Trading Rosemary Read Free Page B

going to need earplugs.

Bargain
    The bulk of Rangitoto loomed over them from the window, the perfect curve of the shield volcano sweeping up through pohutukawas and old lava fields, cracked and black in the sun. Rosemary could hear the birds, the kakarikis and saddlebacks calling to each other in bright flashes. Behind him, soft lights and muted sounds and needles, sketching jagged patterns of footsteps.
    “It’s only for show,” said Netro, of the last. “Old technology. I like to keep it around to demonstrate how far the field has come.”
    “And so no one can sneak up on you?” said Rosemary, but he had cameras for that, set over the front door and not too carefully hidden about the house.
    “I prefer my guests to know that they’re being watched,” he had said, when he had seen her noting their presence.
    Netro had not been what she had expected. Her coins—including her grandmother’s—had sold expensively; they were collector’s pieces that few could afford unless they were in the business of curation, as Rosemary was. Netro clearly was not—she had seen his library, and it was significantly smaller than her own, on a par with what was to be expected from those with a moderately high income and no professional interest. During the negotiations for the sapflower coin, he had specifically requested her grandmother’s requiem, which indicated a special and specific interest.
    And yet he did not seem to care for music. There were no instruments in the house that she had seen, no players or speakers or visible recordings. Instead rocks and computers and pick-axes, heavy boots by the door, dust and little hammers and polishing cloths. Certainly a focused collection, but it was unusual for someone to amass coins of a particular type and not have the interest, the same subject matter, apparent in their surroundings. Rosemary could see the man in front of her with a specialized collection of coined geology, but not of music. She looked again, more carefully, studying the artwork on the walls for clues. There were none: just photographs of volcanoes, professionally done and well—if simply—framed. Rosemary recognized some of them: Ngauruhoe, White Island, Tambora, Krakatau.
    “Have you been to any of them?” Netro asked, noting her interest.
    “I went to White Island when I was a child,” said Rosemary. “In person, I mean. We visited some of the others by coin—Vesuvius, I remember, as part of a history module at school.” Education was often done by imprinting, with specialized recorders able to insert permanent memories, unlike currencies that were fleeting experiences only. “But my grandmother was composing an operetta on the Tarawera eruption, and wanted to see an active volcano. She took me along with her.”
    The boat ride towards the island, how she had run along the deck, short legs pumping as the boat thumped through heavy seas, squealing with delight as the deck fell out from under her. Her grandmother had stood in the bow of the boat, her face towards the volcano and her eyes closed.
I want to listen to the island
, she said when Rosemary asked her.
I want to hear it coming closer to me.
    “And you kept the memory?” said Netro.
    “Of course,” said Rosemary. “I didn’t purge her from my mind, if that’s what you’re implying. We had a very good relationship—I was closer to her than I was to my parents, to be honest.”
    “Yet you sold me one of the defining moments of her life,” said Netro.
    “It wasn’t her life,” said Rosemary, frowning. “It was mine. She was dead. While she might have planned her funeral, she didn’t live it. I did.”
    “Yet it didn’t matter enough for you to keep,” said Netro. “Even though you say you loved her.”
    “I loved
her,
” said Rosemary. “Her. Not the shell of what she left behind, not her things, not her music.”
    “You didn’t like her music?” Netro questioned. “She wasn’t called the finest composer of the last