Moonrise gt-5

by Ben Bova

“Greg’s gone through hell and purgatory to overcome the feelings that led him to… to—”

  “Murder,” Doug said, uncompromising.

  Tears were glimmering in Joanna’s eyes but she fought them back. “That’s right, murder. He killed your father. My husband. The man I loved.”

  “The father I never knew.”

  “I knew him. I loved your father.”

  Doug saw what she wanted to say. “But you loved Greg, too. You couldn’t let your son be arrested for murder.”

  “He was so sick,” Joanna said, suddenly pleading. “Don’t you understand, he would never have done anything like that if he’d been well. He was in torment every day of his life.”

  “So you helped him.”

  “I protected him. I got him the best medical help on Earth. He worked, Douglas. He went through hell—”

  “And purgatory.”

  She shook her head. “You just don’t know. How could you? For years and years and years Greg struggled and worked to overcome his feelings. He’s accomplished so much! He’s come so far.”

  “He’s come to the Moon.”

  “He’s your brother,” Joanna said.

  “Half brother.”

  “You’re both my sons. I love you both. I don’t want you to hate him. That’s why I never told you.”

  “Didn’t you think I’d find out one day?”

  Joanna waved one hand in the air, still clutching her fork. “One day, yes. Some day. But I didn’t mink it would happen so soon.”

  “Is that why you kept us apart all these years? Because you were afraid I’d find out?”

  “I don’t know,” Joanna said. “No, I don’t think so. At first, when you were an infant, I worried that Greg might be jealous of you. He was in heavy therapy then and I felt it was best to keep him away from you. Later…’ Her voice died away; she seemed lost in the past.

  “I’ve told Killifer to resign and take early retirement,” said Doug flatly.

  “All right. Fine.”

  “What are you going to do about Greg?”

  She looked at him sharply. “What do you mean?”

  “I’m stuck here at Moonbase indefinitely. Greg’s the new base director.”

  “I can’t send Greg back to Earth. It would look as if I had fired him as director before he even started.”

  Doug spread his hands. “So we’re going to be here together then.”

  From the expression on her face it seemed to Doug that his mother hadn’t thought about it before. She was silent for long moments.

  “You’re right,” she said at last. I’ll have to stay here, too.”

  “You?”

  Nodding as if she had made up her mind irrevocably, Joanna said, I’ll resign as chair of the board of directors and live here. For the coming year, at least.”

  Doug stared at her and saw the determination in her eyes. “To keep between Greg and me.”

  To bring the two of you together,” Joanna said, almost desperately. “I love you both and I don’t want you to hate each other.”

  “You’re asking a lot.”

  “Don’t you see, Doug? It was my fault, too. I’m his mother. Whatever Greg’s done, I bear a responsibility for it.”

  “You didn’t murder anybody.”

  “But I didn’t stop him from doing it! I didn’t raise him well enough to keep him from murder.”

  “That’s like blaming Hitler’s mother for the Holocaust,” Doug snapped.

  “I didn’t pay enough attention to him. And when I met your father — how betrayed Greg must have felt.”

  “The criminal as victim,” Doug muttered.

  Joanna pointed at him with the fork. “Douglas, if you hate your brother for what he did, you’ll also be hating me. He’s my son, as much as you are, and what he did is my fault, too.”

  Doug felt drained, exhausted, almost the way he had felt up at the mountaintop with Brennart. My father, Brennart, even Zimmerman’s leaving Tie. I can’t lose her too; I can’t drive.

  My mother away from me. She wants to live up here, to be with me. And Greg, too, but still—

  With a slow shake of his head, Doug replied, “I don’t hate Greg.” He hoped it waas true.

  “Do you mean it?” his mother asked.

  “It’s just — all mis is new to me. I never thought—”

  Joanna got her feet and came around the table to sit at the empty chair beside him.

  “I love you, Douglas. I don’t want to lose you. You and Greg are the only people in the world I care about.”

