The Sam Gunn Omnibus Page 35

  Sam jumped to his feet, bowed deeply, and pranced out of my cubicle. Only when I was certain that he could not see me did I allow myself to smile.

  Less than a quarter-hour later a young man appeared at my open doorway. He looked like a Latino: somber dark eyes, thick curly black

  hair, skin the color of smoked parchment. He was handsome, in a smoldering, sullen way. Sensuous lips.

  “Ms. O’Rourke?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m supposed to give you an orientation tour. For your ride up to Alpha.” His tone was little short of insolent.

  “Right now? I’m busy....”

  He shrugged disdainfully. “Whenever you’re ready, princess. Sam told me to hang around until you’ve got an hour of free time.”

  Princess? I seethed inwardly, but maintained a calm exterior. I would not give this sneering youth the satisfaction of seeing that he could anger me.

  “I won’t be ready until sometime after six,” I said.

  Again he shrugged. “Then I’ll hafta hang around until after six.”

  “Where will I find you?”

  A spark of something glinted in his eyes. Perhaps it was anger. “I’ll be in the simulations lab, back down the main corridor, past—”

  “I know where the simulations lab is,” I said.

  “Okay. See you whenever you get there.” He turned and started to leave.

  “Wait!” I called. “What is your name?”

  “Ricardo Queveda,” he answered over his shoulder. “Extension 434.”

  It was close to seven-thirty before I finished my day’s work and made my way to the simulations lab. Although quitting time at VCI was nominally six, there were still plenty of people in the corridors and offices. Many of Sam’s employees worked long hours. Most of them, in fact..

  But the simulations lab seemed deserted. The computer in its center was dark and silent. The overhead lights were dimmed. I stood in the doorway frowning with uncertainty. He had said he would be here. How dare he leave without informing me?

  “You ready for your orientation spin?”

  The voice behind me startled me. I turned and saw that it was Queveda. He held a frosted can of cola in one hand.

  “Dinner,” he said, hoisting the can before my face. “Want some?”

  “No thank you. Let’s get this over with.”

  “Okay. It’s pretty simple,” he said as he ushered me inside the lab. The ceiling lights brightened automatically. “IAA safety regulations require anyone flying into orbit for the first time to have an orientation simulation and lecture. The lecture is recorded and you can see it on one of the display screens here or take a copy home with you and view it at your leisure. Which do you prefer?”

  “I’ll see it here,” I said.

  He nodded. “Sure. There’s another half-hour I’ll have to hang around twiddling my thumbs.”

  His attitude angered me. “Really!” I snapped. “If it’s your job to do this, why are you so nasty about it?”

  He stared straight into my eyes. “My job, senorita, is maintaining these goddamned computers. What I’m doing now is extra.”

  “Maintaining the computers? But I’ve never seen you here.”

  “You haven’t noticed,” he replied sullenly. “I’ve been here. I’ve seen you plenty of times. But you just look right past the hired help, like some goddamned princess or something.”

  “That’s no reason to be angry with me.”

  “That’s not why I’m pissed off.”

  “And there’s no need for such vulgar language!”

  “Dispense Usted perdon, princesa,” he said, with a horrible accent.

  “Where are you from?” I demanded.

  “Los Angeles,” he said as he guided me to one of the monitoring desks that ringed the computer.

  “And what makes you so angry?”

  He snorted. “The thought that a refined lady like you would willingly ride into a tryst in space with an Anglo.”

  “A tryst? Is that what you think I’m doing?”

  “What else?”

  I wanted to slap his sullen, accusing face. But I decided that I would not dignify his anger with any response whatsoever.

  “Let’s get this orientation over with,” I said, barely controlling my temper. “Then we can both go home.”

  I watched the recorded lecture. Then he silently led me to one of the simulation areas and helped me don the VR helmet and gloves. I “rode” in virtual reality aboard a Delta Clipper from Cape Canaveral to Space Station Alpha. The simulation did not provide the physical sensations of acceleration or zero gravity: it was strictly a safety review, showing the interior layout of the Clipper’s passenger cabin, the escape hatches, and the emergency oxygen system.

