Empire Builders

by Ben Bova

  THIRTEEN

  “DON’T YOU SEE?” Dan pleaded with Jane. “All he’s after is power! He’s using this cataclysm as an excuse to grab total world power.” They were walking glumly along the beach as the sunset turned the cloud-streaked sky into flaming reds and oranges. “Dan, you’re not being fair to Vasily.” “Like hell I’m not.” “I don’t like what he wants to do, but I’ve got to agree with him. I don’t see how we can accomplish what needs to be done without the authority of the law behind us. We need the GEC’s control over the situation. Otherwise...” Her voice trailed off into silence. Ignoring the beauty of the fading day, Dan urged her, “He wants to be dictator of the world. He’ll be using economic power instead of military, but by the time the shit hits the fan he’ll be a world-class Napoleon. Or worse yet, a Stalin.” “He’s not like that,” she insisted. “He’s really concerned. He sees this course of action as the only one that has a chance of working.” “And if it does work, he’ll be sitting on a throne for the rest of his life.” “If it doesn’t work, he’ll take the blame.” Dan grunted. “Yeah, maybe. If he hasn’t taken total control of the world’s media by then.” “Be fair!” “Fair? He knew! The sonofabitch knew all about the greenhouse cliff for a frigging year and he didn’t tell anybody about it. He didn’t even tell you or the rest of the Council.” “Yes, I know. He was afraid that the news would leak out prematurely. Can you imagine what effects it will have on people when we do start to tell them? The panic?” “The stock market,” Dan muttered. Jane stopped walking and turned to face Dan. Standing there on the beach, the dying sun behind her, the sky flaming with color, she looked to him like a tall, strong, beautiful goddess just come out °f the sea. “Dan,” she said, “we’ve got to work with Vasily, not against him. There’s no other way.” “I don’t have to do a damned thing. He’s arranged it that way, hasn’t he?” “He knew you’d fight against him.” Dan nodded. “He’s right.” “But if you’d promise to cooperate-” “Cooperate? While his paper-pushing desk jockeys try to run my company? It’ll take those drones ten years just to rework the organization charts!” She sighed heavily and started back toward the huts of the hotel. “I’ll be leaving tomorrow morning, you know. I have an enormous amount of work ahead of me.” “And I’m supposed to stay here. How long?” She shrugged. Striding alongside her, he reached for her hand. “Well, at least we’ve got tonight together.” He could not tell in the dying light, but he almost thought he saw tears in her eyes. “Oh Dan,” she said, “it’s like everything in the whole blessed world stands between us. Has always stood between us.” “There’s nothing in the world between us now,” he replied gently. “Tonight there’s only the two of us on this beautiful island. The past is dead and gone and tomorrow doesn’t exist yet. But we have tonight.” “Yes,” she murmured. “We have tonight.” Dan awoke when his wristwatch’s silent alarm sent its pulsed tingling signal up his left arm. It was still dark. Jane lay sleeping soundly next to him, a thin sheet pulled halfway up her alabaster body. For long minutes he sat in bed gazing down at her in the dim light of the digital clock on the dresser across the room. God but you’re beautiful, he told her silently. To think of all the years we’ve spent apart. What a waste. What a cosmically tragic waste. Slowly, softly, he slipped out of the bed, not wanting to awaken her. He grabbed a swimsuit and T-shirt from the pile in the corner of the hut and padded out naked into the starlit predawn. Grinning to himself, he took his pick of the empty huts, taking one as far from his own as he could. There he urinated and showered, patted his graying hair into some semblance of order, pulled on the trunks and T-shirt, and then marched determinedly to the hotel’s office. No one was at the registration desk. The kitchen looked dark and empty. Dan knew that the staff slept in the long hut behind the office building, but the manager and his wife had a private suite in the building itself. It was a small cottage, the only building on the islet that had solid walls instead of bamboo screens. There was no lock on the building’s front door. Why bother? Where would a thief go on this atoll? All the islets put together barely added up to a few square kilometers. You could see a man standing on the pig farm from all the way across the lagoon; with binoculars you could make out his face. Dan let himself in. The entire ground floor of the little cottage was a single room: the hotel’s business office. The overhead lights went on automatically as the wall sensor reacted to his body heat. Dan saw a desk with a computer and phone console on it, two rattan chairs with gaudy flowered cushions, and a small bookcase that seemed to hold brochures advertising the hotel and nothing else. The manager gets up early, he told himself. I’ll just wait for him to come downstairs. He sat in one of the rattan chairs and was almost dozing off when he heard the sound of water gurgling through pipes. A few minutes later, the manager came downstairs, looking more angry than surprised that Dan was waiting for him. “Mr. Randolph,” he said, “what are you doing here?” The manager was Polynesian, short and round-bellied, old enough for his short-cropped hair to be snowy white. He wore loose-fitting shorts and a brightly flowered shirt, unbuttoned: his business attire. “I want you to phone your supervisor in Papeete ,” Dan said. “You are not allowed to make phone calls, sir.” “I want you to call him.” Puzzled, the manager asked, “Why?” “So that he can call his boss in Port Moresby .” “Is this some kind of a joke, Mr. Randolph?” “Nope. Just tell him that Mr. Randolph is declaring an emergency. And give him the code number fifty-six, twenty-five, seventy-five, thirty-nine. He’ll understand.” It took ten minutes of persuasion and an electronic transfer of three hundred Australian dollars from Dan’s bank in Sydney before the manager reluctantly, suspiciously phoned his supervisor. Dan sat