Freelance On The Galactic Tunnel Network by E. Foner (best beach reads of all time TXT) 📗

hired somebody from Earth, it would have meant an office and hiring support staff.”

“You were in the business?” Ellen asked. She dismissed the rented floater and started unpacking all of the smaller items she’d brought.

“Not the newspaper business, the distribution business. And it was a long time ago, but my memory is that one manager leads to another, and before you know it, you have a whole office of people making work for each other.”

“Excuse me,” an athletic-looking man in his forties interrupted them. “Is that a genuine paddle-cup-mitt-ball set?”

“Yes, sir,” Marshall said, returning to his own blanket and picking up the boxed set to better display it to the customer. “It’s competition-grade, never used, and you can see Prince Gruer’s seal on the flap.”

“I’ve been looking for one of these since I moved back to Earth, but all I’ve found are cheap knock-offs.”

“I took this one in trade at the elevator hub on Jufe Two, an ag world in the—”

“I worked there for twenty years,” the man cut off the explanation. “Sometimes I’m not sure why I ever left. May I?” The trader handed over the bulky package and the customer inspected the seal and nodded. “How much?”

“Let’s call it an even hundred.”

“I shouldn’t have told you how long I’ve been looking for one of these,” the man grumbled, but he held out a programmable cred. “A competition set didn’t cost forty creds back on Jufe.”

The trader slotted the coin into his mini-register and frowned. “You’re short.”

“I thought it would save time haggling. Can you do eighty-seven? That’s our team’s programmable cred and my wife will kill me if I add my own money.”

Marshall grimaced as he keyed in the transaction, and the customer gave his voice confirmation.

“Thanks,” the ex-ag worker said. “At least you know the set is going to a good home.”

After the customer moved off with his prize, Ellen asked, “How did you know there would be any demand for a paddle-cup-mitt-ball set on Earth? You need four arms to play.”

“The leagues on Earth just double the number of players per position, but I’ve seen humans on Dollnick open worlds wearing prosthetic arm sets,” Marshall replied. “I had the feeling that I could get the best price for the set on Earth because there’s not enough demand here for anybody to have started importing them. Sporting equipment is a low-risk proposition in most cases, and if there’s an official seal, it’s as good as cash.”

“Before I started using the Advantage platform, I specialized in craft goods,” Ellen told him, casting a mournful look at the commodity merchandise spread around her blanket. “Some of the art supplies barely weigh anything, and if I spread enough sparkles on the blanket, children would drag their parents over and I could make a killing on crayons and stickers. I did really well with sewing supplies too, especially the alien gear.”

“And then you decided to throw away your money and time trying to chase the crowds?”

“It’s for a story. I can afford to experiment more than most traders with a mortgage because the Galactic Free Press is pretty generous with freelancers. I just wish I could come up with a name for what the Advantage platform is promoting. Follow the leader? Me-too mercantilism?”

“Cash-crop syndrome,” her neighbor suggested, redistributing the remaining merchandise on his own blanket to cover the bare spot left by the paddle-cup-mitt-ball set. “The older traders I know, every cred we earned that didn’t go into feeding ourselves or paying customs bribes went to the ship’s mortgage. We counted our wealth in goods, not coins, and the whole ‘barter is better’ thing wasn’t just a tunnel network slogan for us, it was a way of life. But somebody starts offering young traders easy credit and it turns into a race for cash.”

“Did you just make that up, or is it a real syndrome?” Ellen asked. “I’ve never heard of it before.”

“It’s not a medical condition if that’s what you mean, but cash-crop farming started not far from here a few hundred years ago. Joint-stock companies started pooling capital to build canals, which were soon replaced by railroads, and the next thing you knew, family farms that hadn’t ever been in debt were all working for the bank.”

“Because they had to pay for the railroads?”

“The railroads changed the whole business model of farming. Instead of feeding the family and raising some extra livestock for cash to pay for luxuries, farmers turned to monoculture and started planting whatever they thought would maximize the income from their land. You had whole regions growing just a couple of crops, or specializing in pigs and chickens because the railroads made it possible to reach the big cities. But efficiency has its price, and farmers who put all of their eggs in one basket could be wiped out by a drought, a disease, or worse, by a bumper crop depressing the price for the one product they had to sell.”

“Kind of like traders following the advice from Advantage and showing up on some planet with the same goods as everybody else. Are you from a farm family?”

“Read a few books about it in Zero-G,” Marshall said with a grin. “Family farms are actually making a comeback on Earth now. The alien exporters don’t like buying from factory farms, and they’re not as obsessed with scaling up single product lines as our own exporters. Say ‘Drazen Foods’ and everybody thinks hot peppers, but they actually try to sell every Earth ingredient in the All Species Cookbook.”

“How much for one of those tablecloths?” a woman asked, pointing at the small pile Ellen had set out without much hope.

“What’s the best price you’ve seen today?”

“Forty-two,” the woman replied. “There’s a trader—”

“Forty if you buy right now. I’m not interested in getting caught in a bidding war,” Ellen said gruffly.