  “I know,” he said. And he let her put her arms around him and hold him close. It felt awkward for a moment, but then he melted into his mother’s embrace and it felt warm and safe and soothing.

  Joanna could feel the tension between her two sons, crackling like an electrical spark between two electrodes of opposite polarity.

  The three of them were standing in Anson’s former office. Now it was Greg’s office. Joanna had moved into her own quarters.

  It had been a long day. They had seen Anson off and Greg had formally taken the directorship of Moonbase. Now, the little cluster of people who had crowded the office to congratulate their new boss had left. Greg stood behind his desk, Joanna at his side, Doug in front of the desk.

  Even in the sky-blue coveralls that designated management, Greg looked darkly somber. Doug, wearing the pumpkin orange of the research and exploration group, seemed as bright and youthful as a freshly-scrubbed cadet. Joanna wore a flowered dress, insisting that she would not limit her wardrobe to the utilitarian jumpsuits that everyone else wore.

  Doug smiled at his half-brother and put his hand out over the desk.

  “I haven’t had a chance to congratulate you, Greg’ he said. “Best of luck as director.”

  Greg took his hand and smiled back. “Thanks”

  “And I want you to know,” Doug said as their hands separated, “that I understand what happened… about my father.”

  Greg turned his startled gaze to Joanna.

  “She didn’t tell me. Killifer did.”

  “Killifer?”

  “He left Moonbase a couple days ago. It’s all over with. Finished.”

  “Is it?” Greg asked. “Just like that, you find out about your father’s death and you don’t care?”

  Doug looked toward Joanna, too, then turned back to his brother. “I care, Greg. But it’s all… kind of abstract. I never knew my father. He died before I was born. Maybe I ought to be angry, furious — but I can’t seem to work up the emotion.”

  Greg just stared at him.

  “It’s all in the past,” Dqug said. “I don’t like it, but then I guess you don’t either.”

  With a quick glance at his mother, Greg said, “No, I’m not happy about the past.”

  “Then let’s make the future something we can both be happy about. All of us,” he quickly amended.

  “Okay,” Greg said guardedly. “Sounds good.”

  Doug caught the slight but definite stress on the word sounds .

  “What do you have in mind?” Joanna asked.

  Doug shrugged indifferently. “I’ve got a lot of learning to do. I’m signed up with the research and exploration group. We’ll be going back to Mt. Wasser and building the power tower.”

  Greg cleared his throat and said, “Yes, I’ve got the mission plan on my list of action items. Top priority.”

  “I hope you approve it,” said Doug.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Greg replied.

  Joanna watched her two sons, thinking, Maybe they can work together. Maybe they’ll learn to trust one another and become as close as brothers. But I’ll have to watch them. Closely. For a long time to come.

  “Once we get the water flowing back here,” Doug was saying, “we can start thinking about expanding the base, turning it into a really livable, town.”

  Greg said nothing. He was thinking, Doug knows! He knows what I did. He says he doesn’t care, he says it’s all in the
past, but he hates me. He’ll do whatever he can to destroy me. He’s already challenging me. He’ll want to keep Moonbase open. He’ll want to be director, sooner or later. Sooner, most likely. I’ll have to keep a couple of jumps ahead of him. I’ll have to make certain that Mom doesn’t give him unfair advantages.

  I’ll have to make certain that Moonbase is shut down for good. When I leave here, Moonbase will be history.

  PART III: Legacy

  MANHATTAN

  It was more like a comfortable little lounge than a conference room, thought Carlos Quintana. Richly appointed and furnished with quiet, understated elegance. These diplomats do all right for themselves, he reminded himself.

  The Secretary-General gestured him to sit beside her on the bottle green leather sofa. Quintana had known the woman since before she had been Ecuador’s ambassador to the U.N., back when she had been a shy and frightened newcomer to the world of international politics.

  She introduced him to the acting president of the Security Council and the chairwoman of the General Assembly, a comely African whose skin glowed like burnished ebony. The Security Council president was from Bangladesh, one of the poorest nations on Earth, yet he was quite overweight and his thick fingers were heavy with jewelled rings.

