The Sam Gunn Omnibus Page 32

  I just hung there in midair, all my hopes and plans in a shambles.

  “I’ve got to be invisible now,” Jill said as we neared the station. She glided over to the equipment locker built into the pod’s curving bulkhead and slid its hatch open. “It’ll be a snug fit,” she said, eying it closely. “Glad I didn’t have dessert tonight.”

  “Wait a minute!” I burst. “What’s going on? How did you—I mean, why—what’s going on?” I felt like a chimpanzee thrown into a chess tournament.

  As she squeezed herself into the equipment locker, Jill said, “It’s simple, Sam. You were walking with the baby when Pete here accidentally set off the pod.”

  Pete turned in his pilot’s chair and grinned at me.

  “And then you got into your suit, with little T.J., and rescued Pierre D’Argent’s only son. You’re going to be a hero.”

  “Pete is D’Argent’s son?” I must have hit high C.

  “In return for your bravery in this thrilling rescue, D’Argent will let you have the space-sickness cure. So everything works out fine.”

  Like I said, I was just the tool of a superior brain.

  “Now,” said Jill, “you’d better help Pete to make rendezvous with the station and re-berth this pod.” And with that she blew me a kiss, then slid the hatch of the equipment locker shut.

  It didn’t work out exactly as Jill had it figured. I mean, D’Argent was furious, at first, that I’d let his kid into one of the pods and then left him alone. But his wife was enormously grateful, and Pete played his role to a T. He lied with a straight face to his own father and everybody else. I figured that one day, when D’Argent realized how his son had bamboozled him, he’d be truly proud of the lad. Probably send him to law school.

  In the meantime, D’Argent did indeed let me have the space-sickness cure. Grudgingly. “Only for a limited period of testing,” he growled. Mrs. D’Argent had prodded him into it, in return for my heroic rescue of their only son. She got a considerable amount of help from Jill—who sneaked off the pod after all the commotion had died down.

  Larry and Melinda didn’t know whether they should be sore at me or not. They had been scared stiff when T.J. turned up missing, and then enormously relieved when I handed them their little bundle of joy, safe and sound, gurgling happily. I knew Larry had forgiven me when he reminded me, almost sheepishly, about changing the name of the magnetic bumpers to Karsh Shields.

  So we all got what we wanted. Or part of it, at least.

  The space-sickness cure helped Heaven a lot. The hotel staggered into the black, not because honeymooners took a sudden fancy to it, but because the word started to spread that it was an ideal spot for children! It still cost more than your average luxury vacation, but wealthy families started coming up to Heaven. My zero-gee sex palace eventually became a weightless nursery. And—many years later—a retirement home. But that’s another story.

  I licensed the Karsh Shields to Rockledge. A promise is a promise, and the money was good because Rockledge had the manufacturing capacity to make three times as many of the shields as I could. And, once the hotel started showing a profit, I let D’Argent buy it from me. He’s the one who turned it into a nursery. I was long gone by then.

  With Jill’s help I raised enough capital to start a shoestring operation in lunar mining. It was touch-and-go for a while, but the boom in space manufacturing that I had prophesied actually did come about and I got filthy rich.

  Of course, I more or less had to marry Jill. I owed her that, she had been so helpful. Why she wanted to marry me was a mystery to me, but she was damned determined to do it.

  Of course, I was just as damned determined not to get married. So I— but that’s another story.

  Selene City

  JIM GRADOWSKY GUFFAWED AND LEANED BACK IN HIS swivel chair so far that Jade feared he would topple over.

  “That’s terrific, kid! Great story.” Wiping his eyes, he smiled at Jade as he asked, “What’s next?”

  Jade had dreaded this moment. “I don’t really know,” she replied. “I’ve run out of people to interview.”

  Gradowsky’s happy face turned to gloom. “Come on, Jade, there must be half a zillion people who’ve known Sam over all those years.”

  “They’re all back on Earth,” she said, her voice low.

