Then he shrugged and put the jacket back in the bag. I guess not. They aren’t the criminals and this is the part of the jacket that has the bullet holes.
Epilogue
They were almost to Kaem’s dorm when Arya turned to him. She looked a little dazed. “My phone took a message while Harris was pointing that gun at me.”
Kaem’s heart sank. “What now?”
“Space-Gen wants us to build them some engines, starting with a test version.”
“Oh, okay.”
“They also want to pay us a million dollars just to have a ‘right of first offer’ to buy rocket engines once we prove we can build them.”
Holy shit! Kaem thought, but he schooled his face to stillness. “Tell them a million will only hold those rights for a week.”
“Really?!”
Kaem nodded. “They’ll jump on it,” he said, trying to sound confident.
“Okay, I’ll call them Monday.”
“Call them now. They’re in the Pacific time zone and they called us when it was evening here. They’ll still be waiting.” I hope… Kaem thought.
As they walked into Kaem’s dorm, Arya had her phone return the call. She paced back and forth in the lobby, intermittently talking to someone in California.
Kaem sat, hoping he looked calm. He felt like his head was about to explode.
Arya turned to him. “A million a week until they get us the mold for their test engine? Then no payments until we fill it with Stade and they can start testing?”
Kaem nodded. “Make the deal.”
A few minutes later Arya sprawled into the big chair next to him. Looking stunned, she said, “They’re sending a contract!”
Kaem took a moment to savor the news. “We should show it to an attorney.”
“It’s the weekend. There’s no attorney to show it to. What we should do, is go have a drink to celebrate.”
“Um…” Kaem hesitated, “I don’t like alcohol.”
“We’ll just wet your lips with a toast of celebratory champagne. I’ll call Gunnar as we walk.”
I didn’t say I’d go! Kaem thought, as Arya pulled him to his feet and dragged him after her.
“He says he’ll meet us there!” Arya said enthusiastically.
They walked quietly for a bit, then Arya asked, “What’s gotten into you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Mr. talkative, who always makes a stupid joke, gets a bit of good news and it completely shuts him up. Do I need to hold good tidings in reserve against those times when you’re being annoying?”
Kaem sighed, “I don’t know. Maybe. This whole thing with Harris… it’s getting me down. Do you know if we can file for the patent without using my real name? I know you said it has to be in the name of a person, not our company, but… I’d rather I didn’t have a bunch more crazy people coming after me.”
“I don’t think so, but I’ll look into it. I think you’ll have to do something like the movie stars do. Take a ‘stage name’ so to speak. Even though a lot of them have some exotic name they put on the marquees of theaters, they still live their legal lives by their boring original name. For you, it’d be kind of the opposite. ‘Kaem Seba’ would be the legal name of that famous guy who invented stade, while you lived your dull and obscure life as Joe Blow.”
Kaem grinned, “‘Dull and obscure…as Joe Blow’ huh? Who’s got the stupid jokes now?”
Still walking, Arya threw an arm around his shoulders and squeezed. “Just trying to cheer you up.”
Electricity shot through Kaem at the contact. She’d virtually never touched him before. He desperately wanted to put an arm around her waist.
He refrained.
As they walked up to the bar Arya said, “You have any plans for the weekend?”
“No, what’s up?” Kaem asked eagerly.
~~~
Cursing herself, Arya wondered, Am I his only social life? She said, “It’s just that I’ll be out of town this weekend and wondered whether you’d be okay? It’s probably not so dangerous now that Harris’s off the streets, but…?”
“I’ll be fine,” he said quickly. “Where are you going?”
“Can you mostly stay in? You know, to stay safe?”
“Yes…” he said slowly. Then, sounding worried, “Where’re you going?”
“Um… I’m going to see my parents.” And the boy they think I should marry, she thought, dreading it. But her parents thought they were doing what was right and in her best interests.
~~~
Gunnar found them in a booth at the back of the Cavalier Buffalo. Though he had a tendency to think of them as a couple, they were sitting on either side of the table. Not wanting to offend, Gunnar slid in next to Seba. He looked at Vaii, “So, you said when I got here you’d give me the good news?”
The girl launched into an enthusiastic explanation of how they were being paid $1 million per week. “That’s $10,000 a week to you for your 1% Mr. Schmidt,” merely to give Space-Gen a ‘right of first offer’ to buy the engines.
