Free Partnership by Anne McCaffrey, Margaret Ball

lecture."

    "This particular information," Alpha told him, "is free." She drew herself up to her full height, several inches taller than Fassa, and favored the top of her sleek, dark head with a withering glare, "The system we're going to was discovered by a Black descendant of the American slaves. In a burst of misguided enthusiasm, he decided to give the star and all the planets names from an African language. Unfortunately, he was so poorly educated that the only such language he knew was Swahili, a trade language spread along the east coast of Africa by Arab slavers. He called the sun Nyota ya Jaha — Lucky Star. The planets' names are fairly accurate descriptions, too. Bahati means Fortune, and it's a reasonably decent place to live —
    green, mild climate, lots of nice scenery that stays put.
    Shemali means North Wind."

    polyon groaned appreciatively. "I know. Unlike some of us, I did read up on my destination. The place is called North Wind because that's what you get for thirteen months out of the year."

    "Thirteen months you have in the year? Oh — I get it! Longer rotation period, right?" Darnell beamed with pride at his own cleverness.

    "Shorter, as it happens," Polyon said. His voice sounded remarkably hollow. "Shemali has a year of three hundred days, divided into ten months for convenience. I was being sarcastic about the feet that there is no good season."

    "Never mind," Alpha told him almost kindly, "it's better than Angalia. Actually the full name is Angalia! with an exclamation point atthe end. Itmeans Watch out!"
    "Dare I ask what that means?" Blaize inquired.
    "It means," Alpha told him, "that the scenery — unlike that of Bahati—doesn't stay put."

    Blaize and Polyon stared at one another, briefly companions in misery.

    Polyon was the first to recover himself. "Oh, well,"
    he said, turning back to the game screen, "you see the value of information, Darnell — and the fact that it isn't always in the Galactic Datasource. And some of the information that isn't — ah — publicly available —
    is the most valuable of all." With delicate gestures he 58

    Anne McCaffrey &f Margaret Ball

    nudged the joyball while the fingers of his left hand tapped out codes to enlarge and strengthen Thingberry's magical net. "You need to think of ways to trade for that kind of information. For instance your shipping company — such as it is — could offer discreet transport for parcels that don't get on the cargo list, or that go by a slightly misleading name—in some cases, disinformation or the lack of information is as valuable as actual data."

    "Who'd want that?" Darnell objected. "And who cares, anyway? Can't we just play the game?"

    Polyon favored him with a dazzling smile. "Dear boy, this is the game — and a far more rewarding one than SPACED OUT. Why, I can think of any number of people who might want a — suitably discreet — cargo carrier service. Myself, for starters."

    "Why you?"

    "Let's just say that not all the metachips going off Shemali are going to be in the SUM rationing board's records," Polyon said.

    "So? What's it worth to me to oblige you?"

    "I could pay you back with Net contacts. I can work the Net like no hacker since the days of the first virus breeders. It's an unsecured hedron to me. How soon could you rebuild OG Shipping if you knew ahead of time about every big contract about to be let in Vega subspace ... and what your opponents' sealed bids were?"

    DarnelFs pout vanished to be replaced by a look of stunned calculation. "I could be rich again in five years!"

    "But not, I fancy, as rich as I could be from selling metachips," Polyon murmured. Thingberry's web glistened on the screen above him, strings of jeweled fight looping and floating above the play icons on the surface of Asteroid 66. "What would you say to a friendly wager? The five of us to meet and compare notes, once a year — to see how we're each doing at making lemonade out of the lemons of assignments