by Ben Bova
He waited as patiently as he could, standing there in the winding garden pathway as couples and families passed them, casting frowns at his cigar, while Cardenas’ face grew whiter.
At last she folded the phone and put it back in her shoulder bag.
“Bad news?”
“New Zealand’s just announced that they’ll sign the treaty, after all.”
“No!”
“Their government is under tremendous pressure from the party that’s backed by the New Morality movement. To stay in power, they’ve decided to sign the treaty.”
Zimmerman flung his cigar butt to the brick walk and stamped on it, swearing in German. Cardenas couldn’t understand the words but she recognized the tone easily enough.
“Well,” she said, her breath fluttering, “Pete really didn’t want to leave Vancouver anyway. And the kids are all here…’ Her voice tailed off.
“The only concession you must make is to give up your career,” Zimmerman said scornfully. “That’s all.”
There were tears in her eyes. “You too, Willi. They’ve stopped us both.”
“Never! I do not stop.”
“Where are you going to go?” Cardenas asked rhetorically. “There’s only a couple of tiny nations that won’t sign the treaty and they don’t have the facilities or the trained personnel you need.”
“Where will I go?” Zimmerman grasped her by the shoulders and turned her to face toward the distant mountains. The pale curve of the Moon hung above the bluish snow-clad peaks.
“There!” said Zimmerman firmly. “I will give up wiener schnitzel. Sausage and pastries and even beer I will give up. Even cigars! But not my work. Never! I will not give up my work, even if I have to live like a cave man!”
MOONBASE CONTROL CENTER
“The first day or so when I came up here,” Greg was telling his mother, “I spent more time in this spot than anyplace else.”
“I remember,” Joanna said.
“The radiation storm.”
“You told me they had a big party going on in The Cave.”
Greg nodded as he walked along the row of consoles. Each was occupied by a man or woman; they all had earphones clamped to their heads, but there was no tension in the room, no excitement. Most of the technicians looked bored as they watched their screens.
The big electronic map of Moonbase that covered one wall of the control center glowed softly. No red lights and only a few amber ones. Everything was under control; no major problems in sight. The base was functioning smoothly.
“We haven’t had a big flare like that one since then,” Greg said. “We’re about due for one.”
Greg made his rounds of the base once each day, walking from his office out to the main airlock, then down the ladder that led to the tunnel that went past the farm, then back along the next tunnel to The Cave, and finally to the control center. The fourth tunnel was entirely living quarters, and Greg saw no need to inspect it every day, although he strolled its length at least once a week, just to check things out.
The control center was the nerve nexus of Moonbase, of course. From its consoles every electronic circuit, every valve, every pump and drop of water and whiff of air was monitored both by the base’s mainframe computer and the human technicians who constantly watched the display screens and the big glowing wall map.
Joanna was following him on this afternoon’s inspection tour, seeking a way to tell him of what Doug wanted to do without causing an explosion.
“So what did you and Doug talk about out there on the mountaintop?” Greg asked, making it sound so casual that she knew he was blazing with curiosity. Or more.
“Operation Bootstrap,” she replied honestly.
“Is he still harping on that nonsense?” Greg complained as he strolled slowly along the row of consoles. “I wish he’d grow up.”
“I think Doug—”
“Do you know what he’s doing?” Greg interrupted, a sly smile on his lips. “He and Brudnoy want to get their hands on one of our old LTVs and convert it for this idiotic asteroid mission he’s dreamed up. He’s behaving like a sneaky little kid.”
“Do you think Brudnoy’s behaving childishly, too?” Joanna asked mildly.
Instead of answering, Greg stopped and bent over one of the technicians’ shoulders to look closely at the monitor display. Joanna wondered if he actually were interested in the display or just doing it for effect.
When Greg straightened up and resumed pacing behind the seated technicians, Joanna said, “I think Doug has a good idea — it’s too good to throw away.”
“Not you too!”
She stopped, forcing him to stop too and turn to face her.
“Greg, we’ve got to move on this while we still can. If we wait, the U.N. or the New Morality or somebody might try to stop us.”
With exaggerated patience, Greg said, “Mom, look: I’ve lined up Kiribati for us. We’ll be able to continue developing nanotechnology there in the islands. You ought to be making certain that the board is solidly behind us on this maneuver.”
“Don’t worry about the board.”
“Then we can forget about this Bootstrap business, can’t we? We can forget about Moonbase altogether. We won’t need it as long as Kiribati is cooperative.”
“And how long will that be?”
“Long enough for me to build the first diamond ship,” Greg said.
Shocked, Joanna blurted, “What?”
Smiling icily, Greg said, “We have plenty of carbon on Earth, Mother. We don’t have to build Doug’s dream ships up here. We can do it in Kiribati; much more cheaply, too. And once I demonstrate the prototype to the major aerospace lines, they’ll clamor to buy them, treaty or no treaty.”
“But what about your brother? What about Moonbase?”
“Doug will have to return to Earth when I shut this base down.”
Joanna took a breath. “But Doug can’t return to Earth! They’ll kill him just like they killed Carlos!”
“He can live in the islands. We can protect him there.”
