Having had his taste of how the rich lived, Vance went off to look around the S.S. Anne.
She deserved the name of a great ship. There were several battlefields inside her, built out of carefully chosen materials, so that any number of Pokémon battles could be fought without the least effect on the hull.
A Pokémon battle is a fine thing, and something everyone can enjoy, young and old alike. The Trainers battling now had gone red in the face under the cheering, directing their Pokémon with everything they had, as though the praise mattered to them.
Naturally there were also those who wanted to be noticed by someone important, and a Trainer's own skill was the capital you were noticed for; and since almost everyone who could get aboard the S.S. Anne was rich or highly placed, there had been more than one case of a man catching an important eye and rising overnight.
There had even been boys whose bare-faced stubbornness a wealthy woman had seen right through, and who had gone on to the happy life of a kept man.
As the saying has it: meet a rich lady and seize your chance, and you're sleeping in a great villa that same night.
"A pity that fat Ambrose isn't here. If he were, this sort of thing would be right up his street."
Vance rubbed his chin, leaning on the rail, looking down at all the different sorts of people below, and thought of Ambrose.
Though he had been taken along to one high-class banquet before, the one the great Quillon family had put on.
"What are you doing out here? Looking down on the world of men?"
Nolan came out from one side with a wine glass in his hand, a rich, fragrant wine in it, which he swirled a little and tasted.
"Heh. What right have I to look down on the world of men? I'm an ordinary man myself."
Vance laughed and said it, took a glass of the wine from the tray of a passing attendant and tasted it. It ran dry on the tongue.
Nolan heard him out and shook his head. "An ordinary man? I don't believe it. Whose ordinary man becomes an Elite-class Trainer at this stage? If we hadn't come out of the same intake, I'd take you for the son of one of the great clans."
Over these last days Vance had been letting the Slaking and the rest of them out to eat and train, and Nolan had seen them a few times and knew that the Slaking had broken through to Elite. It had surprised him as well, how Vance had come by such rare Pokémon — but every man has his own fortune, and there was nothing so remarkable in that.
If he had wanted to, he could have raised a Fire-type starter himself.
"Ladies and gentlemen, the S.S. Anne will shortly be putting to sea. There may be a little movement at that time..."
The announcement of the departure came over the tannoy and was repeated several times; then the hull shuddered, and the S.S. Anne drew slowly out of Vermilion harbour and away towards the open sea.
Down in the grand hall the Trainers' gathering went on undisturbed, and the well-dressed gentlemen and ladies stood about in twos and threes, talking and laughing.
The S.S. Anne was large, and she was divided into any number of areas: an area for Trainers to meet and talk, an area for Pokémon battles, an area laid out with more fine food than a man could count, an area where people were dancing...
Vance happened to be walking through the commercial quarter, where the traders had set up. Stall after stall stood there, each of them with a crowd round it.
What they sold was mostly Pokémon, and the supplies a Pokémon might need.
"Good-looking lad — yes, you, sir, that's right, you. With a face like that, you're bound to be somebody one day."
Vance was passing one of the stalls when a middle-aged man began calling out to him. There were several Magikarp beside him.
"So it's you." That amused Vance — running into the Magikarp salesman here, of all days. The man was clearly an old hand, doing business aboard the S.S. Anne now.
Having nothing better to do, Vance walked over.
"Ha ha, excellent, here's another one. It's a lucky day." The Magikarp salesman was delighted inside, but he kept his face steady, and with his eyebrows dancing he explained to Vance what a very fine Magikarp this was — and told it beautifully.
If Vance had not raised a Gyarados of his own, he might have believed every word of it.
"I'll be honest with you. This Magikarp was born with a dragon's destiny in it, and the dragon blood in its body runs thick — no common Magikarp, this one. Give it time and it will evolve, and once it does it will be the equal of a pure-blooded Dragon-type. And what a pure-blooded Dragon-type is worth, you Trainers know better than I do."
The more the Magikarp salesman said, the more excited he grew, and the whole performance was played out in dead earnest.
"So today, for this Magikarp of mine, I'm not asking 9,990,000 and I'm not asking 990,000. One price: 300,000. Call it making a friend of a handsome young man — if we hadn't the luck to meet I wouldn't sell it at all."
"...Do I look like an idiot to you?" Vance had no words for him. He was not some starry-eyed boy, and he was not one of those fools with more money than sense. Good grief — 300,000, ten times what the thing was worth.
Vance rolled his eyes and turned to go. He had come over out of interest, wanting a look at somebody out of the original story; he had had his look, and he could go.
"Eh — eh — eh, don't be like that. If it's come to this, then I've no choice but to bring out the king of all Magikarp, raised by a method handed down in my own family — the Golden Magikarp!"
"My ancestor, for his part, was an awe-inspiring Champion-class master who held sway over a whole region, and he worked out a method for raising Golden Magikarp by long and patient study." As he said it the Magikarp salesman brought out a Magikarp glittering with gold and set it down in front of him.
Vance still had no words. This Golden Magikarp was a Magikarp with a coat of gold paint smeared over it, and the man could talk it up like that.
There was no such thing as a Golden Magikarp. It was a perfectly ordinary Magikarp and nothing else.
"Do an honest trade. Stop swindling people."
Vance walked away without more ado, not caring to waste his time on the fraud.
"Eh? Could he have seen through my consummate acting? That can't be right. Aren't boys that age supposed to long for exactly this sort of thing? Or was my price too high? Never mind, never mind, I'll come down next time — 30,000 Poké Dollars will do. They came out of a stinking ditch anyway, they're worth nothing. Heh heh. That ought to take in a few fools."
Having got that far, the Magikarp salesman could not help congratulating himself on such a head for business, and he packed his things up and got back to it.
Not every boy had Vance's eye, and before long a Trainer came up to the stall and, under that silver tongue of his, bought one of the so-called Magikarp of vast potential.
Having made his round, Vance bought a few decent things of his own, and was about to go on looking when Nolan came to find him and said there was an auction, and they should go and see it.
"It's a mixed crowd there. If you want to pick anything good out of it you need an eye."
"True enough." Vance nodded, and added, "Somebody took me for an idiot just now, as it happens. Though I did manage to buy a few things that suit me."
"Ha ha ha. Who took you for an idiot? What a poor eye he must have."
"Only a man selling fish."
"Ha ha, now that is funny."