Empire Builders (2 page)

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Authors: Ben Bova

Tags: #Science Fiction, #Fantasy

BOOK: Empire Builders
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Morgan Scanwell was governor of Texas then. Dan’s personal fortune was nearing a billion dollars. He knew that Jane’s mind was made up, so he went back to his old ways and became notorious again for his sexual pursuits. While he was squandering his energies on every woman he desired, Jane allowed a compliant Oklahoma legislature to confer a residency upon her, so she could run for vice-president alongside her husband.
Morgan was elected president, only to face a string of crises that killed him. The Russian Federation emerged from its own desperate internal cataclysms with a new belligerency. After coming so perilously close to dissolution and civil war that the rest of the world expected the tottering new Federation to collapse, the Russians regained control of their sprawling land and peoples. The United States, half disarmed, was suddenly confronted with a resurgent, bellicose Moscow. America had long since lost real interest in space, and had allowed Japan and Europe to take the leadership in space developments. Now the Russians, with the world’s most powerful rockets and still armed with thousands of ballistic missiles, quickly took a stranglehold on all space operations—military as well as civilian.
The U.S. economy was foundering. The Russians were making demands on an unprepared America. Congress studied opinion polls that showed the American people were in no mood for a war that would rain hydrogen bombs on their heads.
America bowed. And Morgan Scanwell suffered a fatal stroke. Dan Randolph left Texas when Congress revoked all federal licenses for space operations. Astro Manufacturing moved to Venezuela, and Jane Scanwell became the first woman President of the United States.
She still held a deep passion for Dan Randolph. But now that passion had turned to hatred.
THREE
THE GLOBAL ECONOMIC COUNCIL’S LUNAR tribunal was based in Copernicus City. Like all the other centers on the Moon, Copernicus was deep underground, gouged out of lunar rock to protect its human population from the lethal radiation and enormous temperature swings up on the airless surface.
Ostensibly, the GEC was politically neutral. It insisted that all lunar habitats be given geographic names rather than being named after national biases. Thus the Russian penal colony was officially titled Aristarchus Center, even though most lunar residents still called it by its older name: Lunagrad. On all GEC maps, the great Japanese manufacturing center was called Alphonsus City, rather than Yamagata Industries Lunar Operation #1. The place where humans had first set foot on the Moon’s dusty surface was still called Tranquillity Base; the American astronauts had, even then, been thinking in non-nationalistic terms.
The lunar tribunal had all the aspects of a court of law. There was a banc with high-backed seats for three judges, although officially they were titled “conciliators.”
But as Dan Randolph took his seat among the rows of benches for onlookers, he thought that the conciliators never really reconciled grievances; all he had ever seen them do was take a man’s hard-earned wealth and hand it over to the GEC. He looked with mixed emotions at the sky blue flag of the United Nations standing to one side of the bane. He knew the world could not afford the divisive competition of nationalism, especially when even the smallest nation could manufacture biological weapons that could slaughter millions. But the alternative was a global government to which there was no appeal: a worldwide bureaucracy that was gradually imposing a dictatorship by committee, leveling everything on Earth to the same flat gray dullness. And now they were extending their grip to the Moon.
There was no jury box in this courtroom. The three conciliators listened to the evidence and made their decision. There was no appeal, either.
Mitchell and his zombie of a lawyer entered the tribunal chamber from the side door. The robot recording machine said, “All rise,” and the three conciliators trooped in from the door behind the bane. They wore ordinary business clothes rather than robes. Two men and one woman, the chief of the team.
Dan glanced at his own lawyer, sitting beside him. Katherine Williams was a pert, young, ambitious redhead who had swiftly risen to the top of his legal department despite fierce competition. She knew all the tales about Dan Randolph’s skirt-chasing. When Dan had first interviewed her for a job, she had firmly announced that she did not sleep with the boss. Not yet, Dan had thought, eying her with approval. Now, several years later, she was his top lawyer, and he wondered what her body looked like underneath the tailored royal blue jacket and fitted gold slacks she was wearing.
“The tribunal is ready to pass sentence,” said the woman occupying the middle chair up on the bane. Her voice was sharp, cutting. “Does the defendant have anything to say in his own behalf?”
