“Thank you, James,” he said, then lifted the small porcelain cup and sipped its contents. Crisp notes of apple and strawberry played across his tongue. Amazing what could be accomplished with nothing more than rice, water, time, and skill.
Kryptonite was located on the sixty-ninth floor of the Immortal Tower. Its imported marble countertops and barstools floated above the floor, trapped in electromagnetic eddy currents strong enough to hold up many hundreds of kilos thanks to steel strips imbued into their undersides. After a little idle digging, Tyson had learned the name was a clever joke referring to the one weakness of an immortal hero from twentieth-century Earth mythology. If anything fit that bill for the majority of the tower’s residents and employees, alcohol was it.
During the work week, Kryptonite was an exclusive bar patronized by executives and the ladder-climbers eager to impress their superiors. Friday and Saturday nights, it was a velvet-rope, invite-only music and dance club for Methuselah’s beautiful people and trust-fund babies, and the lecherous men and women who preyed upon them with promises of jobs or paid-for leisure and comfort.
But, being as it was a Tuesday evening, it was just Tyson and James.
Tyson glanced down at his tablet. The display was encrypted to the implants in his eyes. Anyone else casually glancing at the screen would see only static. He could read the reports within his augmented reality environment just as easily, of course. But Tyson, for some indelible reason, had always preferred to keep whatever he was reading out of his head and in his hands. It was a strange quirk, but harmless. Today, he wanted to keep the news at arm’s length.
The two-headed monster of the Teegarden bacteria and the Xre incursion near Grendel had, in forty-eight short hours, wiped out almost seven years of Ageless Corp. stock growth. It was now the biggest drop in company history over such a short span at a time the rest of the market was running with the bulls. Despite furious attempts by his PR department at spin control, the fallout from the INN interview had been decimating. No one had any idea how to stop the hemorrhaging. The board was verging on panic as many tens of billions of nudollars’ worth of market cap disappeared. For his part, Tyson was steeling himself to weather the storm and find out where the new bottom was while he pressed ahead with his investigation. There really didn’t seem to be anything else to do.
“Long day?” the bartender asked.
“Longest on record.” Tyson swirled his cup, then took another sip.
“I’d heard about the incursion. That was some bad luck.”
Tyson waved it off. “That’s the least of my problems.”
“An alien invasion is the least of your problems? Wow, that is a long day,” James said with a wink.
“It’s hardly an invasion, just saber-rattling.”
“If you say so. Then again, I just pour the booze. The big-ticket stuff is a little beyond the purview of people who live off tips.”
“We’re all living off tips, James. That’s all profit is. The tip customers are willing to pay for making their lives a little easier, or longer, or more entertaining. You just earn yours on a person-by-person basis.”
“Hmm, I hadn’t thought of it like that. These other problems, anything you want to talk about?”
“Want to? Sure. Able to? No, not really.”
James nodded as he loaded the small glass-washer at his waist. “That’s fine. There’s a lot of nervous people around is all. We have some mutated space super-plague in orbit, bug-eating aliens knocking at our back door—it’s a lot for folks to take in.”
“It’s a lot for me to take in, James, believe that.”
“I do. Haven’t seen you in a state like this since … what was her name? Rachel, Rochelle?”
“Really? You’re going to bring her up? I thought bartenders were supposed to help their customers forget.”
“Well, which one would you rather be thinking about right now?”
“You’ve got me there.” Tyson pulled a bit of fluff off his sleeve. “You’re trying to get me to say something reassuring, aren’t you?”
James shrugged. “Lot of people are looking for reassurance. It’s to be expected. We haven’t had any trouble with the Xre since most of our grandparents were kids. People come to me for comfort, just as you did. If I can give them some that I got right from the source, well, it would go a long way to easing their minds. And fattening my tips up a bit.”
Tyson chuckled at that. “All about the bottom line, hey?”
“I’m providing a service.”
“Indeed you are.” Tyson drained the rest of the contents of his cup, which had begun to warm. “A fresh chilled cup and another shot, James. And pour yourself one.”
“That’s very kind of you, sir.”
“I know you’re sneaking them anyway. May as well make it legitimate.”
James’s normally smooth, flowing movement from one task into the next faltered for the briefest of moments, but quickly recovered. If he hadn’t been looking closely, Tyson wouldn’t have picked up on it at all. But he had been, and he knew the message had been received louder than if he’d shouted it. His private store of genuine junmai sake would once again be there for his pleasure alone.
His father had taught him many indirect lessons, but the most important had been the value of a subtle application of power. James set two cups down on the bar and emptied the rest of the carafe. They clinked cups, dipped to tap the bar, then drank together.
“Oh, that is lovely.” James set the cup down on the floating marble.
“The finest.” Tyson leaned back from the bar. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to give James something to spread around. He was well-liked and well-connected among the bar’s influential patrons, and most people trusted the word of their favorite bartender a hell of a lot more than any newscaster
