The Year's Best Science Fiction, Vol. 20

“Everyone?” Cynthia Contreras waved a hand: “Noah Dryden.” She made no further explanation, but that was explanation enough. We all lived with expatriate Anglos. We could pretty much guess what this one was doing here.

Dryden nodded at me. “How’s the commodities trade?” he said.

“Never better. How’s the smuggling trade?”

“I’m afraid you have me confused with someone.” He smiled. “I’m in franchised socialism.”-Even as his left hand rose by dead reckoning to the forty-eight yuen strung from his right wrist. “You mean this?” He laughed. “I’ve had this since childhood. But these bracelets are hardly uncommon where I’m from.”

In the dusky light of the kitchen, the eyes glowed bright enough to light the unmarked underside of Dryden’s wrist. Cynthia knew where I was looking; I thought she would look away, but her course was set. She didn’t much care what I figured out now.

“What did this one promise you?” I asked her. “Revenge on the men who killed Esteban?” Cynthia said nothing. “And now that he’s brought proof of their deaths, you turn over Esteban’s pterachnium to him as payment.”

“He seems to know a lot about my business,” Dryden drawled as casually as possible.

I would have asked Cynthia about the isotope futures she had sold Chamberlain and Bell. What was it like to lure two men to their deaths? Cynthia turned to me with these huge and meaningful eyes; all my pointed questions dried up in my throat.

“They’re friends of my husband,” she said to Dryden. “They won’t go to the Shoes. They have their own problems with the law right now.”

As for Martisela, she nodded at Cynthia the way old girlfriends do- where did you find this guy?

Cynthia, for all her veneer, could not look Martisela in the eye. “He helped me,” she said to Martisela. “He helped me even the score for Esteban.”

“For a price,” I said.

“Everything has a price,” Cynthia said. “One way or another, everyone pays.”

Dryden nodded his amen to this. “Bell and Chamberlain were a couple of over-reaching franchisees,” he said. “Their accounts have been settled.”

“ ‘Settled.’ ” Martisela gave me an owlish look. “Doesn’t that sound final.”

“Let him be,” Cynthia said. “It’s been hard enough getting things sorted out to my liking. I don’t want anybody having second thoughts now.” She gave me two eyes like steel bearings. “Esteban was hopeless.” She tilted her head at me defiantly. “He left it to me to avenge his death. A trader shouldn’t leave his family to do that. Not if he has command of his skills. Not in this market.”

An odd sentiment coming from a widow. Even Jorge frowned. But Cynthia Contreras was in that state of grace that Buenaventura bestows on all its widows Everyone around the table nodded along, the way they did to a pretty song sung in Cargo English.

Only Martisela lowered her eyes in disappointment. “Esteban Contreras filled your house with friends,” she said.

“Esteban always trusted people to do the right thing. He made allowances. Look at where he left me.” The emotion she had been holding off welled up. She blinked hard at sudden tears. Her chin wrinkled and her face reddened. Jorge saw his chance to move in with sympathy, but Cynthia was angry and pushed him off. She took Martisela’s arm. “I’m going to be like you.”

Martisela looked down at her habit. But it wasn’t the cloistered life that Cynthia envied. Martisela looked back up at her and she realized what Cynthia was talking about; her eyes widened and she gawped for something to say.

“I’m going to be ruthless and clever,” Cynthia said. “I’m going to play the market like an ocarina. I will always finish at the money. And if I go down I’ll take a billion people with me. So that even if the Shoes put me in the Convent Santa Ynez, and make me ride Bright Matter ships for my penance, nobody will trade another share without looking across the bay to see if I’m still safely away.”

I remember someone cooking carne borracha on the river watch that ran behind the house; the splash and sizzle of tequila was the only sound in the room, I remember Martisela trying to say something, only it wouldn’t come out. She sat next to me, and she was beyond my reach.

It was Jorge who stood up first. “My, doesn’t that smell good?” He grinned and nodded around the table and everyone gratefully agreed. Why, yes. The carne smells delicious. Let’s all go have a look.

This wave moved toward the door. Only Cynthia Contreras paused, and then only for a moment. “People pushed me around all my life,” she said to me. “A person like you, you can’t know what that’s like.” She looked to me to tell her she was making sense.

“Dryden murdered two faithful and trusting employees,” I said. “Just to do business with you. Don’t you wonder when your time will come?”