Artemis (20 page)

Svoboda was nowhere to be seen. A pillow and blanket on the floor showed he was quite the gentleman. It was
his
bed—I should have been the one on the floor. Or we could have shared.

My boots stood neatly together next to the nightstand. Apparently he'd taken them off while I slept. Other than that, I was fully clothed. Not the best way to sleep, but better than having someone undress my unconscious body in the night.

I pulled my Gizmo from my pocket to check the time.

“Holy shit!” It was well into the afternoon. I'd slept for fourteen hours.

The nightstand next to me had three Gunk bars in a neat stack with a note on top:
Jazz—Breakfast for you. There's juice in the fridge.—Svoboda.

I noshed on a Gunk bar and opened his mini-fridge. I had no idea what the juice was, but I went ahead and drank it. Turns out it was reconstituted carrot-apple juice. It tasted like shit. Who the hell puts those things together? Ukrainians, apparently.

I pondered ways to pay him back. A really nice meal? A cool piece of lab equipment? Have sex with him? Just kidding on that last one, of course. I snickered at the thought. Then I stopped snickering but hung on to the thought.

Whoa. I needed to finish waking up.

I took a nice long shower and reminded myself what I was really working toward: a shower of my own. It's damned pleasant to walk three meters and be in a private shower.
Damned
pleasant.

I didn't want to wear my grungy, slept-in clothes so I raided Svoboda's closet. I found a suitable T-shirt and threw it on over my underwear (sadly, Svoboda had no women's undergarments in his closet. I would have had some questions for him if he had). The shirt hung on me like a short dress—Svoboda's considerably taller than I am.

Okay. I was rested, clean, and had a clear head. Time to settle down and do some serious thinking. How would I get out of this? I sat at the desk and plugged in my Gizmo. The desk's built-in monitor rose from its cubby and showed my desktop icons. I cracked my knuckles and extended the keyboard tray.

Over the next few hours, I sipped carrot-apple juice (it grows on you) and researched Sanchez Aluminum. Their operations, leadership, revenue estimates, you name it. Since they were a private company (owned by “Santiago Holdings, Inc.” which I assumed was Brazilian for “O Palácio”), there wasn't much publicly available information.

I looked up Loretta Sanchez and found a paper she'd written about her refinements to high-temperature smelting. I had to take a break to learn some basic chemistry, but I found all that online pretty easily. Once I understood it, I had to admit: She really was a genius. She'd revolutionized the whole system and made it practical for use on the moon.

I'd still beat her ass if I met her. Don't get me wrong.

I must have been at it for a couple of hours because Svoboda finally came home from work.

“Oh, hey,” he said. “How are you feeling—uh…uh…”

I tore my attention away from the monitor to see what had caused his mental reboot. He was just kind of staring at me. I looked down. I was still wearing just the shirt I'd liberated from his closet. I was pretty sexy, I have to admit.

“Hope you don't mind.” I gestured to the shirt.

“N-no,” he said. “No problem. It looks good. I mean, it hangs well. I mean, how your chest makes it, um…”

I watched him flounder for a second. “When all this is over, if I'm still alive, I'm going to give you woman lessons.”

“Whu—huh?”

“You just…you really need to learn about women and how to interact with them, all right?”

“Oh,” he said. “That could be really helpful, yeah.”

He took off his lab coat and hung it on the wall. Why did he wear his lab coat home instead of leaving it at the lab? Because men like fashion accessories too. They just don't admit it.

“Looks like you slept well,” he said. “What are you up to now?”

“Looking into Sanchez Aluminum,” I said. “I have to figure out a way to shut them down. That's my only hope of survival at this point.”

He sat on the bed behind me. “Are you sure you want to screw with them?”

“What are they going to do? Kill me harder? They're already after me.”

He looked at the screen. “Ooh. Is that their smelting process?”

“Yeah. It's called the FFC Cambridge Process.”

He perked up. “Oh, that sounds cool!”

Of course it did. Svoboda's just that kind of guy. He leaned in to get a better look at the screen. It showed the chemistry at each step of the smelting process. “I've heard of the process but I never learned the details.”

“They're guarding the harvester now,” I said. “So I'll have to go after the smelter itself.”

“You got a plan?” he asked.

“Yeah. The start of one,” I said. “But it means I have to do something I hate.”

“Oh?”

“I have to get help.”

He held out his arms. “Well, you got me. Whatever you need.”

“Thanks, buddy, I'll take you up on that.”

“Don't call me buddy,” he grumbled.

I hesitated. “Okay, I…won't call you buddy. Why not?”

“Man lessons,” he said. “Someday I'll give you man lessons.”

I rang the doorbell for the fourth time. She was in there; she just didn't want to answer.

The main entrance to the Landvik Estate stood littered with flowers from well-wishers and mourners. Most of the flowers were synthetic, but a few wilting bouquets revealed how truly wealthy some of Trond's friends were.

I never thought I'd miss the sight of Irina's scowling face, but a sadness overwhelmed me when I realized she wouldn't be the one opening the door.

Then again, maybe no one would answer at all.

I rapped the door with my knuckles. “Lene! It's Jazz! I know this isn't a great time, but we need to talk.”

I waited a bit longer. I was about to give up when the door clicked open. That was as much invitation as I was going to get.

I stepped over the consolation bouquets and through the door.

The once brightly lit foyer stood dark. Only the dim light from the sitting room filtered in to give any illumination at all.

Someone had drawn a dozen or more circles on one wall—where the blood spatter used to be. The actual blood was gone, presumably cleaned by a professional service after Rudy and Doc Roussel were done with the scene.

I followed the light into the sitting room. It too had changed for the worse. All the furniture was shoved against walls. The large Persian rug that once adorned the floor was nowhere to be seen. Some things just can't be cleaned.

