by Ben Bova
“What?”
“I refused, of course. That’s why a half-hour’s conference took two days. They were adamant, but I—” Brudnoy placed a hand on the breast of his open-collar shirt “—I out-sat them. They demanded that we stop the broadcasts; I simply told them that it was impossible. After ducking into Faure’s office fifty times or so, they gave in at last.”
Joanna grabbed him by the ears and kissed him. “Good for you, Lev!”
“It was nothing. Had I known your reaction, I would have made more demands on them.”
She studied his smiling face. Behind his grin, Lev looked tired, worried.
“Faure’s building up a new military force to take Moonbase,” he said softly.
“You’re certain?”
He nodded wearily. “All the signs point to it. The U.N. bureaucrats are merely stalling for time, nitpicking about the evacuation flight and the arrangements for a meeting between you and Faure. In the meantime, I saw plenty of Peacekeeper officers heading into Faure’s office.”
“Really.”
“And worse,” Lev said. “There were several Yamagata Corporation people there, too.”
Joanna leaned her head back against the limousine’s plush upholstery. “I’ve got to get the board of directors to support Moonbase. If they back me, we can start to put pressure on the White House.”
“And if they don’t?” Lev asked.
“They will,” Joanna said firmly. “They’ve got to.”
Ibrahim al-Rashid steepled his fingers as he gazed at Tamara Bonai’s image on the wall screen of his office. She is certainly beautiful, he thought. If only I could convince her to see things my way.
“Then you will attend the emergency board meeting in person?” he asked.
“Yes,” Bonai said. “I want to be there.”
She was apparently in her office, too, although it was difficult to tell, with all the rattan and bamboo decor and the wide windows looking out onto a delicious tropical beach.
“Perhaps you could come a day or so early,” Rashid suggested. “I would be pleased to take you to New York City or wherever else you would like to visit.”
Bonai seemed to think the matter over for a few heartbeats. “I’ve never been to Washington. I understand it’s quite lovely in the spring.”
“Washington,” Rashid said, thinking quickly. “The national capital. I know a very comfortable hotel just a short walk from the White House. Perhaps I could arrange a visit with the President.”
She smiled delightfully. “I’m afraid that would have to be arranged by my own foreign secretary. I am a chief of state, remember, and there is protocol involved.”
Rashid smiled back at her. “Of course. But perhaps I could be of some help. I know the President personally, and a little friendly persuasion always makes the wheels turn more smoothly.”
“That would be very kind of you.”
“Nothing at all,” he said. “I’d be happy to do it.”
Bonai’s face grew more serious. “You understand that I am fully in support of Moonbase’s independence, don’t you?”
“Of course. But you won’t mind if I try to convince you otherwise?”
“You can try.”
“You see, I have believed for many years that the true future of Masterson Corporation lies in the development of fusion power.”
“As Yamagata is doing in Japan?”
“Yes, exactly. If we can work together with Yamagata we can open up the market for fusion power plants in North America. The market is worth trillions of dollars!”
“As long as you can import helium-three from the Moon.”
Rashid kept the disappointment from showing on his face. She knows the whole story; there’s no way to fool her about this.
“Yes,” he admitted. “Fusion power makes economic sense only if we can use helium-three as a fuel.”
“Which is why Yamagata wants Moonbase.”
“Yamagata is producing helium-three at its own base in Copernicus.”
“But without nanomachines to do the work, their costs are prohibitively high.”
“I wouldn’t say prohibitively,” Rashid argued.
Bonai smiled brightly. “Then why do they want Moonbase, if not for our nanotechnology?”
“With nanomachines extracting helium-three from the Moon’s soil,” Rashid said, warming to his subject,’the costs of fusion power go down dramatically. We could offer the world the ultimate energy system, the energy source the stars themselves use! It would be cheap, efficient, and clean: no radioactive wastes!”
“No radioactive waste?” Bonai probed.
