Hidden Variables

by Charles Sheffield

  "Stick at it, Lips." Meyer sounded a lot better now that the decision on Mesurier had been made. "I'll get the message back out to the Cook Islands. Rocky Courtelle's the right man to deliver it, he looks as though he'd kill his mother for a good cigar. What's the launch date going to be?"

  "Two months from now. We've got the boosters for the upper stage, and we'll be taking the first work crew out there on the second mission. I'll be ready to brief the Council in two weeks, but I can already tell you that a lot of the usual production problems will disappear when we've got the Lungfish Station running smoothly. Then I want to hit them with the next step."

  "Next step! I thought we were in business with Lungfish."

  "You'll be all right, Sal. We'll have you up there as soon as there's a medical facility running. But I mean the next big step. I want Council approval for a Lunar Base."

  "On the Moon! What the hell are you talking about, Lips. You'll never sell them on that."

  "Want a little bet on it, Sal? A hundred thousand, and I'll give you five to one odds."

  "But why, for God's sake? We've got all the production capacity we'll need on Lungfish Station for twenty years."

  "Capacity, but not total security. We'll have that when we have a Lunar Base, once we dig in there we'll be out of reach of anybody. We can set up a bigger facility and we'll be able to get the Arabs into the Casino. They say that the Lungfish Station is bad, it's where Mohammad's coffin is supposed to be—but they don't mind the Moon at all. How'd you like to get your hands on a few of those four hundred billion a year petrodollars? We'll make the fanciest Casino in the universe."

  "You think you'll get Arabs to go all the way to the Moon to gamble, when they could be doing it at home? Lips, I hate to say this, but you sound all screwed up."

  Len grinned. "Wait and see, old man. Wait and see. They'll go. Don't you understand, the Moon isn't part of the Moslem earthly universe—it's a place where all the rules can be broken without offending the religion. As far as they're concerned, it'll be janat, the garden of paradise. All the vices and none of them forbidden."

  "On the goddammed Moon?"

  "Why not? You've never been to the Empty Quarter in southern Arabia. After that desert you'd find the lunar surface a pleasant change. Here, before you cut out let me show you my first design. The more you know about this, the easier it'll be to come in hard on my side with the Council."

  Twenty minutes of coaxing, explaining, and summarizing didn't convince Sal Meyer. The financial analysis did that, as soon as Meyer looked over the basic budget and projected returns.

  He shook his head as he finally cut the connection. "Damned persuasive, Lips. And you know what? It's not even an illegal operation."

  "Never mind, Sal. You can't have everything. Who's going to tax us for money we make on the Moon? We don't have to be illegal to avoid the tax bite up there."

  Like the Arabs, Sal Meyer had the sudden look of one to whom Paradise has become just a Shuttle ride away.

  * * *

  Len Martello was mortal. Like any mortal he couldn't cover all the bases. Development operations had been spread over a hundred separate corporations in thirty countries. Each company had become the instrument that cleared some roadblock standing in the way of Lungfish's conversion to production and use. But there were connections between corporations, and that network—given enough time and patience—could be traced. On the day that Sal Meyer made a minimal acceleration ascent to the Lungfish medical facility (five thousand dollars a day; Meyer might feel the pinch if he had to stay there more than fifty years) late that same afternoon Len Martello felt the first thread of the noose.

  "Len." The call was voice only, Garry Scanlon from Washington. "I can't talk long now but you've got problems."

  "You bet I've got problems." Len was lying back in a reclining chair, moodily reviewing the proposed changes to the Lunar Agreement. "Do you know of a new one? Construction on the Lunar Base looks like being a barrel of snakes."

  "Listen. I've been subpoenaed to appear before a Special Commission on organized crime. They sent a set of interrogatories, with the notice. They're going to ask me a whole set of questions about you, what your background is, what you've been doing for the past twelve years, how much money you have—everything."

  Len jerked upright. "Who's behind it?"

  "Senator Macintosh. Remember, I told you once before I'd had his staff aides around to my offices in NASA, wanting to know how well I knew you."