  Nothing is done swiftly among diplomats, Quintana already knew. The four of them had a drink, chatted amiably, and only gradually got down to the reason for which the meeting had been arranged.

  “Yes,” Quintana said quietly, once he had been asked, “I am a beneficiary of nanotherapy. I had lung cancer. Now it is gone.”

  “You had the therapy illegally?” asked the General Assembly chairwoman.

  Quintana smiled. “It is a gray area. Nanotherapy is illegal in many nations, including Mexico. But in Switzerland apparently the authorities allow it to continue.”

  “Not for Swiss citizens, however,” said the Security Council president, who had been a lawyen He had rolls of fat instead if a neck, the glistening skin of his face seemed stretched tight like an over-inflated balloon.

  “But you did it anyway,” said the Secretary-General.

  Still smiling, Quintana said, “It seemed better than surgery or radiation treatments.”

  “Or chemotherapy.”

  “Or death,” Quintana added wryly.

  For a moment they were silent. Then the Secretary-General smoothed her skirt and said, “So you are a supporter of nanotechnology, then.”

  “Yes. Very much.”

  “And you would speak against the current treaty being negotiated?”

  “To outlaw all nanotechnology research? Yes, I am against it.”

  “Would you speak publicly against it?”

  “If I must.”

  “Wouldn’t that involve some element of danger for you, personally?”

  Quintana shrugged. “There is always the chance of some fanatic. I can hire bodyguards.”

  The Security Council president cleared his throat ostentatiously. All eyes turned to him.

  “Isn’t it true,” he asked, in an accusing voice, “that you are a member of the board of directors of Masterson Aerospace Corporation?”

  “That’s no secret,” Quintana said evenly.

  “And isn’t it true that Masterson Corporation will suffer greatly if all nanotechnology work is prohibited?”

  Quintana nodded. “It would mean the end of their base on the Moon. They could not survive up there without nanomachines to process oxygen for them and maintain their solar power farms.”

  “It is also true, is it not,” the president continued, “that your corporation stands to make indecently enormous profits from nanotechnology manufacturing.”

  “If we manufacture any salable products with nanomachines, the manufacturing will most likely be done in space, not on Earth.”

  “The profits will be made on Earth.”

  “Yes, certainly.”

  “So you are not exactly unbiased in this matter.”

  Quintana put his glass down on the marble-topped coffee table. “I am a living example of what nanotherapy can accomplish. As you can see, I am not a monster and the nanomachines that were put into my body have done me nothing but good.”

  “But—”

  “But nanotechnology can do more than heal the sick, that is true,” Quintana went on. “Nanomanufacturing can bring a new era of prosperity to Earth. I should think that nations such as Bangladesh and Zaire would welcome such an opportunity.”

  “At the cost of ruining our existing industries!”

  Quintana laughed disdainfully. “Your existing industries are keeping your people poor. If I were you, sir, I would embrace nanotechnology instead of trying to outlaw it.”

  The president said nothing. Silence hung in the elegant little room for many heavy moments.

  At length, the Secretary-General said, “Thank you for sharing your views with us, Carlos.”

  Knowing he was being dismissed, Quintana got to his feet, bowed slightly to her. “Thank you for inviting me.”

  He got as far as the door, then turned back to them. “Take my advice. Don’t fight nanotechnology. The best thing you could do, right now, would be to buy Masterson stock.”

  And, laughing, he left the three of them sitting there.

  He was still smiling as he stepped out of the elevator at the U.N. complex’s underground garage level. He walked to the dispatcher and asked him to call his limousine.

  As he lit up a thin cigar, a man in grimy coveralls stepped up to him and pushed the muzzle of a nine-millimeter automatic into Quintana’s midsection.

  “Antichrist,” he snarled. And he emptied the gun’s magazine into Quintana’s midriff and chest, smashing him back against the dispatcher’s booth. The shots rang deafeningly through the garage.

