Windjammer: The Tradership Saga Book 1

by M J Gauntlet

  Walking back to the intercom, Zax pressed the button.

  “Can I help you again, Messer Grayson?” Lauria’s voice answered promptly.

  “I think I’m done here for the time being, could you come up and help me reinsert the box?” he said.

  “Sure, I’ll be right there. Just a mo,” she replied, as cheerful as ever.

  In a couple of minutes, the outside vault door opened again, and she walked in. Taking out her key, she asked, “Do you remember the sequence?” Zax nodded and she inserted her key. Zax followed suit and the deposit door opened once again. She stood a discreet distance away from the door as Zax reinserted the box into its receptacle. As he stepped out of the safety deposit vault, he stopped and asked Lauria a question.

  “Just how safe are these containers, I mean can someone force the bank to give them access for, let’s say, legal reasons?”

  “Oh, no. That would be almost impossible to manage,” she replied. “You see, that’s what I meant before, about them being Imperial boxes. It would take a court order to open one of those, and when I say, ‘court order’ I mean an order from the royal court itself, signed by the Empress herself, to force the bank to open one of those.”

  Feeling relieved at leaving the contents of the container, in the vault for the moment, he stepped back out and nodded to her that he was finished. She smiled back and they both headed out of the main vault doors. When they had finally reached the bank’s main floor, Zax turned to her and shook her hand politely, saying, “Thank you. You have been very helpful.”

  “You are quite welcome Zax, is there anything else I can do for you?”

  “As a matter of fact, there is,” he responded, with a smile, “I was told by my dad’s attorney, there might be a small number of eunits held in a trust fund in my name.” Reaching into his pocket, he produced the plasticine sheet with the account number on it. “Could you please check and see if that is true?”

  “I would be glad to,” she answered, sitting back behind her desk, “just hold on a moment and let me check this account number.”

  She checked her screen, blew out her cheeks and then rechecked her readout once again.

  “Well I wouldn’t call it gigantic, but it definitely isn’t what you would call a small account,” she said, with a gleam in her eyes. “Here let me give you a printout of the total amount.” She touched a stud on her desk, a small sheet of plasticine emerged that she tore off and handed to Zax. Then, she laughed out loud at the bug- eyed expression on his face.

  “I take it that you were not quite expecting that sum of eunits?” she added gleefully.

  Indeed, he wasn’t, for the amount on the flimsy sheet was one-hundred thirty thousand eunits!

  “I…I…don’t believe it!” he whispered, stunned.

  “Well it’s true,” she confirmed, smiling back at him, “remember that fund has been open for the past twelve years. Not only has there been a steady monthly flow of eunits going into that account, but it was invested in a rather conservative, yet steadily growing mutual fund. Plus, in all that time, it has been untouched and accruing interest… compounded interest. It adds up. Let me remind you those are Imperial eunits not Brightian planetary eunits.”

  “You mean that all those eunits are now mine?” he inquired, still dumbfounded.

  “Of course, but I want to warn you to only withdraw up to this year’s current interest earned. If you take more than that, the whole amount becomes taxable. The planetary government would then take a hefty bite out of the account. I also suggest you take only a part of what you withdraw in planetary eunits. Not only will it almost double any planetary income derived from the account, but it will also lessen the tax sting at the end of the quarter.” She looked over her shoulder, frowned and then motioned him to come closer to her lips. She whispered in his ear:

  “In just a few moments, a bank official will approach you and try to get you to diversify your account over several other types of planetary bank investments. Do not do that, if you do, they will be able to change this locked account into a high yield interest account at the current offering with a much less yield. Keep this account at least at seventy-five percent of its current balance and it will continue to yield its current preset interest rate.”

  She straightened up suddenly and smiled innocently at Zax as a tall man in a well-made suit came sauntering up to her desk.

  “Hello Miss Talbot,” he said, nodding at Lauria, “and who have we here? Could you be the claimant for our long-held trust account?” he crooned, smiling widely in Zax’s face, while putting his arm around Zax’s shoulders in a comradery fashion. Zax took an immediate disliking for the man.

