The Sam Gunn Omnibus Page 27

  “I wanted to make certain that you were all right,” he said.

  “You came all this way?” Sam asked. His voice had gone tiny, almost hollow.

  Clement made a little shrug. “I had a few weeks’ annual leave coming to me.”

  “So you came out to Guam.”

  “I wanted to ... that was a very courageous thing you did, son. I’m proud of you.”

  I thought I saw tears in the corners of Sam’s eyes. “Thanks, Dad. I—” He swallowed hard. “I’m glad you came to see me.”

  “DAD?” JADE WAS startled. “That withered old man was Sam’s father?”

  “He sure was,” Johansen replied. “He and Sam’s mother had divorced when Sam was just a baby, from what Sam told me later on. Sam was raised by his stepfather, took his name. Didn’t even know who his real father was until just before he started up VCI.”

  Jade felt her own heart constricting in her chest. Who is my father? My mother? Where are they? Why did they abandon me?

  “Hey, are you okay?” Johansen had a hand on her shoulder.

  “What? Oh, yes. I’m fine ... just... fine.”

  “You looked like you were a million miles away,” he said.

  “I’m all right. Sorry.”

  He leaned back away from her, but his eyes still looked worried.

  “So it was his father who fed him the inside information from the Department of Commerce,” Jade said, trying to recover her composure.

  “Right. That’s how Sam learned that the program had a small business set-aside,” Johansen explained. “Which was public knowledge, by the way. Clement didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “But he certainly didn’t want anyone to know about their relationship, either, did he?”

  Johansen nodded. “I guess not. You know, I never saw Sam so—I guess subdued is the right word. He and Clement spent a solid week together. Once the hospital people let us get up and walk around, they even went deep-sea fishing together.”

  “I’ll have to check him out,” Jade said, mostly to herself.

  “Clement died a few years later. He retired from the Commerce Department and applied for residency in the first of the L-4 habitats, the old Island One. Thought the low gravity would help his heart condition, but he died in his sleep before the habitat was finished building. Sam gave him a nice funeral. Quiet and tasteful. Not what you’d expect from Sam at all.”

  “And his mother? Is she still alive?”

  Johansen shook his head. “He would never talk about his mother. Not a word. Maybe he discussed her with Clement, but I just don’t know.”

  Jade sat back in her chair, silent for a long moment while the candlelight flickered across her face. She had not seen her adopted mother, not even spoken with her by videophone, in more than ten years. The link between them was completely broken.

  “So that’s how Sam made his first fortune. With Vacuum Cleaners, Incorporated,” she said at last.

  “VCI,” Johansen corrected. “Yeah, he made a fortune all right. Then he squandered it all on that bridge-ship deal a couple years later. By then he was completely out of VCI, though. I stayed on as president until Rockledge eventually bought us out.”

  “Rockledge?”

  “Right. The big corporations always win in the end. Oh, I got a nice hunk of change out of it. Very nice. Set me up for life. Allowed me to buy a slice of this habitat and become a major shareholder.”

  “Did Sam ever marry Bonnie Jo?”

  Johansen grimaced.

  THAT GOT DECIDED while we were still on Guam—Johansen replied.

  Bonnie Jo hung around, just like Clement did. Sam seemed to spend more time with his father than with her, so I wound up walking the hospital grounds with her, taking her out to dinner, that kind of stuff.

  Finally, one night over dinner, she told me she and Clement would be leaving the next day.

  I said something profound, like, “Oh.”

  “When will you and Sam be allowed to leave the hospital?” she asked. We were in the best restaurant in the capital city, Agana. It was sort of a dump; the big tourist boom hadn’t started yet in Guam. That didn’t happen until a few years later, when Sam opened up the orbital hotel and built the launch complex there.

  Anyway, I shrugged for an answer. I hadn’t even bothered to ask the medics about when we’d be let go. The week had been very restful, after all the pressures we had been through. And as long as Bonnie Jo was there I really didn’t care when they sent us packing.

  “Well,” she said, “Albert and I go out on the morning flight tomorrow.” There was a kind of strange expression on her face, as if she was searching for something and not finding it.