  “Oh. And you can’t go to Earth, is that it?”

  “That’s it, Jim.”

  He took in a deep breath and reached into his desk drawer for a cookie. “You’ll have to do it by videophone, then.”

  Nodding, grateful that her boss understood, she said, “There’s this one woman I’ve got a lead on, in Ecuador. She’s the daughter of their former president and the wife of their current president.”

  “Go get her!”

  “It won’t be easy,” Jade said. “She says she’s busy with their space tower project and—”

  Gradowsky puffed out an exasperated sigh. “Jade, honey, if it was easy anybody could do it. You get to her. One way or another.”

  Jade nodded. “I’ll try.”

  “We all try, kid. You’ve got to succeed.”

  Statement of Juanita Carlotta Maria Rivera y Queveda

  (Recorded at Mt. Esperanza, Ecuador)

  “I HAVE NO TIME TO SPEAK TO YOU ABOUT SAM GUNN. That phase of my life ended long ago. Believe me, directing the construction of the first space elevator on the Earth keeps me quite busy, thank you.”

  Even in the small screen in Jade’s office the space elevator was impressive: a massive tower that rose from the mountaintop and disappeared into the clouds high above.

  Juanita Rivera y Queveda looked impressive, too. Her face was round, the skin golden brown, her hair thick and midnight dark. Jade couldn’t see much of her outfit, but it seemed to be more like a general’s braid-heavy uniform than the simple coveralls of an engineer.

  “Look at it!” she said, gesturing toward the elevator off in the hazy distance. “Even in its half-finished condition, is it not magnificent? A tower to the heavens, an elevator that rises from this mountaintop all the way up to the geosynchronous orbit, nearly forty thousand kilometers high! Ah, these are wonderful times to be alive.”

  Jade started to ask a question, then realized it would take nearly three seconds before the woman’s answer could cover the round-trip distance between Earth and the Moon.

  “As you undoubtedly know,” the Ecuadorian went on, “my husband is the former president of Ecuador, as was my father. But I have never been involved in politics, except for that brief time when Sam Gunn intruded into my life. In fact the first time I heard of the idea of a space elevator, it was Sam who told me about it. He called it a ‘skyhook.’ I thought it was foolishness then, but now I know better.

  “What can I tell you that you do not already know? Sam was a whirlwind, a force of nature. He was constantly in motion, always tumbling and jumbling everything and everyone around him. It was like living in a perpetual hurricane, being near Sam.

  “I understand that he died out in deep space somewhere. Too bad. I am not interested in him, whether he is dead or alive. My interest is in this space elevator, which you in the media call the Skyhook Project. When it is finished, people will be able to ride from our site in my native Ecuador all the way up to the geostationary orbit for pennies! Merely the price of electricity to operate the elevator, plus a modest profit for our company.

  “Yes, it is costing billions to build the elevator, but we have had no trouble in finding investors.

  “Of course, if Sam were here among us he would be one of our biggest investors, certainly. But what chaos he would cause! We are much better off without him.

  “Oh, I suppose I really do hope he is not dead. I miss him, to tell the truth. But I’m glad he is not here! This project is too important to have him involved in it.”

  The woman stopped speaking. Her eyes seemed to focus dreamily on something in the past.

  Jade took the opportunity. “Couldn’t you tell me just a little
about Sam? Your impression of him? How he affected your life?”

  Juanita Rivera y Queverda smiled, a little sadly, Jade thought.

  “Very well,” she said softly. “I will take a brief break and have a cafe con leche while I will speak of the time I worked for Sam Gunn. And the revolution. But only one cup! Then I must get back to my work.”

  Sam’s War

  I KNOW IT IS INCREDIBLE TO BELIEVE THAT SAM GUNN, of all people, saved civilization-as-we-know-it. But the chauvinistic little gringo did. Although he never got the credit for it.

  Yet he was lucky, at that. After all, I was supposed to murder him.

