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Danny didn t need any recourse to Kinsey to tell him that in this area, too,
he was still normal; pleasantly, dully normal.
He smiled mirthlessly at his normal self. All right, Caiden, then you ve got
to be a prophet. Get over your shock; you made yourself promises about what
you d do if you turned out to have a real prophetic sense. You don t turn out
to have much else. Are you going to follow through?
The question, of course, was rhetorical. Danny knew of no other way to keep
himself eating. He had no talent for writing fiction whatever Pat Rickey might
even now be saying to the contrary notwithstanding and trade editorial jobs,
the only kind for which he was equipped, were tighter this year than they had
ever been before. His one chance was to sink his few cents in a fantasm.
Shrugging, he crossed the street. He certainly had had no plans to approach
the skyscraper housing Delta Publishing again except by accident. Of course,
his bank was on the ground floor of the building Delta did its payroll banking
there, and so it had saved him troublesome side-trips, and the bother of
having to identify himself and his paychecks, to stow his small savings cheek
to cheek with his ex-bosses hoard but since it was only a savings account, he
had planned simply to leave it alone until he was desperate.
Well, he was desperate now, though in an unanticipated meaning of the word.
He went to one of the glass-topped desks which surrounded each of the pillars
inside the bank and took his pass book out of his wallet.
He was surprised to find that he had close to two thousand dollars in his
account; he would have guessed it at less than half that. Well, that should
certainly be ample. There was a good deal to be said for being a bachelor.
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But the size of the sum set his mind to whirling furiously again, even while
he was filling out the withdrawal ticket. Savings as comfortable as that would
provide an unanticipated cushion for job-hunting
No, it wouldn t do. Savings dollars spent these days on daily living were
about 64% wasted, prices being as wildly inflated as they were. A dollar had
to make money to retard its own diminishing value. To waste it hunting
virtually non-existent trade editorial jobs would be stupid, when the
possibility existed that it could be invested in a high-return enterprise.
It was Danny s intuition that there was no higher-return investment than
precognition if it paid off at all.
He withdrew the money, to the obvious prim disapproval of the teller what
stake couldhe have in it, anyhow? and left the building once more, and, he
hoped, forever.
A subway took him to the city s financial district, and an elevator took him
up to the brokerage firm which had been the object of a field trip for Danny s
Economics class during his last year in college.
The junior partner of the firm, trained to remember the most insignificant
face and name against the possible development that there should be money
attached to it, received him with apparent pleasure.
 I want to try a few small transactions, Danny said steadily.  Studying, you
understand. I ve some money to spare, and I think actually entering it on the
market would be valuable, laboratory experience for me.
 Possibly even profitable, the broker said.  We re taking a special interest
in small investors these days, because capital s needed pretty badly. So much
is being soaked up by defense industries. Let me see you re interested in the
food business, as I remember; I can offer you some shares in a frozen food
subsidiary of one of the major companies quite sound, and likely to be going
up almost indefinitely.
 No, I m not interested in that kind of thing; on a long-term investment I d
stick to debentures or a savings-and-loan plan, anyhow. That would make me
money in the long run, but it wouldn t teach me anything I didn t already
know. What I want to do is speculate.
The broker smiled ruefully.  Speculate? he said.  No sewers where you live? [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]