  At last it was finished and I pulled the helmet off. Queveda was standing beside me; he took the helmet from my hands.

  “I am not engaging in a tryst with Sam Gunn,” I heard myself mutter as I wormed off the VR gloves.

  He gave me a smoldering look. “I’m glad to hear it, even if it’s not true.”

  “I do not tell lies!”

  For the first time, he smiled at me. It was only half a smile, really, but it made him look much better. “I’m sure you’re telling the truth. But you don’t know Sam.”

  I almost wanted to tell him that I loved Spence, not Sam. But that would have been foolish. Apparently the rumors flew thick and fast through the whole company. Already it was taken for granted that Sam and I would make out in zero-gee. Besides, telling him how I felt about Spence would have made him angry all over again.

  So I tried to shift the conversation as we walked along the corridor to the building’s front entrance. The halls were mostly deserted now. Even Sam’s most dedicated employees eventually went home to their families and friends.

  “I am from Los Angeles, too, you know,” I said.

  “Really? What part?”

  Quickly I realized I had put my foot into a quagmire. “Oh, I went to UCLA,” I said. “I lived just off the campus.”

  “Westwood, huh?”

  Actually I had lived in a leased condominium in Pacific Palisades, with a magnificent view of the beach and the sunsets over the ocean.

  “When I said Los Angeles,” he told me as we reached the front door, “I meant the city. The barrio. Downtown.”

  “Oh.” I had heard about the squalor and crime in the downtown area, but had never visited such a slum.

  We stepped out into the soft warm breeze of a balmy Florida evening.

  “You were born there?” I asked as we walked toward our cars.

  It was dark in the parking lot. Suddenly I was glad of his companionship.

  “No,” he answered. “My parents came to Los Angeles when I was an infant.”

  “And where were you born?” I asked.

  “In Quito.”

  I felt stunned. Quito!

  “That’s the capital of Ecuador,” he explained, misunderstanding my silence. “My father was a university professor there but he was driven out by the dictator”

  “Dictator?” I snapped. “Ecuador is a democracy.”

  “Democracy hell! It’s a dictatorship, run by a little clique of fascist bastards.”

  I felt myself shaking from head to toe. My throat went dry with suppressed anger.

  “Someday I’ll go back to Ecuador,” Ricardo Queveda said. “Someday there’s going to be a reckoning. The people won’t stand for this corrupt regime much longer. Revolution is on the way, you’ll see.”

  In the shadows of the parking lot I could not make out the expression on his face or the fire in his eyes. But I could hear it in his voice, his passionate, fervent voice, filled with hatred for my father. And if he knew who I really was, he would hate me, too.

  I SLEPT HARDLY at all that night, worrying about my father and the rebels and the seething hatred I had heard in young Ricardo Queveda’s voice. When I did manage to close my eyes I was racked by terrifying nightmares in
which I was struggling to climb the sheer face of a high cliff with Sam up above me and Spence below. I saw the rope connecting me to Sam begin to fray. I tried to shout but no sound would come from my throat. I tried to scream but I was helpless. The rope snapped and I plunged down into the abyss, past Spence who reached out to save me, but in vain.

  I woke screaming, bathed in perspiration, tangled in my bed-sheets. And I realized that in the last moment of my nightmare the man who reached toward me was not Spence after all. It was Ricardo.

  Dawn was breaking. Time to get up anyway.

  I was applying the final dab of mascara when the apartment’s intercom chimed. I called out to it and Sam’s voice rasped, “Arise Esmeralda. Your knight in shining armor is here to whisk you away to the promised land.”

  I had seldom heard such a mixture of metaphors.

  We drove to the Cape in Spence’s reconditioned antique Mustang, gleaming silver, with me crammed into the tiny rear seat and the top down. My careful hairdo was blown to tatters once we hit the highway but I did not care; it was glorious to race in the early morning sunlight.

