A Long Time from Home Ch. 09

"Oh, can you give me the price in American dollars please?" I asked, since many of the prices I knew from the women, was in that currency.

He nodded distracted, took a calculator, and punched in some numbers, before he looked up. "If it turns out to be a real one, I will give you..." He calculated in his head. "... 16,000 dollars for it."

Since the 3 million had changed to 24,000, I nodded slowly. Getting two thirds of the price wasn't bad when selling something and, judging Alice's knowledge, it was a lot of money.

"That sounds fair," I said, "Since you said, 'if it turns out to be a real one', I guess that you want to run some tests before giving the final yes, or no?"

"You're absolutely right." He spread his arms in an apologizing way. "I'm sorry, but one can never be too careful." He glanced at the coin again, "Do you happen to have a certificate for this?"

Since I was still reading his surface thoughts, I knew he was talking about a document that showed that the coin wasn't a forgery. However, I also picked up, that many coins didn't have a certificate, especially nose those belonging to private collectors.

I shook my head. "No, unfortunately not. I bought it from a private collector. How long will it take to determine if it's real?"

He hesitated, and I projected a sense of urgency into him.

"I can make a fairly good estimate in an hour." He finally said, "You're welcome to stay and observe."

I smiled and withdrew from his mind. "I would like that very much."

For an hour, I watched him while he weighted the coin, spun it between his fingers, consulted books and his computer, compared it with images and several other things that I could see no meaning or purpose in doing.

On the bright side, he seemed more and more excited as time went by.

Finally, he looked at me. "Even working under this time limit, I am confident that this coin is not a forgery. Now there's only one thing left." He looked me into the eyes. "Do you swear that this coin is real to the best of your knowledge?"

I kept eye contact, nodded, and said, "I swear, that as far as I know, this coin is a real roman aureus."

Suddenly, he barked a short laughter and slapped me on the shoulder. "Good. Then we have a deal." Looking at the coin, he said something to it in a language I didn't understand before he turned his attention to me again. "Let me guess, you would like to avoid paying tax of this?"

"Oh yes!" I answered with a grin.

"Will you accept cash?" He held up a hand to forestall any objection from me, not that I had any, and continued. "I know it's cumbersome, but if I give you half the money in dollars and the other half in pesetas, we can avoid reporting anything to anybody and you can enjoy your vacation with a lot more money."

I pretended to think about it for a few heartbeats, but with no disadvantages at all, it was almost a faultless deal for me and apparently for him too.

Holding out my hand in the time-honoured tradition of closing a deal, I said, "It sounds perfect."

We shook hands on it, before he picked up a phone and made a call.

"My wife will bring the money." He explained when he was done.

I understood. He couldn't really leave the shop and didn't keep that amount of money here.

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The wife was a small, but elegant old lady with hair as white as her husbands and to my relief she brought the money in a small leather bag.

Seeing that I didn't have a bag to transport the money in, the coin dealer simply gave me the bag. "Here... You can keep it."

I opened it and glanced over the content while I read the surface thoughts of the wife to see if I was being cheated, but as I had suspected, she was completely honest, so I closed the bag again and bowed slightly. "Thank you for the deal."

"You're not going to count them?"

"No. You strike me as honest man." I said with a smile. "And besides you would have expected me to count them, so there's no reason to doubt that everything is in order."

He laughed again as he nodded, and we said our goodbyes.

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Now that I had money, I used some of them right away, to buy some of the things I needed.

Most importantly, I needed condoms. I didn't know how many the women had, and since sex and the associated Vis energy suddenly had become as important to me as food, a good supply seemed like a good idea.

That was as far as I got, because as I stepped out of the shop, where I suddenly became aware, that I could hear the twins exited mental comments to each other, while they tried different water rides and that worried me.

One of the rules of the universe is, that if something has happened once, it can happen again and since the twins had telepathy, chances were that other humans had it too. While that might not be bad, there was no guarantee it was good either and if it wasn't good, unfocused use of powers could bring the twins in danger. Especially since I still haven't found the source of the creepy voice from the first night.

I reached out with my mind and contacted them, using an extremely tight focus.

"< Girls don't answer this, but you need to focus when you mind-talk. Right now, you're shouting so loudly I can hear you half a city away. If you want to keep your ability a secret, focus your minds on each other, so you cannot be overheard >" As an afterthought, I added. "< Oh... It's a lot easier, if you touch the person you're talking to, so holding hands will be a good idea >"

As soon as I stopped the contact, a wave of dizziness hit me. Hard enough that I had to lean against a wall to stop myself from falling.

I knew these moments of dizziness was the result of the long meditation, like a patient that needs to recuperate from a long sickness, but it didn't stop them from being annoying... especially when I was walking around with a lot of money.

Looking around for a place to sit, I spotted a small café and a moment later, I was sitting on a chair in a corner with a glass of wine and a plate of local food.

Both were good, but it didn't help on the dizziness, so when I was done and carefully walked over to the waitress. "Sorry, but I think I'm having a slight heat stroke... Do you have a quiet place in the shade, where I can sit for a while?"

Turning around, she sent me a concerned look. "Are you sure you don't want a doctor?"

I nodded with a smile. "Just a cool place to sit, please."

The waitress considered it for a moment, but then nodded. "Come with me."

Instead of leading me into another room, the waitress walked me through the kitchen and through a back door, ending in an enclosed garden, where I could sit in the shade under a tree until I felt better.

Then she went back to work, and I sat down on the grass to meditate.