into a back pocket, took out a round tin of Red Man, and put snuff in one cheek.
“Yeah?” he said.
“So what you do in order to regain stability,” Charlie said, “is establish a market in contracts to purchase goods when they’re delivered. Or contracts to deliver goods, if people have goods that they can sell to you.”
The two men squinted at him. “And how do I do that exactly?”
Charlie wiped sweat from his forehead. Hunger growled in his belly. “See, mate, what happens is that somebody comes in and wants to buy some bread. But you don’t have any bread, and you won’t until you get a delivery, so what you sell the man instead is a contract to sell him bread on a certain date, at a certain price. And then—”
“Wait a minute,” the old man said, “they give me money for this contract?”
“Right, mate. Yeah. The man gives you money, or—” glancing at the electronics behind the counter
“—something else of value. And then, once he has the contract, he can keep it or sell it. And if the price of bread goes down by the time you’re supposed to deliver, you’d lose money on the physical transaction, but you could make money by buying an obligation at the lower price to deliver the same goods…”
“This ol’ drunk’s crazy,” the young man said.
“No!” Charlie said. “This really works! See, if the price of bread goes up…” A young, very pregnant woman came into the store. She was badly sunburned on her forehead and shoulders. She pushed a shopping cart that held a portable television set. “How many cans can you give me for this?” she said.
“Just let me set up this market for you,” Charlie said. “I know how to do it. We can all make money.”
“We got a customer here,” the older man said. He walked to the pregnant woman, picked up the television set, looked at it. “Five cans,” he said.
Charlie looked at them in annoyance. “Look,” he said, “I’m sorry to interrupt the workings of this primitive system of finance you’ve developed here, but I’m talking big money here. This is the futures market I’m talking about.”
The older man looked at Charlie from under the rim of his baseball cap and put the TV set on the counter. “Pay me cash money for something,” he said, “or get out of here. I got business to transact.” Charlie couldn’t believe this stupidity. “Just listen to me!” he said. “Millions of dollars are made every day in just this way! I’ve made millions of dollars just like this! It’s easy! All you have to do is listen!” The older man slapped Charlie across the face, hard. His hand was large and rough. Charlie stared in shock at the man, at the incredible red violence in his glare. The man grabbed Charlie’s collar and rushed him through the door, shouting get out get out get out. Charlie caught a heel on the threshold and went over backward. Asphalt bit his hands, and his teeth rattled. The older man stood over him, red-faced and shouting.