“Law school, yes,” Holloway said.
“I was there for undergrad,” Aubrey said. “Class of ’18.”
“We missed by three years,” Holloway said.
“It’s not every Duke JD that ends up in the wilds of a Class Three planet,” Aubrey said.
“It’s a long story,” Holloway said.
“I would think so, considering it apparently involves disbarment,” Aubrey said. “That’s never a quick thing to explain, is it?”
Holloway looked at Aubrey, with his pleasant, sun-tousled features, notwithstanding the famously beakish Aubrey nose, which Holloway guessed had never once been punched in for its owner being a smug dick. “No, it’s not,” he said. “But inasmuch as this particular long story ends up with me getting rich and you and your family getting even richer, I don’t suppose either of us can complain about it too much.” He smiled at Aubrey.
After a moment, Aubrey smiled back. “Indeed not,” he said. He turned toward Irvine, who had watched the exchange between Aubrey and Holloway with some consternation. “And it’s one story that we can skip to the end of, since I believe we were about to discuss just how much richer we are all going to be.”
“Right,” Irvine said, and tapped the infopanel on the table in front of him. The wall directly behind him woke up and displayed a presentation slide. “Johan, I think you’re going to walk us through what we’re seeing.”
“Yes,” said Johan Gruber, Director of Exploitation for Zara XXIII. He turned to the wall. “After Mr. Holloway established the claim and forwarded the data from the initial survey, it became clear that the sunstone seam was likely larger than we had originally estimated. We sent an additional survey team to the area—”
“Excuse me?” Holloway said. All surveys of a contracted surveyor’s land had to be performed or supervised by the surveyor. To do otherwise was to risk loss of a claim or subsequent profits from finds stemming from the original claim. “I wasn’t made aware of that.”
“Exigent circumstances,” said Janice Meyer, ZaraCorp’s General Counsel on Zara XXIII. “If you look in your contract, you’ll see that ZaraCorp may, in certain pressing circumstances, operate in a contractor’s territory to expedite the collection of information or materials.”
“What’s the pressing circumstance?” Holloway said.
“I am,” said Aubrey. “This is a significant find, and I wanted to be able to report on it to the chairman and the rest of the board. I was scheduled to leave Zara Twenty-three tomorrow, so I authorized the exigent circumstances clause.”
“You needn’t worry, Mr. Holloway,” Meyer said. “In the event of the exigent circumstances clause being triggered, all additional finds are automatically appended to the original find and the surveyor additionally compensated.”
“How so?” Holloway said.
Meyer looked over to Irvine, who nodded. “We feel an additional tenth of a percent is appropriate,” he said.
“That sounds fine,” Holloway said.
“Congratulations on your point-three-five percent,” said Aubrey, with the sort of casual condescension that comes from knowing that one’s own share of the pie is immeasurably greater. He motioned at Gruber to continue.
Holloway debated saying anything but then realized that if he didn’t, he’d be forced to take a cut. “Half a percent, actually,” he said.
“I beg your pardon?” Aubrey said, annoyed to be interrupted.
Holloway glanced over to Bourne, who looked appalled to be noticed. “Tell him,” he said.
“Uh,” Bourne said, and then caught himself. “Mr. Holloway recently renegotiated his contract for point-four percent of the gross,” he said. “So this bonus does take him to half a percent.”
“I see,” Aubrey said. “And was there a reason for this sudden renegotiation of a standard ZaraCorp contract?”
“Exigent circumstances,” Holloway said.
Aubrey did not appear to find the joke amusing. “Fine,” he said. “But your bonus doesn’t apply until after we factor in the cleanup cost of your cliff collapse. CEPA is already processing the fine for that. You share in the profits, you share in the cost.”
What a penny-ante little prick, Holloway thought, and glanced again to Bourne. Bourne glared back at him with a stop picking on me expression on his face. Holloway ignored the look. “Chad?” he said.
“What?” Aubrey snapped, shifting his attention to Bourne. “Does his contract get him out of that, too?”
Bourne tried to get the “trapped animal” look out of his eyes. He sighed. “Yes, it does,” he said.
“Who are you?” Aubrey asked.
“Chad Bourne,” Bourne said. “Contractor representative.”
“You must be a very popular rep, Mr. Bourne,” Aubrey said, “considering how lavishly you treat your contractors. Are there any other special favors we need to know about in Mr. Holloway’s contract? Additional hidden points on the backend? Free nights at the brothel? Are you required to hand-wash his skimmer whenever he comes into town?”
“No,” Bourne said. “That’s all there is.”
“You’d better hope so,” Aubrey said. “Who is your director here?”
“I am,” said Vincent D’Abo, Director of Staffing, raising his hand.
“After this meeting, you and I are going to have a talk,” Aubrey said.
“Yes, sir,” D’Abo said, and shot a poisonous look at both Bourne and Holloway.
“Now that we’ve wasted several minutes on contracts, let’s get back to the actual point of this meeting, if that’s not too much trouble,” Aubrey said. Gruber, caught by surprise, cleared his throat and started over.
Holloway glanced back at Bourne, who looked pale. Sorry, Holloway said, mouthing the word silently. Bourne was resolute in ignoring him.
Holloway turned his attention back to the slides on the wall, and to the drone of Gruber’s voice, describing the methodology of the additional surveys as well as the difficulty of doing the additional surveys on the jungle floor, that is, in places where the surveyors, if unwary, might be consumed by large predators. “In short, our survey teams are still sounding the extent of the seam,” Gruber said. “But the data we do have are compelling. The next slide should make this clear.”
The image flicked over to the next slide, which showed topographical maps from the side and from above. The seam was featured in green on both images.
“Holy crap,” Holloway said. The massive seam he’d found in the cliff was in fact just a tendril; it curled out of the cliff and branched like an alluvial flow into what looked like a wide river of rock that extended for kilometers north of the cliff, petering out only a klick south of Mount Isabel. Holloway looked at the width and breadth of the seam and tried to figure out how much it might be worth. His brain wasn’t keeping up with the numbers.
Apparently he wasn’t the only one. “What’s this going to be worth to us?” asked Aubrey.
“It depends on how dense the seam is with sunstones,” Gruber said. “The portion Mr. Holloway here excavated seems unusually dense, but for our models, I think it would be wise to employ standard sunstone density, based on the data from previous excavations.”
“Fine,” Aubrey said curtly. “Give me a number.”
“Somewhere between eight hundred billion and one-point-two trillion credits,” Gruber said.
It took a moment for the magnitude of the number to sink in. Someone at the table let out a low whistle. Holloway was pretty sure it wasn’t him.
“A trillion-credit seam,” Aubrey said, finally.
“Yes,” Gruber said. “That is, provided we can extract the entire seam.”