Moonwar

by Ben Bova

  “And we have all the university courses available. Some of the lectures are fascinating; they’re all illustrated of course, multimedia.”

  Gradually Edith’s attention wandered from the wallscreen to Doug. She saw an intense young man, so strong within himself that he didn’t even realize the aura he radiated. He’s only twenty-five, she told herself. You’re damned near ten years older. Well, seven, at least. So what’s age got to do with it? another part of her mind answered. You’ve bedded enough old farts. Maybe robbing the cradle would be fun.

  But not tonight, Edith decided firmly. You’d be giving him totally the wrong impression if you flopped in the sack with him tonight.

  Doug let his hand drop from the wall panel and turned to face her. “Well, there’s a couple of hundred choices available. And that’s even with Earthside communications blacked out.”

  “You can’t get anything from Earth?” Edith asked.

  “They’re not transmitting to us. Even the commercial commsats have gone dark.”

  “That’s pretty damned rotten.”

  “All’s fair in war.”

  “Still … what harm would it do to let you see commercial TV?”

  Doug smiled. “It might do us all some good to be without commercial TV for a while. Improve our minds maybe.”

  “Thanks a lot!”

  “I didn’t mean news broadcasts,” he apologized quickly.

  “No, you’re right. News is just as bad, almost.”

  “I’m sure you’re a top-flight serious journalist,” he said.

  He was sitting inches away from her. She could touch his knee merely by moving her leg slightly. Don’t do it! she warned herself.

  Doug could smell her perfume: like the flowers Lev grows in the farm. She certainly is beautiful, with those big green eyes. But she’s an important news reporter back Earthside. She probably thinks I’m just a kid. Or worse, a freak stuffed with nanobugs.

  Yet Doug saw her strange half smile, as if she were waiting for him to say something, do something.

  “I’m not contagious, you know,” he heard himself say, surprised at his own words.

  She blinked, as if stirring from a dream. “What?”

  “The nanobugs. They won’t contaminate you if we touch, or … er, kiss. You can’t catch anything from me.”

  Edith laughed, softly, gently. “Shee-it, back Earthside you’ve got to be worried about catching all kinds of diseases from the guys you date.”

  Doug raised both hands. “I’m disease-free, believe me.”

  “You look pretty healthy.”

  “And you look very lovely,” he said.

  “I’m a lot older than you.”

  “Does that bother you?”

  She hesitated only a moment. “No, I don’t think it really does.”

  Doug moved next to her on the bunk and put his arms around her. Her lips felt soft and warm on his.

  That voice in Edith’s head was still warning her not to do this, but she almost giggled in the middle of a kiss as she answered, What’s the matter, you scared he won’t respect me in the morning?

  What the hell, Edith said to her voice. And then she stopped thinking altogether.

  Out in the corridor, almost exactly thirty meters from Edith’s door, the mercenary let his back slide down the stone wall and hunkered down on the floor.

  Goddamn, he said to himself. Looks like the kid’s going to spend the night with her.

  He draped his arms across his upraised knees and rested his head on his arms. Get some sleep. Maybe he’ll come out before the morning shift starts to come through the corridor.

  But he felt pretty certain that Doug was the kind who would spend the whole night.

  DAY TWELVE

  Edan McGrath, president of Global News Network, was sometimes called Edan McWrath. This was one of those mornings.

  Unexpected because he was on vacation, he had stormed into his Atlanta office and demanded that his vice presidents for programming, news and legal meet him in his office immediately.

  He was a big man who radiated power even though his once hard and muscular body was now weighed down with the fat of overindulgence. Bald, he kept the same trim mustache he had sported when he’d been a Georgia Tech football lineman. Even though his grandfather had handed him Global News as an inheritance, McGrath told anyone and everyone that being born with a platinum spoon in your mouth wasn’t easy. “I’ve had to work to keep Global on top of the international competition,” he would say. “I earn my keep!”