  “I guess you’ll marry Sam once we get back to the States,” I said.

  She moved her eyes away from mine and didn’t answer. I felt as low as one of those worms that lives on the bottom of the ocean.

  “Well... congratulations,” I said.

  In a voice so low I could barely hear her, Bonnie Jo said, “I don’t want to marry Sam.”

  I felt my jaw muscles tighten. “But you still want to protect your father’s investment, don’t you? And your own.”

  Her eyes locked onto mine. “I could do that by marrying the president of VCI, couldn’t I?”

  I know how it feels to have your space suit ripped open. All the air whooshed out of me.

  “Spence, you big handsome lunk, you’re my investment,” she said. “Didn’t you know that?”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you.”

  I nearly knocked the table over kissing her. I never felt so happy in all my life.

  “WHICH NUMBER WIFE was she?” Jade was surprised at the acid in her voice.

  Johansen pushed his chair slightly back from the restaurant table. “Number four,” he said, somewhat reluctantly.

  “And it didn’t work out?”

  “Wasn’t her fault,” he said. “Not really. I spent more time in orbit than at home. She met this kid who was an assistant vice president at her father’s bank. They had a lot more in common....”

  Johansen’s voice trailed off. The candle between them was guttering low. The table was littered with the crumbs of dessert, emptied coffee cups. The restaurant was deserted except for one other couple and the stumpy little robot waiters standing impassively by each table.

  Jade had one more question to ask. “I know that nobody ever retrieved the Apollo 11 lunar module. What happened to Sam’s plan?”

  Johansen made a tight grin. “The little guy was nobody’s fool. Once the world court decided that the right of salvage was pretty much the same in space as it is at sea, we went to the Moon and laid claim to all the hardware the Apollo astronauts had left behind, at all six landing sites.”

  “But it’s all still there,” Jade said. “I’ve been to Tranquility Base. And Gamma and all the others ...”

  “That’s right.” Johansen’s smile broadened, genuinely pleased. “Sam’s original thought was to auction the stuff off to the highest bidder. The Japanese were hot for it. So was the Smithsonian, of course. And some group of high-tech investors from Texas.”

  “So who bought them?”

  “Nobody,” Johansen said. “Because Sam got the bright idea of offering it for free to Selene. I think it was still called Moonbase then. Anyway, the people there loved him for it. Thanks to Sam, Selene legally owns all the Apollo hardware resting on the Moon. Those landing sites are big tourist attractions for them.”

  “That was generous.”

  “Sure was. And, of course, Sam could get just about anything he wanted from Selene for years afterward.”

  “I see,” said Jade.

  Johansen signaled for the bill. The robot trundled over, digits lighting up on the screen set into its torso. Johansen tapped out his okay on the robot’s keyboard and let the photocell take an impression of his thumbprint. Jade turned off her recorder.

  Johansen moved gracefully around the little table and held her chair

&
nbsp; while she stood up, feeling strangely unhappy that this interview was at an end.

  As they strolled slowly down the footpath that led to the hotel where she was staying, Johansen suggested, “How’d you like to go hang gliding tomorrow morning? In this low gravity there’s no danger at all.”

  Jade was surprised at how much she wanted to say yes.

  “I can’t,” she heard herself say. “I’m leaving tomorrow morning.”

  “Oh,” said Johansen, sounding disappointed.

  They walked along the footpath in the man-made twilight toward the little cluster of low buildings that was Gunnstown, where her hotel was situated. Johansen pointed out the lights of other towns overhead. In the darkness they could not see that the habitat’s interior curved up and over them.

  “They’re like stars,” Jade said, gazing up at the lights.

  “Some people even see constellations in them,” he told her. “See, there’s a cat—over there. And the mouse, down further ...”

  She leaned closer to him as he pointed out the man-made constellations.

  “Do you think you’ll ever marry again?” she asked in a whisper.

  “Not until I’m certain it will last,” he answered immediately. “I’ve had enough hit-and-runs in my life. I want somebody I can settle down with and live happily ever after.”

