“Last year,” Hirschmeir grunted. “Lousy bargain. Half of tribe quote-um Locke now.”
“Locke?” Dar scowled. “I would’ve thought Berkeley and Sartre would be more your speed.”
“Old concepts,” Slotmeyer snorted. “We learn at mothers’ knees. You forget—our ancestors opposition culture.”
“That does keep slipping my mind,” Dar confessed. “Well! How about two hundred thirty-four for the bale?”
Hirschmeir shook his head. “Too far below Libra quote. Your scrip only worth eighty percent of Libran BTU today.”
“I’m going to have to have a talk with Sergeant Walstock,” Dar growled. “Okay, so my price is twenty percent low. But you forget—we have to pay shipping charges to get this stuff to Libra.”
“And your boss Cholly also gotta pay you, and overhead,” Slotmeyer added. “We not forget anything, Dar Mandra.”
“Except that Cholly’s gotta show some profit, or he can’t stay in business,” Dar amended. “Okay, look—how about two seventy-five?”
“Tenth of a kwaher?” Hirschmeir scoffed. He bent over and picked up his bale. “Nice talking to you, Dar Mandra.”
“Okay, okay! Two eighty!”
“Two ninety,” Slotmeyer said promptly.
“Okay, two eighty-five.” Dar sighed, shaking his head. “The things I do for you guys! Well, it’s not your worry if I don’t come back next month. Hope you like the new man.”
“No worry. We tell Cholly we only deal with soft touch.” Hirschmeir grinned. “Okay. What you got to sell, Dar Mandra?”
“Oh, a little bit of this and a minor chunk of that.” Dar turned to the sled. “Wanna give me a hand?”
Together, all six of them manhandled a huge crate onto the ground. Dar popped the catches and opened the front and the left side. The Wolmen crowded around, fingering the merchandise and muttering in excitement.
“What this red stone?” Slotmeyer demanded, holding up a machined gem. “Ruby for laser?”
Dar nodded. “Synthetically grown, but it works better than the natural ones.”
“Here barrels,” another Wolman pointed out.
“Same model you sold us instruction manual for?” Hirschmeir weighed a power cell in his palm.
Dar nodded. “Double-X 14. Same as the Navy uses.”
“What this?” One of the Wolmen held up a bit of machined steel.
“Part of the template assembly for an automatic lathe,” Dar answered.
Slotmeyer frowned. “What is ‘lathe’?”
Dar grinned. “Instruction manual’s only twenty-five kwahers.”
“Twenty-five?” Hirschmeir bleated.
Dar’s grin widened.
Hirschmeir glowered at him, then grimaced and nodded. “You highway robber, Dar Mandra.”
“No, low-way,” Dar corrected. “Cholly tells me I’m not ready for the highway.”
“Him got high idea of low,” Hirschmeir grunted. “What prices on laser parts?”
Dar slid a printed slip out of his jacket pocket and handed it to Hirschmeir. “ ‘Scuse me while you study that; I’ll finish the weigh-in.” He turned away to start hoisting bales onto the sled’s scale as the Wolmen clustered around Hirschmeir, running through the price list and muttering darkly.
Sam stepped up and tapped Dar on the shoulder. “What happened to all the ‘ums’ on the ends of their verbs?”
“Hm?” Dar looked up. “Oh, they know me, y’ see. No need to put on a show anymore.”
“All right, all right!” Hirschmeir grumbled. “We take three rubies, three barrels, ten power supplies, and template assembly for lathe.”
“Gotcha.” Dar pressed a button on the scale, and it murmured, “Total for goods, 4235.50 BTUs.”
Dar nodded. “And the total for your pipeweed is 5337.50. You can spend another 1102, Hirschmeir.”
“No got any more goods we want,” Slotmeyer grunted.
Hirschmeir nodded, holding out a palm. “Cash be nice.”
“You could put it on deposit at the bank,” Dar offered. “Cholly’s starting up a new kind of account.”
Hirschmeir shook his head. “Only pays lousy five percent per annum. We do better use it for stake for playing poker with soldiers.”
“But this is a new kind of account,” Dar reminded. “The interest is compounded quarterly.”
Hirschmeir’s head lifted a little, and his frown deepened. “ ‘Interest compounded’? What that mean?”
“That means that, at the end of every five months, the interest is paid into your account, and figured as part of the principal for the next quarter.”
“So for second quarter, Cholly pay interest on 1157.125?”
Dar nodded. “And for the third quarter, he’ll be paying you interest on 1162.48. You’re getting an effective annual yield of twenty-one and a half percent.”
“Cholly go broke,” Slotmeyer snapped.
“No, he’ll make a profit—if enough of you open up these accounts. If he gets five thousand for capital, he can buy Bank of I.D.E. bonds that pay twenty-three percent effective.”
Slotmeyer’s head lifted slowly, his eyes widening.
He whirled to Hirschmeir. “Take it!”
“You sure?” Hirschmeir looked decidedly uncomfortable.
“Sure? When Cholly making profit, too? Gotta be straight deal!”
Hirschmeir looked at the ground for a few minutes; then he looked up at Dar, face firming with decision. “Right. We open new account.”
“Right here.” Dar whipped out the papers and handed them to Hirschmeir; but Slotmeyer intercepted them. He scanned the pages quickly, muttering to himself, then nodded and passed them on to Hirschmeir. Hirschmeir made his sign and added his signature after it in parentheses. Dar took the papers back, fed them into a slot in the sled. It chuckled to itself, then fed out a copy of the forms, and spat out a small flat blue booklet. Dar checked the passbook to make sure the deposit was recorded properly, then nodded and passed the bundle to Hirschmeir. The Wolman folded them away, straightening and grinning. “Okay, Dar Mandra. Is good doing business with you.”
“Always a pleasure.” Dar held up the bottle. “One for the trail?”
Sam watched the Wolman troop move off into the night, while Dar reloaded the grav-sled and fastened the tarp down again. Finally she turned back to him. “Why do they call it ‘pipeweed’?”
“Hm?” Dar looked up. “Take a look at it.”
Sam stepped over and fingered one of the bales. “Long, thin, hollow stems.” She nodded. “Little pipes.”
Dar covered the bale and fastened down the last corner of the tarp. “Good quality, too. Not a bad night’s trading.”
“But how can you say that?” Sam erupted. “You’ve scarcely made any profit at all!”
“About one and a half percent.” Dar picked up a plastic cube and stood up. “Which is pretty good. Cholly’s happy if I just break even.”
“Oh, he is, huh?” Sam jammed her fists on her hips. “What is he, a philanthropist?”
“A teacher,” Dar reminded, “and Shacklar’s a politician. All Cholly really cares about is how much the Wolmen learn from the trading; and all Shacklar cares about is tying the Wolmen into an economic unit with the soldiers. And the good will that goes with both, of course.”
“Of course,” Sam echoed dryly. “And I suppose you manage to pick up a few items about Wolman culture on every trip.”
“Which I faithfully report back to Cholly, who makes sure it winds up as beer-gossip.” Dar grinned. “Give us ten years, and the soldiers and Wolmen’ll know each other’s culture almost as well as their own.”
“Well, they do seem to have a pretty thorough grasp of basic finance.”
“And Slotmeyer’s getting some ideas about law,” Dar said with a critical nod. “He’s coming along nicely.”
Sam frowned. “You sound like a teacher gloating over a prize pupil… Oh!”
Dar gave her a wicked grin.
“Of course; I should have realized,” she said dryly. “Cholly doesn’t hire traders; he recruits teachers.”