Moonrise gt-5

by Ben Bova

  The nanotech treaty would be a shambles, a mockery. All because this little island nation could be bribed into resisting the will of the people, the mandate of God.

  All because of Greg, she knew. He’s sitting up there, above us all, laughing at us. Laughing at me. I’ve got to stop Greg, Melissa told herself. I’ve got to tear him down from his throne in the sky. I’ve got to wipe out Moonbase.

  Her only tool, she realized, was Rashid.

  He invited her to dinner the next night, but she refused. Again the following night, and she refused again. But by the third night, Melissa had done enough research into Rashid’s own personal and corporate life so that the beginnings of a plan had started to form in her mind. When he oh-so-casually asked her if she would like to keep him company during dinner, she accepted.

  His answering smile pleased her.

  In place of candles, Rashid’s tent was lit by battery-powered fluorescent lamps. His table was still meager, supplies had to be flown in from Hawaii, yet Melissa could see the effect he was trying to create: a romantic dinner for two, alone from the rest of the world.

  Instead of the usual slacks and shin, Rashid wore a flowing white robe with gold embroidery, and a cloying musky cologne that made Melissa’s nostrils twitch. She half expected to hear reedy Middle-eastern music; instead, the background was the rhythmic beating of the surf against the reef out beyond the island.

  “And how is your wife today?” Melissa asked coyly as they sat at the folding table facing each other.

  Rashid smiled blandly. “I’ve been much too busy to speak with her today. I’ll call tomorrow.”

  Nodding understandingly, she asked, “Moslems are allowed four wives, aren’t they?”

  He seemed pleased that she knew. “The Koran allows four, yes. But the laws of the United States make polygamy illegal.”

  With a slight frown, Melissa said, “Secular law shouldn’t be placed above religious law. Don’t you agree?”

  “In this case, I agree wholeheartedly!”

  Melissa looked down at her dinner, a prepackaged meal heated in the portable microwave oven. We might as well be aboard an airliner, she thought. The natives who had returned to the island were catching fresh fish in the lagoon, although the papaya and mango and other fruit trees had been stripped by the typhoon’s winds, if not flattened altogether.

  Rashid did not offer wine; neither of them imbibed. Instead they drank clear water produced by the desalting plant that had finally gone into operation.

  Slowly, as they ate and chatted, Melissa brought the subject around to Moonbase.

  “I just don’t understand how the corporation can risk so much of its resources on a totally unproven scheme,” she said.

  “Unproven?”

  “The idea of manufacniring Clipperships with nanomachines,” Melissa said. “Nanotechnology isn’t really that reliable. It’s dangerous, in fact.”

  “They use nanomachines at Moonbase all the time.”

  “Yes, of course,” she said, “but only for the simplest of tasks, like taking oxygen out of the regolith. When it comes to trying to build the mass driver, they’re having trouble, aren’t they?”

  Rashid’s eyes narrowed slightly. “You’re very well informed.”

  “I am your assistant,” said Melissa. “It’s my job to know what you need to know.”

  “Yes.”

  “And it worries me,” she went on, “that your whole standing in the corporation hangs on this crazy scheme. How on Earth did you ever agree to be part of it?”

  His brow knit more deeply. “I really had no choice. I was transferred here on the orders of Joanna Stavenger.”

  “Isn’t she Greg Masterson’s mother?” Melissa asked innocently.

  “Yes. And he’s the director of Moonbase.”

  “But you’re his superior. He reports to you in the corporate chain of command.”

  His nostrils flaring slightly, Rashid muttered, “Not for long, I imagine. He’ll be sitting on the board of directors before I do, no doubt.”

  “Because of his mother?”

  “Why else?”

  “But she’s retired, hasn’t she? She’s living up at Moonbase, too.”

  “She’s still on the board of directors. And still very powerful.”

  Melissa took a sip of water, then asked, “So because of this woman you must risk your career?”

  Stiffening, Rashid replied, “I wouldn’t put it just that way.”