  "Damn. I knew in my bones that it was a mistake asking you to go on that check-out trip to the Cook Islands. I was in a box for somebody who really knew his launch procedures, but we should have kept you out of it."

  "Len." Scanlon's voice was strained. "I'll protect you if I can. But I have to say this, I won't lie to the Commission. You've only hinted at some of the things you've been doing but I'll have to talk about them if I'm asked."

  "That's all right." While Len had become more and more the loner, he knew that Garry had been steadily merging into the Establishment. Over the years there were less protests about the crippling lethargy in Government, more in his casual conversations about the responsibilities of the job of Associate Administrator. "You tell them what you have to. We'll talk when you're free to do it."

  Len Martello returned to his work with a cold and furious energy. Macintosh, the old incorruptible. He had always been there on the horizon, a presence that Len couldn't convert or distract with other business. Could he be any more than a nuisance at this stage of the work?

  Len reviewed the steps that stood between him and an operating and permanent Moon Base. Thirty of them depended on people and functions based in the United States. Over the next sixty days, one by one, he substituted activities that could be handled by foreign interests.

  On the sixty-fourth day, Len's own call to Washington was delivered by an armed marshal. With it came a lengthy set of written questions.

  * * *

  "But despite all that, Mr. Martello, I believe that I can see a pattern."

  The kid gloves and the gentle touch were still in operation. Howard Macintosh, Democrat of Oregon, had handled thousands of witnesses, friendly ones and hostile ones. If he thought that Len was going to refuse to cooperate, that didn't show in his manner.

  Len cleared his throat. "The only pattern I can see, Senator, is one of simple industrial development of our only remaining frontier. I have tried to promote our interests in space, that is all."

  "And that you have done, remarkably well." Macintosh was short and thin, in his mid-sixties. Len had noticed a strange resemblance to Sal Meyer. They could pass for brothers, both from appearance and style of speech.

  "But it raises a question of what you mean by our interests," went on the Senator. "Would you agree that the road to space has become strangely clear of roadblocks in the past few years?"

  "You might think that way. I believe those 'roadblocks' were just that, impediments to progress. No one should mourn their disappearance."

  Len noticed that Garry Scanlon had slipped into the back of the room as he was speaking.

  "That is an opinion you are entitled to hold," said Macintosh. "Yet I find that there is, as I said, a pattern. Things went just the way that your group needed. Now we have a private corporation—"

  "I don't know of any such corporation, Senator."

  "—a corporation, I say, a single corporation, no matter how much its integrated nature may be disguised. This entity now occupies the Lungfish Station, and has a permanent base on the Moon. It has passed beyond the control of any national Earth government, passed beyond even the power of the United Nations. I myself have had pressure from this group, attempts to subvert my opinions and my vote."

  He paused. Since these were not public hearings, Macintosh was not indulging in any histrionics or impassioned oratory. He was a single-minded man with a basic objective. Len was suddenly glad that the Base was doing so well.

  "I did not hear a question, Senator,"
he said at last, when Macintosh showed no sign of continuing.

  "I am coming to it. Mr. Martello, I strongly believe that this entity, this powerful corporation which now has more activity in space than any country of the earth, is controlled by and the tool of organized crime."

  He leaned forward, his manner intent. "I also believe that you, personally, know a great deal about the workings of this organization." With an instinctive flourish, he picked up a document from the long table and held it out towards Len. "If you will cooperate with us—help us to the limit of your knowledge—then I have already arranged that you will be given immunity for any crimes you have personally committed. This document, which you are free to examine, gives that guarantee from the Justice Department."

  He handed it across the table. The room had gone completely silent. Len took the paper with trembling hands, surprised by his own tension, and looked at the Presidential Seal upon it. He read it through carefully.

  "And if I do not act as you suggest?" he said at last.

  "We will terminate our questions for today. You may return to your home." Macintosh paused. "For a time," he said softly. "But Mr. Martello, that will not be the end of the story. I will continue to pursue this matter, as long as I have strength to do it. And you will not have immunity."