  Despite my VR orientation, I gulped as we strapped ourselves into the contoured chairs of the Delta Clipper. It was a big, conical-shaped craft, sitting in the middle of a concrete blast pad. It reminded me of the ancient round pyramids of Michoacan, in Mexico: massive, tall and enduring. But this “pyramid” was made of lightweight alloys and plastics, not stone. And it was intended to fly into space.

  After all my fears, the actual takeoff was almost mild. The roar of the rocket engines was muffled by the cabin’s acoustical insulation. The vibration was less than my orientation simulation had led me to believe. Before I fully realized we were off the ground the ship had settled down into a smooth, surging acceleration.

  And then the engines shut off and we were coasting in zero gravity. My stomach felt as if it were dropping away to infinity and crawling up my throat, both at the same time. The medicinal patch Sam had given me must have helped, though, because in a few moments my feeling of nausea eased. It did not disappear entirely, but it sank to a level where I could turn to Spence, sitting beside me, and make a weak grin.

  “You’re doing fine,” he said, treating me to that dazzling smile of his. I did not even mind that the loose end of his shoulder belt was floating in the air, bobbing up and down like a flat gray snake.

  Sam, of course, unclipped his harness as soon as the engines cut off and floated up to the padded ceiling.

  “This is the life!” he announced to the ten other passengers. Then he tucked his knees up under his chin and did a few zero-gee spins and tumbles.

  The other passengers were mostly experienced engineers and technicians riding up to Alpha for a stint of work on the space station. One of them, however, must have been new to zero-gee. I could hear him retching into one of the bags that had been thoughtfully placed in our seat-backs. The sound of it made me gag.

  “Ignore it,” Spence advised me, placing a cool, calm hand on my arm. With his other hand he pointed at the acrobatic Sam. “And ignore him, too. He does this every trip, just to see who he can get to throw up.”

  Once we docked with Alpha and got down to the main wheel of the station, everyone felt much better. Except Sam. I believe he truly preferred zero-gee to normal gravity.

  Alpha station was a set of three nested wheels, each at a different distance from the center to simulate a different level of gravity. The outermost wheel was at one g, normal Earthly gravity. The second was at one-third gee, roughly the same as Mars. The innermost was at the Moon’s level of one-sixth gee. The hub of the station was, of course, effectively zero gravity, although some of the more sensitive scientific and industrial experiments were housed in “free flyers” that floated independendy of the space station’s huge, rotating structure.

  Much of the main wheel was unoccupied, I saw. Long stretches of the sloping corridor stood bare and empty as Sam and I walked through them. Nothing but bare structural ribs and dim overhead lights. Not even any windows.

  “Plenty room for hotel facilities here,” Sam kept muttering.

  Spence had disappeared into the area on the second wheel that VCI had leased from Alpha’s owner, Rockledge Industries. He had come up to work on the satellite repair facility we had established there, not merely to chaperone me.

  “But Sam,” I asked as we strolled through the dismally empty corridor, “why would anyone pay the price of a ticket to orbit just to be cooped up in cramped compartments in a space station? It’s like being in a small ocean liner, down in steerage class, below the water line.”

  He smiled as if I had stepped into his web. “Two reasons, Esmeralda. One—the view. You can’t imagine what it’s like to see the Earth from up here until you’ve done it for yourself.”

  “I’ve seen photos and videos. They’re breathtaking, yes, but—”

  “But not the real experience,” Sam interrupted. “And then there’s the second reason.” He broke into a lecherous leer. “Making love in zero gravity. It’s fantastic, lemme tell you.”

  I did not respond to that obvious ploy.

  “Better yet, lemme show you.”

  “I think not,” I said coolly. But I wondered what it would be like to make love in zero gravity. Not with Sam, of course. With Spence.

  Sam’s expression turned instantly to wounded innocence. “I mean, lemme show you the zero-gee section of the station.” “Oh.”

  “Did you think I was propositioning you?”

  “Of course.”

