by Ben Bova
Here it comes, I thought. She’ll recommend burning me at the stake.
But Ingrid went on, “Yet, as a woman who has lived in the freedom of a democratic civilization—and as an applicant for citizenship in your nation of Selene—I cannot support the imposition of limitations on Dr. Townes’s research, or on the intellectual freedom of any person.”
My eyebrows popped up almost to my scalp. Both Sams looked surprised; so did most of the council members. I saw Douglas Stavenger nodding his agreement, a slight smile of satisfaction on his face.
“The New Lunar Church has no objection to this work?” the council chairman asked.
“I shudder to think that a human being would aspire to usurping God’s creative powers,” Ingrid said. “But after having thought on the matter and prayed on it, I have concluded that Dr. Townes has not actually created a human being; he has merely duplicated one.”
“So the council has no moral right to object to his work?” asked the chairman.
“Not in my view, nor in the view of the New Lunar Church.”
“Very well,” said the chairman, a grin spreading across his face. “Now let’s get down to the real reason for this hearing. Dr. Townes, you caused a power outage through three-quarters of Selene. Is the university going to pay for that?”
“Power outage?” I gasped. “I thought it was only in my own lab.”
“Surely you noticed that the emergency lights were on throughout several levels for four hours after your experiment.”
“That contraption of yours drained the system,” grumped one of the councilmen, “knocked out two inverters, and overheated the coolant in the cryogenic transmission lines from our main solar panel farm, up on the surface.”
“It did?” Now that he mentioned it, I realized that after our little fracas in my lab the corridors had been lit by the emergency lamps. Even my quarters had been, when I got there after the police took Sam away.
“We can’t have that kind of drain on our power system,” said the chairman. “I think the council will agree that you must be prohibited from running your equipment again.”
“Until you can provide your own electrical power for it,” said the grumpy councilman.
Ingrid hadn’t sat down yet. Raising her voice over the murmurs of conversation buzzing around the table, she said, “If I may, I would like to take this opportunity to serve Mr. Gunn with the subpoenas I’ve been carrying.”
The chairman gestured grandly. “Go right ahead.”
“You can’t do that!” yelped one of the Sams.
The other, just as red-faced, added, “Selene’s constitution specifically states—”
“Our constitution,” said the chairman sternly, “allows specific exceptions to the extradition clause, Mr. Gunn.”
Both Sams snapped their jaws shut with audible clicks.
Turning to the Sams, Ingrid asked, “Which of you is the original?”
“He is,” said both Sams in unison, pointing at one another.
Ingrid frowned at them. “One of you is a copy. I have to serve these papers to the original.”
“That’s him,” they both said.
Ingrid looked from one of them to the other. Then she turned back to the chairman. “As you can see, although no one has the right to curtail Dr. Townes’s intellectual freedom, his experiment has created certain practical difficulties.”
I REALIZED THAT I’d created a Pandora’s Box. So I compromised. Actually, I caved in. I promised the council that I’d dismantle my equipment and scrap it. I would not publish anything about my experiment. I would forget about entanglement and study other aspects of quantum physics.
Which meant I could kiss the Nobel Prize goodbye.
The council was very relieved. Ingrid, though, seemed strangely unhappy.
That evening in the cafeteria, as we nibbled at a dinner neither one of us had any appetite for, I said to her, “I thought you wanted me to scrap the duplicator.”
She gazed at me with those luminous azure eyes of hers. “I did, Daniel. But now I realize that I’ve ruined your life.”
“It’s not ruined, exactly.” “I’m dreadfully sorry.”
I tried to put a good face on the situation. “It’s a big universe, Ingrid. There are plenty of other questions for me to work on.”
“But you—”
A hubbub over by the doorway distracted us. Both Sams were scurrying through the cafeteria like a pair of spaniels hunting for a bone.
“Hey! There they are!” said Sam I to Sam II. Or vice versa.
They rushed to our table and pulled up chairs. “Gotta hurry Dan-o. My ship’s ready to leave.”
“Leave? For where?”
