The Money Star

by Jon Lymon

  “You’re loaded, right? Why don’t you cash in some shares or something?”

  “Shares? Not sure where you’ve got them from. I own my flat and that’s about all the assets I’ve got, save for some savings and a company pension. And that’s nowhere near as lucrative as I was led to believe it would be.”

  “But you’re the richest man in the block.”

  “In a block of council tenants.”

  “I reckon there’s ways we can raise the cash for the fuel ourselves.” Remnant showed Edgar the fire damaged Movado watch.

  “Where did you get that?”

  “From the crash site.”

  “You stole it from the pilot?”

  “He’s got no need for it no more.”

  Edgar grabbed the watch. “Stealing bits of ship is one thing,” he shouted. “But stealing a dead man’s personal effects is another entirely. What were you thinking?”

  “I was thinking we could sell it on, buy some hydrogen with the money we make?”

  “No. No way. Not that way. That watch could have major sentimental value to that pilot’s wife. Or daughter. How would you like someone stealing from your corpse?”

  “I got nothing worth stealing, Edgar.”

  “Well, you need to think of another way to get the money for fuel, else this partnership ends right now.”

  Edgar threw his broom in the trolley and walked several steps ahead of Remnant the rest of the way back to the lockup.

  12

  Gordon sensed the tension between Remnant and Edgar as both waited at the bar for him to fill up their glasses later that day. Normally there’d be banter, some gentle ribbing between the two. Now there was nothing. Gordon eyed both while his head pointed downwards towards the pumps.

  “Something up, gents?”

  “No,” they replied in unison.

  “You heard the crashes I presume? Three on Holborn. Four or five in the City.”

  “Selfish, if you ask me,” said Edgar. “These people need their heads examining, rushing up there without a thought for the consequences.”

  “The Prime Minister’s making a speech tonight,” said Gordon.

  “And so he should,” said Edgar.

  “There’s nothing he can do to stop people,” said Remnant.

  “Don’t be so sure about that,” Gordon replied. “They can always price people out of the market with a tax rise here and there,” Gordon replied.

  Remnant gripped his pint of Gates harder.

  “Oh yes, believe you me,” Gordon continued, “the government has plenty of things they could do. More road humps to stop takeoffs. Up the tax on scrap metal. Ban the sale of rocket fuel…”

  Remnant slammed his empty Gates glass onto the bar. “Fuck the government. Who are they to stop anyone? That thing up there is as much mine as it is anyone else’s. They just don’t want anyone getting their hands on it.”

  Edgar quietly sipped his bitter as Gordon gingerly slid Remnant’s glass back towards the pump and started re-filling it.

  “You’re right of course, Simon,” said Gordon. “But the government has to do something to stop all these ships falling from the sky. And I for one am right behind them. You two are my first customers today. People are frightened to leave their homes in case some ship comes crashing down on them. And they’re frightened to stay in their homes in case someone smashes through their roof.”

  At this point DT entered, and recognising the patrons at the bar, turned to leave.

  “Oi, DT,” Remnant called. “Why don’t you join us?”

  DT froze and turned back slowly, his facial expression a bad attempt at looking like he hadn’t seen them there.

  “Gentlemen. I thought I’d forgotten my wallet.”

  He held up the offending genuine leather article.

  “And I’m already having that drink you owe me,” said Remnant, picking up the pint Gordon had just poured him and signalling to DT to pay for it.

  “Can I get you one, Edgar?” DT asked.

  Edgar raised his glass slightly in total acceptance of the offer.

  “We were just discussing this evening’s Prime Ministerial speech,” said Gordon as he poured. “We’re wondering what the government should do.”

  “A bigger police presence on the streets,” said DT. “We can’t have these launches happening left, right and centre, and crashes every five minutes. I’ve had one customer so far today. The streets are deserted. Apparently the London Underground is the safest place in the capital, and I never thought I’d say that. My father predicts people will soon be living down there.”

  “You not thinking about going up to the asteroid yourself?” asked Remnant.

  “No, no. I don’t have the stomach for flying, my friend.”

  “See, myself and Edgar, we reckon we’ll be ready to launch within a month.”

  This was news to Gordon and DT, and the fact that Remnant was going to tell them was news to Edgar.

  “You’ve got a ship?” DT asked.

  Remnant nodded.

  “Where, how, why?”

  “We’re not answering those kinds of questions.”

  “But neither of you can fly.”

  “That’s why we’re looking to cut in a couple more business partners. A pilot. And a financial sponsor.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We need someone to pay for the liquid hydrogen.”

  “What do you need that for?”

  Edgar felt it was time for him to intervene. “Our engine’s nuclear. Loads faster than rocket propulsion. It’ll get the ship to Mars in three months and from Mars to the asteroid belt in about forty-five days.”

  “Where the hell did you get your hands on a nuclear engine?”

  Remnant nodded in Edgar’s direction. “He made it.”

  Gordon and DT looked at Edgar with renewed respect. “It’s the quiet ones you’ve got to watch,” said Gordon.

  At this point Edgar excused himself, no longer able to resist the urge to show that human brainpower could outwit a quiz machine.