  For an industry that rewarded egomania, his office was comparatively modest. No bigger than, a minor airfield, its decor was muted Persian carpets and quiet little marble busts and statuettes from ancient Greece and Rome. No desk, but a large round table dominated the room. The walls were display screens, naturally. One of them perpetually showed the Global News feed from its Atlanta studios. The other at present displayed a trio of sleek yachts slicing through New Zealand waters in a trial heat of the Americas Cup race.

  The head of the round table was wherever McGrath chose to sit. At the moment he was standing, big hands gripping the back of one of the padded chairs, a stern overweight father figure in a white open-necked sports shirt and whipcord navy blue slacks. He was deeply tanned and obviously boiling mad.

  His three (out of dozens) vice presidents dutifully arrived in his office and took chairs around the table. McGrath thought of them as Larry, Moe and Curly, although his evaluation of which was which changed constantly.

  “McWrath” did not sit down. He pointed the fingers of one hand like a pistol at the vice president for news.

  “This Edie Elgin works for you, doesn’t she?”

  The man swallowed obviously before answering with a timid, “Yes.” He was lean and sallow; he looked as if he hadn’t been out of doors since puberty.

  McGrath pointed the finger-gun at programming.

  “How come her report from Moonbase was aired from freakin’ Kiribati instead of from Atlanta?”

  Programming was made of sterner stuff. He too had been a football player and was still young enough to have retained his muscular physique.

  “We agreed with the U.N. people on a blackout from Moonbase, chief. Remember? You talked to Faure yourself, weeks ago.”

  “But the freakin’ broadcast aired out of Kiribati! We look like idiots! Every independent station on Earth is picking it up. Even our own subscribers are using it. They think it originated here!”

  “We were just following your orders, chief,” the news VP found the strength to say. “You told us not to air anything from Moonbase until further notice.”

  “Live footage of that shithead Peacekeeper blowing his own ass off and you keep it in the can?” McGrath roared.

  “But you made this agreement with Faure …”

  “That two-faced little frog let me think the Moonbase people had killed the Peacekeeper! He lied to me!”

  “You didn’t tell us—”

  “And they’ve declared independence! This is the biggest story of the year! Of the decade! Don’t you have any freaking sense?”

  “You mean you’d’ve wanted us to air it?”

  McGrath walked around the table to loom over the news VP. Leaning over until his nose almost touched the younger man’s, McGrath pointed to the elaborate corporate logo engraved on the wall above the doorway.

  “What’s our middle name?” he asked sweetly. Before the anguished vice president could open his mouth, McGrath bellowed, “NEWS, goddammit! Global NEWS Network. A colony on the Moon declares independence and chases off a regiment of Peacekeeper troops—that’s freakin’ NEWS!”

  The vice president was perspiring, his face white with fear and shock.

  Straightening, McGrath whirled on the head of the legal department, a distinguished-looking man with the chiselled features of a video star, carefully coiffed silver-gray hair, and a tan almost as deep as McGrath’s own.

  “How can Kiribati pick up a report from one of ou
r employees and broadcast it around the world?”

  The lawyer arched an eyebrow. “They can’t. Not legally. We can sue them for billions.”

  McGrath stared at the man for several silent seconds.

  “It would make a great news story, wouldn’t it?” he asked rhetorically. “Global News Network sues the nation of Kiribati in the World Court because a bunch of half-naked islanders have the brains to broadcast news from one of Global’s own reporters while Global’s news department DECIDED NOT TO AIR THEIR OWN REPORTER’S STORY!”

  “He was following your own orders,” the lawyer said mildly.

  “That’s right, chief,” said programming. “You can’t blame the news department for doing what you told them to do.”

  McGrath stood silently for a moment, then crossed his beefy arms across his chest.

  “We look like freakin’ assholes,” he muttered.

  “As I understand it,” the head of the legal department tried to explain, “Edie Elgin beamed her report here from Moonbase. We were under your orders not to reply to any messages coming from Moonbase—we expected her to return with the Peacekeepers, after all.”