  Quintana felt no pain, but the world seemed to tilt into crazy lopsided scenes of concrete ceiling and staring faces. The man with the gun stood calmly over him.

  “Let’s see your devil’s bugs cure you of that.’ And he spat on Quintana’s shattered, bleeding body.

  MOONBASE DIRECTOR’S OFFICE

  “This nanotech treaty has got to be stopped!” Joanna said.

  Greg nodded tightly. He had been director of Moonbase for slightly more than six months. What had been Jinny Anson’s office was now his, and he had transformed it considerably. His desk was an ultramodern curved surface of gleaming lunar glassteel, a new alloy from Moonbase’s labs that was as transparent as crystal yet had the structural strength of high-grade concrete. A long couch of lunar plastic sat against one wall and comfortable webbed chairs were scattered across the floor, which was covered with soft, sound-absorbing tiles manufactured in one of Masterson Corporation’s space station factories in orbit around Earth.

  The air in the room was pleasantly cool, like an air-conditioned office of a major corporation back on Earth. Greg had insisted on paving a large section of Alphonsus’ floor with new radiators that allowed the environmental control system to work more efficiently and made all of Moonbase’s underground facilities much more comfortable. It was his major accomplishment, to date.

  The office walls were lined with precisely spaced Windowall display screens. Most of them showed artwork from the world’s great museums, although Greg could, at the touch of a keypad, turn them into views of virtually any part of Moonbase or the surface of Alphonsus’ crater floor.

  Behind Greg was a giant Windowall that presently showed a restful silk scroll landscape of mountains and mist by the thirteenth-century Chinese ’master Kao K’o-Kung. It lent the office an air of serenity that neither Joanna nor her two sons felt.

  “Will the United States sign the treaty?” Doug asked, from his seat on the couch against the far wall.

  Joanna, sitting on the webbed chair closest to Greg’s curved desk, had noticed that Doug always picked that couch to sit on. It was farthest from his brother.

  “Yes, of course they will,” Greg said, frowning darkly. “The whole idea of the treaty came from Wa
shington.”

  “But they can’t outlaw nanotechnology completely,” Joanna said. “Not entirely.”

  “Yes they can,” said Doug. Joanna knew he was just as concerned as his older brother, yet Doug looked at ease, relaxed, lounging back in the long couch as if this were nothing more than a computer game. She almost expected him to put his feet up and stretch out for a nap.

  “But if they do, they’ll want us to stop using nanomachines here at Moonbase, too. We can’t allow that.” .

  Greg shook his head. “If and when the U.S. signs the treaty, its provisions will be like federal law. And we’ll be bound by them just like any flatlander down Earthside.”

  “You’ll have to stop work on the mass driver,” Joanna said.

  With a tight nod, Greg said, “We’ll have to stop everything that we use nanomachines for.”

  “That means closing Moonbase,” she said.

  Greg started to nod but Doug interrupted with, “As long as we remain an American corporation.”

  “I’ve thought about that,” Joanna said. “But Venezuela, Ecuador, all the European nations — they’re all going to sign the treaty.”

  “What about Kiribati?”

  Greg looked sharply at his brother. “Kiribati?”

  “Don’t you have enough clout with them to keep them from signing, Greg?” Doug asked.

  “What good would that do?” Greg almost growled the words.

  Joanna turned to her elder son hopefully. “We could transfer our articles of incorporation to Kiribati.”

  Greg shook his head dismissively. “And get half a dozen federal agencies jumping all over us. They’d take us to court and the courts would decide against us. We’d be in real trouble.

  They’d send federal marshals up here to shut down all our nanomachines.”

  Doug still looked strangely unperturbed. “Suppose we start up a new corporation,” he suggested. “In Kiribati. And Masterson sells the Moonbase operation to them.”

  Greg’s somber face paled. “Sell Moonbase to them?”

  Doug was grinning now. “Sure. Moonbase and all our Earth-orbital stations.”

  “All the corporation’s space operations?”