  “My name is Carl Lagasse and I’d like to interest you in a few ways to diversify your holdings,” he continued saying as he tried to steer Zax away from Lauria’s desk.

  “Pardon me Messer…er… Lagasse, was it? Pardon me for asking, but would you happen to have a relative working at the space port?” Zax said quietly.

  “Why, yes. I believe I do have a distant cousin working there. I hear he is a big shot manager over at the refitting yards,” he said.

  “Well I don’t know how big a shot he is, but do you think you could give him a message for me?

  “Why sure, I’d be glad to pass along any message you’d like,” Carl Lagasse said, with a grin.

  “Good, tell him that I quit! And he can stuff his job where the two suns don’t shine! Now good day to you sir, I have some important business to finish with Ms. Lauria Talbot.” Zax turned on his heels and headed back to Lauria’s desk.

  “What did you say to him, Zax? It looks like he just had a Brakken turd shoved up his nose,” she asked, laughing under her breath.

  “That turd he is smelling is probably the stench of a distant relative that he believes just cost him a big fat commission,” Zax answered, laughing with her. “Do you think we could discuss just how many eunits would be safe for me to withdraw from this account over lunch? It’s on me. After all, I better get used to spending some of my eunits.”

  “Well…” she began hesitantly, “it is strictly forbidden for bank employees to fraternize with the customers but since this really a business conference, I can see my way free for lunch.” She winked at him, then checked her wrist chronometer.

  “Go to the cashier’s window and have them issue you a new e-card that is linked to your new account and I’ll meet you across the street. I know of a great little bistro near here where we can discuss…er… banking matters.”

  Zax picked up his rucksack and floater, then went to the nearest cashier’s window where he was issued a new e-card with an accessible eunit balance that would have previously staggered his mind. With the new card in his pocket, he headed across the avenue to wait for Lauria to emerge. Presently, she exited the bank and upon seeing him across the street, she waved, flashed him a bright smile and crossed the avenue.

  “Why ,hello Messer Grayson, fancy meeting you here,” she said impishly.

  “Actually Miss, I was waiting for a rather attractive bank employee,” he said, then added playfully, “But I guess you will have to do instead.”

  “Oh, you’re gonna pay for that mister. Since the lunch is on you, I think I will order the most expensive dish on the menu, no, I’ll order two of them,” she replied, with a laugh then said, “Follow me.” Lauria then took him by the arm and guided him down the walkway.

  Lauria led him up the street, around a corner and stopped in front of a little cozy sidewalk bistro. A waiter wearing a white apron approached them and seated them at a window table, where they could watch the people stroll by on the sidewalk. Zax sniffed the air, the aroma coming from the kitchen made his mouth water. His stomach gave a low growl, reminding him that he hadn’t eaten since the previous night. That thought suddenly reminded him of Jinn and he felt a twinge of guilt for some reason.

  Seeing the slight frown on Zax’s face, Lauria gave and extra bright smile, while waving an index finger back and forth
across his face. “Hey, none of that,” Lauria admonished, “we are here to enjoy ourselves, so no down turned faces, ok? Just wait till you taste the food here, it is to die for. Despite what I said about the prices, the costs of the dishes are really quite reasonable. Especially since every one of them is prepared here on the premises, by hand and from scratch. It makes the service take a little longer, but it is worth it.”

  Zax’s eyebrows rose a bit upon hearing that. There were very few places left on Bright where the restaurants prepared the food by hand from fresh ingredients. Most dishes were programed into a synthesizer then ‘reconstituted’ via micro sprayers onto a plate. Only the fanciest restaurants used real chefs, who prepared food from the raw ingredients. Looking around, he found it strange to see a small place like this that prepared real organic dishes.

  “I bet that you are wondering how a small hole-in- the-wall café like this one, can afford to have a real chief, right?” Lauria said.