  Remnant seized the opportunity to sound out DT. “So, are you interested?” he asked.

  DT was still coming to terms with the nuclear engine revelation. “I’m not, no.”

  “We’ve already got several parties interested in funding us. And the Evening Standard say they want to do a feature on us.”

  DT’s eyes lit up. “You’re going to be in the newspapers?”

  Remnant nodded.

  Although DT was a successful jeweller, it was a trade he’d stumbled upon by accident. He’d left school with no idea of what he wanted to do other than avoid following his father into a career on the London Underground, and answered a newspaper advertisement calling for a junior assistant at a Hatton Garden jewellers. To his surprise he was hired, more on race grounds, he suspected, than the burning desire to be a jeweller he’d faked during the interview.

  But he found he enjoyed the trade and the decent money he made pursuing it. He was quick to form his own contacts and forge relationships with suppliers in his native Africa. Within five years he was confident enough to launch his own jewellery business, firstly mail order only from a small room on the first floor above a bigger jewellers on Hatton Garden, then in a big shop all of his own, next to a café that he’d become less and less inclined to eat in the more and more successful he became.

  Like many rich men, DT hadn’t initially welcomed the news of the diamond asteroid. But he knew that the media attention surrounding the alien diamond would push up its value. This fuelled his obsession to be the first to have a genuine chunk of it on display in his shop window. The publicity, the press, the fame, the thought of it all got him excited.

  “If I had a penny for every time someone from round these parts has asked me to fund their mission, I’d be so rich, I wouldn’t need to find the diamond asteroid,” DT told Remnant.

  “It’s your loss,” Remnant continued. “Edgar’s way better at building spaceships than he is bea
ting quiz machines.” It was a comment that earned Remnant a two-finger salute from Edgar.

  “Why should I back your mission above everyone else’s?” DT asked.

  “Because we’re local. And you know us. And you know how good Edgar is.”

  “You say that, but he did fail to fix my burglar alarm.”

  “I said it needed replacing,” said Edgar, still facing the quiz machine.

  “We’ll do all the hard work for you,” Remnant continued. “All you do is sit back and soak up the glory as the main man behind the first mission to make it back with diamond.”

  Phrased like that it sounded a simple and attractive proposition. Remnant saw DT contemplating the proposal, and wondered if there was something he could say that would seal the deal. “We’re going to bring the whole asteroid home to London,” he said.

  That wasn’t the line DT was looking for, and Edgar shook his head as he continued to play the quiz machine.

  “You’d need a pretty big ship to bring all the diamond home,” DT scoffed. “Where are you building this ship, Wembley Stadium?”

  Edgar returned to the bar, a few pound coins lighter for his experience. He finished his drink, nodded to Gordon and started to walk out.

  “Where are you going?” Remnant asked, nodding at DT as if he wanted Edgar’s help to try and persuade him.

  “Where do you think?” Edgar slipped away and an awkward silence pervaded for what seemed like thirty seconds but was more like ten.

  “A hundred grand,” said Remnant.

  “What?”

  “That’s what we need to fuel the ship there and back.”

  “I’m not giving you or anyone else a hundred thousand pounds.”

  Remnant shook his head. “You don’t know a good business opportunity when one’s staring you right in the face, mate.”

  DT could not contain his fury. “You talk to me about business opportunities? You think you are a good business opportunity? Why the hell should I invest in you? Philanderer. Absent father. Unemployed. Unemployable. With a criminal record and absolutely no discernible talent for anything. My friend, you are a long, long way from being a good business opportunity.”

  A few years ago, such a speech would have earned DT several bruises. But Remnant heard him out, quietly finished his pint of Gates, nodded at Gordon and calmly left The Old Mitre and returned to his flat, where he sat in stunned silence.

  He watched the Prime Minister’s speech in parliament that evening with more interest than he’d watched any political speech in his life. The headlines were as expected: the government would be doing all it could to protect its citizens from its citizens. And to give his fellow rich boy politicians a chance to get to the asteroid before anyone else, taxes on liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen were both trebled overnight.

  The public were also to be rewarded for telling the police about any family members, friends or neighbours who were busying themselves in a shed somewhere, or a lock-up or garage somewhere else. ‘We are not doing this to spoil people’s fun,’ he reiterated. ‘We are doing this to protect the lives and businesses of the people of Britain.’ A lot of cheering and paper waving followed and soon after, MPs began drifting away from the extraordinary parliamentary session, some back to constituency business, others to finish drafting their mission plans.

  Remnant repeatedly banged his fists against a wall in his flat, frustration filling every fibre of his being.

  13

  Onamoto was perplexing Haygue. He presumed he must have worked for NASA or SEC at some point, but he had no idea when, or where he’d come from or how he’d performed. All he knew was that he must have hired him. He hired all the team members. So why didn’t he recall interviewing Onamoto?

  Haygue contemplated his next move, hands clasped in arrowhead formation in front of his mouth. He picked up his desk phone and called HR.

  “I need to find a guy,” he told the woman who answered.

  “No one by that name works here,” she said.

  “What name?”

