The Year's Best Science Fiction, Vol. 20

“Don’t worry about the lyghnium.” She narrowed her eyes at a cursor as it rolled down the crown of her knuckles to a stasis-point near the crook of her thumb. “Zuniga’s a dealer in decay products. When he looks at the market, all he sees is what he recognizes. But he tends to miss the parent isotope, which, in the case of lyghnium, is most likely to be…” She turned her hand as the cursor crossed through the cusp of skin between her thumb and index finger. Whatever she saw made her eyes get round. “Pterachnium,” she whispered. “Vacuum 3.”

I felt something giddy rise in my throat. Half the fleet communications in Spanish Space depended on tuned singularities. Most of them were collapsed from white dwarf stars by Vacuum 3.

“This is what those two gabachos at Chuy’s were after.” I heard a voice just beyond my sight: No more tutorials for rich tourists…

“This is what killed Esteban,” she said. “Esteban and everyone on his ship. I can’t believe we’re trading this. I can’t believe we’re making money from it.”

“You know what this means? We’re rich enough to kill! You know how long it’s been since you and I were rich enough, somebody would want to kill us?” No more money changing for Chinese smugglers. No more laughing along with jokes at my own expense.

Martisela made this bemused little moue. She looked as if she wanted to say something. Whatever it was, she let it drop. “Zuniga still has his fangs in you,” she said. “He will never allow your profit to eclipse his own. Not so long as you and he are yoked together.” She was quiet for a moment. I realized she was watching him as he made his way back from the patio.

Zuniga stopped at one of Seсora Sebastian’s glass cases. He pointed-there, to an apothecary bottle of rose hips. There, to a brass censer. Here, to a set of bifurcation grids, pre-loaded in their own epidural slugs.

I knew what he was doing-giving me time to sweat. It worked. I tried to think of some way of extricating myself from his grasp. Nothing came to mind.

Zuniga pointed to a scarab-skin jacket hanging from a rafter. But no, it had to be open weave, to match his shoes. All the Anglo gangsters were living on the edge, fashion-wise.

While Seсora Sebastian hurried off to retrieve just the right shade of blue, Zuniga slipped out his currency marker for a couple of quick deals. He was feeling good; he was clowning. He looked up at us as if he’d only just remembered we were watching. He grinned his most boyish grin- I’ve got to pay for this somehow -and began punching out sell orders as if in panic.

“Some people should stay away from self-parody.”

“How does he do it?” She marveled as she watched. “How does somebody with even less money than we have manage to push around the market the way he does?”

“He leverages himself to excruciating levels and then drums up some new deal to pay down his debt load.”

“And let’s don’t even talk about those suits.” She made a face.

“Zuniga and his little gangster conceits.”

Something behind her eyes made this nearly audible click. “What would you bet he pays for everything in anti-money?” I got nervous when Martisela talked about anti-money. Gangsters still use it. They like it because it is anonymous. Martisela liked it the same way she liked chocolate, because she wasn’t supposed to have it. Anti-money-more specifically, speculating in the misalignment between anti-money and the debt it was supposed to represent-is what got her installed in the Convent Santa Ynez.

“Don’t do it,” I said.

“Do what?”

“Whatever. Don’t do it.”

Her eyes were black and shiny like I’d seen them in the old days. “How much are you willing to be hated?”

“By Zuniga? You’re joking, right?”

“Not by Zuniga. By everyone.” Martisela had this little look of dread and wicked calculation. It made me nervous enough I would have asked what she had in mind, but Zuniga was one last dawdle from being upon us.

“What do I need to do?”

“Sign everything you own over to me.”

Perhaps I paused a beat too long. I was thinking of my winery in the Four Planet Nation. The tea plantation on the flanks of Olympus Mons. The beach house at Santa Jessica that I’d never seen. Martisela leaned her cheek to her collar. “I’m a nun,” she said. “Vow of poverty, remember?” What I remembered was that we were always better business partners than lovers. Somewhere along the way, those little pranks we played had turned expensive.

“You remember the vow of poverty is yours, not mine.”

Martisela didn’t even smile. She palmed my currency marker and brushed by Zuniga without a shiver. Zuniga never even looked at her, she was that good.

“Sorry to push, Hermano.” He gave me his best little frown of sincerity. “But I’ve got to wrap this business up.”

He tugged at his collar enough to show me this greenish smear along his left shoulder.

“I bought this open weave jacket a month ago. Everything stains it, and now look. I stood too close to one of those lizard trees and one of the little bastards rained down on me.”

Well, that explained the smell. At least on this occasion.