Mitchell’s lawyer got to his feet, a tall scarecrow dressed like a funeral director. With a voice to match, he intoned sorrowfully, “The defendant deeply regrets the actions which have led to this proceeding, Your Honors. He regrets his actions so deeply, in fact, that he has divested himself of all ownership in the company that he has founded and directed, Mitchell Mining and Smelting. His remorse has led him to repudiate the ownership of his own company; this is similar to renouncing parenthood of one’s own child. It is a deeply wrenching emotional …”
“Counselor,” snapped the chief conciliator, “are you telling us that Mr. Mitchell has sold off his company?”
“Yes, Your Honor. And I respectfully request that this act of true remorse and regret be considered punishment enough for his mistaken actions of the past.”
The woman snorted disdainfully and glanced at her two male colleagues. “To whom has he sold his company?” she asked.
“To Astro Manufacturing, Incorporated, Your Honor.”
“I see. Is there a representative of Astro Manufacturing in this chamber?”
Dan got to his feet. “I represent Astro, Your Honor. My name is Daniel Hamilton Randolph.”
All three judges smiled at Dan the way Torquemada might have smiled at a rabbi. Dan smiled back and said:
“Your Honors, Astro is quite willing to pay the penalty that you have already decided to assess against Mitchell Mining and Smelting.”
Dan knew that the penalty was already recorded in their computer file of this proceeding. If they changed it now, because Astro could afford an astronomically larger fine or because they hated Dan Randolph’s guts, it would give Astro’s lawyers a perfect excuse to claim prejudice and demand a new trial.
The three judges put their heads together and conferred briefly, hands over the tiny microphones imbedded in the desktop before them.
Finally the chief conciliator, her face grim, leveled a hard stare at Dan. “Mr. Randolph, this tribunal cannot help but believe that your acquisition of Mitchell Mining and Smelting is nothing less than an obvious ploy to thwart justice.”
Dan put on an expression of injured innocence. “But Your Honor, the truth is exactly the opposite. I’m sure that the fine you’ve assessed against Mitchell would bankrupt his company and drive him out of business. His assets would become the property of the Global Economic Council. The GEC would have to assume the burden of running the mining and smelting operation—”
“GEC management would see that the operation remained within its allotted quotas,” the chief conciliator snapped angrily. “There would be no attempts to illegally increase profits by dumping excess ores on the world market and driving prices down from their mandated levels.”
Dan’s smile turned slightly impish. “Yes, we all know GEC operations never show any profits. Somehow, when the GEC takes over a company, it always seems to run at a loss.”
His lawyer made a polite little cough, a warning to get off that tack. This is no time for sticking the needle into them, she was telling Dan.
Still facing the judges, Dan went on, “However, Astro Manufacturing is quite willing to pay the fine you’ve assessed. And Astro will manage Mitchell Mining and Smelting at a profit, I’m sure, while staying within the GEC’s mandated quotas. That will generate more tax revenues for the GEC. Everybody gains. It’s a win-win situation.”
“And what of Mr. Mitchell?” the chief conciliator demanded. “What punishment will he receive for his blatant disregard of the law?”
Dan smiled his brightest. “Why, he’ll have to work for me. That ought to be punishment enough.”
Dan and his lawyer rode alone in his private trolley back to Astro’s main base at the great ringed plain of Alphonsus, where Yamagata Industries had set up its first and still largest lunar center.
One of the privileges of great wealth was privacy. Another was convenience. Dan was one of only two men who had a private trolley vehicle on the Moon. The other was Saito Yamagata, once Dan’s boss, for many years now his friend and sometime partner.
Like cable cars that climb mountains or cross chasms on Earth, the lunar trolleys were suspended from cables made of lunar aluminum and titanium. Cryogenically cooled, the cables carried electricity at low resistance that powered the trolleys swiftly and smoothly ten meters above the battered lunar terrain.
“You almost blew it, boss,” said his lawyer. She was sitting in a softly yielding padded chair, swirling a drink she had fixed for herself at the minibar.
Dan looked up from the display screen built into his desktop. “Close doesn’t count, except in horseshoes, Scarlett.”
“My
name
is Katherine,” she said, with a slight frown. “My friends call me Kate.”
“And what should I call you?”
The frown turned into a grin. They had played this little game a thousand times in the years that she had worked for Dan Randolph. “Ms. Williams will do.”
“Scarlett,” he said. “With that bricktop of yours, your name has to be Scarlett.”
She went back to frowning.
“That is your natural hair color, isn’t it?” Before she could answer, Dan added, “Doesn’t matter. It’s gorgeous. Never change it.”
She cocked an eyebrow as if she were going to retort, but thought better of it and sipped at her drink. Dan went back to scrolling through the messages that had accumulated during the morning. One of them was from Zachary Freiberg, his chief scientist.