  “Okay, okay,” McGrath grumbled, “so I told you not to carry anything coming from Moonbase. But our own reporter, for chrissake! Shows the world that Faure’s a lying little sneak. And they’ve declared independence. Doesn’t anybody think for themselves around here?”

  An uncomfortable silence greeted his question.

  The lawyer resumed, placatingly, “Apparently Elgin, or the Moonbase people, repeated her report to several locations around the world. Maybe she was trying to get one of our offices to acknowledge receiving it.”

  “We don’t have an office in Kiribati,” McGrath mumbled.

  “That’s true. But those islands are spread out over a considerable portion of the Pacific. Somebody out there must have picked up Elgin’s report and decided to pirate it.”

  “So what can we do, legally?”

  “Sue them, of course.”

  McGrath shook his head. “I’m not going to give the competition a chance to show the world what buffoons we’ve been.”

  “We’ve got to do something,” the lawyer insisted, “even if it’s just a suit to protect our copyright.”

  McGrath fumed for a few moments. “I’ll talk to whoever’s in charge there. I want to keep this as quiet as possible.”

  Programming piped up, “So what do we do about Moonbase now?”

  “Edie Elgin’s still up there?”

  The news VP nodded.

  “Then we run her reports, goddammit. We’ve got the only reporter on the scene at Moonbase. We play it for all it’s worth!”

  “But your agreement with Faure … ?”

  “Fuck him! You think the United Nations is more important than Global News Network?”

  Ibrahim al-Rashid was not happy when his executive assistant—a lissome sloe-eyed Jamaican woman with a delightful lilt in her voice—informed him that another news broadcast was coming from Moonbase. Rashid watched Edie Elgin’s report from Moonbase’s farm in glum silence. His heart sank when she told the world that Moonbase could sustain itself indefinitely and did not need supplies from Earth.

  Even before her report ended, Rashid’s intercom chimed softly. He glanced at the phone screen: GEORGES FAURE, UNITED NATIONS, NEW YORK.

  With a sigh, Rashid muted the news report from Moonbase’s farm and activated the phone. Faure’s face, even on the small screen, looked bleak.

  “You have seen this latest news, broadcast from Moonbase?” Faure asked, without preamble.

  “I was just watching it now.”

  “The situation deteriorates with each moment,” Faure said. “Now the entire world knows that Moonbase has asked for independence.”

  “I thought Global News had agreed to the blackout,” said Rashid.

  “They did. But. once Kiribati broke the blackout, Global and the other networks broke their agreements with me.”

  Rashid sank back in his chair. Kiribati. That means Tamara Bonai has betrayed me. And Joanna’s out there whipping up the other directors against me.

  “It was my belief,” Faure almost snarled, “that the Kiribati Corporation was under your control.”

  “It was my belief, too. Apparently we were both wrong.”

  “Then something must be done to correct them!”

  “What do you have in mind?”

  Faure’s image glowered out of the screen, like a little imp trying to look threatening. “I might ask of you the same question,” he retorted.

  “I’ll call the person responsible for this. I’ll see to it that it doesn’t happen again.”

  “Too late for that,” Faure snapped. “Now that the cat is out of the sack, we will not be able to stuff it back inside again. All the news networks are besieging my public information office for permission to send reporters to Moonbase.”

  “You don’t have to grant such permission,” said Rashid.

  “Certainly not! But this means that the news networks will carry any propaganda that Moonbase beams to Earth!”

  Rashid thought about that for a moment, and reluctantly decided that Faure was right.

  “In that case,” he said to the fuming image, “all we can do is counter their propaganda with information of our own.”

  “Yes, and in the meantime the World Court will meet to decide whether or not Moonbase can be considered as a nation of its own.”

  “Surely you can delay the World Court.”

  “Only to a certain extent.”

  “Long enough to send a stronger contingent of troops to seize Moonbase?”

  Faure nodded tightly. “Yes, long enough for that, I should think.”