“Right of first offer?” Gunnar asked, not certain what that meant.
“It means that if Orbital Systems offers us $100 million for the right to buy stade rocket engines, we first have to give Space-Gen the opportunity to outbid them.”
“Son of a bitch!” Gunnar breathed. He glanced at Seba who looked practically morose. Turning his eyes back to Vaii, Gunnar waved at Seba and said, “What’s gotten into him?”
Vaii laughed. “Nothing like a bit of good news to put the man in the dumps!”
Gunnar turned to Seba, “Really?”
Seba shrugged, “We had a little run-in with Harris this evening. Made me think there might be some downsides to being rich and famous.”
Gunnar snorted. “There’ll be some upsides too, you know?”
Seba shrugged.
Gunnar turned to Arya, “What’re you going to do with your share of the money?”
“Build the business. I’m going to make Staze the world’s biggest corporation.”
“I thought you were going to sell it to Space-Gen?”
“We’re only selling them rocket engines and cryogen tanks. They won’t be able to make them for themselves. Anyone else wants something made of stade, they’re going to have to come to us too.”
Gunnar turned to Kaem, “What about you? What’re you going to do with that money?”
This brought a small smile to his lips. “First thing on my list is gene therapy. Assuming I survive that… then I’d like to build stuff out of stade.”
Gunnar was about to ask about the “gene therapy” wish when the waitress settled a tray before them. It had a bottle and some wine glasses on it. She said, “Sorry we don’t have any champagne flutes.” She shrugged, “Well, we don’t actually have any champagne either, just sparkling wine. Is that okay?”
“It’ll be fine,” Vaii said. “When you pop the cork, be sure to spray some of the foam on the sourpuss in the corner, okay? There’ll be a substantial tip in it for you.”
“Really?” the waitress asked, studying Kaem as if she wanted to be sure he wouldn’t object but he didn’t seem to notice.
“Really,” Vaii said.
The girl set to work on the cork. When it popped it hit the wall over Kaem and dropped in his lap. It startled him, but was nothing to the spray of bubbly foam that followed. Startled, he drew back in horror, but then, realizing what was going on, he finally broke into a huge smile.
Laughing, Vaii said, “Thanks!” and held a $100 bill out to the waitress.
As the girl walked away, Arya leaned forward and confidentially said, “I used to work as a waitress and always promised myself that when I got some money, I’d leave a big tip.” She looked after the departing waitress. “Someday I’m gonna leave a lot bigger tip than that.”
Gunnar laughed, “You haven’t got money yet!”
~~~
Remembering his father’s advice, Kaem kept the smile on his face. After
a bit he started to feel better. How can I be sad? he wondered. It looks like Stade’s going to be everything I hoped for!
The End
Hope you liked the book!
To find other books by the author try Laury.Dahners.com.
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Author’s Afterword
This is a comment on the “science” in this science fiction novel. I’ve always been partial to science fiction that poses a “what if” question. Not everything in the story has to be scientifically plausible, but you suspend your disbelief regarding one or two things that aren’t thought to be possible. Essentially you ask, “what if” something (such as faster than light travel) were possible, how might that change our world?
I think the rest of the science in a science fiction story should be as real as possible.
Therefore, in this story, the central question continues to be what if someone invented a way to stop time in a certain volume of space-time.
Stasis is not a new idea in science fiction. Niven’s “slavers” used it to escape from bad situations into the future. In Vernor Vinge’s The Peace War, people who threaten the authoritarian government are “bobbled” in stasis fields to get them out of the way. In both of these SF universes, the stasis fields are indestructible but—to the best of my recollection—they are always spherical and are only used to protect oneself from destruction (Niven) or to punish offenders by sending them forward in time (Vinge). Sometimes a story will use stasis for the preservation of food or people but they usually ignore the presumed mechanical properties.
The question in this book then becomes: What if these indestructible segments of space-time could be induced in non-spherical shapes. Wouldn’t this provide the ultimate material for rockets, construction and other engineering projects requiring exotic properties?
Acknowledgments
I would like to acknowledge the editing and advice of Gail Gilman, Nora Dahners, Juli Damazo, Philip Lawrence, Abiola Streete, and Henrie Timmers, each of whom significantly improved this story.
A Pause in Space-Time (A Stasis Story #1) (The Stasis Stories) Page 14