  Not that I am a professional assassin, you understand. The daughter of El Presidente is no common thug. I followed a higher calling: national honor, patriotism, love of my people and my father. Especially, love of my father.

  Ecuador was, and still is, a democracy. My beloved father was, but sadly is no longer, its Presidente. Above all else, you must realize that Ecuador was, and always had been, among the poorest nations of the Earth.

  Ah, but we owned something of inestimable value. Or at least, we owned a part of it. Or at the very least, we claimed ownership of a part of it.

  The Equator. It runs across our noble country. Our nation’s very name is equatorial. An imaginary line, you say. Not entirely imaginary. For above the Equator, some thirty-five thousand kilometers above it, lies the only region of space where satellites may be placed in stationary orbits. The space people call it the geostationary orbit, or GEO.

  A satellite in GEO rotates around the Earth in precisely the same twenty-three hours, fifty-six minutes and few odd seconds that the Earth itself takes to turn one revolution. Thus a satellite in GEO will appear to hover over one spot above the Equator. Communications satellites are placed in GEO so that antennas on the ground can lock onto them easily. They do not wander around the sky, as satellites at lower or higher altitudes do.

  It was my father’s genius to understand the value of the Equator. It was also his sad destiny to have Sam Gunn as his nemesis.

  “The gringos and the Europeans get rich with their satellites,” my father told the other eleven delegations to the meeting.

  “And the Japanese, too,” said the representative from Zaire.

  “Exactly so.”

  As host to this meeting of the Twelve Equatorial Nations, my father stood at the head of the long polished conference table and gave the opening speech. He was a majestic figure in the captain-general’s uniform of sky-blue that he had chosen to wear. With the lifts in his gleaming boots he looked almost tall. The uniform tunic’s shoulders were broad and sturdy, the medals gleaming on its breast looked impressive even though they were decorations he had awarded himself. He had long been darkening his hair, but now it was thinning noticeably. He had brought in specialists from North America, from Europe and even China; there was nothing they could do except recommend an operation to replace his disappearing hair. My father was brave in many ways, but the thought of personal pain made him hesitate.

  So he stood before the other delegates with a receding hairline. I thought his high forehead made him look more handsome, more intellectual. Yet he longed for the full leonine mane of his younger days.

  My father had spent the better part of two years working, pleading, cajoling to bring these Twelve together. They had come reluctantly, grudgingly, I thought. But they had come. There was much to gain if we could capture the geostationary orbit for ourselves.

  I served my father as his personal secretary, so I sat against the wall to one side of his imposing figure, together with the other secretaries and aides and bodyguards. The delegates were of all hues and sizes: the massive Ugandan so dark his skin seemed almost to shine; the Brazilian dapper and dainty in his white silk suit; the silver-haired representative from Kiribati dressed in the colorful robes of his Pacific atolls. One could say that these Twelve truly represented the entire human race in all its variety, except for the fact that they were all male. I was the only woman present. Not even one of the other aides was a woman.

  Although Ecuador was a poor nation, my father had spared no expense for this conference. The table was sumptuously set with decanters of wine and stronger spirits, trays of Caspian caviar and Argentine beef. The people may be poor, my father often said, but the Presidente must rise above their shortcomings. After all, what are taxes for? The miserable revolutionaries in the mountains vowed to put an end to my father’s displays of wealth, and the sour-faced journalists in the cities coined slogans against him, but the people accepted their Presidente as they always have accepted the forces of nature over which they have no control.

  My father thundered on, his powerful voice making the wines vibrate in their crystal decanters. “The corporations of the northern hemisphere use our territory and give us nothing for it. Imperialism! That’s what it is, nothing but naked imperialism!”

  The representatives applauded his words. They were stirred, I could see. They all agreed with my father, each and every one of them. The rich and powerful corporations had taken something that we wanted for ourselves.

  But the Indonesian, slim and dark, with the big soulful eyes of a frightened child, waited until the applause ended and then asked softly, “But what can we do about it? We have tried appeals to the United Nations and they have done nothing for us.”

