Trading in Futures Read Free Page B

Jethri opened his pouch and pulled
out the agreement they'd written yesterday, sitting at this very
back booth, with Nance the bartender as witness.
    Carefully, he smoothed the paper, read over
the guarantee of payment. Two cantra was a higher buy-out than he
had asked for, but Sirge had insisted, saying the profit would
cover it, not to mention his 'expectations.' There was even a
paragraph about being paid in the event that Sirge's sure buyer was
out of cash, citing the debt owed Sirge Milton, Trader, by Norn
ven'Deelin, Master Trader, as security.
    It had all seemed clear enough yesterday
afternoon, but Jethri thought now that he should have asked Sirge
to take him around to his supplier, or at least listed the name and
location of the supplier on the paper.
    He had a sip of beer, but it tasted flat and
he pushed the glass away. The door to the bar slid open, admitting
a noisy gaggle of Terrans. Jethri looked up, eagerly, but Sirge was
not among them. Sighing, he frowned down at the paper, trying to
figure out a next move that didn't put him on the receiving end of
one of his uncle's furious rakedowns.
    Norn ven'Deelin, Master of Trade...
    The words looked odd, written in Terran.
Norn ven'Deelin, who had given his card--his name--into Sirge
Milton's keeping. Jethri blinked. Norn ven'Deelin, he thought,
would very likely know how to get in touch with a person he held in
such high esteem. With luck, he'd be inclined to share that
information with a polite-talking 'prentice.
    If he wasn't inclined...Jethri folded his
paper away and got out of the booth, leaving the beer behind. No
use borrowing trouble, he told himself.
     
    Ynsolt'i Upper Port
     
    IT WAS LATE, but still
day-Port, when he found the right office. At least, he thought,
pausing across the street and staring at that damned bunny
silhouetted against the big yellow moon, he hoped it was the right
office. He was tired from walking miles in gravity, but worse than
that, he was scared. Norn ven'Deelin's office--if this was at last his
office--was well into the Liaden side of Port.
    Not that there was properly a Terran side,
Ynsolt'i being a Liaden world. But there were portions where
Terrans were tolerated as a necessary evil attending galactic
trade, and where a body caught the notion that maybe Terrans were
cut some extra length of line, in regard to what might be seen as
insult.
    Standing across from the
door, which might, after all, be the right one, Jethri did consider
turning around, trudging back to the Market and taking the licks he'd
traded for.
    Except he'd traded for profit to the
ship, and he was going to collect it. That, at least, he would show
his Senior and his Captain, though he had long since stopped
thinking that profit would buy him pardon.
    Jethri sighed. There was dust all over his
good trading clothes. He brushed himself off as well as he could,
finger-combed his hair and looked across the street. It came to him
that the rabbit on Clan Ixin's sign wasn't so much howling at that
moon, as laughing its fool head off.
    Thinking so, he crossed the street, wiped
his boots on the mat, and pushed the door open.
    * * *
    THE OFFICE BEHIND the door was airy and
bright, and Jethri was abruptly glad that he had dressed in trading
clothes, dusty as they now were. This place was high-class--a body
could smell profit in the subtly fragrant air, see it in the floor
covering and the real wooden chairs.
    The man sitting behind the carved center
console was as elegant as the room: crisp-cut yellow hair, bland
and beardless Liaden face, a vest embroidered with the
moon-and-rabbit worn over a salt-white silken shirt. He looked up
from his work screen as the door opened, eyebrows lifting in what
Jethri had no trouble reading as astonishment.
    "Good-day to you, young sir." The man's
voice was soft, his Trade only lightly tinged with accent.
    "Good-day, honored sir." Jethri moved
forward slowly, taking care to keep his hands in sight. Three steps
from the console, he