  “A. Guy.”

  “That’s not who I’m after.”

  “Oh. Who you after?”

  “Someone who worked here. A Chinese guy.”

  Haygue heard rapid keyboard tapping.

  “We have had six hundred and thirty seven Chinese origin employees in the last five years. Do you have a name?”

  “Of course I’ve got a name. Haygue.” Haygue spelt it out before the woman asked. He again heard keyboard keys being tapped as he toyed with one of the red stripes on the flag that held pride of place in his office.

  “Says here Haygue’s of Caucasian origin. Lives in New England.”

  “I know. That’s me,” Haygue fumed. “I’m after someone else.”

  “Can you calm down please.”

  “I am calm,” he said. “All the way down to my boots.”

  “Do you have a name?”

  Haygue’s frustration was peaking. “Are you reading from a script? Are you a machine?”

  “I’ll thank you not to be so rude, sir. Do you want my help or not?”

  “I can’t give you a name. It’s classified information. Do you have a password I can use to access the HR files?”

  “That’s classified information, sir.”

  “What, the password? The password is classified information, cap C, cap I?”

  “I can’t give you the password. You don’t have enough privileges.”

  Haygue fake laughed. “I must be in the top ten in the pecking order around here and I don’t have enough privileges?”

  “That is correct, sir.”

  “Can I take your name, please?”

  “My name’s Carrie, sir. Carrie Deuteronomy.” Much to his relief she spelt it out before he had to ask.

  “OK, Carrie. The guy’s name is something Onamoto.” He spelt out the surname before she had to ask.

  “I’ve got access to the records of every employee on screen in front of me. There’s no Onamoto.”

  “There must be.”

  “Sorry. There’s no Onamoto, sir.”

  “Can I come and have a look myself?”

  “You don’t have enough privileges, sir.”

  “How do I get more privileges? Who hands them out?”

  “That’s classified information, sir.”

  “Right. So what can you do for me? I need to find this guy.” Haygue thumped his desk.

  “I’ll thank you not to be so aggressive, sir. Now, will that be all?”

  “No, that won’t be all. What information can you give me about all the Chinese people who’ve worked here.”

  “Six hundred and thirty seven in the last five years, sir.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s quite a lot don’t you think?”

  “I’m escalating this to the highest possible level. Let me speak to your superior.”

  “You’re my superior, sir.”

  “What?”

  “If you want to escalate this to the highest possible level, you’re the highest possible level I can escalate it to.”

  “Am I? Right, well I say give him, give me the details he, I’m requesting.”

  “I can’t do that, sir. You don’t have enough privileges.”

  “But if I’m at the highest possible level and I don’t have enough privileges to access this information, who the hell does?”

  “That’s something you’ll have to take up with your superiors, sir. Now, is there anything else I can help you with today?”

  “You have no idea what I’m trying to achieve here, do you? I’m trying to dig this country out of the mess it’s gotten itself into. And you’re not helping, and neither is this Onamoto guy, so I want you to make sure that a record of this conversation is kept on file, so people know the lengths I went to to try and unmask this guy. Because, I’m telling you, he could have cost this country one hell of a fortune.”

  Haygue stopped and heard the line was dead. He hung up too, still unsure if he
’d been talking to a woman or womachine.

  There were too many barriers to get things done through the official channels. Haygue would have to go it alone. Find this Onamoto guy, ask him what the hell he was doing posting top secret pictures of bright white lights on the internet, and why he was claiming they were pictures of an asteroid made of diamond. Get him to go public and retract what he’d said.

  Haygue took another look at Onamoto’s page on Flickr. There were now over five hundred comments about the picture of the white light, and a link to a YouTube page that showed the same still of the white light. It had received over a million views and half a million likes. Some of the comments were cynical, many had been removed because they were offensive, plenty were in a foreign tongue, but the plethora of exclamation marks suggested people were excited. And that’s exactly what Haygue didn’t want.

  14

  Three days after leaving The Old Mitre with his tail between his legs following DT’s bitter attack, Remnant was back spending his recently received social benefits on his fourth Gates of the afternoon. Gordon had been keeping an eye on him as he drank near a pair of young lawyers who weren’t appreciative of his constant leanings towards them and glances at their respective cleavages.

  “Hundred grand. It’s all I need,” he slurred. “You two ladies look like that’s a bit of loose change to you. How about it? Give me the cash and I’ll come back loaded with diamond. Come on, let’s go to the cashpoint.” He grabbed one of their wrists and was distracted by the sizeable sparkler already on her ring finger before she wrenched it away. “Blimey, that’s a big one. But I’ll get you one five times the size.”

  The lawyer looked to Gordon for support, but he turned away.

  “Look, whoever you are,” said the second lawyer. “We’ve just told you we’re not interested. We’re not giving you any money.” They both gathered their bags and stormed out of the pub without finishing their drinks.

  “You’re just like everyone else,” he shouted after them. “You can’t see a good business opportunity when it’s staring you in the face.”

  He staggered to the bar and downed the remaining half of his Gates. He tilted his empty in Gordon’s direction. “Fill her up, Gord.”