The first alien auction on British soil took place in a hotel conference centre outside Milton Keynes. Elias attended because civilisation had clearly become a joke and he wanted front-row seats.
The event was legal.
Technically.
The government had spent two days deciding whether it could prevent it, then discovered twenty-seven foreign governments had already allowed similar events and several British companies had signed attendance contracts containing arbitration clauses nobody fully understood.
So Harcourt went.
And where Harcourt went, Elias invited himself.
"You are not buying anything," she told him in the car.
"I have my own money."
"Not the point."
"Then what is?"
"We don't know what alien money does."
"Mostly buys things, I suspect."
"Elias."
"I promise not to purchase a planet without telling you."
"That sentence should not be necessary."
The hotel car park contained armoured vehicles, diplomatic cars, private security teams and one floating silver object that had apparently transported a delegation from Norway. Inside, the carpet remained aggressively beige. Elias found this comforting. Human mediocrity had survived contact with the universe. The auction hall contained three hundred humans and perhaps forty non-humans.
Some species used projection interfaces. Others attended physically under protected commercial access. The green-scaled merchant who had tried to buy Elias's Archive stood near the front.
Elias approached.
"You have a name?"
The merchant's expression suggested regret.
"Sikren."
"Excellent. I was tired of calling you the lizard solicitor."
"My species is not related to your reptiles."
"Lizard solicitor remains efficient."
Sikren looked at Harcourt.
"Does your government control him?"
"No," she said.
"Does anyone?"
"His sister, occasionally."
Elias ignored them.
The auction catalogue appeared through the CTL for people who had accepted assistance. Elias received a tablet because he had not. Lot One: purified reservoir crystal. Lot Two: low-grade defensive charm technology. Lot Three: licensed translation package for twelve Concordance trade languages. Lot Four: a biological treatment extending human healthy lifespan by an estimated thirty-seven years.
The room changed at that one.
Every human stared.
Elias read the restrictions.
"Subscription dependency."
Harcourt looked over.
"What?"
"Treatment requires maintenance doses every eighteen months."
"Still thirty-seven years."
"If the supplier remains available."
"You wouldn't take it?"
"Not without knowing what happens if I stop."
The auction moved on.
Weapons appeared.
Training contracts.
Medical services.
Mana cultivation techniques.
Resource forecasts.
Then the item Elias wanted.
Lot Twenty-Seven.
A damaged arcane computation node from a civilisation designated extinct under Concordance records. Sikren noticed his attention.
"Do not."
Elias looked at him.
"Why?"
"It is useless."
"Then it will be cheap."
"It is incompatible with your infrastructure."
"Everything is incompatible until someone fixes it."
The bidding began.
Elias raised his paddle.
Harcourt grabbed his sleeve.
"You promised."
"I promised not to buy a planet."
"I meant anything."
"That wasn't what you said."
The bidding climbed.
Two alien buyers dropped out. A Japanese technology consortium remained.
Elias bid again.
The consortium bid.
Again.
Sikren muttered something untranslated.
"What did you say?"
"A prayer for patience."
"You're religious?"
"Only around you."
Elias won the node for the equivalent of forty-two million pounds plus a small quantity of blue crystal. Harcourt looked physically ill.
"Forty-two million."
"Cheap."
"For a broken alien computer."
"Exactly."
"You don't know what it does."
"I know what it used to do."
"Which is?"
Elias smiled.
"Magic."
The next lot silenced him.
Not an object.
A contract.
Exclusive predictive mapping rights for a region of northern England. The seller was Veylan Frontier Resources. The map showed coloured probability zones.
Future breaches.
Resource emergence.
Mana wells.
One bright region covered Sheffield and the Peak District. Another covered part of Northumberland. A third sat directly beneath Vale House.
Elias stopped breathing.
Sikren watched him.
"You didn't know."
"Know what?"
"Your property lies on a convergence."
Harcourt turned.
"Define convergence."
Sikren hesitated.
Elias stepped closer.
"You offered me a moon to leave Earth."
The merchant's expression closed.
"That was unrelated."
"No."
Elias looked again at the map. His estate had been purchased twenty-one years earlier because it was remote, defensible and large enough to build underground laboratories. He had also chosen it because three different historical traditions associated the surrounding landscape with unusual lights, fairy roads, black dogs, phantom armies and one extremely persistent seventeenth-century account of a doorway appearing in a hill. His colleagues had laughed.
Elias had laughed too, eventually. He bought the land anyway. Now the alien map burned gold over it.
"How valuable?" he asked.
Sikren said nothing.
"Sikren."
"Potentially significant."
"How significant?"
"The auction price for predictive rights should indicate that."
The opening bid appeared. Equivalent to six billion pounds.
Elias began to smile.
Harcourt looked at him.
"Why are you smiling?"
"Because I finally made a sensible property investment."