  "A man who has done nothing wrong does not need immunity."

  "How true." Macintosh shook his head. "But how many of us have done nothing wrong? Will you give me your answer, Mr. Martello?"

  "I will give it to you, Senator." Len cleared his throat, then sat with head bowed for many seconds. When he at last looked up his face was white. "I decline your offer of immunity. If you have no more questions, I request that I be allowed to leave these Hearings."

  The hubbub in the room took a long time to die down. As Len was leaving he caught Garry's eye—an incredulous, troubled eye. Behind him, he could hear the mutter of voices at the table as Senator Macintosh huddled with his aides.

  * * *

  After that last meeting of looks in the Congressional Hearing, Len had seen and heard nothing from Garry for almost four months. His phone calls had not been returned, two letters had gone unanswered. That Garry should arrive, uninvited, at the penthouse apartment that Fall evening was doubly surprising. Even as a youth, Garry had made all his appointments in advance.

  "Alone?" Garry looked round and snaked into the apartment almost before the door was open fully.

  "God help us! "Len was laughing. "Who's after you, Aunt Wilma?"

  "No joking." Garry went over to the window and looked out nervously. "I took an Eastern Shuttle flight to get here—paid cash. Have to be back before anybody knows I've left."

  "You can come away from the window—we're thirty floors up. No one's going to be looking in. Garry, what the hell's going on?"

  They sat facing each other, Garry with his overcoat still buttoned.

  "You're in bad trouble, Len. A week from now, you'll be in jail. Macintosh has enough to put you in for tax evasion—I talked to one of his aides, and he told me a lot more than he ought."

  He was short of breath and his words came out in wheezing bursts.

  "It's not too late, I know that. If you come back to Washington with me, agree to cooperate—you'll still get immunity. Will you do it, Len?"

  His expression was pleading. Len shook his head slowly.

  "I can't do it, Garry. You don't understand the situation. They'd give me immunity so they could get at the top guys in the operations, right? But I've not been level with you. For the past two years, I've been the top man. Think they'd give me immunity? Anybody else in the Council, maybe. Me? Never."

  Garry's plump face flushed and his mouth gaped open. "You're the top of the whole thing? That was why you walked out of Macintosh's hearings!"

  "Not the only reason. Here, you need this." He passed across a tumbler of scotch and soda. "I had an even better reason—not just my own skin. Look, Garry, how's the NASA program doing now? Budget and projects."

  "You've read the papers. Since you got Lungfish and the Lunar Base operating, we've started a big joint program with ESA and the Russians. I can't quote you all the details yet, but I'm sure my area—Tracking and Data Analysis—will double."

  "And the year after that I'll bet it will double again—as soon as Congress finds that our group is going to build a Farside Base and start lunar mining. They'll be so keen to stop us that money won't count." Len lifted his own glass. "Let's drink to crime. Don't you see, people only seem willing to pour money into something when they act out of fear—that's why Defense can get fifty times the budget of the peaceful programs. Well, now everybody has somebody they can mistrust: me."

  The light was dawning in Garry's eye. He took a huge gulp of scotch, choked on it, and spluttered, "But that won't do you any good, Len. You'll be rotting in jail."

  Len Martello stood up and walked over to the telescope setting. He switched on the control for the big refractor and opened the opaque cover on the penthouse roof.

  "I'll rot in jail—but they'll have to catch me first. Garry, it's bad news but I've been expecting it for a long time. Look at this, tell me what you see."

  "Mm. Serenitatis? Let me get the focus right." Garry bent over the eypiece for a long second. "Yeah. That's Taurus-Littrow there. Long time since I looked at that."

  The familiar sight somehow had calmed his excitement. He grinned up at Len, then bent again to look at the lunar image. "You've put your base there, right? No chance of seeing it with this, though."

  "Not yet. Just wait a few years. We began with the Casino, now we're into low-pressure agriculture, power generation, medical plants. It's beginning to grow. But I'm not just telling you that to show off, you know. How long do you think it will be before there's a U.N. team sent up to try and close down that operation?"

