Empire Builders

by Ben Bova

  NINETEEN

  THE WEATHER FORECAST had been for partly sunny skies with a forty percent chance of afternoon showers. But it had started raining in Miami Beach about eleven in the morning, a steady, cold rain driven by a stinging wind from the Atlantic . The ocean looked gray and angry, as if displeased with what it saw ashore. The mayor of Miami Beach sat beneath the protective canopy, of course. It had been intended to shield the VIPs from the sunshine, but some thoughtful soul had attached rain flaps of clear plastic on three sides of the bright blue canopy. Now, as rain lashed against the flaps and wind buffeted the entire stage so hard the mayor feared it would blow away, the governor droned on endlessly with his prepared speech. “...with the foresight and courage that have always marked the truly courageous pioneers and innovators who have made Florida the great state that it is,” the governor thundered into the microphone, trying vainly to outhowl the wind. The crowd had dwindled to almost nothing. Many of the folding chairs that had been carefully arranged out in front of the wooden stage had been blown over. Only a handful of people remained out in the wet, beneath big, swaying beach umbrellas that the mayor’s public-relations people had frantically scrounged from every shop they could find along Collins Avenue . The TV crews were at their posts, thank goodness, swaddled in slickers and plastic tarpaulins. Doesn’t really matter how many people are in the live audience, the mayor thought, as long as this ceremony gets onto the evening newscasts. As long as the cameramen don’t show all those empty seats. At last the governor finished, to a spattering of applause, and the master of ceremonies—a nationally recognized talk-show host—introduced the mayor as “the man who has been the guiding light behind this project from its very inception to this moment of its dedication.” The mayor’s ears were finely attuned to measuring crowd reaction, and he calculated that the applause for him—sparse as the audience had become—was slightly more than the governor got. That boded well for next year’s election campaign, even though the mayor had more of his dependents out there than the governor had. “Today,” the mayor said, after thanking the emcee for his glowing introduction, “we dedicate more than a structure of concrete and steel. We dedicate ourselves to the proposition that Miami Beach will remain a viable community despite the worst that Nature can hurl against us.” Behind him, behind the stage and its billowing canopy, rose a wall of gray concrete that stretched the length of what had once been a beautiful beach. Now the beach was completely gone, replaced by a sea wall twenty feet high, gray and grim and resolute. It protected the line of hotels and condominium high-rise buildings that stood shoulder to shoulder along the former beachfront, towers of glass and steel and developers’ dreams. Florida’s seaside resorts and retirement communities had been devastated by the gradual rise in sea level and the increasing violence of storms powered by the rising greenhouse effect. Many cities and towns had lost their beaches, their seafront palaces, even their marinas and canals to the encroaching ocean. Causeways had been inundated or even washed away entirely. Whole towns had gone bankrupt. Mass migrations northward and inland had already begun. The Miami Beach Seawall Project was the answer to the problem, the gauntlet thrown down in the face of Nature by a combination of desperate private developers, frantic Florida bankers, and frenzied local and state politicians. Using federal, state and even private funding, they had built a sea wall that would protect Florida ’s showcase resort city from the rising sea and the raging storms. In truth, the mayor had been a driving force behind the project. Scientists from Washington had said that no sea wall could stand against the full might and fury of a mammoth hurricane. Yet other scientists (especially those from Florida universities) maintained that a wall could be built that was strong enough to do the job. Now it was completed, and the mayor stood basking in the glow, figuratively, of his mighty accomplishment. It had cost billions, as the media and the mayor’s political enemies pointed out repeatedly. But it would save the hundreds of billions already sunk into the city’s buildings, streets and infrastructure. “Now Miami Beach is safe,” the mayor proclaimed, straining his voice against the growing bluster of the wind. “Now we no longer have to fear rising ocean levels or damaging storms.” Behind him, waves crashed against the sea wall, thundering harder and harder against its concrete face. Driven by an ever-fiercer wind, the ocean seemed to be smashing itself against this new challenge. The