  “But suppose Kiribati decides one day to sign the U.N. treaty? What happens then?”

  “That won’t happen.”

  “No one expected New Zealand to sign the treaty, but they did. What if Kiribati does, too?”

  Rashid puffed out a breath. “The whole scheme collapses like a house of cards.”

  “And yet you have-the key to the corporation’s salvation in your hands, don’t you?”

  “I do?”

  “Fusion power,” said Melissa. “The secret of the stars, brought to Earth.”

  “Ah, yes! Fusion. Yes, I had great hopes for it.” His face darkened again. “Before I was assigned to the Kiribati Manufacturing and Entertainment Corporation.” He pronounced the words with clear disgust.

  “And what’s happening with the fusion development program?” Melissa asked.

  “Nothing. It’s dead in the water. If the corporation would only put some funding behind the effort…”

  She reached across the table to put her hand on his. “Why don’t you move in that direction?”

  “I can’t,” he said. “I’ve got to get this miserable resort complex up and going.”

  “Wouldn’t the board back you, if you made a strong presentation about the benefits of fusion energy?”

  Rashid blinked at her several times as he stroked his trim dark beard. “With Quintana gone,” he muttered, “the balance of power on the board is rather shaky.”

  “Moonbase has always been such a marginal operation,” said Melissa eagerly. “Why not cut it entirely and devote our resources to developing fusion? That way there won’t be any problems with the U.N. treaty to worry about, and you can end this farce of a resort complex here in these godforesaken islands.”

  “But the fusion generator requires helium-three.” — Melissa waved an impatient hand. “One trip to the Moon per year could scoop up enough helium-three to run a hundred fusion generators. You don’t need a permanent base on the Moon for that.”

  “Are you certain?”

  She nodded. “Make fusion work and you can forget about Kiribati.”

  Rashid laughed shakily. “I could go home to Savannah.”

  “You could be elected to the board of directors!”

  “And solve the world’s energy problems.”

  “You could become the most powerful man in the corporation,” Melissa urged. “The most powerful man on Earth!”

  He laughed again, stronger. “I could live in a Moslem nation, where a man is allowed his proper number of wives.”

  “And concubines,” said Melissa, deliciously.

  For an instant Rashid looked as if he would toss the table aside and seize her in his arms. But then the fire in his eyes dimmed, shifted. His face fell.

  “Greg Masterson,” he muttered. “And his mother.”

  “But they’re a quarter-million miles away,” Melissa said. “You can outmaneuver them.”

  He shook his head. “Joanna is a powerful woman. And Greg — he must be the one behind this diamond Clippership concept.”

  Melissa took a deep breath, then said, “Why don’t you let me deal with them?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Very seriously, Melissa replied, “Let me go to Moonbase and speak to them directly. Let me try to convince them that shutting down Moonbase is the right thing for the corporation to do.”

  “How on Earth can you possibly do that?”

  With a knowing smile, Melissa said, “Oh, there are ways to convince people of almost anything.”

 
; “Are there?”

  “Yes, of course. Especially if you know things about them that they would prefer to keep others from knowing.”

  PIE FARM

  “I am honored that you have come to see my humble patch of weeds,” said Lev Brudnoy, quite seriously.

  He had been bent over one of the miniature lime trees that he had planted in a row of pots filled with lunar sand. Getting the cuttings to start the miniature citrus orchard had been relatively easy; people brought them up from Earthside, and, after an intense inspection by Moonbase’s environmental protection scientists, they were carried in sealed containers to the farm. The little orchard was another step in Operation Bootstrap.

  Joanna cocked a brow at him. “Come off it, Lev. We’re not in old Mother Russia anymore.”

  Brudnoy pawed awkwardly at his shock of graying hair. “But you are such a great lady, and I am only a sort of peasant…”

  “Lev,” said Joanna sternly, “how long have we known each other?”

  He screwed up his eyes, thinking. “About nine months, more or less.”

  “How much actual work have you seen me do in that time?”