Glancing at the men and women attending the consoles, Joanna said, “Greg, we shouldn’t be discussing this here.”
But he planted his fists on his hips and demanded, “Why not? I’m going to recommend to the board that we shut down Moonbase for good. There’s nothing we’re doing up here that we can’t do in Kiribati and you know it!”
My god, Joanna thought, his mind’s made up and he won’t listen to any alternatives. He doesn’t care what happens to Doug. He doesn’t care about anything at all.
She heard herself reply, “Very well, then, Greg. I’ll fight you every inch of the way on this. And in the meantime I’m going to buy an LTV and pay for adapting it for the asteroid rendezvous.”
The blood seemed to drain from Greg’s face. “You’re going … to buy…’ He couldn’t choke out the rest of the words.
“With my own money,” Joanna said. “It’ll be a private venture.”
“You can’t…”
“Yes I can,” said Joanna, trying to keep her voice down, hating having to say this within earshot of so many strangers.
“And I can rent space from Moonbase for doing the necessary refurbishing work on the LTV.”
Greg visibly struggled to regain control of himself. Some color returned to his cheeks. His eyes seemed to calm down somewhat.
“It’s your money,” he said. Then he pushed past his mother and strode back toward the door to the control center, leaving Joanna standing there.
Spend Christmas on Christmas Island, Ibriham al-Rashid grumbled to himself. Only an advertising executive who’s never left Manhattan could come up with such an idiotic idea.
It had been three months since Rashid had been named chief operations officer of the new Kiribati Manufacturing and Entertainment Corporation, a weirdly structured company that included luxury vacation centers alongside all of Masterson Corporation’s former space operations division, including Moonbase.
&nb
sp; Just like that, with little more than a few strokes on a keyboard, he had been removed from his directorship of Masterson’s space division and made chief operating officer of this ridiculous new corporation. His work with the fusion energy system was put on hold. “No need for that if we can still use nanotech in space, or out there on the islands,” the corporate president told him. “Don’t look so grim! This is a promotion for you.”
A promotion, Rashid thought bitterly. They’re throwing away the fusion development and sticking me here on this miserable little island. I’ve been destroyed by corporate politics.
As part of their deal with Kiribati, Masterson Corporation was setting up the new company with seats on the board of directors for each of the council chiefs. In addition to transferring Moonbase and the entire space operations division to the new corporation, Masterson was funding construction of two major tourist complexes, with hotels and casinos and all the amenities, one on Tarawa and another on Kiritimati — the atoll that Westerners still called Christmas Island. “Spend your holidays on Christmas Island,” was going to be their advertising slogan.
Rashid stood on the atoll’s highest point, Joe’s Hill, all of twelve meters high, and stared at the devastation that last week’s typhoon had left. The sandy islands had been scrubbed clean by the ferocious winds and a storm-driven tide that had surged completely across them, leaving nothing standing but a few battered palm trees.
The islanders had been moved to safety days before the storm struck, of course, and now were trickling back from the shelters to which they had scattered, most of them thousands of miles away, across the broad Pacific.
There were more construction workers than natives on the atoll now, and Rashid’s ears rang with the grating whine of power saws and the incessant thumping of electric staple-drivers. Huge trucks groaned and rumbled all over the tiny island.
They were building a luxury casino hotel, an amusement center, and an airfield that could handle Clippership rockets as well as supersonic jets. International relief crews would be arriving soon to start helping the returning natives to rebuild their homes, but the corporate task of turning this smashed atoll into a vacation paradise was moving ahead without delay. Every gram of building materials had to be flown in. Four thousand palm trees were due to arrive today, Rashid knew. Tomorrow’s Clippership cargo would include enough sod to grass over the ’championship eighteen-hole golf course’ that the advertising brochures promised.
It would almost be as easy to build a resort complex at Moonbase, Rashid thought sourly.
Construction had been behind schedule when the typhoon struck. Now it was seriously lagging. Rashid, who hated to leave Savannah, and actually preferred New York, had rocketed out to Tarawa once the storm had spun away, and then flown on a corporate jet to what was left of Christmas Island.
Not this Christmas, he knew. There’d be no tourists visiting this atoll for many months to come.
His only consolation on this trip was the new assistant he had hired, a tall, sleek dark woman named Melissa Hart who had gladly accompanied him on this depressing journey to this miserable little lonely island.
Rashid had been impressed with her good looks and smooth self-confidence when she had first appeared at his office seeking a job on his staff. Her personnel file said that she had been a faithful Masterson employee for more than ten years, with an excellent record.
She was older than the women Rashid usually went after. And rather too thin for his taste. Yet she was alluring: cool yet tempting, proper in dress and demeanor while her smile seemed to suggest everything a man could desire. She spoke modestly, worked efficiently, and smiled deliciously. When she agreed to accompany him as his assistant on this trip to the Pacific, Rashid’s fantasies kept him awake and sweating for the entire flight.
Now, with the sun setting and the infernal racket of the trucks and construction crews beginning to ease off, Rashid walked along the sandy beach toward the little tent city that had been put up to house the workers. The largest tent of all had been erected for him. Melissa slept in a tent with three other women, all construction workers, all bigger, more muscular, and much tougher-looking than Rashid himself.