sea wall held, for the time being. But an especially powerful gust of wind ripped away the canopy that protected the VIPs up on their makeshift stage. Screams, shouts and a horrible groaning of timbers. The plastic canopy, suddenly torn loose, flapped wildly and knocked the mayor and several other VIPs off the stage, twelve feet down onto solid concrete. Then the entire stage shifted and tilted and came crashing down. The mayor, his wife, four others onstage and the three closest TV camerapersons were killed. The governor escaped with only a few broken bones. In the tumult and confusion, no one noticed that the ocean waves were already lapping over the top of the sea wall, sending dark gray fingers of water down its other side and onto the protected ground behind it. And this was not a hurricane, not even a tropical storm. Merely a few gusts of wind. Dan Randolph knew nothing of the tragedy in Florida . He had finally been allowed to share a meager meal of frozen fish and rice from packages that bore the heron symbol of Yamagata Industries. The microwave oven in which Pops Tucker heated the food was not original equipment for a temporary shelter, Dan knew. It had been brought in from somewhere else. Big George talked expansively during the meal of his younger days growing up in the opal mines of Australia . “After living in Coober Pedy most o’ my life, I thought these underground cities on the Moon would be downright luxurious. And they were.” Tucker stayed silent throughout dinner. But every time Dan glanced at him, the sour old man seemed to be watching him, eying him carefully, craftily. Like a judge sizing up a convicted man before sentencing. Or like a salesman trying to figure out how much he can charge for a used piece of merchandise. Dan said nothing to the wrinkled, gnomish little man. He wondered if the pistol in his thigh pocket made a big enough bulge to be recognized. He realized that it was only a matter of time before the GEC put a price on his head. That’s what Tucker’s trying to figure out: how much am I going to be worth to him. Dan and Big George talked for a couple of hours after dinner, with Tucker making rare contributions to their conversation. George bragged about the work he had done on the Moon’s surface, braving the dangers of radiation and the billion-to-one chance of a meteoroid hit. Despite himself, Dan began talking about his days on the early construction jobs in orbit, and the first rugged mining operations on the Moon. After a while, George went silent and Dan found himself narrating story after story about those pioneering times. He did not even have to embellish the truth to keep the big Aussie spellbound. “I’m going’ to sleep,” Tucker said at last. He made it sound cranky, accusative. “If you guys are gonna keep spinning yams at each other, do it quietly, okay?” George shook his shaggy mane as if awakening from a trance. “Yeah, it’s getting late. Time to sleep.” “You can have the upper bunk, over George,” Tucker said to Dan, pointing. “And I’m a very light sleeper, so don’t try anything funny.” Dan gave him a laugh. “What do you think I’m going to do, run away and hide?” Tucker snorted disdainfully. “That’s how you got here, ain’t it?” Dan acknowledged his point with a shrug. They took turns in the toilet, then climbed into their respective bunks without removing their coveralls. Dan’s body still ached from George’s pounding, but he fell asleep almost immediately, exhausted physically and emotionally. If he dreamed, he did not remember it the next morning. Rafaelo Gaetano sat on the flagstoned patio in the warm evening breeze and gazed up at the sliver of a moon dancing in and out of the clouds. Then he looked down into the streets and sighed. At least the stench of the city did not reach up this far to the hillside villa. Reggio di Calabria had been a beautiful city once. Down at the toe of the Italian boot, across the strait from Sicily’s Messina , Reggio’s waterfront had once been described as “the most beautiful ki
lometer in Italy ” by no less than the poet D’Annunzio. Now the city was bursting to overflowing with people driven off their parched farms by the drought. The streets were choked with garbage. Homeless people fought the rats every night. The waterfront was awash in filthy water half the time. In daylight you could see the high-tide marks on the buildings, creeping higher all the time. Drought and flood. Gaetano wondered how they could both be happening at the same time. Perhaps this greenhouse business was real, after all. “Escaped, you say? How could the man escape? Where can he run to, up there?” Gaetano returned his attention to the fat, wheezing old man sitting across the patio table from him. Don Marcello Arcangelico had been at death’s door ever since Rafaelo had been a boy. But the old man refused