Girl on Mars (Girl on the Moon Book 2)

by Jack McDonald Burnett

  Finally, she deigned to meet with Dyna-Tech, in person in their northern California headquarters. Laura Haskell-Lefebvre was there herself, along with Skylar Reece and three other people Conn didn’t recognize. At least one had to be a lawyer, Conn mused. Maybe all three.

  Yongpo stayed away, so it was Conn on her side along with an attorney she had hired to help her in exchange for a commission when they sold the tech. He would earn his money at this meeting, she thought.

  Skylar Reece took charge, as she did in most meetings. She said that the technology didn’t belong to Conn in the first place, it was rightfully the property of Dyna-Tech, and they were prepared to go to court for an injunction if she tried to sell the tech to anybody else.

  “I knew that already,” Conn said. “Are we going to discuss a sale here, or not?”

  “We’ll discuss purchasing the tech, but we will reserve the right to litigate. If we win, we get our money back, obviously.”

  “That doesn’t work for me,” Conn said. “As a condition of sale, if you’re the successful bidder, you will waive any cause of action against me or Yongpo.”

  “We’ll win in court,” Laura chimed in. “Sell it somewhere else, we’ll win and be awarded damages. It’s not working out for you either way.”

  “I beg to differ,” Conn said. “If I sell the tech to EMSpace, EMSpace will have the tech. You might get damages, but you won’t be able to make EMSpace un-know how to build portals. If you want the tech exclusively, you’ll get it on my terms.”

  “So two companies have it,” Skylar said. “So what? Like the pressure fields, this makes it easier to be our customer.”

  “And easier to be EMSpace’s customer,” Conn said. “You and I know that the only thing that’s kept EMSpace from building its own space station to compete with Gasoline Alley is the cost of getting materials into space. They didn’t have Peo’s wealth and conviction.” She couldn’t help it, she looked at Laura when she said it. Peo was as close to a mother as Conn ever had, the person to whom she owed everything good in her life. Peo had left her the company when she died. And then Conn had given it over to the person Peo had tried to keep it away from. “Now they won’t need it.

  “Are you really ready to give away a chance to own this tech exclusively and get a competitor with a huge advantage over you instead? That’s not even considering how long I can drag out litigation before you supposedly win. Months? A whole year that EMSpace is the exclusive owner?”

  Conn saw her attorney smirk behind folded hands. Maybe he wouldn’t have to earn his money today, she thought.

  “How do we know this is going to work out better than the avatar technology you negotiated from the Pelorians?” Laura asked, not bothering to hide her contempt. Conn had indeed negotiated for the technology that enabled Pelorians to manufacture and manipulate avatars, and the Pelorians had reneged rather than reveal that the so-called “avatars” were clones with copies of another individual’s consciousness uploaded into and animating them. “The world wasn’t exactly overrun with avatars while you were away.”

  Conn bristled. “That’s a chance you’ll have to take,” she said. “Or, as is looking more likely, EMSpace will.”

  “Like I said, we’ll get an injunction,” Skylar said. “You won’t be able to show the tech to anybody until after litigation.”

  “That would put me in a sticky spot,” Conn agreed. “In that case, I would give the tech to the US military. Good luck getting a court to say they can’t have it, in this day and age.”

  “You’re bluffing.”

  “Nope. There’s probably somebody from the military listening in right now, nodding his head. We’ve grown close since I got back.”

  The five Dyna-Tech people huddled, then broke. “What are your terms?” Skylar asked.

  Conn stated her asking price. “And if I decide to sell to you, I want back in the company.” She looked at Laura again. “At the C level.” The highest level in the company, on equal footing with all the Chief Whatever Officers. “At a fair salary.”

  “We don’t have any openings at the C level,” Skylar, the Chief Operations Officer, said.

  “Then make a new one. Make me your CSO—Chief Strategy Officer. That sounds good. And I want to be in charge of any initiatives that I come up with. And Yongpo gets his job back, reporting to me. Remember, you’ll be signing an agreement not to sue him, too.”

