" - do you want to mostly talk about how they are stupid and horrible, because they are, or do you want to try to figure it out because it might be important?"

"It's not really important. I'm all the way over here and wouldn't know what to do if I weren't.

I wish -"

"We got a new ambassador once, and he brought his son, and I was assigned to show him around. And he stole something from his mother that would let him show me things from - the interplanetary information network, it's called the skylace. He showed me some pictures before we got caught.

I thought they were fake."

"His planet is - greater?"

"They scried him. He's on Outer Sohaibek. The pictures were from Kular, probably, which has six planets. It's the same, or looked it - busy and frivolous and -"

"- and you'd get in trouble, right, if you thought that other planets were better places to live? So you - didn't think of it?"

"They can't read minds, but." Shrug.

"I would be pretty upset if it turned out Cheliax was worse than other places."

"I suppose the retired paladins will have things to say about that if you ask."

"We talked about it a bit. They said that Cheliax is richer because Hell gives it things, which I knew, that's not an argument against serving Hell. They didn't claim that Lastwall's a nicer place to live or anything."

"Outer Sohaibek looks like it is though." He shrugs. "Maybe they have a lot of - homeless people somewhere and the scry was only following Sarham so it didn't see them, but..."

"My father is a merchant. And he's pretty good at it, so he's rich. And some people try their hand at merchanting but they don't have a good sense for when prices will rise and fall and which seacaptains are competent and which will make mistakes and which will try to scam you. And they don't do very well, and lose money, and eventually they learn or they quit and do something else, I suppose. And it seems like maybe if there's nothing to tell them they're not very good at it they'll - go on being not very good at it. I guess."

"- but that thing can be a person and not the threat of ruin! Also there's nothing to scam about with no money."

"I don't think it can be a person, what, is there someone whose job it is to calculate how well all of the merchants would have done if they used money, and tell them, because if you've got lots of people doing jobs like that instead of working then no wonder you're poor. Also I think there's plenty to scam about with no money, you can siphon off the goods, or just not work very hard, or not handle stuff carefully so it arrives broken..."

"They don't calculate how much people would have made with money but it's simple to tell if things arrive where they're going."

"That's not what makes the difference between a good and a bad merchant, though, it's picking what to ship, and when, so that there's not a surplus in the port you're sending it to, and making sure you don't spend much time delayed in port anywhere because you have arrangements all the places you'll be passing through, and funding speculative ventures sometimes when they look good but not so many of them you won't stay afloat unless one pans out, and then unexpected things happen like terrible storms or a charybdis in the strait or whatever and a good captain will still lose the ship sometimes but not nearly as often, which adds up, if you're funding ten of them..."

"I think our ships are better. And our communication technology; you could just call someone in the right city and have more than twenty-five words to talk about what's there."

"I guess maybe eventually all the problems become trivial and you'd have to be an idiot to mess up at shipping."

"Yeah. So I don't know what's - wrong."

Shrug.

"I bet Sarham could explain it. But he's in another galaxy and I could only even maybe talk to him through relays who're trying to repeat all the noises we make. Also this might make him think he was crazy."

"You, uh, make all your women stay home and be married and raise babies, right. It might just be that. If other countries let everyone do things and you only let half of them."

"I am pretty sure they don't have another way to get babies on other planets. Also that definitely can't be what the Osirians are complaining about."

"It cannot be what the Osirians are complaining about but - in Cheliax women do have babies, just, daycares raise the babies so the women can go on doing things with their lives."