  “Work?” He spread his hands. “Your work is far removed from the kind of thing I do.”

  “Not any more,” said Joanna. “If we’re going to make a success of this Operation Bootstrap that you helped hatch up—”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you. Maybe it was entirely Doug’s idea, but I have a feeling that you at least aided and abetted him.”

  Brudnoy spread his arms in a gesture of helplessness. “I am part of the cabal, I confess it freely.”

  Joanna’s expression relaxed into a smile. “Very good. So am I, from here on. I’m here to help you. What do you want me to do? Weeding? Picking? Name it.”

  He swallowed visibly. “Well, we don’t have weeds. So far, we’ve, been able to screen them out before we accept a new batch of seeds or cuttings. But pruning is important…”

  Joanna rolled up the sleeves of her blouse and made a mental note to wear regular coveralls the next time she came to Brudnoy’s farm.

  “Look, I know how I’d feel if I was still the base director and my predecessor showed up all of a sudden,” said Jinny Anson.

  Seated behind his curved glass desk, Greg eyed her suspiciously. “Do you?” he retorted.

  Anson gave him a disarming smile. “I don’t want your job, Greg! Honest. Been there. Done that. All I want is a place where my husband can work in peace.”

  “Doug suggested he come up here.”

  “With two teenaged daughters?” Anson shook her head. “You don’t want that, I don’t want that, and they don’t want that.”

  “Then what?” Greg demanded.

  “Damned if I know,” Anson admitted. “There’s gotta be someplace on Earth where Quentin can teach without being hounded by the New Morality bigots.”

  A slow smile crept across Greg’s lips. “You could move to Kiribati.”

  Anson blinked. “Kiribati.”

  “The islands are really lovely,” said Greg. “I wish I were there, right now.”

  “Kiribati,” she repeated.

  Three extra people at Moonbase strained the living accommodations. Zimmerman got the base’s only unoccupied quarters. Anson and Cardenas had to share one room, and a ninety-day contract employee, a young nanotech engineer working on the mass driver, reluctantly agreed to gite up his quarters and double up with one of the other short-timers for the remainder of his stay.

  Anson called her husband in Austin as soon as the crew that delivered the extra bunk to her quarters had shut the door behind them.

  “Kiribati?” Quentin’s placid face crinkled into a mild frown. “Where the hell’s that?”

  Knowing that she was taking her husband’s career in her hands, she said, “Way out in the middle of the Pacific. They used to be called the Gilbert Islands, I think.”

  Once her words reached him, his frown dissolved. “The Gilberts? Robert Louis Stevenson lived there! He loved it! Said it was the best place on Earth.”

  “Really?”

  They chattered back and forth — with three-second lags — for more than an hour. Quentin pulled up a geography program that showed them both the modern Kiribati: palm-fringed atolls in the tropical Pacific; small towns with happy, crime-free people.

  “It’ll be a better place to raise the girls than Austin,” said Quentin, with real enthusiasm.

  Jinny worried about tropical islanders’ ideas about sex, but said nothing.

  “I could start the English department for this new university,” Quentin went on. “I could really-’ Suddenly his voice cut off and his big smile vanished.

  “What is it?” Jinny asked.

  Before her words could reach him, Quentin said, “But what about you? You’ll have to leave your job with Masterson Aerospace if we move to the islands.”

  Jinny relaxed. “Don’t sweat it,” she said easily. “I’ve got a new job all picked out. I’m going to be president of the new university, whatever we decide to name it.”

  His eyes widened once he heard her response. “President? Wow.”

  “Damn’ right,” said Jinny. “I’m gonna be your boss, sweetheart!”

  She couldn’t get what she wanted without going to bed with him. Melissa decided that she had played Rashid as far as she could; the next step had to involve sex.

  Rashid was no fool. He realized that the only way for him to get out from under this Kiribati farce was to move the fusion development forward. He had to get the board of directors hot for fusion energy, divert their attention — and their funding — from Moonbase and nanotechnology.