  Happily ever after, Jade said to herself. Does anyone ever do that? She pulled away from Johansen slightly, thinking of Raki and what she owed him, what she owed herself.

  I’m leaving tomorrow. Good. I’ll leave and go out and interview more of Sam’s friends and enemies. I’ll leave and never see this man again. It’s better that way. Six wives! Who can trust a man who’s had six wives?

  She felt almost glad that she was leaving habitat Jefferson in the morning.

  Almost glad.

  Selene City

  WHEN JADE GOT BACK TO HER OFFICE THE NEXT MORNING there was a message waiting for her. From Spence!

  Her heart thumping, she hit the playback tab on her desktop keyboard. Spence’s handsome face appeared on her screen, crinkling a smile at her.

  “Hi, Jade. Guess who I ran into right after I saw you off? Larry Karsh. You know, the VCI engineer I told you about. He’s on his way to Selene and he says he has an audio disk that Sam himself recorded. About the time when he opened his honeymoon hotel in Earth orbit. Thought you’d want to listen to it.”

  Jade nodded eagerly at Spence’s image.

  “Okay, that’s it. Thought you ought to know about it. Larry’s on his way to Selene. Maybe you can get him to let you hear the disk. ‘Bye.”

  And his image winked out.

  Not a word about me, she thought as she stared at the blank screen. Not a word about us. He’s just doing a favor for a friend. Nothing more.

  She felt crushed, terribly let down. For long moments she simply sat at her desk trying to fight back the disappointment that threatened to engulf her.

  He doesn’t care about me. Not the way I want him to. Not the way I care about him.

  Suddenly she felt the shock of realizing that she truly did care about Spence. Am I in love with him? she asked herself. She had no answer.

  At last she shook her head, as if trying to clear the cobwebs of emotion that were entangling her. You’re a news reporter, she told herself sternly. Spence has given you a lead on a hot story. Sam’s own voice!

  Without even asking Jumbo Jim, she checked the incoming flight arrivals, then made her way to Selene’s spaceport.

  Armstrong Spaceport

  “YEAH, I WORKED FOR SAM FOR SEVERAL YEARS BACK IN

  the old days,” said Larry Karsh.

  He was a lean, lanky, long-limbed man with the kind of baby face that would keep him looking youthful into his seventies, Jade thought. She had just barely arrived at the spaceport in time to meet him as he disembarked from the shuttle from habitat Jefferson.

  “I’m on my way to the construction base on Mercury,” he’d told her. “Yamagata Corporation’s building a set of solar power satellites there, y’know.”

  Jade maneuvered him to the tiny bar set between terminal gates and offered him a drink on Solar News’s expense. He smiled gratefully and asked for orange juice. Selene’s citrus groves were famous off-Earth. Jade had South Pole water.

  “Y’know, in a way, Sam was a big factor in my marriage,” Karsh said as he sipped his drink. “But my wife and I could never forgive him for kidnapping our baby. That ended it between Sam and me, for good.”

  “Kidnapped your baby?” Jade asked, shocked.

  “Oh, T.J.’s none the worse for the experience. He was still in diapers when it happened. Now he’s heading up the Ecological Protection Service on Mars, making sure that the tourists don’t do any harm to the Martian environment so the scientists can keep on studying the life forms in the rocks. He’s a bright young man, my son is.

  “Y’know, the power we generate from those sunsats in Mercury orbit will be beamed to the Mars stations. We’ll be providing electrical power for most of the inner solar system, how about that? And we’ll still have plenty left over to power the sailships out to Alpha Centauri and Lalande 21185.”

  Jade made approving noises, then asked, “But about Sam ... ?”

  “Sam? I kinda miss him, sure. But don’t let my wife hear that! She’d just as soon boil Sam in molten sulfur, even after all these years.”

  “I can understand that, I guess.”

  “Well sure, Sam felt pretty bad about what happened. Or so he said. He even sent me a long letter explaining his side of it. Not a written letter,

  Sam never liked to commit very much to writing. It’s an audio disk, from his diary.”

  “Sam kept a diary?”