The other Sam replied, “Back to that black hole in the Kuiper Belt. Wanna come with me?”
Ingrid was immediately suspicious. “How did you get the money to—”
“Rockledge!” both Sams crowed. “And Masterson Aerospace and all those other big buffoons who were suing me.”
“They’re financing your mission to the Kuiper Belt?”
“Yeah.” The Sams’ grins were ear-to-ear. It was eerie: they were exactly alike. “They’re willing to pay mucho dinero to get rid of me.”
I got their meaning. “They’re hoping that this time you go away and stay away.”
Nodding and laughing, one of the Sams said, “Yeah. But what they don’t know is that only one of me is going.”
“And the other?”
They both shrugged.
“I don’t know,” said one. “Maybe I’ll go back into the zero-gee hotel business.”
“Or go back to the resort at Hell Crater,” said the other one.
“Or turn Selene into a tax shelter. How’s the Church of Rightful Investments sound to you?” They both winked at Ingrid simultaneously.
“You’ve stolen my matter transmitter!” I snapped.
A Sam raised both his hands in a gesture of innocence. “Me? Steal? No way!”
Before I could let out a satisfied sigh, though, the other Sam added, “But now that we know a transmitter can work, there oughtta be some bright physicist who’s willing to build me a new one.”
“Sam, you can’t!” Ingrid and I objected together.
They both grinned at us. “Maybe not. We’ll see.”
So I’m going out to the Kuiper Belt with one of the Sams. Much to my
surprise and delight, Ingrid wants to go with me. She really does love me! We’re going to be married over an electronic link to the Vatican, no less, while we’re on our way out.
The Kuiper Belt. A mini-black hole. Maybe there really are aliens out there. Of course, that might be one of Sam’s tall tales, but what the hell, Ingrid’s with me and we’re bound to find something worth a Nobel out there.
It’s a big universe!
Solar News Headquarters, Selene
DANIEL C. TOWNES IV GOT TO HIS FEET LIKE A LONG, LANKY ladder unfolding.
“That’s about it,” he said. “Sam’s already aboard his torch ship. Ingrid and I will shuttle out to it an hour from now.”
Jade sputtered, “But... two Sams?”
The physicist nodded somberly. “I don’t know if one solar system is enough to hold two Sam Gunns. Maybe one of them would be better off going through that black hole.”
He turned toward the door to Jade’s office.
“Wait!” she cried, getting up and starting around her desk. “I’ve got half a million questions I need answered!”
Townes shook his head. “Sorry. No time. I just thought you ought to know what Sam’s been up to since he returned to Selene.”
He dipped his chin in a brief nod, then ducked through the door and was gone.
Leaving Jade standing in her cubbyhole office, her thoughts in a whirl.
Two Sams? she asked herself. Can I believe that? Was Townes telling the truth?
She sank back into her swivel chair. For a long while she simply sat there while her mind spun out questions to which she had no an
swers.
But at last she muttered to herself, “Sam’s here. In Selene. One of them is, at least. He’s here. And I’ve got to find him.”
But how? she wondered. I need help. And then it hit her: There’s somebody else who wants to find Sam really badly. Turning to her desktop console, Jade said, “Phone, find Senator Jill Meyers. I need to speak with her.”
Orchestra(ted) Sam
JADE WAS SURPRISED AT HOW NERVOUS SHE FELT AS SHE waited in the arrivals lounge at Selene’s Armstrong Spaceport. In ten minutes the shuttle from Space Station Epsilon would arrive, and her plan to smoke Sam Gunn out of hiding would start to unfold. She hoped.
Rocket shuttles from the space stations orbiting Earth were never delayed by weather or traffic. Once they broke orbit they were essentially in a dead fall that ended at Armstrong’s scoured and blasted concrete pads out on the floor of the giant crater Alphonsus.
Too nervous to remain seated, Jade paced along the curving glassteel window that looked out at the landing area. Two spindly-looking shuttles were standing on their pads. Beyond them the sky was as black as infinity but studded with brilliant hard pinpoints of stars and the streaming whiteness of the Milky Way. Out on the horizon she could see the low, slumped, tired-looking mountains that formed Alphonsus’s ringwall.
