Chapter 43

“I think you win your bargain,” I say to Linda as we drive away from office.

“Oh, my, yes,” she says. “I got us everything we wanted and more. Hugo, I’m sorry to take over like that, I hope it didn’t upset you.”

This is not sensible. “It is right that you do this, I do not understand enough,” I tell her. “When Irving says two hundred dollars in an hour I think is very much.”

“Well, it’s not bad. But you’re worth a lot more than that. You’re worth every penny of the five hundred, and all the perks too.”

“‘Perks?’” I ask. Then she tells me all else that is agreed. I can only shake my head in wonder that Irving will give so much.

“Without you I receive none of this,” I say. “I should know this when Irving first speaks, I know one does not ever accept first...” I cannot think of right word.

“First offer,” she helps me.

“Offer, yes. Always make better offer in return, is right way of bargaining. But in this place I do not know what may be bargained. In store you do not bargain for things, and I think at first this is not done here. But then I see you make bargain for crop where we go to sell, and I see it is as with my people, some things are bargained and others are not.”

Before, in old world, I do not bargain with Akkuda for spearhead, he makes for every hunter because he is best knapper of flint and is always same to all, in skins or meat or other things. When I trade for fur, though, or what else I may need and do not have, I will speak back and forth with the one I trade with for long before trade is agreed. I see that it is the same here.

“But I do not know difference here, not now,” I finish.

She turns her head briefly to smile at me. “You’ll learn, dear. It’s one of the things we’re going to have to work hard on in the next few weeks, before we move, this whole business of money. Because you’re going to have a lot of it.”

“But why so much?” I ask. “Much money, and they buy fine house for us, and we work only very little for all this. If this can be called work.”

“What do you mean?”

“Linda, I grow crop, this is work,” I explain. “I learn very much, this is work too, different but still hard. But I receive little money for crop and none for learn. To listen to others and watch them and know do they say true or not, this is not work, I do easily.”

“Work isn’t defined by how much effort you put into it,” she tells me. “It’s measured by its value to others, you understand? By what it’s worth to the one who will pay for it.”

I say yes, I understand, but I do not entirely, and I think it is in my voice that I do not, for she speaks more.

“Darling, you grew a bunch of lovely veggies,” she says. She means crop. “A really terrific bunch, it was very impressive. But lots of people can grow great veggies. Not a lot of people can do what you do about finding lies. In fact, nobody can; you’re unique, understand? The only one. You alone can do this. That’s what makes it so valuable.”

“But you have machine can do,” I say.

“The machine needs all those wires, remember?” she reminds me. “You know when you’re being tested. And some people refuse to take the tests, because they know they’re lying, or even if they aren’t the machine isn’t completely reliable. It can be fooled. And it requires the yes-no answers, too. For you, none of this is so. All you have to do is watch and listen, and you know. That makes it really special.”