  Coming back to Dyna-Tech in any capacity would mean Skylar and Laura could make her life a living hell. Dyna-Tech wasn’t Peo’s Dyna-Tech anymore, and Conn would be nothing but a misfit with a make-work job if Skylar and Laura agreed to bring her on. But she added the demand so the women would have a win to give them solace when they came back to her with their checkbook open.

  “These are terms similar to what you’re offering EMSpace?”

  “Almost identical. They offered more in cash if I closed with them before talking to you.”

  The two decisionmakers sat right there, Skylar and Laura, but Dyna-Tech broke up the meeting so they could think it over. Conn gave them a deadline. “After that I sell to somebody else.”

  Conn shook hands with her attorney and they parted ways. She had bus fare, and little else to her name. Yongpo had money in the bank, but Conn had given her meager savings to her father in advance of the journey to Mizar and Alcor. He needed it more than she ever expected to again. She was grateful for Yongpo’s help now, and vowed to make it up to him a millionfold when she sold the portal tech.

  As she waited for the bus, a black car pulled up to the stop. Two men emerged, the driver and one from the passenger seat. “Come with us, please,” the driver said, taking Conn by the elbow.

  FIVE

  Offers

  September, 2037

  Conn shrugged away from the man, and let out a screech, the loudest noise she could make. The goons winced.

  One collected himself. “Let me try this again. Would you please get in the back seat of the vehicle? There’s somebody who needs to speak with you.”

  “I’m right here,” Conn said, throat a little raw. “He’s right here. He can get out and talk to me.”

  The goons looked at one another. Something in their demeanor made Conn think they had decided to try and take her by force again, so she shrieked again. She fumbled for her fone, and took it out. One of the goons grabbed it from her. She got the impression they weren’t supposed to hurt her. She was under no such constraint. She kicked the one who had taken her fone in the shin.

  The second goon tried to get her in a bear hug, but she kept wriggling just out of his grasp. The back door of the car opened, and a figure emerged. “All right,” his voice boomed. “All right!” The goons and Conn all stopped what they were doing.

  The man was short, a little taller than Conn, and he was slight, but he was dressed in an immaculate three-piece charcoal suit, which gave him a certain gravity. He had a receding hairline of dust-colored hair over world-weary eyes. He looked like he had seen a lot of strange and awful things. Conn guessed he was forty-five.

  With a jerk of his head, he sent the goons back to the front seats of the car, the larger one tossing Conn back her fone. Three-piece-suit looked her up and down. She felt a hint of malice radiating off him—but just a hint. “Do you mind if we sit down?” the man asked her. She didn’t. “Honestly, they meant you no harm. Neither do I.”

  “Assuming you’re US government, you people have disappeared me once already,” Conn said. “Not to mention trying to have me killed, more than once. I’m not letting either one happen again.”

  “That sounds entirely sensible,” the man said. He grunted as he sat. “There was a time when approaching you would have meant dealing with a bodyguard, maybe two.”

  Conn’s face reddened.

  “How fortunes change. I’m Janus Gordon. I work for the National Security Authority.”

  Conn could tell he was baiting her, but she just looked at him.

  “This ‘portal’ technology you’v
e discovered. It’s as clear a threat to national security as I’ve ever seen. I’ve advocated banning it. Insisted, even. But if we ban it, it will be harder to use it. And men and women who make different decisions than I do have decided we need to use it.

  “Now, appealing to your patriotism is unlikely to work, for reasons we’ve already discussed—your experience with the government has not been positive. I’m not authorized to offer you money for the technology, and if I were, it certainly wouldn’t be the kind of money Dyna-Tech is offering.” Conn didn’t have to wonder how he knew what Dyna-Tech was offering. “And, skeptical as you may be, we’re not going to ‘disappear’ you or have you killed, either. I officially deny that we did that, by the way.”

  “That wasn’t exactly in question,” Conn growled. “Once I figured out why you wanted me to go away.” Conn was the only American civilian who could understand the Pelorian language—and the government had wanted to be the only one “translating” what the aliens said. It was easier to start an interstellar war that way.

