er's role But Marco's House either did not share his misgivings or found reason to ignore mem, in 485 Count Nikos Marco s grandson, is recorded with the majority on the crucial Landsraad vote that would, six years later put the solan into circulation The same vote made the Guild, m effect, banker to the Impenum There was never an Imperial bank as such nor any sort of cen tral bank, but, as Marco saw must happen the Guild controlled interstellar banking be cause it controlled interstellar communication Information, like people and plasteel and portyguls, went from star to star only m the holds of Guild ships Thus money, as a form of information, could circulate only through the medium of the Guild E\ery heighlmer and most of the Guild's smaller spaceships earned at least one purser, empowered to collect and disburse loan and borrow, hold in trust, broker for a second party, extend and withdraw credit, cash drafts and make change To some extent each such officer was an entrepreneur because the gains and losses to the Guild from his conduct of business would be reflected quickly and di reUly in his standing on the non navigational side of the Guild hierarchy and, so, m his access to the geriatric spice No Guildsman had reason to accumulate many solans and no way to accumulate many personal pos sessions but one could accumulate years for his hfespan Since the solan was only a name, a bit of ncepaper, and a number in a ledger, it had to be defined in terms of its purchasing power To some extent once the monetary system was in place and functioning, its value de fined itself simply by the practice of money users But most of the years between the Landsraad vote ol 485 and the initial distnbu tion of solans in 491 were devoted to mtn cate negotiations to fix the starting point for the system The Guild subtly and effectively resisted any tendency of the emperor or the Landsraad to single out the price of spice as a fundamental determinant Instead the Guild negotiators proposed a complex formula of commodity equivalents The commodity mar ket processes had become rather sophistical ed over the centuries and the Guild, of IMPERIAL MONETARY SYSTEM 339 IMPERIAL POETRY course, had detailed current and historical records of weight/number/value ratios Their proposed formula was a scrupulously honest effort to preserve the relative economic standings of all the Houses It was debated for over four years The conflicting ambitions, rivalries, and enmities among the Houses tended eventually to cancel each other, and the weight of House Cornno gradually settled on die side of the Guild formula Although only the final version of that formula is known, it had certainly been modified by die debate, and some Houses, inept or careless in financial calculations, suffered thereby House Atreides, for instance, could not have profited from the equation of one tonne of punch nee to twenty-nine grams of molybdenum But no House was pauperized, nor did any beco