  “We have a legal right to the equatorial orbit,” insisted the Kenyan, preaching to the choir. “Our territorial rights are being violated.”

  The Brazilian shook his head. “Territorial rights end at the edge of the atmosphere.” The Brazilians had their own space operations running, although they claimed they were not making any profits from it. Rumor had it that key members of their government were siphoning the money into their own pockets.

  “They most certainly do not!” my father snapped. “Territorial rights extend to infinity.”

  Two-thirds of the men around the table were lawyers and they immediately fell to arguing. I knew the legal situation as well as any of them. Historically, a nation’s territorial rights extended from its boundaries out to infinity. But such legal rights became a shambles once satellites began orbiting the Earth.

  The Russians started it all back in 1957 with their original Sputnik, which sailed over virtually every nation on Earth without obtaining prior permission from any of them. No one could shoot down that first satellite, so it established the de facto precedent. But now things were different; antisatellite weapons existed. True, the big nations refused to sell them to their smaller neighbors. But such weapons were built by corporations, and there were ways to get what one wanted from the corporations—for money.

  My father’s strong voice cut through the babble of argument. “To hell with the legalities!”

  That stunned them all into silence.

  “When a nation’s vital interests are being usurped by foreigners, when a nation’s legal rights are being trampled under the heels of imperialists, when a nation’s wealth is being stolen from its people and their chosen leaders— then that nation must fight back with any and every means at its disposal.”

  The Indonesian paled. “You are speaking of war.”

  “Exactly so!”

  “War?” echoed the Ugandan, dropping the finger sandwich he had been nibbling.

  “We have no other course,” my father insisted.

  “But... war?” squeaked the slim and timid representative from the Maldives. “Against the United States? Europe? Japan?”

  My father smiled grimly. “No. Not against any nation. We must make war against the corporations that are operating in space.”

  The Brazilian ran a fingertip across his pencil-thin moustache. “It should be possible to destroy a few satellites with ASATs.” He was showing that he knew not only the political and military situation, but the technical jargon as well.

  “Fire off a single antisatellite weapon and the U.N. Peacekeepers will swoop down on you like avenging angels,” warned the delegate fr
om Gabon.

  “The same U.N. that refuses to consider our request for justice,” my father grumbled.

  The Colombian representative smiled knowingly. “There are many ways to make war,” he said. “Space facilities are extremely fragile. A few well-placed bombs, they can be very small, actually. A few very public assassinations. It can all be blamed on the Muslims or the ecologists.”

  “Or the feminists,” snapped the Indonesian, himself a Muslim and a devoted ecologist. Everyone else in the room laughed.

  “Exactly so,” said my father. “We pick one corporation and bend it to our will. Then the others will follow.”

  Thus we went to war against Sam Gunn.

  My father was no fool. Making war—even the limited kind of terrorist’s war—against one of the giant multinational corporations would have been dangerous, even suicidal. After all, a corporation such as Rockledge International had an operating budget larger than the Gross National Product of most of the Twelve Nations. Their corporate security forces outgunned most of our armies.

  But Sam Gunn’s corporation, VCI, was small and vulnerable. It looked like a good place to start.

  So our meeting ended with unanimous agreement. The Twelve Equatorial Nations issued the Declaration of Quito, proclaiming that the space over the Equator was our sovereign territory, and we intended to defend it against foreign invaders just as we would defend the sacred soil of our homelands.

  The Declaration was received with nearly hysterical fervor all through Latin America. In Ecuador, even the revolutionaries and the news media reluctantly praised my father for his boldness. North of the Rio Grande, however, it was ignored by the media, the government, and the people. Europe and Japan received it with similar iciness.

  My far-seeing father had expected nothing more. A week after the meeting of the Twelve he told me over dinner, “The gringos choose to ignore us. Like ostriches, they believe that if they pay us no attention we will go away.”