  “Be that as it may,” the man continued. “The most I can do is what I’m doing: making sure you sell the technology to a company based in the US. Are you? Selling the technology to a US company?”

  “I don’t see—wait. I guess I see what business it is of yours,” Conn said. “But I don’t see why I should cooperate and answer that question.”

  Gordon stared at her for a moment before speaking again. “I have something to offer that may be just as valuable to you as what EMSpace or Dyna-Tech are willing to pay.”

  “It would have to be pretty valuable.”

  “What I can offer you, Conn, is freedom. We’ll stop following you. We’ll stop listening in. We’ll leave you alone—if you can assure us you’re selling the technology to a US company.”

  “Won’t you leave me alone once I sell anyway? You’re offering me, what, a couple extra days of ‘freedom?’”

  “That would indeed be a piddling offer,” Gordon said. “The answer is no. We won’t leave you alone once you sell. We don’t have assets associated with you simply because of your portal technology. We follow people, Conn. We bug people, people whose loyalty is in question. People who have aided and comforted our enemy. People who have escaped from prison.”

  Conn glared at him.

  “That’s what we do. I can assure you, like almost no one else in this world can, that your life will decidedly not return to normal once you sell. But—” he stopped and smiled at her “—if you can convince me you’re selling to a US company, then, like I say, I’ll make it all stop.”

  “What do you do for the NSA, Janus?”

  “I run it.”

  She had gathered. “You obviously know who I’m talking to. Can’t you figure out who I’ll sell to?”

  “Oh, my money is on Dyna-Tech. I’m surprised they had to think about it. Hopefully, they won’t catch on to the fact that you’re lying when you say EMSpace will hire you as well.” Conn had worried about that, starting right after she said it. “But only you know your mind, Conn. You’ve spoken to companies with significant presence abroad. You’ve spoken to other governments. No, Conn, we’re not willing to guess. We need you to tell us.”

  “I tell you whether I’m selling to a company in the US, and all the spy crap around me stops?”

  “If you tell me that yes, you are selling to a company in the US, then that is the offer.”

  “I haven’t decided.”

  Gordon sighed, somewhat theatrically, she thought. “Conn, may I lay my cards on the table? We would like to see Dyna-Tech accept your offer. That would put you in charge of portal projects at the company. If you’re over portal projects, you’ll be the person we need to deal with when it comes time to license the technology to us. That state of affairs is acceptable to us. With that in mind, we’re making the offer I’ve just made you. That ought to answer your unspoken question: why now? Because we just learned that Dyna-Tech will make you its Chief Strategy Officer if they accept.”

  If Skylar and Laura were going to bring Conn on as Dyna-Tech’s Chief Strategy Officer, then Janus here was Mickey Mouse. But Conn didn’t say anything like that to Janus.

  “If Dyna-Tech ultimately says no, we would prefer you sell to EMSpace, whose operations are entirely within the US. We know and trust the person we would have to deal with for the tech at EMSpace, too.

  “Dyna-Tech and EMSpace. The only companies you’ve talked to with no other presence than in the United States. No other government has anything to hold over them. That’s important.

  “Now you know what other angle we’re coming from. Simply commit to selling the technology to Dyna-Tech or EMSpace, and we’ll stop all the spy crap, as you say.”

  Conn furrowed her brow. “Then what happens if you come to me at Dyna-Tech for a license to use the technology, and I say no?”

  “We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it,” Gordon said.

  Conn sighed, herself. It was an attractive offer. She would sell to Dyna-Tech if Laura and Skylar accepted her offer. She was confident EMSpace would come through if Dyna-Tech didn’t. “Deal, Janus. I’ll only sell to Dyna-Tech or EMSpace. Now leave me alone.”

  “Thank you, Conn, and you have my word, we will.” He grunted some more when he rose. He trudged back to the car, got in the back seat, and the goons drove him away.

