The Year's Best Science Fiction, Vol. 20

“ ‘Piedras de molleja.’ ” He smiled at the name. “They remind me of your wife, you know. That hint of sweetness forever out of reach?” Of course, he would know what I was here for. He took my shoulder under his hand and we started down the bridge toward the ferry landing on the far side. “I’m sorry about your wife,” he said. “You have to be strong. If she dies, it is to alleviate the suffering of millions of others.”

“Shut up about my wife.” I smiled; I had decided this conversation would remain friendly. In any case, I had come to talk about something else. “It was your idea to leverage Esteban and myself out of our own corporation.”

“We may have collateralized a few of your assets. I would hardly call what we did ‘leveraging.’”

“I’ve always been curious why somebody like you would take an interest in a tiny corporation like Coria Bright Matter. Alberto Zuniga told you about our lyghnium shares. Didn’t he.”

I had found something amusing for him. “It was your friend Contreras that he told us about. A good morghium designer is hard to come by. The lyghnium has turned out to be a bonus.”

For a moment, he seemed uncertain how much he wanted to go on. Oh, but here was a man in love with his cause. He had no enemies. Only prospects.

“We have this wayward franchisee,” he said after a while. “This man, del Cayo. He purchased a lot of very expensive ideology. Refused every decent overture of repayment. When we pressed the matter, he generated the money to pay us by pumping up lyghnium production at all his ergosphere mines throughout the French Violet-so much lyghnium, he caused a collapse in the market.”

“So, you turn our Bright Matter ships into missiles. And you shut down his lyghnium operations. Permanently.”

“He’s put a quarter-billion people out of work. He’s used our ideology to sanction a civil war against his brother. Killing…” He waved his hand at some unconscionable number. He had that faith shared among Anglos that anything can be forgiven. God’s own attorneys, those people; anything can be mitigated in the light of something worse.

“You must be nervous right now.”

“It’s a big night for us,” he admitted, breathless as an ingйnue.

“I mean, you must be nervous putting all that lyghnium back on the market.” That is how you paid or your pterachnium isn’t it?”

He peeked up at me through his eyebrows, impish in his guilt. “We fudged a little. What we sold were options on lyghnium futures-the same contracts we acquired from Coria Bright Matter when we bought you out. Lyghnium 485.” He shook his head in amazement. “I’d still like to know where you got that stuff. It must be decayed half to lead by now, which is a singular shame.”

“You’re going to substitute 482 from one of your mines.”

He put up his hands, what can I do? The problem would come when Dryden’s creditors called in those 485 options; there would be trouble even if they accepted Dryden’s isotope for our own. Putting 900 pennyweight of lyghnium on the market would devalue the price another couple of kilotramos at least. I could see that chewed at his conscience in ways that killing another Bright Matter ship did not.

But I had good news for Dryden’s conscience.

“You are in a unique position to fulfill your lyghnium 485 contracts,” I said. “You own the parent isotope.”

He started to explain to me about binding energies versus repulsive electrical charge, and the limitations of naturally formed nuclei. He stopped. He gave me a cautious, sideways look. A little smile. “What did you say?”

“Lyghnium 485 decays down from pterachnium. You borrowed the money to buy your pterachnium using its own isotope futures as collateral.”

He thought about that. His eyes grew narrow, and then very wide.

“It’s called a market loop,” I said. “The way Martisela set up ours was very deliberate, with an exit strategy close to hand. And we were careful about who we brought in downstream. You bought into her market loop without ever realizing. You used it to borrow from some of the biggest brokers on the Exchange.”

He turned on his heel to look back up the path. He might have been looking for a way out. He might have been looking to see if anyone else found me as amusing as he did.

“So what then? We compounded your larceny with a few innocent mistakes. What are you going to do?” He laughed. “Call Los Zapatos?”

“Better. I called all the people holding paper on your lyghnium.” In the dusk beneath the bridge, Dryden’s face took on the pallid glow of a drowned isotope. I could have read my watch by the reflection. “Not to worry,” I said. “I have assumed your debt. No need to thank me.”

His first move was for something in his waistband.

“In the event of my passing, my assets go to Seсora Contreras.”

Dryden had spent the evening with the delightfully ruthless widow. His eyes widened at the mention of her name. His hand fell back to his side.