Islands in the Sky

3.4

Sema walked along a dock. There was bustle. There was noise. There were far more people than she was used to, probably more different people than the total of all those she had seen in her life until now, and they were all on one place, all pushing past each other, calling to one another, telling each other to move, fool, and make room. All of them busy, going place, doing things.

Sema liked it. It was overwhelming, but exciting too.

She stood against a wall, and just watched for a while. She took a little time to get used to it all, after the relative peace of the dock. She stood there, watching, taking it in, letting herself get accustomed the busyness and noise, and soon she had. Soon she stopping flinching at every shout and stopped expecting to be run over by a cart, and then, once she had, she began to enjoy it all. It was exciting and hectic and interesting. It was exciting, like nothing she had ever seen before.

She seemed to be in a part of the harbour where trade goods were delivered. There were crates and bundles being unloaded, and put onto wagons, and taken to warehouses opposite the wharves. There, or taken completely away, leaving the docks altogether. There were horses, and cranes, and people carrying things on their shoulders, and ingenious systems of nets and rocks and ropes to float cargoes from one dock to another.

It was gloriously disorganised and busy, so busy that to see it properly Sema needed to start picking out single things to concentrate on, to study one thing at a time, if she was understand all that was happening.

She looked sideways. She was still near the wall, trying to stay out of everyone’s way. Near her, along the front of the buildings opposite the wharves, traders had set up stalls, and some were operating out of the ground-floors of the buildings too. Sema watched for a while, working out what was happening, since she soon would need to trade herself.

Some of the traders were those she obviously would need. Those some selling a single foodstuff, or a range of clothes, or small items, directly to customers who came to find them. Those were the traders Sema would need, but there were other traders, too. Traders who dealt in words and ideas, Sema realized, listening. Traders who traded promises and understandings, and once she realized that, Sema found the idea fascinating.

She listened, while pretending not to. It was easy enough to overhear. People seemed to do all their business just standing on the side of the street, or inside a building, but with the doors and windows open for the breeze and light, or so they could watch their ships and cargoes, and their voices carried easily.

Some of the trades were apparently agreements for whole ship-cargoes to be traded at once. Sema stood, and listened for a while, and understood that easily enough. They were just trading, but with far larger amounts than she would. A hundred shirts, instead of one. A thousand plastic buckets rather than ten.

That was simple enough, and Sema understood readily, but other trades being discussed were more complicated. Some trades were for ideas. For services, and against imaginary shares of what something might eventually be worth.

There were two men near Sema who were trading for the passage of a cargo on a ship. They were talking near her, so she went a little closer, then stopped, and stood there, and pretended to watch a ship being unloaded across the street.

She listened, unnoticed, and began to understand.

They were arranging a cargo of scrap plastics to be moved halfway around the city, from this dock to another dock on the far side of Anew-Hame. It wasn’t a trade, exactly, Sema thought, because the man with the plastic would still own the plastic at the end of it, but it was a trade too, because the one with the ship was to keep some part of the value the plastics would be sold for, in exchange for the use of his ship.

It was an interesting idea, Sema thought. It was like renting someone a chicken or cow, but not giving over ownership. So one person got the eggs or milk which the animal produced, but the other still actually owned it.

She listened for a while, as the two men argued. They were mostly disagreeing over the share of the plastics the man with the ship would receive. They spoke of hundredths, of two hundredths and three hundredths and two-and-a-half hundredths, which didn’t completely make sense. Sema thought, and decided they must mean two or three items in every hundred, but that there were so many hundreds of items that two-and-a-half could be made by setting aside one item from every second hundred.

It was complicated, but she could see how it worked. And she was interested in how it worked, as well. It seemed like an emblem of everything this city was, and which she didn’t yet understand, but wanted to. The whole city was overwhelming, but interesting at the same time. Or at least the whole area of the docks was, which was all she had seen so far.

She listened until the two men seemed to just be saying the same things again and again, but more firmly. Apparently bargaining here was accepted, she decided, at least in an arrangement like this one. Although the bargaining was rather dull, and seemed to mostly consist of each threatening to go elsewhere, over and over, but not actually doing it. Which was useful to know.

She listened anyway for a while, until the men noticed her, and asked what she wanted, and she said, “Nothing,” quickly, and then walked away. They stopped talking to watch her go, and then went back to their discussion.

And their lack of interested in her seemed to show something about the city, too. Something about her own unimportance.