  For some time after Faure’s call, Rashid sat in his desk chair, fingers steepled before his face, swivelling back and forth slightly. He was wondering what he could do about Tamara Bonai. This broadcast from Moonbase had to be her doing. She was defying everything that Rashid had worked so patiently to achieve.

  There would be a showdown with Joanna soon, he knew. She’s trying to drum up support on the board for a special meeting. Bonai will undoubtedly be on her side, unless I can prevent her from it.

  The problem was that Bonai was not merely the figurehead president of the hollow-shell Kiribati Corporation. She was also the head of the Kiribati council of chiefs; technically, legally, she was a chief of state.

  I will have to deal very carefully with her, Rashid thought. But she must be dealt with, one way or another.

  A slow smile worked across his face. Bonai is a very beautiful woman. It could be quite enjoyable dealing with her—one way or another.

  DAY FIFTEEN

  Joanna’s call woke Doug. He almost told the smart wall to answer it without cancelling the video, but Edith stirred drowsily beside him and mumbled, “What’s that?”

  “Nothing,” he whispered, bending over her and kissing her bare shoulder. “Go back to sleep.”

  Doug slipped out of bed and padded to his desk on the other side of the partitioned room. The phone kept on chiming softly, insistently.

  The chair felt cool to his bare rump. He picked up the old-fashioned receiver and spoke softly, “Stavenger here.”

  From the delay he realized the call was coming from Earthside. His mother’s voice asked testily, “Where are you? Why isn’t there any video?”

  A smile creased Doug’s face. “Because it’s almost four AM here, Mother, and I’m not dressed.” He pressed a stud on the phone console and his mother’s features appeared on the wallscreen opposite his desk, slightly larger than life.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, and heard the same question from her, almost at the same instant.

  “I’ve had a long talk with Rashid. He’s as much as admitted that he’s working toward a merger with Yamagata.”

  “A merger?” The thought alarmed Doug. He had never considered that Masterson Corporation might be taken over by another company.

&nb
sp; “It would be a buyout, really. Lord knows how much cash Yamagata’s promised him under the table.”

  “What can you do about it?” Doug asked.

  He knew her answer before he heard it. “I’m rallying the members of the board. If Yamagata wants us, it’s going to be a hostile takeover, and we intend to fight it every inch of the way.”

  “Do you have enough votes?”

  As he waited for her response, Doug realized he didn’t know the board well enough to count the votes himself.

  “It’ll be close,” Joanna admitted. “Rashid’s got a solid bloc on his side. But I think I can turn some of them around. Tamara Bonai might be the swing vote.”

  “Tamara?”

  A slight smile turned the corners of Joanna’s lips. “It might be worthwhile for you to visit her with the VR system. She’s a year or so older than you, but a little sweet talk might help us.”

  Doug stared at his mother. Despite the smile, she meant it.

  “Mom,” he said, thinking of Edith sleeping in his bed, “I’m no Romeo.” He couldn’t help smiling.

  But Joanna was already saying, “Faure’s been ducking me, as usual. His office has set up a meeting with two of his underlings, so I’m sending Lev to meet with them.”

  “We want to send some of the people here back Earthside,” Doug said. “The dance troupe… and there’s at least a dozen others who want to get home as soon as they can.”

  Joanna nodded once she heard his words. “I’ll tell Lev to see what he can work out. An evacuation flight might be good publicity for us. Faure won’t be able to turn down such a request. If he does—”

  “Speaking of publicity,” Doug interjected, “are Edith Elgin’s reports doing us any good?”

  Her face lit up once she heard the question. “Are they! She’s going to get a Pulitzer, you mark my words.”

  “Great,” said Doug. “But are they having any effect?”

  “Everybody knows you’ve declared Moonbase’s independence,” Joanna said excitedly. “All the talk shows and newsheets are full of debates about it. I’ve gotten three U.S. senators to ask the White House to request a hearing in the World Court. Faure’s turning blue over it!”