The Sam Gunn Omnibus Page 34

  “Esmeralda,” he complained one evening, “you’re turning my love life into the petrified forest.”

  We were at the entrance to my apartment building. I thought of it as my castle, its walls and electronic door locks my defense against Sam’s assaults.

  “I agreed to have dinner with you,” I said, “nothing more.”

  He sighed heavily. “I guess I’m paying you too much.”

  “Paying me ...”

  With an almost wicked grin he said, “If you were broke and hungry you’d appreciate me more, I betcha.”

  “What an evil thing to say!”

  “Well, look at this apartment building,” he went on. “It’s a frigging luxury palace! I’m just paying you too much money. You’re living too well—”

  I had to cut off his line of thought before he realized that my salary could never pay the rent on my apartment. Before he began to ask himself how a poor computer programmer from Los Angeles could afford the clothes and the sports car I had.

  “So you want women to be starving and poor,” I snapped at him. “Or perhaps you prefer them barefoot and pregnant?”

  He shrugged good-naturedly. “Barefoot is okay.”

  I did not have to pretend to be angry. I could feel the blood heating my cheeks. “Sam, the days of male domination over women were finished long ago,” I told him. “Don’t you understand that?”

  “I’m not interested in domination. All I want is a little cooperation.”

  “You are a hopeless chauvinist, Sam.”

  He broke into an impish grin. “Not quite hopeless, Esmeralda. I still have some hope.”

  It was impossible to dislike Sam, even though I tried. But at least I stopped him from asking himself how I could afford my lifestyle on the salary he was paying me.

  Yet it was Spence that I felt drawn to. He was quietly competent, always even-tempered, extremely capable. I knew he was married, but somehow I felt that his marriage was not all that happy for him. Perhaps it was because I wanted to believe so. Perhaps it was because he was a kind, fatherly, caring, truly gentle man.

  And then I met Spence’s wife. Her name was Bonnie Jo. Apparently she had once been engaged to marry Sam Gunn but somehow had married Spence instead. The story I gathered from my fellow workers was that her father had provided the money for Sam to start VCI. Spence had mentioned that he and his wife were both stockholders, which made me wonder if her father was still a financial backer of the company.

  But it was not her finances that stunned me. It was her beauty. Bonnie Jo’s hair was the color of lustrous gold, her eyes a rich, deep, mysterious grayish green. She was almost as tall as I, her figure slim and athletic, her clothes always impeccably stylish. Compared to her, I felt fat and stupid. Her voice was low, melodious; not the piercing high-pitched shrill of so many gringo women. But her eyes were hard, calculating; her beauty was cold, like an exquisite statue or a fashionably draped mannequin.

  It quickly became clear to me that she no longer loved Spence, if she ever had. She was cool to him, sometimes cruelly so, as when she bought herself a sapphire ring for her own birthday and loudly announced that Spence could not have afforded it on the salary Sam gave him.

  For his part, Spence buried himself in his work, driving himself deeper and deeper into the technical side of VCI, leaving the administration to Bonnie Jo and the office staff. This brought us together every day. I realized that I was falling in love with this handsome, kind, suffering older man. I also realized that he saw me as nothing more than another employee, young enough almost to be his daughter.

  Spence traveled to Space Station Alpha to personally test the program for remotely repairing satellites in GEO. I remained in Orlando, at VCI’s mission control center. It was a tiny room, big enough only for three monitoring stations. Windowless, it would have been unbearably stuffy if the air conditioning had not been turned up so high that it became unbearably frigid. The front wall was one huge display screen, which could be broken into smaller displays if we desired.

  I sat at the right-hand monitor, almost shivering despite the sweater I wore, ready to give whatever assistance I could to the man who was actually controlling Spence’s mission. We both wore earphones clamped over our heads, with pin-sized mikes at our lips. However, the mission controller was supposed to do all the talking; I was told to remain silent. Sam took the third seat, on the left, but it was empty most of the time because Sam hardly sat still for two seconds at a time. He was constantly bouncing out of his chair, pacing behind us, muttering to himself.

