The Sam Gunn Omnibus Page 9

  The moments ticked by as I sweated coldly, miserable with apprehension and—yes, I admit it freely—with guilt. I had set the target for the laser’s aiming mirror. The big slab of polished copper hanging outside the station’s hull was already tracking Sam’s trajectory, turning ever so slightly each second. The relays directing its motion clicked inside the laboratory like the clicks of a quartz clock, like the tapping of a Chinese water torture.

  Then I heard the sighing sound that happens when an airtight hatch between two modules of the station is opened. Turning, I saw the hatch swinging open, its heavy hinges groaning slightly. Zworkin pushed through and floated over the bulky master control console to my side.

  “You show an unusual interest in this test,” he said softly.

  My insides blazed as if I had stuck my hand into the power outlet. “There is the crisis in Geneva,” I replied. “Ground control wants this test to proceed flawlessly.”

  “Will it?”

  I did not trust myself to say anything more. I merely nodded.

  Zworkin watched the muttering technicians for a few endless moments, then asked, “Do you find it odd that the American is approaching us exactly at the time our test is scheduled?”

  I nodded once again, keeping my eyes fixed on the empty point in space where I imagined the beam and Sam’s spacecraft would meet.

  “I received an interesting message from Moscow, less than an hour ago,” Zworkin said. I dared not look into his face, but his voice sounded tense, brittle. “The rumor is that the Geneva conference has struck a reef made of pure diamond.”

  “What?” That spun me around. He was not gloating. In fact he looked just as worried as I felt. No, not even worried. Frightened. The tone of voice that I had assumed was sarcasm was actually the tight dry voice of fear.

  “This is unconfirmed rumor, mind you,” Zworkin said, “but what they are saying is that the NATO intelligence service has learned we are manufacturing pure diamond crystals in zero gravity, diamond crystals that can be made large enough to be used as mirrors and windows for extremely high-power lasers. They are concerned that we have moved far ahead of them in this key area of technology.”

  Just at that instant Sam’s cocky voice chirped over the station’s intercom speakers. “Hey there friends and neighbors, here’s your Hollywood delivery service comin’ atcha.”

  The laser mirror clicked again. And again. One of the technicians floated back to the console at my side and pressed the three big red rocker switches that turn on the electrical power, one after the other. The action made his body rise up to the low ceiling of the laboratory each time. He rose and descended slowly, up and down, like a bubble trapped in a sealed glass.

  A low whine came from the massive power generators. Even though they were off in a separate module of the station I felt their vibration.

  In my mind’s eye I could see a thin yellow line that represented Sam’s trajectory approaching us. And a heavier red line, the fierce beam of our laser, reaching out to meet it.

  “Got something more than videos, this trip,” Sam was chattering. “Managed to lay my hands on some really neat electronic toys, interactive games. You’ll love ‘em. Got the latest sports videos, too, and a bucketful of real-beef hamburgers. All you do is pop ‘em in your microwave. Brought mustard and ketchup too. Better’n that soy stuff you guys been eating....”

  He was talking his usual blue streak. I was glad that the communications technicians knew to scrub his transmissions from the tapes that ground control monitored. Dealing with Zworkin was bad enough.

  Through his inane gabbling I could hear the mirror relays clicking like the rifles of a firing squad being cocked, one by one. Sam approached us blithely unaware of what awaited him. I pictured his spacecraft being hit by the laser beam, exploding, Sam and his videos and hamburgers all transformed instantly into an expanding red-hot ball of bloody vapor.

  I reached over and pounded the master switch on the console. Just like the technician I bounded toward the ceiling. The power generators wound down and went silent.

  Zworkin stared up at me open mouthed as I cracked my head painfully and floated down toward him again.

  I could not kill Sam. I could not murder him in cold blood, no matter what the consequences might be.

  “What are you doing?” Zworkin demanded.

  Putting out a hand to grasp the console and steady myself, I said, “We should not run this test while the Yankee spy is close enough to watch.”

