Abram Sowell

Buys filed paper at twenty cents on the nuyen and waits for 2071. Has never broken a contract.

A second-floor office on Wilshire in Westwood, above a dental practice, with his own name on the door and magazines in the waiting room. Sowell speculates in filed interests: assignments, fee shares, contingent claims, anything sitting on a register somebody might one day honor. He buys at twenty to thirty cents on the nuyen and then does nothing at all, for years.

The bet is the annexation. Pueblo's integration procedure converts interests entered on recognized registers into Pueblo instruments, so a worthless-looking assignment filed with the right body in 2060 is an instrument in 2071. See Pueblo.

The people whose paper he buys call him Twenty Cents, after what he pays for it, and they say it to his face. He answers to it without a flicker, because a man who argues about the number is a man who might go higher.

He is not connected to anybody, employs nobody, and has never broken a contract, because a man in his line who breaks one is finished by lunchtime.

What the crew knows#

• He will show his arithmetic if he thinks it will help him, and not otherwise. Ask why he is offering a fifth of what a thing might be worth and you may get it slowly, in numbers, or you may get a number and nothing else. On the Belmar assignment it was the second one.
• He pays promptly and in full, and people who deal with him twice stop reading the paperwork.
• He will look at any filed paper, not just the piece you came in with.
• He does not want to know how you got it and will stop you if you start explaining.

Contact#