Rashid waved a hand in the air. “Well, some, of course. But very little, and totally manageable. Not like the old-style fission reactors, with their uranium and plutonium.”
“I see.”
“We could be the primary producer of fusion power systems for North and South America,” he said, regaining his enthusiasm. “The market will be trillions of dollars every year! Think of the profits!”
“And who would make these profits? Masterson Corporation or Yamagata?”
“Both,” Rashid answered.
She said nothing for several moments. Then, rather thoughtfully, Bonai offered, “We must talk about this in more detail.”
“Yes. When you visit Washington. Before the board meeting.”
She nodded. “Yes. Before the board meeting, certainly.”
Rashid felt delighted. I’m winning her over! he told himself.
DAY TWENTY-FIVE
“He makes a certain amount of sense, Doug,” Bonai was saying. “Fusion power could be an enormous market.”
Tamara and Doug were strolling along the beach, side by side, even though separated physically by nearly four hundred thousand kilometers.
Doug had gone to Moonbase’s virtual reality studio and donned a full-body sensor suit. Instead of the cumbersome helmets that VR systems had once required, he wore contact lenses over his eyes. Produced by nanomachines, the contacts served as miniaturized television screens that fed visual input to his retinas from a microcamera mounted just above his eyes on a headband. Equally tiny microphones were plugged into his ears.
As far as Doug could see, hear or touch, he was sloshing through the gentle surf on Bonai’s private islet, on the far side of the Tarawa lagoon, away from Bonriki and Betio, where the airport and hotels were.
It was beautiful, Doug had to admit. Gorgeous, with the sun dipping down toward the ocean horizon and the trade wind bending the palm trees. The surf broke out on the coral reef with booming roars; here in the lagoon it lapped softly at their feet as they walked along the golden beach.
Tamara was beautiful, too, in a wraparound flowered pareo of blue and gold, her bronzed shoulders bare, her lustrous black hair cascading down her back. She stumbled slightly on the wet sand and Doug reached out a hand to steady her. Even with the three-second lag between Earth and Moon, her hand was still there for him to grasp. He felt her hand clutch his, and she smiled up at him as they continued down the beach, hand in hand.
She could have stayed in her office and simply programmed the VR equipment to show us this beach scene, Doug knew. But Tamara actually was strolling on one of the small islets up at the far end of the lagoon, wearing a full-body sensor suit and a set of microminiaturized cameras that ringed her head like a diadem to provide a complete picture of the island environment for the virtual reality link.
Sweeping his gaze from her lovely face to the curving length of the beach, the graceful palms, the brilliant white clouds parading across the bright blue sky, Doug realized why he had been so reluctant to meet with Tamara in virtual reality. This was the world that was denied him. This was the world that humans were meant to live on, not the harsh lifeless Moon, but this tropical island where you could stand naked in the warm breeze and breathe free.
I could live here, he thought. I’d be safe enough here; nanoluddite fanatics wouldn’t even know I’m down here.
There was another world, though: stark, barren, dangerous -yet full of promise. We can make a paradise on the Moon, Doug told himself. We can build a world that’s fair and free, a world where people can live and work and create a better future.
But it’ll never be like this, he knew. The world I left behind me. Someday we’ll have something approaching this on the Moon. Someday. But it will never be the same.
A powered outrigger was chugging along slowly in the lagoon, heading their way, its electric motor almost completely silent as it sluiced through the marvelously clear water. Doug could see its shadow undulating across the white sandy bottom of the lagoon, hardly a meter deep.
“I thought this was your private islet,” Doug said to Tamara.
She followed his gaze. “Everybody knows the islands up on this end of the lagoon are off-limits. The boys who handle the boats tell tourists not to come this far.”
Frowning, Doug said, “Well, there’s one tourist who didn’t listen.”
Bonai watched intently as the outrigger hit the current flowing between islets and slewed badly. The man in the canoe worked the gimballed engine back and forth to straighten out again.
“He’ll get himself in trouble,” she said.