  “How could you? This is a business trip,” he protested. “I even brought you a chaperone. My intentions are honorable, cross my heart.” Which he did, and then raised his right hand in a Boy Scout’s salute.

  I trusted Sam as far as I could throw the cathedral of Quito, but I followed him down the long passageway to the hub of the space station. It was a strange, eerie journey. The passageway was nothing more than a long tube studded with ladder-like rungs. With each step we descended the feeling of gravity lessened until it felt as if we were floating, rather than climbing. Sam showed me how to let go of the rungs altogether, except for the faintest touch against them now and then to propel myself up the tube. Soon we were swimming, hardly touching the rungs at all, hurtling faster and faster along the long metal tube.

  I realized why the standard uniform for the space station was one-piece coveralls that zippered at the cuffs of the trousers and sleeves. Anything else would have been undignified, perhaps even dangerous.

  The tube was only dimly lit, but I could see up ahead a brighter glow coming from an open hatch at the end. We were whipping along by now, streaking past the rungs like a pair of dolphins.

  And then we shot into a huge, empty space: a vast hollow sphere with padded walls. Sam zoomed straight across the center and dove headfirst into the curving wall. It gave and he bounced back toward me. I felt as if I had been dropped out of an airplane. I was falling and there was no way I could control myself.

  Then Sam grabbed me as we passed each other. His hands gripped my flailing arms and I was surprised at how strong he was. We spun around each other, two astronomical bodies suddenly caught in a mutual orbit. I was breathless, unable to decide whether I should scream or laugh. Slowly we drifted to the wall and nudged against it. Sam flattened his back against the padding, gaining enough traction to bring us both to a stop.

  “Fun, huh?”

  It took me several moments to catch my breath. Once I did, I realized that Sam was holding me in his arms and his lips were almost touching mine.

  I pushed away, gently, and floated toward the middle of the huge enclosure. “Fun, yes,” I admitted.

  We spent nearly an hour playing games like a pair of school children let loose for recess. We looped and dived and bounced off the padded walls. We played tag and blindman’s bluff, although I was certain that Sam cheated and peeked whenever he felt like it.

  Finally we hovered in the middle of the empty sphere, sweating, pan
ting, an arm’s length from one another.

  “Well,” Sam said, running a hand over his sweaty brow, “whattaya think? Worth the price of a ticket to orbit?”

  “Yes! Well worth it. I believe people will gladly pay to come here for vacations.”

  “And honeymoons,” Sam added, with his impish grin. “You haven’t even tried the best part of it yet.”

  I laughed lightly. There was no sense getting angry at him. “I think I can imagine it well enough.”

  “Ah, but the experience, that’s the thing.”

  I looked into his devilish hazel eyes and, for the first time, felt sad for Sam Gunn. “Sam,” I said as gently as I could, “you must remember that Esmeralda loves the young poet, not Quasimodo.”

  His eyes widened with surprise for a moment. Then his grin returned. “Hell, you don’t have to follow the script exactly, do you?”

  He was truly incorrigible.

  “It must be time for dinner,” I said. “We should get back to the galley, shouldn’t we?”

  So we started up the tube and, as the gravity built up, found ourselves clambering down the rungs of the ladder like a pair of firefighters descending to the street.

  “You mean you’re in love with somebody else?” Sam’s voice echoed along the metal walls of the tube.

  He was below me. I could see his face turned up toward me, like a round ragamuffin doll with scruffy red hair. I pondered his question for a few moments.

  “I think I am,” I answered.

  “Somebody younger? Somebody your own age?”

  “What difference does it make?”

  He fell silent for several moments. At last he said softly, “Well, he better treat you right. If he gives you any trouble you tell me about it, understand?”

  I was so surprised at that I nearly missed my step on the next rung. Sam Gunn being fatherly? I found it hard to believe, yet that was what he seemed to be saying.

  Spence was already in the galley when we got there.

  Sam showed me how to work the food dispensers as he explained, “This glop is barely fit for human consumption. I think Rockledge has some kind of experiment going about how lousy the food has to be before people stop eating it and let themselves starve.”