Jane Avril Inconnu was a petite, slim young woman with jade-green eyes and flaming red hair that she had allowed to curl down to her shoulders. In her fitted tunic and slacks of grayish green she looked almost elfin. Several of the other people waiting in the lounge seemed to recognize her from the videos she had hosted, but none of them had the courage to come up and speak to her. For which she was grateful; she had enough on her mind without trying to make friendly chitchat.
Can we do it? she asked herself for the thousandth time. Can we get him to come out into the open? Despite having spent the past several years of her life producing biographical videos about Sam Gunn, she had never met the wily, devious little imp himself.
A glint of light caught her eye. Again, another sparkle against the starry black sky. As she watched, her nose almost pressed against the cold glassteel window, she saw the shuttle take shape, its ungainly silhouette glittering in the harsh light of the distant Sun.
The shuttle touched down, feather soft, on the hot jets of its retros, blowing dust and grit across the landing pad. An access tunnel wormed out like a wheeled caterpillar and connected to its main hatch.
Jade ran to the reception area, suddenly as impatient as a schoolgirl. Working her way to the front of the small crowd waiting for the arrivals to get through customs, she wondered yet again if she could carry her plan through to success.
At last Jill Meyers appeared in the doorway, a small travel bag clutched in one hand. She saw Jade and grinned maliciously. Meyers was short and stubby, her face round and snub-nosed, with a sprinkling of freckles. Her light brown hair was cut short, and she wore a nondescript beige travel suit.
The older woman hugged Jade with her free arm while several of the other debarking passengers stared. Jill Meyers, former U.S. Senator and a respected judge on the International Court of Justice, was immediately recognizable.
Before Jade could say hello or even take a breath, Meyers whispered into her ear, “Now we get that little SOB to marry me!”
IT WASN’T EASY to keep Jill Meyers’s arrival in Selene a secret, but Jade figured that if Sam did find out that she was on the Moon it might help to smoke him out of hiding. She even half-expected Sam to show up in her office, sooner or later, brash and breezy, ready to embark on some twisty scheme or other.
Jade was not prepared, however, for the Beryllium Blonde.
She recognized Jennifer Marlowe immediately from the disks she had reviewed while producing her Sam Gunn bios. She was golden blonde, radiantly so, with long legs, wide innocent eyes of cornflower blue, and a figure that would drive any man to wild testosterone-soaked fantasies. Dressed in a glittering metallic sheath that hugged her curves deliciously, she swept unannounced into Jade’s cubbyhole of an office.
“Good morning,” she said, with a gleaming smile. “I’m Jennifer Marlowe, of the law firm of Raippe, Pillage and Burns.”
Astonished, Jade slowly rose from her desk chair and said, “Yes, you are, aren’t you?”
Marlowe sat on the spindly chair before Jade’s desk, still smiling enough wattage to light a shopping mall. But there was something cold behind her smile, Jade thought. Something hard and hostile.
“What can I do for you?” Jade asked, settling back into her own swivel chair.
The smile dimmed somewhat. “I’m here on a rather delicate matter, Ms. Inconnu.”
“Call me Jade; everybody does.”
“Your eyes. Of course.”
“Does this ‘delicate matter’ have anything to do with Sam Gunn?”
The Blonde sighed dramatically. “Of course. Who else?”
“I thought all those lawsuits against Sam had been settled,” said Jade.
“All but one,” the Blonde replied.
Jade raised her eyebrows a notch, waiting.
“A breach of promise suit,” the Blonde explained. “Sam promised to marry me—”
“Marry you!” Jade blurted, shocked. “Marry you?”
“That’s right,” the Blonde replied gravely. “And I’m here to see that he makes good on his promise. Or else.”
“Or else what?”
“Or else I’ll take all his assets. Every penny. I’ll leave him with nothing but the clothes on his back. Maybe not even that much.”
“NO WONDER SAM’ S in hiding,” said Jill Meyers that evening. She had invited Jade to dinner in the suite she had rented under an assumed name: Minerva de Guerre.