Yet he grinned as he walked along the curving beach. At least now that the construction crews were knocking off for the evening he could hear the hiss and boom of the surf. There would be a moon tonight. Very romantic, looking out across the lagoon at the night sky.
And Melissa had agreed to have dinner with him. In his tent. Just the two of them, alone. Rashid felt like a sheik of old as he prepared his mind for the night’s pleasure.
Melissa Hart had not been surprised at how easy it was to get close to Rashid. New Morality cohorts in Masterson’s personnel department had faked a record for her, and Rashid hadn’t bothered to check any of the recommendations that were signed by department heads from across the continent.
No, the man had taken one look at her and hired her with a wolfish smile.
Sex is a weapon, Melissa told herself. But a weapon is powerful only when it’s used wisely. Keeping Rashid wanting her was the important thing; as long as his desire was alive, she had the power. Allowing him to have her would diminish that power she knew. She would give Rashid smiles and glances, even kisses and fondling. But they would consummate his lust only when it suited Melissa’s goal.
Tonight we have dinner in his tent, she told herself as she clipped on a pair of faux pearl earrings. One of them was a microminiaturized radio that would transmit every word of their conversation to the solid-state recorder hidden beneath her cot.
“Big night with the big shit boss, huh?” said one of the construction workers with whom Melissa shared the tent. She was a short, burly woman with a good-natured laugh and a vocabulary from the docks. The other two had not come in yet.
Melissa nodded as she studied her image in the only mirror she had, a small hand-sized one.
“How do I look?” she asked.
The woman eyed her critically. Melissa was wearing flowing light pink silk harem pants slitted from hip to cuff, with a loose long-sleeved overblouse.
“Good enough to eat,” the construction worker said, grinning.
Melissa smiled back at her. The woman began to pull off her grimy tee-shirt. “Watch out for him,” she warned. “He’s got ideas about you.”
“Don’t worry about me,” said Melissa. “I’ve handled men like him before.”
“Sure.” And the woman made an up-and-down movement with her fist.
Melissa laughed at the crudity. I should give her a lecture on morality, she thought, but I don’t have the time.
As she started out of the tent, the woman said, “I’m damned fuckin’ jealous, you know.”
Surprised, Melissa blurted, “You’d want to have dinner with the boss?”
“Uh-uh,” she replied. “I’d rather have you.”
“Oh,” was all that Melissa could think to reply. But as she left the tent she thought that she would certainly have to give her a morality lecture. Then she wondered if she’d be safer in Rashid’s tent overnight than with the three other women.
Joanna felt miserably alone as she walked along the tunnel toward her quarters.
Instead of bringing them together I’m driving them further apart, she said to herself. I want Greg and Doug to work in harmony, and here I’ve as much as told Greg I don’t trust his judgment and I’m siding with Doug.
But what else can I do? Doug’s right and Greg’s simply refusing to pay attention to what he’s trying to accomplish. This whole Kiribati business could blow away at any time; Greg thinks he’s being so clever in setting it up, yet it could be a house of straw.
Well, she thought as she slid open the door to her suite, it’s done. I’ve told Greg what I’m going to do. Now I’d better tell Doug. At least he’ll be happy about it. I hope.
The message light on her computer was blinking. Joanna closed her door, then said in a clear, firm voice, “Computer, read messages.”
Joanna slid into her desk chair as she asked, “Did she leave a message?”
“Yes.”
“Read it, please.”
Again, the words spelled on the screen as Kris Cardenas’ slightly shaking voice said, “Mrs. Stavenger, I’ve been thinking about your request that I come to Moonbase to examine your son. Professor Zimmerman is with me, and we would both like to come, if that can be arranged.”
“End of message,” said the computer.
Joanna sat at the blankly glowing screen, thinking hard. Zimmerman! He swore he’d never come back here again. But Switzerland’s going to sign the nanotech treaty. Canada, too. Could it be…?
“Phone,” said Joanna. “Call Kristine Cardenas.”
Their conversation was brief, cool, and to the point Kris Cardenas and Wilhelm Zimmerman would leave from Vancouver for Moonbase on the next available flight. Joanna checked the schedules and saw that they could get to an Earth-orbiting transfer station on the next day. Then they’d have to wait for four days before an LTV was scheduled to make the weekly run to Moonbase.
She shook her head. They’re too important to sit around for four days. The authorities might even try to detain them, especially if they wait in Vancouver instead of the space station.
Joanna ordered a special flight to meet them at the orbital station and take them immediately to Moonbase. They’ll be here in three days, she told herself.
The corporate comptroller called an hour later to ask if she knew how much a special lunar flight cost and how thin Moonbase’s profit margin was already.
I’ll have to clear this with the division head,” he said, glowering out from the screen at Joanna. “And he’ll probably want to check it out with the director of Moonbase before he okays it.”
Joanna sighed. “Put it on my personal account, Lester,” she said.
Once her words reached him, his eyes went wide. “You’re going to pay for it out of your own pocket?” He looked as if she had threatened some fundamental tenet of his inner faith.