  "Couple of years, not much more. You know that they relaxed the ban on nuclear rockets, just in the hopes that we'd come up with something that would make sure you were under control?"

  Len operated the switch to close the covers on the telescope. "Think you'll be on that close-out team?"

  "Well . . ." Garry shrugged. "I'm a pretty high muck-amuck these days. If it's an official inspection team, chances are pretty good that I can work my way onto it." He grinned. "You can be sure I'll try like hell to go, but so will a lot of others."

  "Know what they'll find there?" Len went back to his seat. "It's a one hundred percent legitimate business venture—no sign of crime. The only reason we needed the crime in the first place was for muscle—to get some of those damn-fool regulations pushed out of the way, and to give the financial base."

  "But it's too late for you, Len." Garry's expression was serious again. "It may be clean now, but it wasn't clean when you started. I know that. We'll be up there, and you'll be in some damned jail down here."

  Len Martello leaned back in his chair. He looked tired, ten years older than his forty years, but his eyes were still bright. "I deserve to go to jail, Garry. I can't deny it." He raised his hand to still the other's protest. "Sure, I went into the game with good intentions. But I found out one thing very quickly. You can't work up to your elbows in dirt and expect your hands to stay clean. Not just the tax evasion. I had to get into the drug sales, and the enforcement, and the strong-arm tactics. I wouldn't have lasted a month otherwise. But good ends don't justify means."

  He shrugged his thin shoulders, watching the shock spread across Garry Scanlon's face. "I deserve to go to jail, there's no argument on that."

  "Maybe." Garry's face was a mixture of emotions. "Maybe you do. I won't judge that. But I know this, Len, if anybody ought to go on the lunar trip, it's not me—it's you." His voice was earnest. "You touched dirt, sure you did. Lots of people back in Washington will be happy to crucify you for it. But I just want to say that I'm sorry about it all. If I could give you my place on a trip up to the Lunar Base, I'd do it—gladly."

  "Thanks, Garry." Len's voice was so soft that he was only
just audible. "I know how much that means to you. Don't think I don't appreciate it, and the fact that you came here to warn me the way you did.

  "But you know"—he grinned, and suddenly there was a trace of the youth of twenty years earlier in his smile—"you don't need to give up anything for me. They'll come and get me in a week, right? Know where I'll be then?" He jerked a thumb upward, toward the unseen orb of the Moon. "If they want me, they'll have to come and get me. I'm betting that I can keep a move ahead of the posse, all the way out. We'll have full mobility over the lunar surface in another four years. You'll have to develop that if you want to catch me. How long will that take?"

  He raised his glass. "Come on, drink up and we'll get you out of here before you miss that last shuttle. Know what I feel like? In the old days they'd hang a carrot out in front of a donkey to keep it moving along. That's me. As long as I'm out there, you don't need to worry about the health of the space program—they'll have to keep going and catch me."

  "You're right." Garry smiled and picked up his glass. "National pride would never be satisfied to leave you out there. We'll be chasing you."

  "A toast then." Len shrugged. "It's not the one we've always wanted, I know, but there's still time for that. It's a few years yet to 1999. I'm betting we'll still drink that one—and we'll drink it where we've always wanted to. For now, let's just drink to the Space Program."

  "No." Hesitantly at first, then with increasing resolve, Garry raised his own glass. "This time I'm going to propose the toast. The Space Program is fine, but I'll give you something better. Here's to the carrot—and long may it hang out there."

  AFTERWORD: THE MAN WHO STOLE THE MOON.

  You might think that a writer knows exactly what is in his or her head when a story goes down on paper. I used to think so, but now I'm far less sure of it. Consider this example.

  Robert Heinlein's classic "The Man Who Sold The Moon" was obviously much in mind when I wrote this story. No surprise there. I had even gone back and re-read the original just before I began, but so far as I knew I had not played any word games within the story beyond the twist on the title itself.