to cross death’s threshold. Beneath his pasty, sagging skin was a heart pacemaker, an artificial hip, a transplanted kidney and plastic tubing in place of worn-out arteries. The man was a tribute to modern medical science and his own indomitable will to continue living at any cost. In the evening shadows, with only the lights from the house and a few flickering fireflies, it was difficult to read the expression on Don Marcello’s fleshy face. But the tone of his voice was unmistakable He was not pleased. Gaetano reflected swiftly that it did not matter to Don Marcello that he was a Council member of the GEC, one of the most powerful men in what was in effect the government of the world. Governments did not impress Don Marcello. He saw them merely as impediments to business, as greedy bureaucrats with their hands out for bribes or, worse, honest do-gooders who wanted to rid the world of businessmen such as himself. “So?” the Don asked impatiently. “How could he escape? Where has he gone?” With great care to keep a tone of respect in his voice, Gaetano replied, “I don’t know how he escaped. He was in his own headquarters, however. There must have been many men there who are loyal to him. He must have had considerable help.” “Yes, yes,” Don Marcello muttered. Personal loyalty to one’s leader was a concept he could understand and agree with, even when the loyalty was to an enemy. “As to where he’s gone,” Gaetano went on, “what does it matter? He can’t show his face in any of the cities on the Moon. He can’t get off the Moon: all the launching facilities are under tight control. He is probably already dead out on the surface someplace.” “And if he’s not?” Gaetano shrugged elaborately. “What difference? He can’t go anywhere that matters. He can’t do anything to interfere with us. As far as our plans are concerned, he’s as good as dead.” Don Marcello was silent for several moments. Gaetano could hear his heavy, labored breathing in the darkness· “And what does the Russian think of this?” he asked at last. “Malik? He is concerned· With him, Dan Randolph is a personal affair. A vendetta.” “Vendetta,” Don Marcello mumbled. “What would a Russian barbarian know of a vendetta?” Gaetano wisely chose not to reply. “Well?” the old man snapped. “Is he doing anythmg. “Who?” “The Russian, you cucumber!” Through clenched teeth Gaetano answered, “Malik ordered that all the satellites in orbit around the Moon be used to scan the surface for signs of Randolph .” “Satellites? Machines. What about a search with people?” “Don Marcello,” Gaetano said as politely as he could, “the Moon is not like Earth. They don’t send out search parties with dogs. There’s no air on the surface. No water.” The old man considered this for several moments, mumbling wheezily to himself. Then, “If they do not find his body it means that he is not dead. If he is not dead he can still be a threat to us.” “I don’t see how. He’s been stripped of his power. All his wealth has been confiscated. Even if he is alive, he’s hiding like a rat someplace almost half a million kilometers away from us.” “He is dangerous, I tell you.” And so is Carthage , Gaetano thought to himself. But he knew that Don MarceIlo’s kind of stubborn ruthlessness was what had made Rome a great empire and what made their family enterprise an international power· “What of the Russian?” Don Marcello asked. “Does he suspect.?” Gaetano shook his head. “Not a thing. He thinks this plan to confiscate the Big Seven space corporations is all his own idea.” Again silence, except for the old man’s labored attempts to breathe. Down the hillside, Gaetano could see the distant lights of cars passing on the highway. “The scientists actually believe,” Gaetano said in a hushed voice, “that the sea levels will rise so high that cities like Reggio will be completely flooded.Messina ,Palermo , even Naples will be underwater.” “Bah!” “They say it will really happen.” “Even if it does,” said Don Marcello, “it only means more power and money for us. People will want new homes. They’ll come running up here to the hills, willing to pay anything for a shack to live in. And in the meantime we’ll be skimming the cream off the Big Seven—almost legally!” He laughed, a coughing, painful, ugly gar-Gaetano nodded in the gathering darkness. Don Marcello Arcangelico saw the world in very simple terms. What was good for him was good for his family. The rest of the world, the rest of the universe, he did not care about. What a name for him, Arcangelico. Then Gaetano remembered that Lucifer had been an archangel. “NOW WE SEE if you’re really who you say you are,” Pops Tucker said in his sour, grouchy manner. It was rooming. Not sunrise; that would not happen out on the worn old mountains of the Alphonsus ringwall for another three hundred and thirty hours. But inside the