Dan routed all the other messages to the people he hired to get things done. Zach Freiberg he called himself. The scientist’s message was marked Urgent and asked Dan to call immediately, regardless of time zones on Earth. Dan called out Freiberg’s name to the computer and within seconds his face appeared on the screen.
“Wha’s wrong, Zach?”
Freiberg was obviously in his office in California. Tawny brown hills showed through the window behind him, with palm trees and cypresses framing the view. From the angle of the sun Dan guessed it was midmorning in Pasadena. He registered all this during the couple of seconds it took for his words to reach Earth and Freiberg’s reply to return the quarter-million miles to the Moon.
Zachary Freiberg had one of those faces that would look boyish to the day he died: round apple cheeks, round chin, soft features and soft blue eyes. His wiry strawberry-blond hair no longer flopped over his broad forehead, though; in the ten years that Dan had known Zack, the slow recession of his hairline had been the one sign of aging he could see.
Zack looked troubled. “Can we go to security mode?”
“I’m on the trolley, moving too fast for a laser link.”
Freiberg bit his lower lip.
“We can scramble,” Dan suggested. “Or wait till I’m back in the office and we can use the laser.”
“Scramble, then,” said Freiberg two and a half seconds later.
Wondering what could be making him so upset, Dan typed in his private security code. The screen flickered briefly, then steadied once again.
“What is it?” he asked.
Unconsciously, Freiberg hunched closer to his screen, like a man about to whisper a secret in a neighborhood bar.
“I’ve been looking at the long-term climate trends,” he said. “You remember, you wanted to get a better fix on the greenhouse effect?”
Dan nodded, glancing at Kate Williams. She was staring through the window by her seat, watching the pockmarked Mare Cognitum whiz by. How big are her ears? Dan wondered.
“I remember asking you about the long-term effects of the greenhouse warming, yeah,” he replied to Freiberg. “If the sea level keeps rising we’ll have to build a dike around the launching center at La Guaira.”
“Right.” Freiberg’s round face took on an even more anguished look. “Dan—if what I’ve come up with is right, and I think it is, we’re in for
big
problems. I mean, major catastrophe.”
“Will we have to abandon the launch center?”
“It’s worse than that, Dan. A whole lot worse. It’s not just Astro. It’s the whole fucking world!”
Dan had never heard Freiberg use that expletive before. The guy’s scared!
Without waiting for Dan to ask, Freiberg went on, “It’s a cliff, Dan. The climate doesn’t change gradually, it all of a sudden shifts and
bang!
you’ve got the glaciers melting down, Greenland and Antarctica melting down, the sea levels going up thirty meters, rainfall patterns
radically
shifting, all the coastlines on Earth inundated—it’s a mess, a goddamned catastrophe like out of the Bible!”
Dan sank back in his chair. Kate Williams saw the expression on his face and stared at him.
“Nobody’s considered the gas hydrates in the deep-sea sediments,” Freiberg was almost babbling, “and under the tundra all across the Arctic. They release methane when they’re disturbed and the pressure conditions—”
“When?” Dan asked. “How soon?”
“Soon. A few decades. Maybe as soon as ten years from now.” He ran a hand across his forehead. “I think maybe it’s already started.”
“You’re sure? Certain?”
Freiberg nodded unhappily. “I’ve had half a dozen people check it out. It’s real. Floods, killer storms, croplands turned to deserts—the whole thing. All that stuff the environmentalists have been spouting for the past fifty years. It’s all going to happen, Dan. And it’ll happen so fast there’s practically nothing we can do about it.”
“We’ve got ten years?”
“Maybe more. Maybe less.”
Dan sucked in a deep breath. He knew he should feel alarmed, frightened. But he did not. He was more annoyed than anything else. His mind accepted what Freiberg was saying; he knew intellectually that this was a real emergency looming, a disaster of incalculable proportions. But deep in his innermost animal being he felt no terror, no panic. The reality of this threat was too remote, too academic, to spark his emotions.
And that’s the real danger of it, he told himself. It’s too far in the future to stir the guts, even though it’s close enough to kill us all.
To Freiberg he said, “Haul your ass up here, Zach. I want to go through this with you inch by inch.”
Freiberg nodded glumly. “The numbers aren’t going to change, boss.”
“Yeah, I know. But there must be
something
we can do about it.”
“Learn to swim,” said Freiberg.

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