  “That is just what I was thinking,” Zax replied

  “Well the answer is really simple…” she was interrupted, as a human waiter approached the table, stood to the side as he leaned over and placed a drink catalog in front of her. After repeating the gesture for Zax, he then disappeared as silently as he came. “Omar, the owner,” she continued after the interruption, “is from what he likes to call ‘the old country’, which translated means his ancestors were from Old Earth. A place called Italian, or Roma, or some old-style nation like that. Omar says, his family has been cooking this way for centuries and he is not about to change now. Several reconstructive nutriment corporations have offered him a small fortune for his recipes, but the refuses to give them his ‘family secrets’, as he calls them. Wait till you meet him. He is one of a kind.”

  As if to on cue, a voice boomed out from the back of the cafe, calling her name. “Lauria…Bella Donna! How are you?”

  The voice was attached to a virtual mountain of a human being. Omar was almost as wide around as he was tall, yet seemed to move with the grace of a contragrav dancer as he navigated his way through and around, both tables and customers as he approached their table. Wearing a tent sized apron, lightly stained with some sauce or another, he brought his considerable mass to an abrupt halt, just narrowly avoiding a disastrous collision with a waiter balancing a fully loaded tray in his path. Then just as rapidly, (seemingly with total disregard for the law of inertia) Omar continued onward with the same headlong velocity, which he miraculously brought to a halt at their table.

  “It has been too long since you have come to visit me, Dolcezza! I am hurt. You look so skinny!” Omar gushed, with a mock frown. Zax immediately decided that he liked this man-mountain, standing before him. Turning an eye towards Zax, Omar smiled a huge toothy grin, then turned back towards Lauria and gave her a stage wink.

  “Is this young fella the reason I have not seen you for so long? If so, then you are forgiven.”

  As the big man turned back towards Lauria; Zax could see the fully realized tattoo on the back of his hand, indicating that he was a citizen landowner.

  “No Omar, Zaxxion is not the reason for my absence,” Lauria said, her voice suddenly sounding demure, “it’s just that they have been keeping me busy at the bank. As a matter of fact, Messer Grayson is the reason that I’m here now. This is his first time he has been to the Capital and I told him that this place had halfway decent food.” Lauria accompanied this last statement with a laugh. Omar’s face fell with a mock look of hurt, but before he could rebut her words, a loud crash issued from the kitchen area in the back of the restaurant.

  “Saints preserve me! Those fumble thumbs will be the death of me!” he exclaimed, and with a light-footed nimbleness that would have put a dancer to shame, Omar negotiated the minefield of tables and customers. With a mad dash, he disappeared back into the dimness of the kitchen.

  As Omar departed, a waiter seemed to appear in the vacuum left by the distraught owner.

  “Here are your menus, would you like to order drinks now?” As he placed the paper menu on the table, Zax noticed that he also bore a backhanded tattoo. Smiling to himself, Zax realized that it confirmed something that he had subconsciously noticed earlier.

  When he first entered the bistro, out of habit he had looked over the people around him, both the customers and the waiters and waitresses. Looking around again, he now saw that there was a preponderance of ‘backhanders’ in the establishment. Zax was so busy looking around, that he failed to notice the twinkle in Lauria’s eyes.

  “I see, you have noticed what makes this place special and why I try to eat here whenever I can,” she said, with a wide grin.

  Amazed that Lauria was able to read his thoughts so accurately, Zax smiled and simply nodded, then turned his attention to the menu. Turning it over in his hands, he marveled at the material. He had first thought that it was a thin plasticine strip made to simulate paper, but realized it was made of real paper.

  “You don’t see this much anymore,” Zax said, in mild surprise, holding the menu up to the light.

  “Yes, I know,” Lauria replied, with a note of pride in her voice. “Only the most expensive venues use these now days. Most eateries use electronic tablets, holo projectors and the like. The cheaper ones use degradable plasticine, or a cheap smart board attached to a wall.”

