Firefly Season 2, Page 2

you do, if you can track him down again, then you've got a payday that you'll remember for a long time. I bought the al-Din that way, with the profit from doing a bit of work on the side that my old kaiser didn't know about. There's an England in this branch, right? United States? Great War? OK, maybe you'll be able to understand this story. Does your world have a fantasy novel called The Fellowship of the Ring? Yeah? How many books in the series? Oh, OK. Well, in some branches he died early. And, let me tell you, there's no money to be had like that from a bunch of fans who think a story ended too soon.

  I'm going to come back to that - that's the point of this whole tale, actually.

  But second thing you need to know is this: Friedrick Richter. Do you know the expression "balluji"? How about "freska"? "Asshole"? Yes. OK, then. Friedrick Richter is an asshole among assholes. If the Pontifex of Greater Spain commanded all of his slaves to - no, never mind. The point is Friedrick Richter is an asshole like you've never met. And that was before I stole a woman from him.

  Yeah, well. Get to be my age and come back and tell me you've never made a bad decision.

  Get me another beer, why don't you? This one is empty.

  Good.

  Friedrick Richter is an asshole, and while I don't run into him that often, when I do, it's always exciting. And I mean that the same way that a crashed petrol truck on fire is "exciting".

  So the entire crew and I get to Isham's Cross-Time in this one port, following up on a lead I'd gotten, and it's looking good. I see our contact there, and he's smiling. And better yet, he's holding a briefcase. Put those three things together - buyer, source, and middleman - that's me - and that's where the magic happens. And by magic, I mean "profit".

  I told you about my first big score, those two fantasy books. That was twenty years ago. Books still sell, but time change, and you've got to change with them. You see these screens around us? Tell me what you see. No, go on, look.

  Over there, behind you, you've got David Fincher's "Rendezvous with Rama". That one there, to your right, that's Alejandro Jodorowsky's "Dune". There, further along, you've got "Star Wars". Now, let me tell you, THAT is a rare one. Have you heard of George Lucas? American Graffiti? Well, in the branch where he doesn't die on the set of Americ-

  Oh. You've seen it?

  Yeah, well. The point is, everyone's seen some of these, but no flatlander's seen them all. That's the definition of flatlander, right? And that's why people come to Isham's Cross-Time, or any of the infinite clones of it. To scout. To haggle. To see what's new. To sell films and TV shows. Because unlike a ray gun or cancer meds, you don't need to reverse engineer art and culture. Transfer it from thumb-wide to wire-tape, or mag wheel, or flutter-disk, or 35 millimeter, or glask-bon, or whatever you need for you local market, and you've got gold. You let the flatlander contact worry about distribution, so there's not even a hassle. Look, let me ask you: is there a movie or TV show that never quite came into existence in your branch?