  “This has gotta work, guys,” he mumbled. “The whole future of the company’s riding on this mission.”

  I thought he was being overly dramatic. Only later did I come to realize that he was not.

  The big display screen before us showed a telescope view from Alpha of our Orbital Transfer Vehicle as it approached the satellite that needed repair. The OTV was an ugly contraption: clusters of spherical tanks and ungainly metal struts. At its front a pair of mechanical arms poked out stiffly. Ridiculously small rocket nozzles studded the vehicle fore and aft and around its middle; they reminded me of the bulbous eyes of a mutant iguana.

  I could feel Sam’s breath on my neck as Spence’s voice said, “Shifting to onboard camera view.”

  “Roger, onboard view,” said the mission controller, sitting at my elbow.

  The screen abruptly showed a close-up view of the malfunctioning satellite. It seemed huge as it hung serenely against the black backdrop of space.

  “Starting rendezvous sequence,” Spence’s voice said. Calmly, quietly, as unruffled as a man tying his shoelaces.

  Sam was just the opposite. “Keep your eyes glued on the readouts,” he snapped. “And your finger on the abort button. The last thing we want is a collision out there.”

  He was speaking to the mission controller, I knew, but his words applied to me as well. I had inserted a subroutine into the automatic rendezvous program that would fire an extra burst of thrust at the critical moment. Not only would the OTV be destroyed, but the communications satellite, too. VCI would be sued by the commsat’s insurer, at the very least. All I had to do was touch one keypad on the board in front of me. Despite the frigid air-conditioning I began to perspire.

  But I kept my hands in my lap. Calmly, methodically, Spence achieved the rendezvous and then directed the OTV’s machinery to remove the malfunctioning power conditioner from the commsat and insert the new one. I watched the screen, fascinated, almost hypnotized, as the robot arms did their delicate work, directed by Spence’s fingers from more than thirty thousand kilometers’ distance.

  At last the mission controller said into his microphone, “I copy power conditioning checkout in the green. Move off for communications test.”

  “Moving off for comm test.” The mission plan called for the OTV to back away from the commsat while its owners in Tokyo tested the new power conditioner to make certain it properly fed electrical power to the satellite’s forty transponders.

  The display screen showed the commsat dwindling away. And then the great glowing blue curve of the Earth swung into view, speckled with dazzling white clouds. I felt my breath gush from me. It was overwhelming.

  I heard Spence chuckle in my earphone. “I’ll bet that’s Juanita.”

  “Yes,” I replied without thinking. I glanced at the mission controller. Instead of frowning at my breaking the mission protocol, he was grinning at me.

  “Never seen the view from orbit before, huh?” Spence asked.

  “Only photographs in magazines or videos,” I said.

  “Welcome to the club,” said Spence. “It still gets me, every time.”

  “Let’s get back to work, shall we?” Sam said. But his voice was strangely subdued.

  The word came from Tokyo that the power conditioner functioned perfectly. A seventy-million-dollar commsat had been saved by replacing one faulty component.

  Now it was Sam who gushed out a heartfelt sigh. “Good work, gu
ys. C’mon, I’m gonna buy you all the best dinner in town.”

  I wanted to stay at my monitoring station and talk with Spence. But I could not. The mission controller cut the link to him even before I could say adios.

  For some reason, Sam insisted that Bonnie Jo join us. So he bundled the four of us into his leased Mercedes and drove us to a Moroccan restaurant on the strip just outside Disney World.

  “You’re gonna love this place,” Sam assured us as our turbanned host guided us to a table by the dance floor, a big round engraved brass table, barely a few centimeters off the floor. There were no chairs, only pillows scattered around the table.

  “Relax, kick your shoes off,” Sam said as he flopped onto one of the big pillows. “The belly dancers start in a few minutes.”