  Both Rashid and Melissa assumed, automatically, that Greg Masterson was behind the diamond Clippership scheme. And Melissa urged, almost begged, Rashid to send her to Moonbase to deal with Greg.

  Yet Rashid was wary of allowing Melissa to go to Moonbase. He wanted to know how she could possibly stop Greg Masterson and, even more difficult, his mother.

  She told him, part of it, in bed.

  They had their usual dinner in his tent. This time, though, instead of keeping him at arm’s length Melissa let Rashid hold her, kiss her, undress her. She almost laughed at the way his hands trembled as he rumbled with the old-fashioned hook-and-eye at the back of her blouse’s collar.

  It wouldn’t do to tell him outright, she knew. Her story would have much greater impact if she seemed to reveal it to him reluctantly, overpowered by his masculine mastery, her resistance melting away under the fierceness of his passion.

  So she let him paw her and walk her to his double-sized cot and run his hands and lips over her naked body. She felt almost nothing, she kept herself in rigid control. But she moaned for him and writhed and gasped and heaved when he entered her.

  At last it was finished. She wanted to leap out of the narrow bunk and run to the lagoon for a cleansing swim in the warm enfolding waters. Instead she lay at Rashid’s side, breathing softly.

  He turned toward her and propped himself on his elbow. Looking down at her in the darkened tent, he asked, “Was that enjoyable for you?”

  Melissa made a sigh. “The best I’ve had in years and years,” she said languidly. Truthfully.”

  He laughed gently. “How many years?”

  “Ever since…’, Melissa let her voice fade away into the shadows.

  “Since when?”

  “I shouldn’t tell you,” she whispered. “I shouldn’t let anyone know.”

  “Know what?”

  For long moments she remained silent, waiting for his curiosity to grow unbearable, knowing that the best lies were always based on truth.

  He leaned over her, grasped her by the shoulders almost menacingly. “What is this great secret? Tell me.”

  Melissa let the breath sigh out of her. “It was so long ago, so many years have passed—”

  “You can confide in me,” he said more gently. “I won’t tell anyone else.”

  “Years
ago — a lifetime ago-’ She hesitated.

  “You must have been only a girl,” he said.

  “Yes,” Melissa replied. “I was very young. And I fell in love.”

  “Ahh.”

  “With Greg Masterson.”

  Even in the darkness of the tent she could see his eyes go wide. “Greg Masterson?”

  “I was his lover,” said Melissa, in a little girl’s voice. “But he cast me aside. He nearly destroyed me.”

  Rashid dropped onto his back and lay beside her. “Greg Masterson,” he muttered.

  “Greg Masterson,” she repeated.

  “And you want to go to the Moon to be with him again.”

  “I want to go to the Moon,” whispered Melissa, “to repay him for the way he treated me.”

  “You no longer love him?”

  “I’ve hated him for nearly twenty years.”

  Rashid was silent for a long time. At last he asked, “And what can you do to him on the Moon that you can’t do from here on Earth?”

  “I can confront him. And his mother. His mother is at Moonbase. She’s protected him all these years.”

  “Protected him? From what?”

  “From-’ Melissa stopped herself. She had no intention of telling Rashid everything. “From me,” she said. “I was carrying Greg’s baby when he sent me away. I had an abortion. All my life I’ve had to live with the knowledge that I murdered my own child.”

  It was a clever variation of the truth. But it was enough to convince Rashid.

  “So you want to go to Moonbase to confront Greg and Mrs. Stavenger.”

  “Yes. I want them to know that if they don’t shut down Moonbase I’ll tell the whole world about him, how he abandoned me, how he made me commit murder.”

  Rashid thought it over for a few moments. “But that all happened almost twenty years ago, you say.”

  Melissa pulled her trump card. “There is no statute of limitations on murder. The law says abortion is murder. I’m willing to stand trial for what I did. I deserve to be punished. But Greg will have to stand trial beside me, as an accomplice to murder.”

  “My god!”

  “That’s the law now in America,” she said.