  He eyed me shrewdly, then called to the two dumbfounded technicians. “Out! Both of you! Until your commander calls for you again.”

  Shrugging and exchanging confused looks, the two young men left the laboratory module. Zworkin pushed the hatch shut behind them, leaning against it as he gave me a long quizzical stare.

  “Grigori Aleksandrovich,” he said at last, “we must do something about this American. If ground control ever finds out about him—if Moscow ever finds out...”

  “What was it you said about the diamond crystals?” I asked. “Do you think the imperialists know about our experiments here?”

  “Of course they know! And this Yankee spy is at the heart of the matter.”

  “What should we do?”

  Zworkin rubbed his chin but said nothing. I could not helping thinking, absurdly, that his acne had almost totally disappeared.

  So we allowed Sam aboard the station once again and I brought him immediately to my private cubicle.

  “Cripes!” he chirped. “I’ve seen bigger coffins. Is this the best that the workers’ paradise can do for you?”

  “No propaganda now,” I whispered sternly. “And no more blackmail. You will not return to this station again and you will not get any more diamonds from me.”

  “And no more ice cream?” He seemed entirely unconcerned with the seriousness of the situation.

  “No more anything!” I said, straining to make it as strong as I could while still whispering. “Your visits here are finished. Over and done with.”

  Sam made a rueful grin and wormed his right hand into the hip pocket of his coveralls. “Read this,” he said, handing me a slip of paper.

  It had two numbers on it, both of them in six digits.

  “The first is your private bank account number at the Bank of Zurich, in Switzerland.”

  “Russian citizens are not allowed to ...”

  “The second number,” Sam went on, “is the amount of money deposited in your account, in Swiss francs.”

  “I told you, I am not—” I stopped and looked at the second number again. I was not certain of the exchange ratio between Swiss francs and rubles, but six digits are six digits.

  Sam laughed softly. “Listen. My friends in New York have friends in

  Switzerland. That’s how I set up the account for you. It’s your half of the profit from those little stones you gave me.”

  “I don’t believe it. You are attempting to bribe me.”

  His look became pitying. “Greg, old pal, three-quarters of your Kremlin leaders have accounts in Switzerland. Don’t you realize that the big conference in Geneva is stalled over—”

  “Over your report to the CIA that we are manufacturing diamonds here in this station!” I hissed. “You are a spy, admit it!”

  He spread his hands in the universal gesture of confession. “Okay, so I’ve passed some info over to the IDA.”

  “Don’t you mean CIA?”

  Sam blinked with surprise. “CIA? Why in hell would I want to talk to those spooks? I’m dealing with the IDA.”

  “Intelligence Defense Agency,” I surmised.

  With an annoyed shake of his head, “Naw—the International Diamond Association. The diamond cartel. You know, DeBeers and those guys.”

  I was too stunned with surprise to say anything.

  “The cartel knew you were doing zero-gravity experiments up here, but they thought it was for diamond film and optical quality diamond to use on your high-power lasers. Once my friends
in New York saw that you were also making gem-quality stones, they sent word hotfooting to Amsterdam.”

  “The international diamond cartel..

  “That’s right, pal,” said Sam. “They don’t want to see diamonds manufactured in space kicking the bottom out of their market.”

  “But the crisis in Geneva,” I mumbled.

  Sam laughed. “The argument in Geneva is between the diamond cartel and your own government. It’s got nothing to do with Star Wars or Red Shield. They’ve forgotten all about that. Now they’re talking about money!”

  I could not believe what he was saying. “Our leaders would never stoop—”

  Sam silenced me with a guffaw.

  “Your leaders are haggling with the cartel like a gang of housewives at a warehouse sale. Your president is talking with the cartel’s leaders right now over a private two-way fiber-optic link.”

  “How do you know this?”

  He reached into the big pocket on the thigh of his suit. “Special video recording. I brought it just for you.” With a sly smile he added, “Can’t trust those guys in Amsterdam, you know.”