  # # #

  Conn contacted the other companies she had talked to, and the governments, and let them know they were out of the running. It was good business, a way to maintain a good relationship for the future.

  She thought about offering EMSpace a deal: they could pay her less in cash in exchange for a job. But she didn’t want to work at EMSpace. Where she wanted to work, where she felt most at home, was in Peo’s Dyna-Tech. At that Dyna-Tech, everybody knew her, everybody understood that she knew what she was doing, everybody knew she was good at what she did. She wouldn’t have any of that at EMSpace—she’d be the woman who bought herself into a job. Laura and Skylar's Dyna-Tech would probably feel the same way.

  Still, it would be Dyna-Tech. Wouldn’t it?

  She was staying at an extended stay motel, courtesy of Yongpo, while in California. She couldn’t wait until she cashed in on the portal tech, so she could pay him back, with substantial interest, for everything he was doing for her. She turned on a general news feed, and dozed off in the uncomfortable armchair in the motel room.

  Her Wear buzzed, waking her. It was a little after ten PM. She fumbled for her fone, and after juggling it a little held it up to her ear. “Hello?”

  “Conn Garrow? Marcus Stoll. Is this a good time?”

  “Good a time as any,” Conn said, not quite awake. “What can I do for you?”

  “I have a proposition for you that I think you’re going to be interested in hearing. How secure is your fone?”

  Conn thought about Janus Gordon’s promise to let up on the government’s spying. She couldn’t be sure they had stopped. That they were going to stop. “Truthfully? I’m not sure.”

  “Can we meet in the morning? I’m flying into San Jose now.”

  “I’m sorry, who are you? What’s this about?”

  “I’m an entrepreneur, an extremely well-financed entrepreneur. I have a project that I would love for you to participate in.”

  “I appreciate the thought,” Conn said, “but I’m anticipating starting a new job this week.” Where did that come from? Laura and Skylar wouldn’t bring her on. Was she starting to hope they would? “Are you looking for a consultant? I can recommend some good people.”

  “Your expertise would be very welcome, but I’m going to suggest a more hands-on role. I wish I could say more, but I really can’t. Let me buy you breakfast?”

  “I’m sorry, I just don’t see—”

  “Conn, you’ve been to the moon twice.”

  “Three times.”

  “Three? Oh.” The world didn’t know about the third trip. “Well, you’ve done that, and you’ve traveled t
o a moon of Saturn. And to a distant solar system.”

  Conn got impatient. She’d had a dozen offers from the marketing departments of companies big and small, looking for a product endorsement or participation in some advertising campaign. She had Marcus Stoll pegged as some company’s Chief Marketing Officer, trying to rope her into something like that. “I’m really not interested—”

  “Coffee, Conn. Just a cup of coffee. I’m not trying to sell you anything. I’m not trying to sell anybody anything. I don’t want your money, your likeness, or your endorsement. This is an opportunity you’ll want to hear about. When you hear about it, you’ll understand why I wanted to talk to you in person, before you commit to anything else. I promise.”

  She agreed to meet Marcus Stoll for breakfast, to get him off her back.

  SIX

  The Job

  September, 2037

  Conn got a byte from Stoll first thing in the morning, telling her what diner he’d picked for their meeting.

  Alice’s had some of the trappings of a diner—desserts on display, seats at the counter—but Conn could tell right away that it wasn’t cheap. Well, Marcus Stoll did claim to be an extremely well-financed entrepreneur . . .

  He was waiting for her in a booth. He stood and waved. She had brief second thoughts about even joining Stoll. But soon enough she was at the booth, and sat. She wasn't looking forward to a half hour’s worth of sales pitch.

  “Thank you for coming out to see me. Are you sure I can’t talk you into breakfast? I hear good things about this place.” Conn agreed to breakfast.

  The best word for Stoll was jolly. He was plump, with dimpled cheeks and bushy eyebrows under a receding, dark hairline. He had a genuine, infectious smile. Like Janus Gordon, he had on an expensive three-piece suit, the only thing about him that said money.