The Incredible Secret of Antares 9

Drinking By The Spaceport

Jay Lovatt lifted the margarita to his lips with unsteady hands. Mis-sipped liquid sloshed over the rim and spattered on his lap. He grimaced. $18.99 for each drink. Before tip. There were a number of empty glasses around him already, but the alcohol's restorative effects were surely an investment, in himself.

He picked up his computing device. The hated banking application icon, a graphic of a smiling cartoon dollar, stared out at him.

His inebriated fingers fumbled for the balance button. He swore. Two middle aged ladies drinking coffee next to him on the terrace looked up. They then returned their attention to a splendid courier vessel which rose from the spaceport's nearest launch array, a spindly tree-like structure with branches and platforms that rotated as craft launched and landed.

Ground traffic and vapor-bikes hurried from the spaceport toward Downtown and the high rise habit-rep apartments, or further afield to the affluent Crystal Lake, where Jay, just about, still managed to afford to live.

The balance appeared. $2140.00.

He stared in disbelief, then closed the application and began over. He swore again, eliciting another disapproving glance from the women. Their courier ship was ascending beneath the crimson penumbra of Entratis. The gas giant would grow to dominate the sky as the afternoon turned to evening. It was nearing Perihelion, the once every ten years occasion when Entratis would move close to Violia, swelling its seas on one longitude, and draining them on the other.

The courier ship vanished from sight, lost against Entratis' swirling luminosity.

"Really," one of the ladies shot him a disapproving glare.

Two thousand one hundred and forty dollars. Less than one third of the absolute minimum he had thought would be in there.

He began the miserable job of checking his last five months of transactions. Parties, clubbing, cash withdrawals, loans to friends who had less income than he did, drugs, restaurant food. More drugs. His career as a dealer didn't seem to be yielding the returns he had hoped.

Some of the transactions made no sense. He opened one for $124.19, Aua Hills. He couldn't remember ever visiting Aua Hills. He clicked "Query" and a video appeared showing him stumbling into a gas station with a girl called Julia. Julia held his arm and was having trouble walking on the stiletto heels he had bought her that day.

"Five bottles of your finest absinthe," he projected to the clerk, sounding to all intents and purposes, like an idiot. He cringed as the man frowned back at him.

"We can only sell you three at once sir. By law."

He waved his hand, "Three bottles of your finest absinthe." Julia snorted and clung onto his arm, pulling him off balance.

"We only sell Carter Mule, sir."

"Three bottles of your crappiest absinthe please," he and Julia held onto one another, laughing.

"$124.19."

Jay watched the grainy image of himself reaching for its wallet before leaving with its absinthes. It would then drive drunk in its leased sports car to Jezzo's parent's house in Aua Hills, for a pool party where it would provide more free drugs than it would sell, and leave the next afternoon without Julia, who would go home that night in her heels with a football player named Jim.

The next 40 minutes passed in similar financial self-flagellation until he eventually muttered "Shit", under his breath this time, and dropped the device back on the table in a small Margarita puddle. He had spent the entire three yearly instalment of his trust fund and already borrowed away his next, with interest payments that would eat into his third. He would not now receive one more cent of unearned income for another six years. He would have to work, or become a much better dealer, so much better that it would become like work.

"Shit," he repeated.

The ladies stood to leave. A smartly dressed waiter passed them, thanked them graciously, then strode toward Jay. Jay had already made the decision that this far in another $18.99 couldn't hurt but instead of taking his order, the waiter passed him a gleaming sub-space phone.

"There's a call for you."

The bar was the kind of place that had clients who received sub-space calls, or even owned the telephones themselves. He had never made or received one of the costly calls himself. He wasn't after all, made of money.

He lifted the machine to his ear and prepared for his voice to travel across light years to, someone.

"Jay. It's your uncle here," Jay inwardly groaned. "These calls are immensely expensive so I'm not going to converse with you. Just listen. Antares 9, the dig we're doing. Incredible. Actually fantastic. But we need help with getting a ship and for reasons we'll have to go into when we see you, we are in the precarious position of having to rely on you. Get a ship and get out here. Leave as soon as you can but make sure its fast. That is the most important thing Jay. Fast. Use your money and I'll pay you back when you arrive. Leave by December, around Perihelion. This is important Jay, more so than you can imagine. Do not mess it up. I am counting on you and I expect you to be counted. Got it?"

"Er, yes," Jay replied to the signatory of his next trust fund payment. "I don't have much going on here anyway."

"No," his uncle agreed. "Anyway, are you alright?"

"Yes. Fine," Jay replied.

"Good. Goodbye, and thanks Jay." Light years away on another world his uncle broke the connection.

The waiter returned to retrieve the telephone and slapped the check down amidst the glasses.

"Take your time no hurry at all," he said. Then stood over Jay until he had paid.

"Change?"

"No thats fine," Jay said as the waiter carried one hundred and fifty of his dollars away.

Even so, he couldn't under tip in Montoya Retreat, and he was beginning to feel much better. All he needed was to find a cheap freighter and get someone to write out a very big receipt for it. Maybe he would hire a crew separately too, they wouldn't come cheap, or they wouldn't appear to, to his uncle.

He stood and as he did so knocked one of the glasses which tipped over the railing and smashed on the ground far below.

"Sorry!" he shouted without looking, and left the terrace bar. He needed to prepare for an appointment that would earn him some quick money, and that didn't require anything to be weighed.