“Serves him right,” said Doug.
Still watching, she said, “But he might overturn the canoe.”
“An outrigger?”
He waited, then heard her reply. “It’s been done before.”
Doug laughed. “Then he can walk back to Bonriki. The lagoon’s not deep and the water’s warm.”
Another electric-powered outrigger came into view, bigger, more powerful, faster. KIRIBATI CORP. was painted on its prow in bright orange letters.
“Here come my bodyguards,” Bonai said.
“Bodyguards?”
She smiled at him. “The beach patrol from the hotel. They make sure none of the tourists comes up this way.”
Doug watched as the beach patrol boat pulled up even with the smaller outrigger. Three men were in the bigger canoe, he saw: young, muscular, bronzed skin. One of them had an electric bullhorn in his hand.
“I’M SORRY, SIR, BUT THIS PART OF THE LAGOON IS OFF-LIMITS TO VISITORS. PLEASE TURN AROUND AND HEAD BACK TOWARD THE HOTEL.”
For a moment Doug thought that the visitor would try to defy the patrol. But then he turned around and both canoes slowly headed back down the lagoon.
“You see?” Bonai said teasingly. “We can be alone together. I have my bodyguards to ensure our privacy.”
“You mean that if I tried to come here in the flesh, they’d stop me?”
“No, Doug. Not you,” she said, growing serious. “I would always allow you to come here whenever you wanted to.”
He realized he was still holding her hand. Tamara looked up at him. “You did promise, you know. This virtual reality visit doesn’t count.”
“I know,” he said. She gave no indication that she wanted him to release her hand, and he felt too awkward to let go.
So they walked in silence, hand in hand, for several moments.
“When do you go to Savannah?” he asked.
Again the wait. Then, “I leave Monday morning.”
“Monday? But the board meeting isn’t for another week.”
“My foreign secretary is arranging a quick visit with your President, at the White House.”
With a pang, Doug realized that the President of the United States was no longer his President.
“It’s something that Rashid suggested,” she said. “He’s going to give me a tour of the city afterward. Then I’ll go to Savannah for the board meeting.”
“Rashid suggested you see the President?”
“No, he suggested escorting me wherever I’d like to go. I picked Washington, and my foreign secretary has moved heaven and earth to get me a five-minute meeting with the President. Rashid’s been helping, of course.”
“A photo op,” Doug muttered.
Bonai agreed. “I imagine that’s about all it will be: a public relations gesture toward the Chief Executive of the Kiribati Council.”
Suddenly realizing what an opportunity her visit could be, Doug asked urgently, “Tamara, could you do us a favor?”
“Us?”
“Moonbase.”
She looked up at him from beneath long eyelashes, the expression on her lovely face almost sly. “I’d be happy to do a favor for you, Doug.”
Oblivious to her nuance, Doug went on, “When you’re talking to the President, could you ask her to consider backing our independence?”
The three seconds ticked slowly. “The American President? She’s as anti-nanotechnology as they come!”
“I know, I know. But if you tell her that Yamagata will take over Moonbase, and Japan will be using nanotechnology to take over the aerospace industry and God knows what else -maybe she’d have second thoughts about us.”
Bonai disengaged her hand from Doug’s and walked in thoughtful silence along the beach. He followed her, wondering if he was pushing her too far, but unwilling to give up the chance to make a plea to the President.
“All right,” she said at last. Then she laughed. “I was wondering what I’d have to say to her. Now I know.”
“Great!” said Doug.
“And then,” she added, “Rashid wants to show me the city of Washington. He’s already picked out the hotel we’ll stay in.”
“Hotel?” Alarm bells rang in Doug’s mind. “You’re not staying at the same hotel with him, are you?”
“Why not?” she asked innocently.
“You know his reputation. With women, that is.”
“He’s very romantic, apparently.”
Feeling nettled, Doug said, “He’ll just try to add you to his list.”