  It was difficult to catch my breath. My head was swimming.

  “Listen to me, Greg. Your leaders are going to join the diamond cartel; they’re just haggling over the price.”

  “Impossible!”

  “Hard to believe that good socialists would help the evil capitalists rig world prices for diamonds? But that’s what’s going on right now, so help me. And once they’ve settled on their terms, the conference in Geneva will get back to dealing with the easy questions, like nuclear war.”

  “You’re lying. I can’t believe that you are telling me the truth,”

  He shrugged good-naturedly. “Look at the video. Watch what happens in Geneva. Then, once things settle down, you and I can start doing business again.”

  I must have shaken my head without consciously realizing it.

  “Don’t want to leave all those profits to the cartel, do you? We can make a fair-sized piece of change—as long as we stay small enough so the cartel won’t notice us. That’s still a lot of money, pal.”

  “Never,” I said. And I meant it. To do what he asked would mean working against my own nation, my own people, my own government. If the secret police ever found out!

  I personally ushered Sam back to the docking compartment and off the station. And never allowed him back on Mir 5 again, no matter how he pleaded and wheedled over the radio.

  After several weeks he finally realized that I would not deal with him, that when Grigori Aleksandrovich Prokov says “never” that is exactly what I mean.

  “Okay friends,” his radio voice said, the last time he tried to contact us. “Guess I’ll just have to find some other way to make my first million. So long, Greg. Enjoy the workers’ paradise, pal.”

  THE OLD MAN’S tone had grown distinctly wistful. He stopped, made a deep wheezing sigh, and ran a liver-spotted hand over his wrinkled pate.

  Jade had forgotten the chill of the big lunar dome. Leaning slightly closer to Prokov, she asked:

  “And that was the last you saw or heard of Sam Gunn?”

  “Yes,” said the Russian. “And good riddance, too.”

  “What happened after that?”

  Prokov’s aged face twisted unhappily. “What happened? Everything went exactly as he said it would. The conference in Geneva started up again, and East and West reached a new understanding. My crew achieved its mission goal; we spent two full years in Mir 5 and then went home. The Russian Federation became a partner in the international diamond cartel.”

  “And you went to Mars,” Jade prompted.

  Prokov’s wrinkled face became bitter. “No. I was not picked to command the Mars expedition. Zworkin never denounced me, never admitted his own involvement with Sam, but his report was damning enough to knock me out of the Mars mission. The closest I got to Mars was a weather observation station in Antarctica!”

  “Wasn’t your president at that time the one who—”

  “The one who retired to Switzerland after he stepped down from leading the nation? Yes. He is living there still like a bloated plutocrat.”

  “And you never dealt with Sam Gunn again?”

  “Never! I told him never and that is exactly what I meant. Never.”

  “Just that brief contact with him was enough to wreck your career.”

  Prokov nodded stonily.

  “Yet,” Jade mused, “in a way it was you who got Russia into partnership with the diamond cartel. That must have been worth hundreds of millions each year to your government.”

  The old man’s only reply was a bitter, “Pah!”

  “What happened to your Swiss bank account? The one Sam started for you?”

  Prokov waved a hand in a gesture that swept the lunar dome and asked, “How do you think I can afford to live here?”

  Jade felt herself frown with puzzlement. “I thought the Leonov Center was free....”

  “Yes, of course it is. A retirement center for Heroes of the Russian Federation. Absolutely free! Unless you want some real beef in your Stroganoff. That costs extra. Or an electric blanket for your bed. Or chocolates—chocolates from Switzerland are the best of all, did you know that?”

  “You mean that your Swiss bank account...”

  “It is an annuity,” said Prokov. “Not much money, but a nice little annuity to pay for some of the extra frills. The money sits there in the bank and every month the faithful Swiss gnomes send me the interest by e-mail. Compared to the other Heroes living here I am a well-to-do man. I can even buy vodka for them now and then.”

  Jade suppressed a smile. “So Sam’s bank deposit is helping you even after all these years.”