  The restaurant was small, almost intimate. Although smoking in restaurants had been outlawed for decades, the management filtered a thin gray haze (nontoxic, the menu assured us) through the air-conditioning system. For “atmosphere,” the menu said. The food was surprisingly good, roasted goat and couscous and a tangy sauce that reminded me of the best Mexican dishes. But it was clear that Sam had come to see the dancers. And that he had seen them many times before. They all seemed to recognize him and to spend most of their performances close enough to our table for me to smell the heavy perfumes they used.

  Our mission controller’s name was Gene Redding. He was well into his forties, balding, portly and very competent at his job. As he sat on the pillows gazing up at the dancers gyrating within arm’s reach, his face turned redder and redder and his bald pate began to glisten with perspiration. His glasses kept fogging, and he constantly removed them to wipe them clear, squinting at the dancers all the while. From the silly grin on his face it was obvious that he was enjoying the entertainment.

  Conversation was impossible while the dancers were on. The reedy music and thumping percussion were too loud, and the men were too engrossed. I saw that Bonnie Jo was just as interested in the dancers as the men were. I must admit that they were fascinating: erotic without being vulgar. God knows what fantasies they stirred in the men’s minds.

  It was on the drive back to the office that the argument began.

  “We turned the corner today,” Sam said happily as he drove along Interstate 4. “Now the money’s gonna start pouring in.”

  “And you’ll pour it all out again, won’t you, Sam?” said Bonnie Jo.

  She was sitting in the back seat, with me. Gene was up front with Sam.

  “I’m gonna invest it in the company’s growth,” Sam said lightly.

  “You’re going to sink it into your idiotic orbital hotel scheme.” It sounded to me as if Bonnie Jo was speaking through gritted teeth.

  “Idiotic?” Sam snapped. “Whattaya mean, idiotic? People are gonna pay good money for vacations in zero-gee. It’s gonna be the honeymoon capital of the world!”

  “Sam, if just for once you’d think with your brain instead of your testicles, you’d see what a damned fool scheme this is!”

  “Yeah, sure. They laughed at Edison, too.”

  “We can’t piss away our profits on your harebrained schemes, Sam!”

  “As long as I’m the biggest stockholder I can.”

  I noticed that we were going faster as the argument got hotter. Sam was using neither the highway’s electronic guidance system nor the car’s cruise control; his rising blood pressure made his foot lean harder on the car’s accelerator.

  Bonnie Jo said, “Not if I can get a bloc to outvote you at the annual meeting.”

  “You tried that before and it didn’t get you very far, did it?”

  “Spence will vote on my side this time,” she said.

  The other cars were blurring past us, streaks of headlights on one side, streaks of red tail lights on the other. I felt like a crew member in a relativistic starship.

  “The hell he will,” Sam yelled back. “Spence is solidly behind me on this. So’s your father.”

  “My father has already given me his proxy.”

  Sam was silent for several moments. We sped past a huge double trailer rig like a bullet passing a tortoise.

  “So what,” he said at last. “Most of the employees’ll vote my way. And that includes Spence.”

  “We’ll see,” said Bonnie Jo.

  “We sure as hell will.”

  So there were internal strains within VCI’s top management. My discovery of this pleased me very much, mainly, I must confess, because I realized that Spence and Bonnie Jo were truly unhappy with one another. I began to think that I might use their differences to destroy VCI—and their marriage.

  But Sam had other ideas. So did my father. And also, so did the rebels.

  THE FOLLOWING FRIDAY afternoon Sam popped into my cubbyhole of an office, whistling off-key and grinning at the same time. It made him look rather like a lopsided Jack-o’-lantern.

  “Got any plans for this weekend?” he asked me as he pulled up the only other chair in my cubicle, turned it backwards, and straddled it.

  I certainly did. I was planning to spend the weekend at my desk, studying every scrap of data I could call up on my computer about VCI’s finances. I already knew enough about the technical operations of the company. Sam’s argument with Bonnie Jo had opened my eyes to the possibilities of ruining the corporation by financial manipulations.