shelter where Dan had slept with Big George and Pops Tucker, the digital clock on the comm console said 07:45 hours. The overhead fluorescents had switched on automatically. Morning. Dan sat on the edge of his bunk, feeling grungy, unwashed, still stiff and sore from the rattling George had given him. In the darkness, before falling asleep, he had tucked his gun under the thin mattress of his bunk. It was safer there than bulging in his pocket, he reasoned. Tucker eyed him suspiciously. George was in the lavatory; they could hear him gargling ferociously, sputtering like a drowning man. “If you really are Dan Randolph,” the old man said, “and what you told us last night was the truth, you can be a big help to us.” “How?” “You’ll see.” George came out of the lay wearing only his skivvies. He looks like an ad for bodybuilding, Dan thought. More muscles than a squad of weight lifters. Over a breakfast of coffee and thin, flavorless wafers, Tucker outlined his plan. “If you’re really the head of Astro Manufacturing, you oughtta be able to access Astro’s logistics inventory programs pretty easy.” Dan sipped at the hot, bitter brew in his plastic cup. “What makes you think I’d have anything to do with inventory programs? I hire people to deal with that for me; I don’t handle it myself.” “You used to hire people,” George reminded him. “That’s right,” Dan admitted. “I used to.” Tucker was undeterred. “Those gov’ment assholes took over your office yesterday, right? I’ll bet they haven’t touched the company’s inventory programs. Not yet. They’ll be busy with personnel files and organization charts and crap like that. They don’t know from the real stuff. They’re just paper-pushers, not real workers.” With a shake of his head, Dan insisted, “The first thing they did, most likely, was erase my access codes to all the company programs.” “Your personal access codes, maybe. What about the emergency codes, though?” “Probably not. But what makes you think I carry them around in my head?” “You’ve got ‘em,” Tucker said firmly. “If you’re really Dan Randolph, you either got ‘em or you know how to get ‘em.” Dan put his cup down on the table. Tucker had a crafty look on his wizened face. Big George was munching on one of the wafers, but he too had his eyes on Dan. Heads you win, tails I lose, Dan thought as he stared back at Tucker. If I can’t access the inventory programs you throw me out the airlock. If I can, you get what you want and maybe then you toss me out. I’ll have to get that damned gun when they’ve both got their backs turned. “Well?’ Tucker prompted. Dan gave him a crooked grin. “Let’s see what’s in my wristwatch.” He slipped it off his wrist. It was easier to work the tiny keyboard that way. Dan knew that the emergency access codes to the logistics programs were not stored in the wrist unit’s minuscule computer, but the gadget did hold the phone numbers of every department head at Alphonsus and Caracas . This early in the morning hardly any of them would be at their offices, but their phones w
ould be linked to the company’s central mainframe. It was almost ridiculously easy. While Tucker and George watched, Dan used the name of the head of the logistics department to get the mainframe to produce a string of access codes. “You were right,” he muttered as he watched the numbers scrolling past on the wrist unit’s tiny screen. “Don’t even need the damned emergency codes; the idiot program’s about as secure as a virgin in the men’s locker room.” Dan frowned, thinking that he would have to beef up the system when... Then he remembered that it was no longer his system, or his company. Tucker borrowed his wristwatch and went to the desktop computer, began tapping in the access codes. George smiled happily. “Now we’ll be able to find out what your blokes are moving from one location to another.” “What good will that do you?” “Can’t steal what you can’t find,” George said. “Steal?” “Right. How do you think we live out here? Charity from the Big Seven?” Tucker looked up from the screen, its bluish glow casting a ghastly light on his wrinkled face. “There’s a shipment of spare parts for the skimmers going’ out to the base camp on the out slope.” “Crew?” George asked. “None indicated. Just a cargo run.” “Sounds good. When?” Tucker glanced back at the screen.” ‘Safternoon. Leaves the city at sixteen hundred.” George rolled his eyes ceilingward as he did a swift mental calculation. “Ought to be here by sixteen-twenty, sixteen-twenty-five at the latest.” “You’re going to hijack a cargo trolley?” Dan asked. Tucker made a disdainful grunt. “Nothing so grand,Randolph . We’re not big thieves; we’re just small ones. All we’re going to do is pilfer a little.” Jane Scanwell had spent the night in the transfer station at the L1 liberation point, thirty-six thousand miles above the lunar