“I, uh, heard.”
“Yeah, and part of it was all of those shares you got.”
“What? What shares?”
Magda sighed, and she and Sharon looked at each other. Magda looked hard at Stoner. “You recall that you have been giving lectures and seminars on alchemy and physic—?”
Stoner leapt to his feet. “Now hold on—you charged admission?” He realized as the words escaped that he had raised his voice. He took a deep breath. “Guys, I’m sorry and all for shouting, but I wouldn’t have agreed to that.”
Magda was first to get over the shock of Stoner looking angry. “No, Tom, schatz, we did no such thing!” Stoner could see that she was a little upset that he might have thought so.
“That’s right,” said Sharon. “It’s just that when all those guys were asking to hire you on as a consultant, Magda was getting you stock deals instead of just the flat fees they were offering.”
“Eh? They have those here and now?” Stoner had hardly been up to speed with capitalism as she was spoke in the twentieth century, let alone the seventeenth.
“Oh, indeed, Signor Stone,” said Benjamin, drawing breath for what promised to be a serious lecture. “You see, we have had partnerships and anonymous societies and joint-stock companies for many, many years now and there are—”
Stoner laughed. “Benjamin, please! Have mercy, man. Even if you explain it in short words I’m not going to grok it, okay?”
Benjamin frowned the uncomprehending frown of someone whose learning of the English language had missed the word “grok” entirely. But he did shut up.
“So, what now?” Stoner asked into the ensuing silence. “You got me a bunch of stocks. So. I just wait for my 401-K to mature?”
Only Sharon got that, of course. “What we did was a hair less formal there, Stoner. We got everyone we had stock in to pool their buying through us, and that got us some excellent deals. They’re all acting like our subsidiaries now, one big corporate group rather than a lot of little businesses that just feed their margins to middlemen. With which, I might add, this town is infested.”
Benjamin didn’t even twitch.
Stoner mentally vibed some respect for Benjamin; the poor guy had spent weeks in the company of two of the hardest chicks in Venice right now, and he still seemed to have it all together.
Speaking of which, Stoner realized, he’d better take some positive action before his old lady lost all respect for him. “So, all I gotta do is sign?” Stoner levered himself to his feet and reached across the table for a pen. “Is there a downside?” he asked, poised to sign the first paper. He grinned, trying to disarm his pretense at shrewdness.
“Um, well—” Sharon looked at Benjamin, “do I have this right, Benjamin, that if we lose everything—”
“This would be difficult, Signora Nichols. Very difficult, as we have interests in four fleets and nearly thirty ships.”
“Yes, but—” said Stoner, realizing that Sharon probably needed this, since she was in as clear a case of done-deal euphoria as Stoner had ever seen.
“Don’t worry,” said Sharon, “it’s hardly likely to happen. Thirty ships, all in different parts of the world sailing at different times. They can’t all sink at once. Anyway, even if it all drops in the pot, we’ve got so many people in this town tied up in our deals that they’d never . . .” Sharon trailed off.
“What?” By now, Stoner was fairly sure that he had punctured the balloon a bit, but he still wanted to know what the downside really was. “What do we do if we lose everything?”
“Get imprisoned for debt.”
“Oh. Is that all?” Stoner immediately began to sign and seal where Benjamin had penciled for him to do so.
As he did, he mentally counted off, and was up to twenty-eight before Sharon spoke up.
“You don’t mind?” she asked, apparently surprised.
“Nope,” Stoner said, pressing his Deadhead signet ring into soft wax.
“Nope?”
“Nope.” Stoner was gratified that Magda hadn’t been suckered. “How long do you think I’ve been in business, Miss Boojwah Nichols? You think the old hippie gets confused and scared around bread?”