“White! What are you doing here?”
“Hello, Hooten.” When I’d stilled the beating of my heart, I managed a polite nod for J. Davis Alexander’s least favorite nephew and tried to sidle past his lanky frame.
His long, equine face thrust into mine. “I said, What are you doing here?”
“Just checking my bank box.” With a determined bit of shoulder work I made it past Hooten and into the small paneled foyer at the base of the elevator. I thumbed the button.
Behind me I heard a muffled cry of rage. “It’s empty! It’s—”
The elevator door opened and I stepped inside. Two hands fastened around my neck and yanked me back out. The hands tightened. “You’ve stolen it, White, you’ve—”
The fingers fell away from my neck and I whirled around, the flight bag clutched protectively to my chest.
Hooten was in the grip of two bulky gentlemen wearing discreet blue suits. “Please, Mein Herr,” one of them murmured to the furiously thrashing Hooten as he tightened his forearm around the Belter’s scrawny neck, “this gentleman is under the protection of the Banque Unione de Vaduz.” He turned to me. “Would you care to give him in charge, sir?”
I stepped back into the elevator and cast a final glance at Hooten. “No, just keep him calm until I’m in an air-car.”
The elevator door shut on Hooten’s indignant shrieks.
“So now you’re rich beyond the wildest dreams of avarice,” marveled Isabel with an ironic twist to her lips, “and you can use whatever evidence you found in the box to pry Miss Rutabaga of 2270 away from J. Davis Alexander and into your own little harem.” She exchanged complacent smiles with Jin Tshei, who reached across the table to pat her hand fondly.
“I admit the thought flashed briefly across my mind,” I grinned, raising my eyes from our table at the Cafe des Mondes to the corner office of Hartman, Bemis & Choupette where even now J. Davis Alexander was undoubtedly casting about for reasons to fire me.
“The dreams of avarice, that is,” I added hastily, “not Miss Grain Harvest of 2273- But on mature consideration I decided it would be far less stressful just to step into the Farmers Bank of Liechtenstein on the other side of the street and dump everything into a new bearer box over there. Let J. Davis Alexander worry about having Miss Grain Harvest find the new code-cards.”
Both ladies patted my hand simultaneously. “Very wise,” approved Jin Tshei, enveloping me in the radiance of the multi-gigawatt smile that always turned my legs to jelly. “But you still haven’t told us how you managed to keep from freezing to death.”
I shrugged casually, as if I made Houdini-like escapes every day of the week. “Very easy, when you think of it. I stuck one piece of torn-up shirt into one of the barrels, the pineapple brandy, I think, as a very small wick, tightly stoppered, and kept that going as my pilot light. Then, with a little experimentation, I got a much bigger piece burning in the other barrel. That’s the one that was doing the actual heating.”
“But the smoke,” objected Isabel. “It must—”
“Beltships have very efficient recycling and scrubbing equipment, even if their heating systems leave something to be desired. All I had to do was make sure I didn’t run out of clothes to burn—and to remember to change barrels whenever one of them was used up.”
“Yes, that must have been the hard part,” said Jin Tshei tartly, “especially since you seem to have been as busy drinking the stuff as you were burning it. Falling down on the feet of the Queen! Really, Jonathan White, you ought to be ashamed of yourself! Ten billion people watched you make a fool of yourself!”
“The Queen thought it was a very nice gesture,” I muttered defensively. “Showed the proper deference to her lofty stature and all that. No one told her I had simply passed out.” I took a sip of the Coca-Cola that had been my only drink at the Café des Mondes since returning from Earth and grimaced. “Her son the Crown Prince was drying out at a clinic in New Zealand with the D.T.’s, you know. That’s why he couldn’t make the trip down to Port Pomare.”
“But how did you get the damned wick burning in the first place?” demanded Isabel impatiently. “I thought you said you didn’t have any matches or any way to make a fire.”
“Yes, that was a little bit of a problem. But after a while I stopped licking the Water of Life off my fingers and remembered that I’d just nearly charred them to the bone by fiddling around with the powersuit’s wiring. So I ripped a couple of meters of wire out of the suit, jammed one end into the ship’s outlet, and crossed the other together over the pilot light in the barrel. Bingo! A nice bright spark—and a nicely burning wick.”
Isabel gave me a hard stare. “Would you ever have done anything so absolutely stupid if you hadn’t been drunk?”
A long silence. “We’ll never know, will we?” I shrugged at last. “Anyway, it wasn’t entirely my fault. I said that the air-scrubbers were super-efficient at cleaning the air and removing smoke. Very true—but it’s also true they weren’t designed to cope with the fumes of several thousand liters of burning mango brandy, either. At the same time they were filtering out the smoke, they were pumping pure alcohol vapor back into the cabin. That’s what kept me drunk for nineteen and a half days.”
Jin Tshei grip’s tightened on my hand. “Brave, intrepid Jonathan Welbrook White, pioneer drunken space hero!”
“I’ll never live it down,” I admitted. “On the other hand,” I added, my tone brightening, “the demonstration of the Ore-ball Express did just exactly what we wanted it to. The secondary offering for 220 million was oversubscribed, Orbex Inc. is getting ready to go into full-scale production of ore-balls, and the stock the three of us own from the initial offering has already quadrupled. And just between us, I just may have made a copy or two of some of the… spicier material in those sealed envelopes I found in J. Davis Alexander’s bearer box. Who knows: it might be useful to mention that fact the next time our furry friend up there takes a notion to fire me.”
I gestured imperiously to the lifelike robot attendant in his old-fashioned black suit and white apron. “Garçon! Another round of drinks for the ladies—and a Coca-Cola for the gentleman!”
MANY THANKS TO GERALD NORDLEY FOR INITIALLY SUGGESTING THE IDEA OF THE FLOATABLE ORE-BALL AND THEN DOING CALCULATIONS ON ITS FEASIBILITY. ANY MISTAKES IN THE STORY, HOWEVER, ARE ENTIRELY THE AUTHOR’S.
Editor’s Note: Earlier stories of Jonathan Welbrook White, Ethical Broker & Bourseman, include “Six Million Solid Gold Belter Buckles” (August 1994), and “Deep-Fried Black Diamonds” (January 1995).