surface. She had left Alphonsus within an hour of Dan’s escape and now, after a sleepless night, was sitting uneasily in the passenger compartment of a regularly scheduled shuttle heading for Earth orbit. Weightlessness still bothered her. Although she was strapped into her seat, her innards still felt as if she were falling endlessly and her head was throbbing. The passenger compartment was very much like the interior of an airliner; the flight attendants even walked almost normally along the central aisle, thanks to Velcro slippers. Still, Jane fought down the queasiness in her stomach, the feeling of stuffiness in her sinuses. And her roiling emotions. Damn Dan she said to herself for the hundredth time that hour. And damn me for caring about his foolish, arrogant hide. Running away! What a stupid trick to pull. Where’s he going to run to, on the Moon? He’ll just get himself killed, that’s all he’s going to accomplish. Well, what can you do about it? she asked herself. Is there any way you can help him? She was surprised at her own question. Help him? He’s a fugitive from justice. How can I even dream of trying to help him? And when did he ever ask for my help? He ran away from me. He always runs away from me. We could have stayed on Tetiaroa together. But he didn’t even give me the chance to tell him that I’d resign my Council position if he’d quit Astro and retire peacefully. Now it’s too late, she realized. Now he’s a fugitive in hiding. Maybe he’s already dead. Good riddance! He’s been nothing but heartache and pain to me ever since I met him. Time to forget Dan Randolph and get on with my life. No tears. No regrets. If he’s not dead already he will be soon and there’s nothing I can do about it. Not a damned thing. She refused to cry. But suddenly her guts churned with acid and she grabbed for the retch bag in the seatback in front of her. Katherine Williams sat in Dan’s swivel chair and studied the data on his desktop screen. The takeover was proceeding smoothly. Each department and section of the company was functioning as it should—somewhat raggedly, perhaps, in a few cases, but that was to be expected when there had been such an abrupt change in management. Now the computer system was patiently, remorselessly, thoroughly rooting Dan Randolph’s name and all his various access codes from every branch of Astro Manufacturing. Within a few hours, as far as the computer programs were concerned, Dan Randolph will cease to exist. It will be as if he never had existed, Kate thought. But where is he? She wondered as she leaned back in his chair. It was utterly comfortable: its midnight black covering was something like butter-soft leather, but warm to the touch and gently yielding, so that it conformed to the contours of her body as if the chair had been custom built for her alone. Kate smiled to herself. Not a bad idea, actually. Instead of going back to San Francisco , why not stay here and run Astro for the GEC? I can bring Kimberly up here; she’d be better off away from her old haunts, once she’s out of the rehab center. We’d both be better off up here on the Moon: Kimberly away from her drug culture and me a quarter-million miles away from Rafe Gaetano was not a bad lover, once they got down to the pleasure of lovemaking. It was the damned silly games he liked to play beforehand. He really didn’t like women, Kate realized. No, it’s not that, exactly. He’s afraid of women. He’s got to put himself in a position of absolute power before he can get it up. What would Gaetano do if I told him I wanted to stay here and run Astro’s operations for the GEC. And bring Kimberly up here with me. That would just about break his hold over me. Would he care? He can always find some other woman to dominate. She shook her head, frowning. No, he wouldn’t want to give up his power over me. Not unless I could give him something in return. Something he wants more than his feeling that he can control me. Something . . . The answer was displaying itself to her in the desktop screen. Dan Randolph ! If I could deliver Dan to him, Rare would let me have Astro as my reward. That would work. She broke into a happy smile as she leaned forward across the desk to reach the computer keyboard. I’ll have Kim here safe and Astro Manufacturing. Terrific! All I’ve got to do is find Dan Randolph. She began pecking at the keyboard with single-minded intensity, telling herself that it wouldn’t matter if Dan was dead or alive. All she had to do was find him. Or his body. “Are you sure this is going to work?” Dan asked dubiously. “I’ve done it before,” Big George’s voice replied in his helmet earphones. “It’s not as crazy as it looks.” It looked pretty crazy to Dan. He and George were climbing up one of the slim concrete pillars that held the cable-car line, clambering in their space suits slowly