Outside on the wide marble balcony of the Central Exchange Bank, Pei Xuan looked up at the clear blue sky above the docking port, where one thousand giant outer-sector cargo ships sat parked in neat rows with their top cargo hatches wide open.
Lord Silver-Tongue, Patriarch Jin, and the twenty-nine other billionaire merchants hurried out onto the bank steps behind him, squinting up at the empty clouds and laughing out loud.
“Hahaha! Granary Wormholes One through Twenty?” Lord Silver-Tongue fanned himself with his golden folding fan, sneering so hard his pointy tongue poked out. “Where are your wormholes, Mayor Pei? All I see are three white clouds and a flock of fat pigeons! Are you going to feed my one thousand cargo ships with pigeon droppings?”
“Look at him standing there raising his hand like an immortal stage magician!” Patriarch Jin slapped his knee and shouted to the fifty thousand spectators and live broadcast cameras in the plaza. “Everyone on Worlds 1 through 45, open your eyes and look closely! Even if Dry-Well Kingdom has grain on other planets, transporting 250 million tons of food by Star-Train would take five thousand train trips and three whole months! By your own law, a bank run must be paid on the spot! Since you can’t deliver—”
