Zana put the girl down and she bounced right into her mother's arms.
"They're staying! They're staying!" she shouted happily. Her mother hugged her little one tight and gave Zana and Rivqua the most grateful look and bowed her head. Flippine's kid brother gazed in bewilderment at the sudden commotion, and for his contribution held out his toy spaceship for Zana to appreciate.
Mister Wizzbipp shook the rock stars' hands and poured out his thanks with a promise that he and the stage crew would tweak tonight's show to even greater perfection, just wait and see.
Rivqua assured him, "You guys are doing great. Any tweaking that needs done, it'll be us."
Waving and dipping their heads the family of purple aliens retreated back into the elevator and were gone.
"Well," said Zana, turning to the secretary robot with a business-like smile. "Guess you'd better get busy unlocking our money and we'll go down and have us a little rehearsal, okay?"
"I assure you your advance funds will be available by lunchtime tomorrow."
"Just out of curiosity, who takes over the running of the place now?" Rivqua asked.
The robot was silent for a moment, as if thinking about this.
"The board will come with suggestions I expect. Mister Bing held the majority stake so they can do nothing more than put forward names. That stake will fall into the hands of the Toss Vague-Ass city council temporarily. The government is not allowed to have commercial enterprises so they will oversee a bidding and in conjunction with the board select a suitable new majority shareholder who in turn may or may not run the hotel. Presumably it will be one of the other hotel owners. Not necessarily though. There is also the monopolies rule for the council to consider."
"A regular soap opera coming up then," said Zana.
Rivqua turned to the detective inspector. "I haven't seen anything in the papers, come to think of it. Surely the Grand Galactica manager's murder would be front page news? Why the lid?"
"They're on to it alright. They just want specifics and absolute confirmation. There are so many fake deaths these days it's embarrassing for the papers when they get it wrong."
"What? Why would high-fliers fake their death?"
"To get away from debts, threats, impossible partners. Like I always say, welcome to Toss Vague-Ass! I said that, right? Have I not said that?"
"You have," said the secretary bot.
"Does ring a bell," said Zana.
No comments:
Post a Comment