Nathan Lowell - Quarter Share

“And you, sir, how may I serve you this morning?” He laid it on with a trowel and grinned the whole time.

“Two egg omelet, some of those excellent mushrooms, a bit of onion, some crumbled bacon, and a bit of grated cheese, if you please. Moist in the middle, my good man. Mind you don’t dry it out.”

“How about I just hit you with the pan and toss your carcass out an airlock?”

I laughed. “Okay, okay, I get your point.”

Cookie must have been helping him with his skills as well, because he slid a perfect omelet onto my plate in just a couple of ticks. “Thanks, Pip. Looks great.”

He waved his spatula at me with a pleased nod of his head. “Enjoy.”

I looked around and spotted Diane sitting alone at a table. She nodded to the chair across from her.

As I settled into the seat, she braced me without preamble. “So, Francis says you guys visited him on watch last night?”

I nodded. “That’s why I was asking about whether or not you sold all your stuff. Pip sold everything we had yesterday. By all measures, this was an amazing success.”

She sipped her coffee and nodded. “It was for me. I sold stuff that I’ve been dragging around for months. And it was much easier than trying to find some buyer and haggling with them and safer then deals made in shady bars. I turned a nice profit, so I’ve got both mass and cred to spend today.”

“Yeah, me, too.” There wasn’t anybody in the mess line just then so I motioned Pip over. “What we were talking to Francis about was the possibility of getting organized before we hit St. Cloud.”

Pip joined us. “Yeah, next time around we should be better prepared. I suspect that there are people aboard who could have used the space and didn’t know we were doing it because the whole thing was so slapdash.”

“We’ve been thinking that we should actually form the McKendrick Mercantile Cooperative,” I put in. “You know, like on the banner? We thought we’d ask the other traders on the crew to join. Together, we can coordinate coverage on the booth and expenses. With a little investment we could put together a booth that looks like we know what we were doing.”

Diane laughed. “I’m being double-teamed here, but I think you’re right. What will it take?”

I shrugged. “Even if all we do is get the word out to the entire crew that’s more than we had going on in Margary.”

“Good point,” she agreed.

Pip plunked down beside me. “I’m trying to think of this like a business. I don’t want to share everybody’s profits because that’s not right. But there’s a lot of things we can pool that would help everybody.”

“Like what?” Diane looked at him.

I snickered. “Like chairs. My feet are still recovering.”

“Mine, too.” Diane grimaced.

Pip nodded. “Exactly. So, the co-op invests in things like chairs, but the expense should be shared by all the members somehow.”

Diane cut off a piece of her omelet and chewed it for a moment before speaking, “That makes sense, but whose mass allotment takes the hit?”

Pip and I glanced at each other before I answered her, “I’m thinking we ask Lois.”

Pip grinned. “I was thinking the same thing.”

Diane looked confused. “Lois who?”

“Lois McKendrick, of course.” I smiled at her confusion.

She blinked at me a couple times, maybe trying to decide if I was kidding. “Let me know how that works out for you.”

Pip smirked. “Oh, I think we’ll convince her.”

Diane looked doubtful. “Well, if we do this, we’ll need creds for expenses: booth rental, chairs, signs, cargo totes-”

“Grav-pallet?” I suggested.

Her face lit up at the thought. “Ooh, that would be excellent, but maybe a bit of a stretch all things considered.”

I nodded. “True, but we’re on the right track. I’m willing to toss a few creds in the pot as seed money, but how do we replenish the pot?”

Diane ate some more of her omelet while she considered. Finally she nodded once as if she’d made up her mind. “Okay, I see three ways: dues, buy in, or fees.”

I grimaced. “I thought of dues, but that’s a problem because it limits who can participate. If you don’t pay your dues then you can’t sell, but if you want to drop out halfway through the period, how can we give a refund?”

Pip nodded his head in agreement. “How would the buy in idea work? You pay a fee to set up in the booth at the next port?”

Diane nodded.

“Down side is that you have to pay before you have the income. If you don’t sell anything it would be tough,” Pip said.

We sat there looking at each other for a couple of ticks. Finally, I broke the silence. “It sounds like we go with fees then. How are you thinking this would work?”

Diane gestured with her fork. “If you sell in the booth you should pay some nominal amount. Like one percent. We could cap it at some amount, say ten creds, and the trader would pay whichever is smaller. That way somebody who doesn’t sell a lot can still get in. People who sell more won’t get smacked to hard.”

Pip nodded slowly. “Rental here in Margary is ten a day, the table cost an extra cred. With that arrangement just one person would cover that easily.”

Diane pointed out the obvious. “If we’d been operating under that rule during this past exercise, all four of us would have paid ten creds for that first day.”

I shook my head. “No, ten creds is one percent of a thousand. Bev and I only made about a hundred each, but that big bundle of belts would have covered it easily.”

Diane shrugged. “Well, I made almost a kilocred on all my stuff, so I’d have made up the difference.”

Pip nodded his agreement. “And yesterday, Rhon Scham, Biddy Murphy, and I would have also.”

Diane looked back and forth between us. “That seems fair to me. I’d gladly have kicked in ten creds for what I got out of it.”

Francis came in looking for breakfast so Pip went to get him an omelet.

“Thanks, Diane. That was kinda what I was thinking, but you really solidified it for me.”

She speared the last bite of her omelet. “My pleasure, Ish. Count me in on whatever you’ve got going forward, okay?”

I nodded and paused for a moment. “Hey, do you know anything about mushroom farming?”

“Huh?” She blinked at me for a few heartbeats and a wry smile twisted her lips. “Do you know what the phrase smooth change of subject means?”

I laughed. “Sorry, my brain is hopping around this morning. Did you know that Margary is the mushroom capital of the galaxy or something?”

“You’re kidding.”

I shook my head. “They have plenty of dark tunnels here to grow them in. I thought I’d try to find out more about what it takes besides dark and space. It has got to take some kind of growing medium, but what do they have out here in the Deep Dark?”

She looked me straight in the eye and grinned at the realization. “Sludge.”

“That’s my thought, too. Fancy a little exploration?”

“Ten minutes. Main lock.”

“I’ll be there.”

I waved at Pip and Francis as I bussed my tray and headed to change into my civvies.

Fifteen minutes later, Diane and I were standing on the docks. She gave a half shrug. “So, how do we find a mushroom farm?”

“Look for someplace dark?”

“That’s most places here, I would think.”

I smacked myself on the forehead. “I’m so stupid,” I said as I grabbed my tablet and pulled up the ship’s stores records. The invoice for what looked like a huge amount of mushrooms was on file along with the name of the supplier and their information. Their office was on deck twelve and there was a contact number.