“Billy, I’ve swallowed better-tasting stuff that came out of people.”
“Bugger.” He put the bottle away. “I’ll keep working on it.”
I gulped beer to wash the taste away.
My Gizmo beeped at me. A message from Trond:
“Free tonight? Can you drop by my place?”
Meh. I was just starting my evening beers.
“It’s late. Can it wait?”
“Best if handled tonight.”
“I’m just sitting down to dinner…”
“You can drink dinner later. This is worth your time, I promise.”
Smartass.
“Looks like I have to cash out,” I told Billy.
“Pull the other one!” he said. “You’ve only had one pint!”
“Duty calls.” I handed him my Gizmo.
He took it to the register. “One pint. Lowest tab I ever rung you for.”
“I won’t make a habit of it.”
He waved my Gizmo over the register then handed it back to me. The transaction was done (I’d long ago set up my account to accept Hartnell’s as a “no-verify” point of purchase). I slid the Gizmo into my pocket and headed out. The other patrons didn’t say goodbye or even acknowledge me. God, I love Hartnell’s.
—
Irina opened the door and frowned at me like I’d just pissed in her borscht. As usual, she wouldn’t let me pass without stating my business.
“Hi, I’m Jazz Bashara,” I said. “We’ve met over a hundred times. I’m here to see Trond at his invitation.”
She led me through to the dining-hall entrance. The smell of delicious food hung in the air. Something meaty, I thought. Roast beef? A rare delicacy when the nearest cow is 400,000 kilometers away.
I peeked in to see Trond sip liquor from a tumbler. He wore his usual bathrobe and chatted with someone across the table. I couldn’t see who.
His daughter Lene sat next to him. She watched her father talk with rapt fascination. Most sixteen-year-olds hate their parents. I was a huge pain in the ass to my dad at that age (nowadays I
’m just a general disappointment). But Lene looked up to Trond like he put the Earth in the sky.
She spotted me then waved excitedly. “Jazz! Hi!”
Trond gestured me in. “Jazz! Come in, come in. Have you met the administrator?”
I walked in and—holy shit! Administrator Ngugi was there. She was just…there! Hanging out at the table.
Fidelis Ngugi is, simply put, the reason Artemis exists. When she was Kenya’s minister of finance, she created the country’s entire space industry from scratch. Kenya had one—and only one—natural resource to offer space companies: the equator. Spacecraft launched from the equator could take full advantage of Earth’s rotation to save fuel. But Ngugi realized they could offer something more: policy. Western nations drowned commercial space companies in red tape. Ngugi said, “Fuck that. How about we don’t?”
I’m paraphrasing here.
God only knows how she convinced fifty corporations from thirty-four countries to dump billions of dollars into creating KSC, but she did it. And she made sure Kenya enacted special tax breaks and laws just for the new megacorporation.