  “He sure did. Like a running log of everything he did. No, I haven’t the faintest idea of where he stored it. Probably carried it with him wherever he went, knowing Sam. Editing it every day, most likely, changing it to suit his mood or the needs of the moment, y’know.

  “The only part of the diary I’ve got is the bit he sent me, which deals about the time he kidnapped my son.”

  Her insides trembling with anticipation, Jade murmured, “You wouldn’t have it with you, by any chance?”

  “Yeah, sure, I’ve got it here in my stuff someplace. Always carry it with me. Figured it might be a valuable historical document some day. Wanna hear it?”

  It took all Jade’s energy to keep from grabbing Karsh’s carry-bag off his shoulder and tearing through it.

  Nursery Sam

  TRYING TO HIDE HER EXCITEMENT, JADE SLIPPED THE thumb-sized disk that Larry Karsh handed her into her digital player and wormed it into her ear.

  I WAS TRYING to get away from the Senator who wanted to marry me. (Sam’s voice was a sharp-edged tenor; Jade pictured his freckled, snub-nosed face as she listened.)

  So I’m sitting in the Clipper—riding tourist fare—waiting for the engines to light off and fly us to my zero-gee hotel, when who traipses into the cabin but Jack Spratt and his wife.

  With a baby.

  I scrunched way down in my seat. I didn’t want them to see me. I had enough troubles without a pissed-off former employee staring daggers at me for the whole ride up to orbit.

  His name wasn’t really Jack Spratt, of course. It was Larry Karsh, and he had been a pretty key player in my old company, VCI. But that god-damnable Pierre D’Argent, the silver-haired slimeball, had hired him away from me, and Larry wouldn’t have gone to work at Rockledge if he hadn’t been sore at me for some reason. Damned if I knew what.

  Okay, maybe I shouldn’t have called them the Spratts. But you know, Larry was so skinny he hardly cast a shadow and Melinda was—well, the kindest word is zaftig, I guess. She could just look at a potato chip and gain two kilos. Larry could clean out a whole shopping mall’s worth of junk food and never put on an ounce. So with him such a classic ectomorph and Melinda so billowy despite every diet in the world, it just seemed natural to call them Jack Spratt and his wife.
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br />   I guess it irritated Larry.

  Well, I didn’t like the idea of bringing a baby up to my zero-gee hotel. Business was lousy enough up there without some mewling, puking ball of dirty diapers getting in everybody’s way. Heaven—that was my name for the hotel—was supposed to be for honeymooners. Oh, I’d take tourists of any sort, but I always thought of Heaven as primarily a honeymoon hotel. You know, sex in free fall; weightless lovemaking.

  For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why people didn’t flock to Heaven. I thought I had a terrific motto for the hotel: “If you like water beds, you’ll love zero-gee.”

  Okay, okay, so most people got sick their first day or so in weightlessness. It’s a little like seasickness: you feel kind of nauseated, like you’re coming down with the flu. You feel like you’re falling all the time; you want to upchuck and just generally die. Of course, after a while it all goes away and you’re floating around in zero-gee and you start to feel terrific. Scientists have even written reports about what they call “microgravity euphoria.” It’s wonderful!

  But first you’ve got to get over the miseries. And I knew damned well that Rockledge was working on a cure for space sickness, right there in the same space station as my Hotel Heaven. But even if they found the cure, who do you think would be the last person in the solar system that Pierre D’Argent would sell it to?

  That’s right. Sam Gunn, Esq. Me.

  Me, I love weightlessness. God knows I’ve spent enough time in zero-gee. The idea for the honeymoon hotel came out of plenty of practical experience, believe me. In fact, the Senator who wanted to marry me had been one of my first datum points in my research on zero-gee sex, years ago. She had been a fellow astronaut, back in the days when we both worked for the old NASA.

  But it only takes a few newlyweds tossing their cookies when free-fall first hits them to sour the whole damned travel industry on the idea of honeymooning in Heaven. As one travel agent from North Carolina told me, sweetly, “Even if you don’t get sick yourself, who wants to spend a vacation listening to other people puking?”