with Mr Banerjee," she said. "I have his phone number. He knows that I'm a good worker -- he'll make it all better. You'll see, Mamaji, don't worry."
"Why, Mala, why? Couldn't you have just run away? Why did you have to hurt this boy?"
Mala felt some of the anger flood back into her. Her mother, her own mother --
But she understood. Her mother wanted to protect her, but her mother wasn't a general. She was just a girl from the village, all grown up. She had been beaten down by too many boys and men, too much hurt and poverty and fear. This was what Mala was destined to become, someone who ran from her attackers because she couldn't afford to anger them.
She wouldn't do it.
No matter what happened with Mr Banerjee and Mrs Dibyendu and her stupid idiot nephew, she was not going to become that person.
#
This
scene is dedicated to Borders, the global bookselling giant that
you can find in cities all over the world -- I'll never forget
walking into the gigantic Borders on Orchard Road in Singapore and
discovering a shelf loaded with my novels! For many years, the
Borders in Oxford Street in London hosted Pat Cadigan's monthly
science fiction evenings, where local and visiting authors would read
their work, speak about science fiction and meet their fans. When I'm
in a strange city (which happens a lot) and I need a great book for
my next flight, there always seems to be a Borders brimming with
great choices -- I'm especially partial to the Borders on Union
Square in San Francisco.
Borders
worldwide
If you want to get rich without making anything or doing anything that anyone needs or wants, you need to be
fast
.
The technical term for this is
arbitrage
. Imagine that you live in an apartment block and it's snowing so hard out that no one wants to dash out to the convenience store. Your neighbor to the right, Mrs Hungry, wants a banana and she's willing to pay $0.50 for it. Your neighbor to the left, Mr Full, has a whole cupboard full of bananas, but he's having a hard time paying his phone bill this month, so he'll sell as many bananas as you want to buy for $0.30 apiece.
You might think that the neighborly thing to do here would be to call up Mrs Hungry and tell her about Mr Full, letting them consummate the deal. If you think that, forget getting rich without doing useful work.
If you're an arbitrageur, then you think of your neighbors' regrettable ignorance as an opportunity. You snap up all of Mr Full's bananas, then scurry over to Mrs Hungry's place with your hand out. For every banana she buys, you pocket $0.20. This is called arbitrage.
Arbitrage is a high-risk way to earn a living. What happens if Mrs Hungry changes her mind? You're stuck holding the bananas, that's what.
Or what happens if some other arbitrageur beats you to Mrs Hungry's door, filling her apartment with all the bananas she could ever need? Once again, you're stuck with a bunch of bananas and nowhere to put them (though a few choice orifices do suggest themselves here).
In the real world, arbitrageurs don't drag around bananas -- they buy and sell using networked computers, surveying all the outstanding orders ("bids") and asks, and when they find someone willing to pay more for something than someone else is paying for it, they snap up that underpriced item, mark it up, and sell it.
And this happens very, very quickly. If you're going to beat the other arbitrageurs with the goods, if you're going to get there before the buyer changes her mind, you've got to move faster than the speed of thought. Literally. Arbitrage isn't a matter of a human being vigilantly watching the screens for price-differences.
No, arbitrage is all done by automated systems. These little traderbots rove the world's networked marketplaces, looking for arbitrage opportunities, buying something and selling it in less than a microsecond. A good arbitrage house conducts a
billion
or more trades every day, squeezing a few cents out of each one. A billion times a few cents
"Why, Mala, why? Couldn't you have just run away? Why did you have to hurt this boy?"
Mala felt some of the anger flood back into her. Her mother, her own mother --
But she understood. Her mother wanted to protect her, but her mother wasn't a general. She was just a girl from the village, all grown up. She had been beaten down by too many boys and men, too much hurt and poverty and fear. This was what Mala was destined to become, someone who ran from her attackers because she couldn't afford to anger them.
She wouldn't do it.
No matter what happened with Mr Banerjee and Mrs Dibyendu and her stupid idiot nephew, she was not going to become that person.
#
This
scene is dedicated to Borders, the global bookselling giant that
you can find in cities all over the world -- I'll never forget
walking into the gigantic Borders on Orchard Road in Singapore and
discovering a shelf loaded with my novels! For many years, the
Borders in Oxford Street in London hosted Pat Cadigan's monthly
science fiction evenings, where local and visiting authors would read
their work, speak about science fiction and meet their fans. When I'm
in a strange city (which happens a lot) and I need a great book for
my next flight, there always seems to be a Borders brimming with
great choices -- I'm especially partial to the Borders on Union
Square in San Francisco.
Borders
worldwide
If you want to get rich without making anything or doing anything that anyone needs or wants, you need to be
fast
.
The technical term for this is
arbitrage
. Imagine that you live in an apartment block and it's snowing so hard out that no one wants to dash out to the convenience store. Your neighbor to the right, Mrs Hungry, wants a banana and she's willing to pay $0.50 for it. Your neighbor to the left, Mr Full, has a whole cupboard full of bananas, but he's having a hard time paying his phone bill this month, so he'll sell as many bananas as you want to buy for $0.30 apiece.
You might think that the neighborly thing to do here would be to call up Mrs Hungry and tell her about Mr Full, letting them consummate the deal. If you think that, forget getting rich without doing useful work.
If you're an arbitrageur, then you think of your neighbors' regrettable ignorance as an opportunity. You snap up all of Mr Full's bananas, then scurry over to Mrs Hungry's place with your hand out. For every banana she buys, you pocket $0.20. This is called arbitrage.
Arbitrage is a high-risk way to earn a living. What happens if Mrs Hungry changes her mind? You're stuck holding the bananas, that's what.
Or what happens if some other arbitrageur beats you to Mrs Hungry's door, filling her apartment with all the bananas she could ever need? Once again, you're stuck with a bunch of bananas and nowhere to put them (though a few choice orifices do suggest themselves here).
In the real world, arbitrageurs don't drag around bananas -- they buy and sell using networked computers, surveying all the outstanding orders ("bids") and asks, and when they find someone willing to pay more for something than someone else is paying for it, they snap up that underpriced item, mark it up, and sell it.
And this happens very, very quickly. If you're going to beat the other arbitrageurs with the goods, if you're going to get there before the buyer changes her mind, you've got to move faster than the speed of thought. Literally. Arbitrage isn't a matter of a human being vigilantly watching the screens for price-differences.
No, arbitrage is all done by automated systems. These little traderbots rove the world's networked marketplaces, looking for arbitrage opportunities, buying something and selling it in less than a microsecond. A good arbitrage house conducts a
billion
or more trades every day, squeezing a few cents out of each one. A billion times a few cents
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