“Perhaps I’ll add him to my list,” Bonai shot back.
Doug stood there on the beach, staring at her, dumbfounded.
“All’s fair in love and war, isn’t it?” Bonai teased.
“All he really wants from you is your vote at the board meeting,” said Doug, frowning.
“And you think he’ll try to convince me in bed?”
“Yes,” he snapped.
Bonai giggled and threw her arms around Doug’s neck. “You’re jealous, aren’t you?”
“Jealous?” Doug sputtered. “How- why…”
She pressed against him. “You are jealous.” She seemed delighted.
“Rashid’s not to be trusted,” Doug mumbled.
“Would it make you feel better if I said I won’t sleep with him?”
“Yes,” he blurted.
“Good. Wonderful.” She kissed Doug swiftly on the lips, then pulled away and almost danced along the waves lapping the beach.
Doug stood in confused silence, wondering what he was getting himself into, uncertain of what he felt about Tamara, and feeling more than slightly guilty about Edith.
Jack Killifer rammed his rented outrigger up onto the sand, not caring whether he ripped off the electric motor’s propeller or not.
She was all alone out there, he thought as he trudged up the sand toward the tiki hut that sheltered the beach bar. I could have done it and gotten away with nobody seeing me. Except for that goddamned boat from the hotel. They must look out for her all the friggin’ time.
He sat in moody silence on a rickety stool at the bar, sipping mai tais and wondering how he could get Tamara Bonai alone. He also wondered if he’d actually have the guts to murder her. Yes, he decided. I’ll do it. I’ll just pretend she’s Joanna Brudnoy.
He grinned at the thought. Bonai will be a practice run for Joanna. He laughed aloud, startling the young Australian couple sitting a couple of barstools away.
DAY THIRTY-ONE
There were more news people than dignitaries or U.N. employees, Joanna saw. The meeting chamber was jammed with reporters and photographers, all focused on the little ceremony that she and Faure were prancing through.
Lev stood off to one side, in a corner where the cameras did
not peer, hands clasped quietly behind his back, looking slightly uncomfortable in a dark blue business suit and a tie that refused to stay knotted tightly against his collar. Lev’s done most of the real work, Joanna knew, but he’ll get none of the credit.
Faure was at his haute couture best, wearing an impeccable dove gray suit with a vest of sky blue over a crisp white shirt: the U.N.’s colors. His cravat matched the vest. Joanna, knowing she’d have to compete with Faure’s fashion statement, wore a simple white mid-sleeved dress of classic lines, with a vee neckline cut low enough to arouse the cameras’ interest. Her earrings were gold Incan sunbursts, her choker and one bracelet also gold.
They entered the chamber from doors on opposite sides of the room, stood together before the long baize-covered table for a few moments while photographers snapped still shots of them. Neither of them looked at the other, both stared straight ahead as if an invisible wall separated them.
As the video cameras hummed, one of Faure’s aides brought a slim leather-bound document to them and laid it open on the table. Only then did Joanna and Faure sit in the high-backed chairs placed there for them.
Faure looked into the phalanx of cameras as he picked up one of the pens that had been laid on the table.
“The signing of this agreement sets in motion a mercy flight to the rebellious Moonbase, allowing the rescue of sixty-five men and women who have been trapped on the Moon by the unfortunate stubborness of the Moonbase management.”
He bent his head and wrote his name at the bottom of the document. Then, with a beaming smile, he offered the pen to Joanna.
Ignoring his gesture, Joanna picked up one of the other pens waiting on the table top. She too looked into the cameras.
“This evacuation flight has been made necessary by the unprecedented actions of the United Nations against Moon-base, a community that has declared its political independence and should be treated as an equal member nation of the U.N.”
She signed in a flowing hand, making certain that her signature was larger than Faure’s tiny, cramped letters.
The small band of dignitaries and U.N. workers standing behind them clapped perfunctorily. Faure scooped up the pens and started to hand them out to the onlookers.