  Slowly the old man nodded. “Yes, he is helping me even after his death.” His voice sank lower. “And I never thanked him. Never. Never spoke a kind word to him.”

  “He was a difficult man to deal with,” said Jade. “A very difficult personality.”

  “A thief,” Prokov replied. But his voice was so soft it sounded almost like a blessing. “A blackmailer. A scoundrel.”

  There were tears in his weary eyes. “I knew him for only a few months. He frightened me half to death and nearly caused nuclear war. He disrupted my crew and ruined my chance to lead the Mars expedition. He tricked me and used me shamefully....”

  Jade made a sympathetic noise.

  “Yet even after all these years the memory of him makes me smile. He made life exciting, vibrant. How I wish he were here. How I miss him!”

  Decisions, Decisions

  “HEY, THAT’S NOT BAD,” SAID JIM GRADOWSKY AS HE turned off the recorder. He grinned across his desk at Jade. “You did a good job, kid.”

  She was sitting on the front inch and a half of her boss’s couch. “It’s only a voice disk,” she said apologetically. “I couldn’t get any video.”

  Gradowsky leaned back and put his slippered feet on the desktop. “That’s okay. We’ll do a simulation. There’s enough footage on Sam Gunn for the computer graphics program to paint him with no sweat. The viewers’ll never know the difference. And we can recreate what Prokov must’ve looked like from his current photo; I assume he’ll have no objection to having his portrait done in 3-D.”

  “He might,” Jade said in a small voice.

  Shrugging, her boss answered, “Then we’ll fake it. We’ll have to fake the other people anyway, so what the hell. Public’s accustomed to it. We put a disclaimer in small print at the end of the credits.”

  So that’s how they do the historical documentaries, Jade said to herself, suddenly realizing how the networks showed such intimate details of people long dead.

  “Okay, kid, you got the assignment,” Gradowsky said grandly. “There must be dozens of people here in Selene and over at Lunagrad that knew Sam. Track ‘em down and get ‘em to talk to you.”

  She jumped to her feet eagerly. “I’ve already heard about a couple of mining engineers who’re over at
the base in Copernicus. And there’s a hotel executive at the casino in Hell Crater, a woman who—”

  “Yeah, yeah. Great. Go find ‘em,” said Gradowsky, suddenly impatient. “I’ll put an expense allowance in your credit account.”

  “Thanks!” Jade felt tremendously excited. She was going to be a real reporter. She had won her spurs.

  As she reached the door of Gradowsky’s office, though, he called to her. “Don’t let the expense account go to your head. And I want a copy of every bill routed to me, understand?”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  The weeks rolled by. Jade found that the real trick of interviewing people was to get them started talking. Once they began to talk the only problem was how much storage space her micro-recorder carried. Of course, many of her intended subjects refused to talk at all. Almost all of them were suspicious of Jade, at first. She learned how to work around their suspicions, how to show them that she was not an ordinary network newshound, how to make them understand that she liked Sam Gunn and wanted this biography to be a monument to his memory. Still, half the people she tried to see refused to be interviewed at all.

  Jade tried to plan her travels logically, efficiently, to make the best use of the network’s expense money. But an interview in Copernicus led to a tip about a retired accountant living in Star City, all the way over on the Farside. The exotic woman who claimed that Sam had jilted her at the altar knew about a tour guide who lived by the Tranquility Base shrine, where the Apollo 11 lander sat carefully preserved under its glassteel meteor dome. And on, and on.

  Jade traveled mostly by tour bus, trundling across the pockmarked lunar plains at a reduced fare, packed in with visitors from Earth. For the first time she saw her home world as strangers see it: barren yet starkly beautiful, new and rugged and wild. When they talked of their own homes on Earth they mostly complained about the weather, or the taxes, or the crowds of people at the spaceport. Jade looked through the bus’s big tinted windows at the lovely blue sphere hanging above the horizon and wondered if she would find Earth crowded and dirty and humdrum if she lived there.