The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell [32]
"I am a futures broker," he told her, leaning back from the table and settling his stomach over his belt. "I represent a group of investors who sponsor promising young people in difficult circumstances."
He had made his fortune in the Americas, where he’d mined slums and orphanages for bright, determined children whose feckless or dying parents could provide neither an environment nor an education adequate to develop their offsprings’ potential. "Brazil, of course, was the first to privatize their orphanages," he told her. Burdened by hundreds of thousands of children, abandoned or orphaned by HIV and TB and cholera or just running wild, the government had finally given up pretending that it could do anything with these kids. Jaubert’s backers had another way.
"Everyone wins," Jean-Claude Jaubert explained. "The taxpayers’ burden is reduced, the children raised in a proper manner, fed and educated. In return, the investors receive a percentage of the children’s earnings for life."
A lively secondary market had developed, a bourse where one could invest in an eight-year-old who’d tested extraordinarily high in mathematical ability, where one could trade rights to the earnings of a medical student for those of a talented young bioengineer. Liberals were horrified, but men like Jaubert knew that the practice gave children a monetary value, which made them less likely to be shot during street-cleaning sweeps through the slums.
"And yet," Jaubert told her, "I think that the most promising and spirited young people are depressed by the lifelong contracts they are held to. They burn out, refuse to work. You can see perhaps what a waste this is." Jaubert proposed that a more equitable contract be drawn, lasting perhaps twenty years, which would include the years of training provided by the investors. "Brokers, such as I, will find work for the talent, who will receive a decent living wage. When released from the contract, mademoiselle, you would have a reputation, experience and contacts—a firm foundation upon which to build." It was necessary that Sofia be tested for various diseases and disabilities that might affect her work, of course. "Should anything untoward be detected," Jaubert told her, "you would be treated if possible and with your consent, naturally, ma cherie. The medical costs are added to the contracted debt."
It was Sofia herself who negotiated the clause allowing her to buy Jaubert out if she were able to earn his backers’ investment, plus four percent over projected inflation, compounded annually over the contract life, in less than twenty years. Jaubert was delighted. "Mademoiselle, I applaud your business sense. It is a pleasure to work with someone as practical as she is beautiful!" The clause provided her with a motive to earn the highest fees as quickly as possible, a benefit to them both.
Their relationship from that time on was cordial. After the handshake that sealed their agreement, he never touched her again: Jaubert had his own code of ethics. Her tutors and trainers found her a machine for learning. Polyglot from childhood, she spoke Ladino, classical Hebrew, literary French, commercial English, as well as the Turkish of her neighbors and schoolmates. To these, the investors determined, she should add Japanese and Polish, to widen her sphere of usefulness. She had a natural bent toward AI analysis, which the investors lost no time in developing. In the great Sephardic tradition, her programs were distinguished by their strict logical clarity, the transitions from one subject to the next graceful and simple.
Jaubert was congratulated, and prospered along with his backers. He himself felt he had rescued something very fine when he found Sofia Mendes. Jaubert had seen self-possession and intelligence under the dirt and hunger, and his perception paid off handsomely.
What Sofia Mendes saw now, with vision unclouded