comfortably in the cushioned rattan chair as the manager’s call was transferred from Papeete to Port Moresby to Honolulu to San Diego and finally to Caracas . With each transfer the man’s eyes became wider. Dan could see white all around the manager’s pupils by the time he handed the phone over. Smiling his thanks, Dan heard a computer’s synthesized voice say, “Please repeat the security code for voice check.” Dan said, “Fifty-six, twenty-five, seventy-five, thirty-nine.” “Voice check positive. Stand by please.” A woman’s voice said, “Security, O’Dare.” “Scramble,” said Dan. “All messages on this line are scrambled, Mr. Randolph. And carried by laser link to avert tracing.” Dan grinned. She was curt and sharp, no wasted breath. Good. “I’m on an atoll near Tahiti called Tetiaroa. I need an airlift to a space launching facility where I can get to Alphonsus City as quickly as possible.” Hardly a heartbeat’s delay. Then, “Computer shows commercial flights to Alphonsus scheduled from Yamagata center in Tokyo Bay in twelve hours.” “Not soon enough. I need a high-energy boost, too. I can’t afford to spend several days in transit.” “We can roll out a private booster at La Guaira, have it ready for you by the time your plane gets you here.” “What about Cape York ? Don’t the Aussies have anything heading for Alphonsus?” “Not for the next thirty-six hours, sir.” The hotel manager’s mouth had gone just as round as his eyes. Dan grinned at him as he said into the phone, “Get a spaceplane to Papeete . Set up an OTV at space station Nueva Venezuela for a high-energy burn to Alphonsus. Top priority and top security. Have a plane from Papeete pick me up here and fly me back to the airport. I don’t want anyone to know that the plane is coming to Tetiaroa. That’s vital. And it’s all got to be done beforenoon , my time.” “Yes sir, Mr. Randolph. I’m keying it in right now.” “Good work, O’Dare.” Handing the phone back to the goggle-eyed manager, Dan thought, Malik’ll find out about the spaceplane as soon as its flight plan is filed. Maybe he’ll be suspicious about a flight from Papeete to Nueva Venezuela , maybe not. But he can’t react fast enough to stop me. And he won’t know anybody’s coming here to pick me up. He thinks he’s got me stuck on this atoll. My people on the space station can get me off to Alphonsus before he knows what’s happening. Walking out of the office into the first pale light of dawn, Dan told himself, If we move fast enough we can get away with it. I’ll be on my way to Alp
honsus before Malik knows I’ve left Tetiaroa. Jane was sitting up in bed, still half asleep, when he got back to the hut. She modestly pulled the sheet over her bosom. Dan grinned at her reaction, thinking back to their lovemaking during the night. I guess the truce is over, he said to himself. “Where’ve you been?” she asked. “Took a walk.” She looked slightly suspicious, but as he got back into bed beside her, Jane’s expression changed. “How did you like your lemonade?” she asked. “Huh?” “You told me that when they hand you a lemon, you should start making lemonade. How did you like the lemonade?” Grinning, “You’re no lemon, Jane. You’re a peach.” He kissed her and she kissed back and their bodies twined together once again. They barely had time to pull on their swimsuits and take a dip in the lagoon before they heard a plane coming in. Jane squinted up into the bright morning sky. “It’s early,” she said. “I don’t think that’s your plane,” said Dan. “Who” “It’s for me. And you.” She stared at him. “What do you mean?” “We’re going to Alphonsus. Grab your bag.” He started toward their hut as the plane swooped in for its landing. “You can’t leave this island!” Jane shouted after him. “Watch me. And you’re coming too.” She dashed after him. “What do you mean? You weren’t even allowed to make a phone call. We warned the manager and his entire staff!” “Honey, the manager and the entire staff work for me. I bought this joint, the whole frigging chain, the day you invited me to meet you here.” “You what?” He stepped into the hut and began tossing his scattered belongings into his travel bag. “You ought to check up on the ownership of the places where you want to hold prisoners. Not that it would’ve done you much good. There’re four other corporations between me and this hotel chain. You’d’ye spent a couple of days following the paper trail to find me.” “You sneaking bastard!” He looked up at her, standing in the doorway, fists planted on her hips. The swimsuit she wore was a formfitting maillot, emerald green. “You’re calling me a sneak?” Dan laughed. “I didn’t invite you here for the purpose of sticking you in the slammer.” “And last night—you knew you were going to do this! And this morning!” “I knew I was going to try. I’m not going to let Malik or you or the Pope inRome steal my company away from me. Not without a fight.” Furious, Jane pounded a fist against the bamboo screening. It rattled as if one more shot would knock it down. “Come on, come on, we don’t have time to waste.” “I’m not going with you!” “You sure as hell are.” “No?’ Closing the Velcro seal on his travel bag, Dan said, “Jane, I may be old and slow and softened by living on the Moon too much. Maybe Malik can beat the crap out of me. But I can still fling you over my shoulder and carry you out to that plane, if I have to.” She glared at him. “You’d have a heart attack halfway there.” Shrugging, “Then I’ll be dead and that’ll be the end of it. Will you cry over my body?” “I’ll do something else over your body!” “That’s not very ladylike. Come on, time’s wasting.” “I’m not going,” she insisted. He stepped up to her, smiled sweetly, and said, “Either you come with me conscious, or I’ll knock you out cold and drag you.” “You wouldn’t dare.” “I wouldn’t like to.” “A minute ago you were going to carry me.” “Stop stalling. I need you as a hostage. Otherwise that damned Malik would probably use one of the orbiting lasers to blast my spacecraft.” Jane looked at him. “You’re serious, aren’t you?” “Totally.” She went to the dresser and began emptying the drawers into her carry bag.