“This is going to make him burrow even deeper, wherever he is,” Jade said unhappily, picking at the salad before her.
Meyers shook her head, equally dismayed. “I had a talk with Doug Stavenger this afternoon. Strictly informal, of course. You’d think in a community as small and tight as Selene it’d be impossible for Sam to hide for long.”
Jade said, “There’ve been people living in the equipment and storage levels for years, castoffs and hideaways existing on their wits. I’ve even heard that sometimes they break into the emergency shelters up on the surface and live there for as long as they dare.”
“Stavenger didn’t mention that.”
“He wouldn’t, not to a distinguished visitor. He wouldn’t want you to know there’s an underground subculture in Selene.”
“Why does the governing council permit it?”
Jade shrugged. ”It’s small enough so that it would be more trouble to root out than it’s worth. At least, that’s the official line.”
“This isn’t going to help us find Sam.”
“No,” Jade agreed. “It isn’t.”
Meyers drummed her fingers on the table top. “There’s got to be a way to find Sam.”
“But if we do, La Marlowe will get him. One way or the other.”
“What’s she really after?” Meyers wondered aloud. “I mean, Sam doesn’t have anything in the way of assets, does he? He must be pretty close to broke.”
With a slight shake of her head, Jade answered, “He must have something that she’s interested in.”
“But what could it be?”
JUMBO JIM GRADOWSKY was a large man, terminally untidy in his clothing and personal habits, his desk a perpetual disaster area. And he was clearly unhappy.
“You’re moping,” he said to Jade. Despite the successes of Jade’s series on Sam Gunn, Solar News’s corporate headquarters on Earth had not deigned to enlarge the office space in Selene. Profits first, was the motto in Orlando.
Sitting in front of Jumbo Jim’s messy, cluttered desk, Jade nodded despondently. “I guess I am moping,” she admitted.
“You’re going through your assignments like a sleepwalker,” Jim added, pushing aside a small mountain of reports and memos to reach for the milkshake mug on the corner of his desk
. Several of the monomolecular sheets slid languidly to the floor.
“I guess I am,” Jade repeated. Then, pulling herself up straighter, she said, “It’s this Sam Gunn thing. I can’t get it out of my mind.”
Gradowsky took a long pull on his milkshake. Wiping chocolate foam from his lips with the back of his hand, he said, “All right, here’s what I’m going to do. You’re off all assignments for the next three days. You spend the time tracking Sam down.”
“Three days? Jim! Thanks!” Jade wanted to jump over the desk and kiss him.
“Three days,” Gradowsky warned, holding up three fingers. “Then I want you here with all your brains working.”
“Thanks, Jim,” she repeated, bolting from the chair and heading for the door.
Monica Bianco was sympathetic but not terribly helpful. Her office, like Jade’s, was nothing more than a cubicle with shoulder-high partitions, although she had adorned the wobbly walls with photos of her abundant family back Earthside. Every timeJade saw the pictures she thought about how much she wished she had a family. But she had no one—except, maybe, Sam Gunn.
“I don’t see how you can flush him out,” Monica was saying. “If he’s squirreled away in the maintenance level or out in one of the emergency shelters it’d take a small army to find him.”
Jade agreed gloomily. But she insisted, “There’s got to be some way.”
“Like what?”
“Like ... I don’t know.”
Monica leaned back in her chair. “You’ve been following Sam’s life for the past three years. Don’t you have a feeling for how he thinks? How his mind works?”
“Well, sort of.”
“So?”
Jade thought about it for several silent moments. Then it hit her. “That’s it!” she shouted, and ran from Monica’s office, leaving the older woman sitting open-mouthed behind her desk.
Sam wouldn’t hide out in some ratty corner of a warehouse, she told herself as she slid behind the desk in her own cubicle. Not Sam!
She called up the guest list of the Selenite Hotel, the poshest hostelry on the Moon. He wouldn’t use his own name, of course, Jade told herself as she scanned the list. Some of the names were blanked out and photo IDs missing, guests who wanted complete privacy.