A while back, John Klima invited me to be in an anthology called Logorrhea.  The concept of the anthology was stories based on the winning words of the Scripps National Spelling Bee.   He gave me a list of possible words (some of which were already spoken for) and asked whether any of them had a story in ‘em.

It took me about a minute to choose.  I wanted Cambist.  (And my thanks to John Paola for winning with that word back in 1977.)

A cambist is an expert in the exchange of foreign currency.  For that last few years, part of my for-fun reading has been books on economics for us lay folks.  It’s been insanely nifty.  And yes, I am a big ol’ geek for thinking so.

Magic (and I know this looks like a non-sequitur, but hang tight for a second) is making something true that was not true or possible that was not possible by the combined act if will and speech.  If I could hold out my hand and yell “Fireball” and a ball of fire sprang from my fingertips, you’d think that was magic, right?

And if it took two people, both yelling “fireball”, and the damned fireball still appeared, that would still be magic, right?

So when we say “this coin is the container of abstract value” and just like that, the coin is the container of abstract value, dude, that’s magic.   And a million things that weren’t possible before become possible.  I can get enough lightbulbs to keep my home noonday bright anytime I want, and with almost no effort.  How much effort would it have taken me to craft those bulbs by hand?  Would I have been able to keep up with them as they burned out?  How would I make the filament?  Or blow the glass?  Or create the vacuum?

But through the simple act of collective will, I can sell a story called The Cambist and Lord Iron: A Fairy Tale of Economics to John Klima, take the check to my bank, and turn words that I made up out of my head into lightbulbs that let me write long after midnight.  Through money anything becomes expressible in terms of anything else. Money is the most powerful magic system humanity has ever created, and it’s better than religion because it works.  If there wasn’t a story in that, I figured I might as well go back to tech support.

Along with my little offering, the inimitable Jeff VanderMeer wrote a story using each of the words the rest of us had chosen, and making a kind of mini-zeitgeist for the book as a whole.   It’s called Appoggiatura.

Jeff’s story is being podcast — my little portion and everyone else’s too.  Check out the whole project or else read on.  Here’s what Jeff VanderMeer made of my little word and the magic in it:

CAMBIST

At the Anadolubank in Istanbul, Hazine Tarosian has handled them all.
Crinkled and smooth, crisp and softly old. To her, new bills smell like ink
and presses moving at high speed. There's a hint of friction in the paper,
of burning smoke, that gives motion to the images, living contrast to inert
cold coins. A burst of sunflower, bee in orbit around pollen, for the
Netherlands. Ireland's beefy headshot of James Joyce, with Ulysses on the
other side. The sibilance of Egypt's Arabic letters against a backdrop of
Caliph-era battlements, in the distance a verdigris dome, last link to
fabled Smaragdine. The careful detail of Thai King Bhumanibol calm upon his
throne, sword across his lap, a flaming mandala at his back. Or even
Portugal's massed galleons listing, sails taut against the whorled wind, sun
a complex compass.

Hazine has begun to believe that the value of such wonders should be based
on something more lasting than the rate of exchange. The verdigris dome in
particular has so enthralled her that she even bought a book about
Smaragdine called The Myths of the Green Tablet and a few old coins that she
keeps in a display at her bank office.

For months now the image of the dome has come to her at night. She is
floating over it and it is floating up toward her, until she's falling down
through the dome and she can see, distant but ever closer: a green tablet, a
ruined tower, an entire ancient city.

This dream is so vivid that Hazine always wakes gasping, the solution to
some great mystery already receding into the darkness. Friends tell her the
dream is about her job, and yet it informs her waking life in unexpected
ways, imbues certain people and things with vibrant light and color. She
keeps the Egyptian bill in her wallet. The suggestion, the hint, of
Smaragdine, is so potent, as if a place must be hidden to become real.

Is this, then, the power of money? Hazine thinks, bringing tea and the
newspaper back to bed with her in the mornings, her lover asleep and
dreamless beside her.