up the steel ladder rungs imbedded in the pole like a pair of ungainly oversized bear cubs struggling up a tree. Pops Tucker had remained in the shelter, too old and frail for the athletics that George was contemplating. “It’s simple,” George said. “We wait at the top of the pole. The fooking trolley comes by. We jump down onto its roof, then climb down and enter it through the airlock. Nothing to it, practically.” The pillar looked about ten meters high to Dan, from the ground. Halfway up, climbing laboriously in the awkward pressure suit, it seemed more like a hundred meters high. He leaned over to see the ground from inside his helmet. Make it two hundred meters, he said to himself. “The main thing is the timing,” George was explaining. “When I say to jump, jump. Don’t want to miss the fooking bus. Even in this gravity, a ten-meter fall can break your bones.” Dan’s back still hurt sullenly. At last they reached the top of the pillar. He clambered up beside George and the two of them hung there like high-tech monkeys. Suddenly a new thought popped into his head. “Hey, once we’re inside the trolley, how the hell do we get out again? We can’t wait until it gets to the end of the line, there’ll be people waiting for it there.” He could not see George’s face behind the heavily tinted visor of his helmet. But he heard the big man chuckle. “We stop the bugger, that’s what we do. Stop her and use the emergency escape line to get back to the surface.” “Then they know somebody’s been aboard it.” “Sure they know.” Inside his helmet, sweating from the exertion of the climb, Dan frowned with puzzlement. “But I’ve never heard of a trolley being hijacked.” “Doesn’t happen very often,” George’s voice replied. “We don’t do this every day, y’know.” “But I would have been informed about it,” Dan insisted. “My security people would have reported it up the chain of command to me.” “Maybe,” said George. “Maybe not.” “I don’t understand—“ “Hold it! Here she comes.” Dan had to turn his entire upper torso to look in the direction of the cable, hanging tautly a
few feet below them. It was still night on the Moon, but there was enough Earthlight for him to make out the bullet shape of the trolley whizzing along the cable toward them. Cripes, it’s coming fast. If we miss . . . “Jump!” George yelled. Dan jumped. He seemed to hang in emptiness forever. Then he landed with a bone-rattling thud on the trolley’s roof. His boots scraped and slid on the slick hard surface and he felt himself going over sideways in the dreamy slow motion of the Moon’s low gravity. He reached out for something to grab hold of but there was nothing, not even thin air, nothing but vacuum. He was falling over the side, slipping like a man in a nightmare toward the ground rushing by so far below. Something grabbed him hard and yanked him back onto the flat surface of the trolley’s roof. Dan lay on his belly, gasping. George’s voice in his earphones sounded amused. “I forgot to tell you—grab one of the handholds on the roof when you land. Otherwise you’ll fall off.” “Thanks ...” Dan puffed, “for the ... advice.” “C’mon, no time to waste.” I’m too old for this, Dan said to himself. But, taking a deep breath, he slowly got to all fours. George was already clambering down the side of the moving trolley to work its airlock hatch. Dan got shakily to his feet. The car was moving along at a good fifty knots or more, he estimated, but there was no real sensation of movement. No wind, certainly, and the car seemed steady as a rock beneath his feet. A little vibration, but nothing much. If he didn’t look at the ground hurtling past it would be hard to tell they were moving at all. “C’mon,” George called. “In we go.” Dan lowered himself down from the lip of the roof and swung into the open airlock. Within minutes he and George were inside the main cab of the trolley. It was stuffed with crated mechanical parts and boxes of electronics equipment. George whistled happily. “A fooking cornucopia!” He went to the display screen built into the front bulkhead. “Can you work this?” Clumping in his boots, Dan walked up beside him and pecked at the keyboard mounted on the wall. The car’s manifest appeared on the screen. “Fair dinkum, mate. Now let’s see what we want to take.” To Dan’s surprise, George selected only a half-dozen small electronics items from the cargo. “Is that all?” he blurted, when George indicated they would stop the car and get off now. “I damn near broke my neck just for this? George must have nodded inside his helmet, though Dan could not see it. “Enough,” he said. “If we get too greedy it’ll upset people.” “Upset who?” Stacking the half-dozen boxes he had selected beside the airlock’s inner hatch, George answered, “The people in your security section who look the other way when we steal from you, that’s who”