The Year's Best Science Fiction, Vol. 20

“This is business, I presume?” Martisela was having a grand time. I could tell.

“I’ve got something going. I need someone who can read the market for me. You’re the best I know.”

We looked at each other, suspicious as gangsters. “What’s the commodity?” she asked.

“Just backroom stuff. Strictly backroom. No shares, no speculation.”

“What’s the commodity?” Repeated, with a little edge to her voice.

“It’s 1.3 teratramos. Marti- 1.3 teratramos!”

Her chin started to rise. “You’re nervous, Orlando.”

“I’m not nervous.”

“Don’t lie to me,” she said. “ ‘No shares. No speculation.’ ” In her scornful he-man voice. “You’ve got something unstable and you’re trying to unload it before it decays to lead.”

This is the price one pays for dealing with an ex-spouse. At some point, all the surprises lay behind you. Along with most of the hopes. She looked at me, daring me to lie. I could see her hand edging behind her for the door. The water-taxi pilot who had brought me out was venting his boredom by tapping the boarding bell.

“I have acquired Esteban’s load.”

She turned on me in slow, blinking, perfect amazement. “The Hierophant,” she said. “You’re trading on the Hierophant.” Her hands came loose at her sides. “You’re trading on Esteban’s last load?”

Allow me to spare you the rest of our reunion. Swearing is like riding a bicycle, I suppose. In any case, there’s no percentage in outrage.

“It’s for his wife, Cynthia,” I said. “Esteban named me executor of his estate.”

“Cynthia Contreras. The golfa with the colored eyes.”

Perhaps Esteban’s semi-comely widow was the wrong person to bring up. “It’s for you as well,” I said. “To get you out of this place before the Church sends you off on some doomed bright matter ship.”

“What makes you think I want out of my obligation to sponsorship?”

This would be a rhetorical question. The wreck of the Hierophant had been found in the San Marcos star system just two days earlier. Nobody wants to die the way those people died.

“Have you seen the market fixing on April hostages? April hostages are up something like 20 percent.” The market seemed to be forecasting an imminent shortage.

She gulped that one back a moment. Then: “The sisters are a little touchy about that word, ‘hostages,’ ” she said evenly.

“When exactly were you going out on your sponsorship?”

“Tomorrow morning.” She looked at me. “You laugh and I’ll slug you.”

A phone went off at her belt-Martisela was late for the evening meal. They were wondering, was everything all right? My taxi pilot was calling out something about a cargo he had in the back, decaying to lead. Martisela seemed perfectly content to let us all wait.

“This unspecified salvage,” she said to me. “This is from that morghium deal we did? And the market is putting the price at 1.3 teratramos? That must be some kind of vacuum state.” I mentioned how Cynthia Contreras had sold off the isotope rights. Martisela shook her head in astonishment. “That’s a really stupid thing to do,” she said. Only we both knew Esteban’s widow, and she was not prone to stupid moves. Not at her most grief-stricken.

“You know where this all plays out.”

“At the Botanica.” She said it without thinking, in a rush of breath and memory that broke my heart. The Botanica Linda was where she and I had spent our lives. All our memories were there. All our good fights.

“This is just for Esteban,” she said as we boarded the water-taxi back to town. A couple of Martisela’s hermanas poked their heads out the door. “I’ll be right back,” Martisela called out to them.

I realized I was participating in a jailbreak-a Buenaventura sort of jailbreak. Martisela had made good her escape. But she was leaving for her sponsorship in the morning, she had to be back before then or give up any thought of ever retrieving her trader’s license.

This would be a jailbreak as staged by Cinderella.

Martisela must have realized this the same moment I did. All the way to the Bodega, I heard my Spanish Cinderella looking forward to midnight:

“Ya me chinge,” she muttered.

***

I remember when the Anglos started bringing their war business to us. There was not much discussion on the morality of marketing perbladium to sociopaths. Mostly, the Shoes worried that the old city, with its paraffin works and its churches all tinged green by lizard droppings, would present an unsophisticated face.

A new Exchange was built in one of the towns along the Buenaventura Crater rim, as far away from the wet docks and the paraffin works as possible. It’s very nice. Perhaps you’ve seen pictures? I especially like the true clock in the Court of Commerce. (Though honestly, how many people need to know the true ship time of some carrier up in the Blanco Grande? All the Bright Matter traders have their own true clocks anyway.)

The real money, of course, remains where it always has. In the back room of the Botanica Linda.