  Turning the menu around, Zax began to read what was offered. Some of the dishes he recognized, but the clear majority, he didn’t’. He was used to eating at places that had only five or six items, not dozens. Looking at Lauria, he lowered the menu and threw up his hands in surrender.

  Just then, the slim waiter returned and stood at their table, with a memo tablet in one hand and a light pen in the other.

  “May I take your orders, Messer and Madam?”

  “Oh, Zax, let me order for you. I think I know just what you will flip for, ok?”

  “Sure, its ok by me,” Zax said, slightly bewildered by the number of selections available on the front and back of the menu.

  “Great!” she exclaimed, clapping her hands like a little girl, “Zax will have the sizzled Deep Ocean salmon with a side of soft fried tatoes. For wine, he will have the aged Bluet from the Calick mountains. As for me, I will have the Fettuccine Omar with a small slice of Ploor Cheese Lasagna on the side. No wine for me, just water.”

  The man’s eyebrows rose when she said no wine, but he nodded once and headed back to the kitchen, shouting the orders out loud in some foreign dialect Zax had never heard. As he went towards the kitchen, a young man in a similar apron as the waiter, slid past the waiter holding a small circular tray. The way he weaved amongst the tables, it looked like the items on the tray would surely side off, but they maintained their equilibrium as though they were glued to the base of the tray. As the young man approached their table, Zax wondered if all the employees here at Omar’s were ex-acrobats. The youth stopped at their table, deftly deposited a glass of water in front of Lauria and another water filled glass along with an empty wine goblet in front of Zax. He then poured wine from a darkened bottle into the glass. Zax took a tentative sip, then raised his eyes in mild surprise. It was a tasty blended wine with a slight acrid bite. It was very good.

  “Now Zax, tell me all about yourself,” Lauria began, as she suddenly erupted with a stream of questions, “Are you really Nubian, or is that just a fashion statement? When did you become a citizen? Have any brothers or sisters? I think your father, god rest his soul, must have been a very good at whatever it was he did to be able to set up a sweet tax-free trust like that. What did he do for a job? Was he a banker? I bet he was a Nubian pirate.”

  Startled by her effervescence, he smiled and began to answer her eager questions one at a time. It had been quite a while since anyone was interested in him enough to hear about his life. Not even Jinn had pelted him with so many questions. For a moment, he wondered if it was because of his recently swollen eunit account, but he doubted it. The questions were too scattered and her eagerness to talk
was genuine.

  The waiter swooped by again and dropped a small plate of tiny portions of food in front of them.“Antipasto,” he said, with a flourish, “It’s on the house,” he added, then disappeared from the table. Zax reached down and chose a long tube of some sort of pasta, which was stuffed with a white creamy looking substance. He took a bite and his eyes rolled up to the ceiling. It tasted heavenly. Wiping his fingers on his cloth napkin (another archaism), he started to talk between bites.

  “Technically my dad, mom and I have been citizens ever since we immigrated to Bright. He was a retired long-ranged space scout for the navy and…”

  It went on like that for a while, and every once and a while he would chime in with questions of his own, which allowed him to hear a part of her history, before the lunch arrived.

  “When I was finally granted landowner status…” she was saying between mouthfuls of bread and appetizers, “…I was so excited when I saw my ID number on the big board next to a parcel of land that now belonged to me. But the excitement quickly died, when it was revealed that the allotment was high in some valley between some uninhabited mountain range in the Southern Hemisphere. Why does it seem like the Lasters, like ourselves, always tend to end up with the useless shit acreage?

  “You know, I naïvely believed that once I actually received my allotment, everything would somehow magically change. But it hasn’t, not really. People still look at the tattoo. Even after it changes to show that you are a bona fide land-owning citizen, they still look down their noses at you simply because it is on the wrong side of your hand! I see it every day at the bank. Some will either smile condescendingly at you or just look right through you as though you weren’t even there. Would you believe it, I’ve even had customers asked for a ‘qualified’ bank official to handle their questions! It just burns me up!”