  “I will be working all weekend,” I said.

  “You sure will,” said Sam, crossing his arms over the back of the little plastic chair and leaning his chin on them.

  His mischievous grin told me that he had something unusual in mind. I merely stared at him, saying nothing, knowing that he was bursting to tell me whatever it was.

  Sure enough, Sam could not remain silent for more than two heartbeats. “Ever been in orbit?” he asked. Quickly he added, “Literally, I mean. In space.”

  I blinked with surprise. “No. Never.”

  His grin widened. “Okay, then. Pack an overnight bag. You’re going up tomorrow morning. I’ll have you back here in time to be at your desk first thing Monday morning.”

  “You’re taking me into space?”

  “Space Station Alpha,” he said. “You’ll love it.”

  “With you?”

  He tried to put on a serious expression. “Strictly business, Esmeralda. Strictly business. You’ll have a private compartment in the one-g section.”

  “But why?”

  “Company policy. Everybody who works for VCI gets a chance to go into orbit.”

  “This is the first time anyone’s told me about it,” I said.

  His grin returned. “Well... it’s a new company policy. I just made it, as a matter of fact.”

  I realized his intention. “So you merely want to get me into space with you.”

  “It’ll be business, I swear,” Sam said, trying to look innocent.

  “What business?” I asked. All my instincts were ringing alarm bells within me.

  “I need a woman’s opinion about my plans for the orbital hotel. Can’t ask Bonnie Jo, she’s dead-set against the idea.”

  I must have frowned, because he swiftly added, “I’m talking about the way the compartments are done up, the facilities and the decorations and all that. The food service. I need a woman’s point of view, honest.”

  He almost sounded reasonable.

  But his grin would not fade away. “Of course, if the mood strikes you and you start to feel romantic I could show you the zero-gee section of the station and we could accomplish feats that could never be done on Earth.”

  “No!” I snapped. “Never!”

  “Aw, come on,” Sam pleaded like a little boy. “I’ll behave myself, honest. I really do need your opinion. It’s business, really it is.”

  My mind was racing furiously. The more I knew about Sam’s operations the easier it would be to trip him up, I reasoned. However, I knew that no matter how much he protested, his lecherous male mind still entertained the hope that he could seduce me, still harb
ored fantasies of making love with me in zero gravity. I had to admit to myself that I harbored a similar fantasy—except that it was Spence I fantasized about, not Sam.

  “Listen,” Sam said, interrupting my train of thought. “I know you think I’m a male chauvinist and all that. Okay, maybe I am. But I’m not a rapist. If anything happens between us it’ll be because you want it to happen as much as I do.”

  “I should be perfectly safe, then.”

  He laughed. “See? You’ve got nothing to fear.”

  Still I hesitated. His reputation worried me. Apparently he could be irresistibly charming when he wanted to be.

  He heaved a great, disappointed sigh, threw his hands up over his head and said, “All right, all right. You want a chaperone to go with us? You got it. I’ll ask Spence to come along, too. How’s that?”

  I had to exert every iota of self-control I possessed to keep myself from leaping out from behind my desk and shouting Yes! Yes! Very deliberately, I turned my gaze away from Sam’s eager eyes and studied the blank wall behind him, pretending to think mightily.

  At last I said, “A chaperone is proper. But it should be a woman. A duena.”

  Sam sighed again, this time from exasperation. “Look, I can’t shuttle people up and back to a space station just to keep your Hispanic proprieties. D’you know how much it costs?”

  “But you are taking me,” I said.

  “I need your mother-loving feminine opinion about the hotel accommodations, dammit! And Spence has useful work to do for the company at Alpha. That’s it!”

  “Very well,” I said with as much reluctance as I could feign. “Spence is a married gentleman. He is not as good as a proper duena, but I suppose he can be trusted to act as our chaperone.”