His partner, Stanford Runstom, Public Relations representative for Modern Policing and Peacekeeping, answered the waiting question with an affirmative grunt.
“Delightful,” she chimed. “Are you here to write or to read?”
“Um, we just wanted to have a drink,” Runstom said.
“Well, naturally, sir,” she said with a cock of her head.
“What is this place?” Jax managed to blurt. “Is it really a library? And a bar?”
She smiled. “New to EE-3, aren’t you? Yes, the Bibliohouse is a library. I’ll put you in the reader section and set you up with the introduction.”
They followed her to the central bar, which Jax could see curved around in a full circle, but was only seated on the front half by well-padded stools. Every few seats there were short walls, like dividers, and affixed to these were page-sized datapads on thin, bendable arms. Past the bar, he could see the back half of the space was occupied by long tables, and seated sporadically at those were men and women of various backgrounds, tapping at keyboards, faces lit blue by screens.
Once they took a seat, the hostess tapped at a small wrist-pad and the screen next to Jax’s head lit up. He pulled it to get a better angle on it and started skimming through a document titled “Welcome to the Bibliohouse”.
“When you’re ready to order,” the hostess said, “just tap the icon at the bottom of the screen there and a bartender will come by.”
“Thank you,” Runstom said for both of them.
Jax was already nose deep into the intro. With all the new construction going on across the planet, it was important for everyone to document their work. Evidently, some visionary higher-ups also wanted stories collected as well, so that someday in the future, when some wealthy Double-E-Threer wanted to know the rich history of their world, they’d have a massive repository of materials to draw on.
Therefore, a percentage of every workday was dedicated to writing: either more formal documentation around the plethora of projects, or the informal recitation of interesting stories, tall tales, legends, and anecdotes. Workers were encouraged to do their writing wherever it felt comfortable, and the owners of this particular library thought some would find it comfortable to make their recordings in a place where they could access any information – technical, historical, biographical, and even fictional – about EE-3 as well as imbibe a well-crafted libation.
Clearly, they were onto something. Jax thought that if he ever made it back to Terroneous, maybe he’d try to convince the Stockton Public Library to allow him to open up a bar in the back.
“You fellas know what you’d like to drink?”
And with that, the magic of the place had worn off. It wasn’t the arrival of the bartender – Runstom must have hit the button on his pad already – but it was the thought of that little library back in Stockton. The thought of Terroneous, a moon orbiting a gas giant in the Barnard system, impossibly far away from this bar on a small planet in the Epsilon Eridani system. The only transportation they had access to was Runstom’s small ship, which was only capable of Warp; it’d take years for that thing to make it from Eridani to Barnard’s Star.
Of all the things they needed to figure out, the most important for Jax was getting back to Terroneous. How strange that such a place had become home to him. But he couldn’t have known it until they’d taken him from it. Had ModPol done him a favor by illegally extraditing him from the independent moon? Forcing him to realize his connection to that place? Maybe so. He didn’t care how it had become his home, just that it was. And he needed to get back there.
Back to her.
“Ale,” Runstom said. “The brown one.”
“Mucksucker Brown, comin’ up. And you, sir?”
Jax looked at Runstom, then at the bartender. The man could’ve been the brother of the hostess, he looked so similar. Perhaps it was a family-owned place; or maybe it was just the identical glinting blue suit. Jax had no idea what to order, just that he needed something with alcohol in it.
“Brandy?” he said, then added, “If you have it?”
The bartender cracked half a grin, then glanced at the rounded wall behind him. There were shelves reaching as high as the bookshelves around the outer wall, but these were populated by bottles of all shapes and colors. Jax flinched as he watched the man turn his head upward. They must’ve had a ladder to reach those upper rows.
“We’ve got some,” he said, still looking up. “Not easy to get out here, but we have some fine brandy imported from Poligart.”
“Oh, uh,” Jax started. He felt like an idiot when it came to money anymore, never having any for one, and never knowing what anything cost anyhow.
“Go for it,” Runstom said, laying out a card. “Someone told me I need to get better at spending the company money.”
The bartender let the rest of the smile appear. “Comin’ right up,” he said, then left them.
Jax could only imagine what they looked like to these people: a tall, lanky man from the domes of Barnard-4 with skin as pale as the foam head on the beers they were drinking, and his companion: the broad-chested, oddly well-dressed Runstom, whose skin was dark olive in color. No one here was from “around here”, because they’d all arrived within the last decade or so to begin construction and pick up other necessary jobs to support the development of a new civilization on the once primordial planet. But Jax had learned that he would be an outcast among outcasts anywhere he went that wasn’t Barnard-4. The domers on the planet of his birth never left home, and there was little chance of encountering one in his travels. Likewise, Runstom never really fit in anywhere he went. He was just too weird.
Plus he had the green skin.
“Alright.” Runstom’s tone pulled Jax’s attention away from the deliciously information-dense pad. “So where the hell is my ship?”
Runstom’s company-issued ship, a luxury thing called an OrbitBurner-something-or-other, hadn’t been at the docks. The issuing company being the same Modern Policing and Peacekeeping that had wrongfully extradited Jax from Terroneous. Though technically Runstom worked for the Defense division, his ties with Justice strained.
Jax blew out a long sigh, trying to determine the best way to break the news about Runstom’s ship, then just decided to blurt it out. “Dava took it.”
“Dava?”
“Space Waster.”
“Sonova—”
“But she’ll bring it back.” Jax leaned in a little closer. “Look, Stan, I know you’re going to be pissed about this. But I promise you, they’ll bring the ship back.”
“They?” Runstom’s eyes burned and his lips drew taut. “How many are there?”
“Just three,” Jax said quickly. “They stowed away. Look, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before. Please understand – I just didn’t want any more violence. They promised me they’d keep to themselves.”
Runstom looked down and away. “Violence.”
The drinks arrived and Jax knew he’d have to sit in silence for a few moments while Runstom processed this. He always had a way in his head, a way that things should be done, and when they weren’t done that way, he had to reason out why. In this case, he probably felt that Jax should have alerted him right away that there were stowaways on board, so that he could summarily arrest them. But that’s not what happened. Jax knew that Runstom would have to ponder why things didn’t go the way they were supposed to, and that it meant he would have to take a moment to see it from Jax’s perspective. But he would, eventually. Or at least he’d try.
Jax took a sip of his brandy. It was like sweet fire in his throat. It reminded him of the