Lene sat on a couch in the corner, mostly in the dark. As a wealthy teen girl she usually put hours into her appearance. Today she wore sweats and a T-shirt. She had no makeup on and dried tears streaked her face. Her hair was in a loose ponytail, the universal sign of not giving a fuck. Her crutches lay askew on the floor.

She held a wristwatch in her hands and stared at it with a blank expression.

“Hey…” I said in that lame tone people use when talking to the bereaved. “How you holding up?”

“It's a Patek Philippe,” she said quietly. “Best watch manufacturers on Earth. Self-winding, chronograph, time zone, you name it. Nothing but the best for Dad.”

I sat on the couch next to her.

“He had it modified by top watchmakers in Geneva,” she continued. “They had to make a replacement self-winding weight out of tungsten so it would have enough force to work in lunar gravity.”

She leaned over to me and showed me the watch's face. “And he had them change the moon-phase indicator to an Earth-phase indicator. It was tricky too, because Earth's phases go in the reverse order. They even modified the time zone dial to say ‘Artemis' instead of ‘Nairobi.' ”

She clasped the band around her thin wrist. “It's way too big for me. I'll never be able to wear it.”

She angled her arm downward. The watch slid off and fell to the couch. She sniffled.

I picked it up. I didn't know anything about watches, but it sure looked nice. Diamonds denoted each hour on the face except the 12. That had an emerald.

“Rudy has the guy who did it,” I said.

“I heard.”

“He'll rot in a Norwegian jail for life. Or be executed in Russia.”

“Won't bring Dad or Irina back,” she said.

I put my hand on her shoulder. “I'm sorry for your loss.”

She nodded.

I sighed, just to fill the awkward silence. “Look, Lene, I don't know how much Trond told you about his business dealings…”

“He was a crook,” she said. “I know. I don't care. He was my dad.”

“The people who killed him own Sanchez Aluminum.”

“O Palácio,” she said. “Rudy told me. I never even heard of them before yesterday.”

She put her face in her hands. I expected a crying jag—she was entitled to one. But it didn't come. Instead, she turned to me and wiped her eyes. “Did you trash Sanchez's harvesters? Did Dad put you up to it?”

“Yes.”

“Why?” she asked.

“He wanted to take over the aluminum industry—well, the silicon industry, actually. Interrupting Sanchez's production would let him get a city contract he needed to make that happen.”

Lene stared ahead blankly, then slowly nodded. “Sounds like him. Always working an angle.”

“Look, I have an idea,” I said. “But I need your help.”

“You need a crippled orphan?”

“A crippled orphan
billionaire
, yeah.” I pulled my legs up onto the couch so I could face her girl-to-girl. “I'm going to follow through with Trond's plan. I'm going to stop Sanchez's oxygen production. I need you to be ready to take over the contract. Once you do, O Palácio will be willing to sell you Sanchez Aluminum.”

“Why would they sell to me?”

“Because if they don't, you'll make your own company, undercut their prices with your free power, and bankrupt them. They're mobsters, but they're also businessmen. You'll be offering them a big payoff to walk away when their alternative is watching the company collapse. They'll take the deal. You own all of Trond's holdings, right?”

“Not yet,” she said. “It's billions of euros, dollars, yen, and every other currency under the sun. Plus entire companies, stock portfolios…God knows what else. I'm on a trust until I'm eighteen. The probate's going to take months, maybe years.”

“Not for his Artemisian slugs,” I said. “Our lack of regulation works in your favor. His accounts became yours the instant Doc Roussel declared him dead. And I hear he converted a fuckton of money into slugs to prep for the Sanchez purchase. You have the money to make this happen.”

She stared into the distance.

“Lene?”

“It's not the money,” she said. “It's me. I can't do this. I'm not Dad. He was a master of this stuff. I don't know what the hell I'm doing.”

I turned the watch over in my hands. The platinum back had Norwegian text engraved on it. I held it in front of her. “Huh…what's that say?”

She glanced over. “
Himmelen er ikke grensen
. It means ‘The sky is not the limit.' ”

“He was a confident man,” I said.

“Got him killed.”

I reached into my pocket and pulled out my Swiss Army knife. With the help of its tweezers, I detached the set pins from the metal watchband. I removed three links and put the pins back in.

I took Lene's hand and slid the watch onto her wrist. She gave me a confused look but offered no resistance. I snapped the clasp shut. “There. Now it fits.”

She shook her arm and the watch remained in place. “It's heavy.”

“You'll get used to it.”

She looked at the watch face for a long time. She wiped a mote of dust from the glass. “I guess I'll have to.”

“So…?” I prompted.

“Okay, I'll do it.” She stared straight ahead. “Take the fuckers down.”

I'd never noticed before, but she had her father's eyes.

Dear Kelvin,

Thanks for helping me earlier. I was in deep shit. Now I'm in slightly shallower shit. Basically, I'm at war with a company called Sanchez Aluminum. I'll give you the full story later. For now, I need another favor.

Sanchez Aluminum's smelting facility is in a mini-bubble near the reactors. The reactor/smelter complex is a kilometer from town.

I did some research and found a twenty-year-old article about the “negotiations” between Sanchez and KSC. KSC got really hands-on in the smelter's design process and Sanchez didn't like it. They almost went to litigation in Kenyan court.

Sanchez's argument was “It's our smelter. We don't need approval from anyone. Fuck off.”

KSC's counter was “It's 200 meters from our reactors. We need to know it won't blow up. Give us approval rights or we won't rent you the space, you little shits.”

Ultimately KSC won because they own the mini-bubble. They never sell property—they're all about rent.

Anyway, the upshot is KSC must have detailed schematics of the Sanchez smelter somewhere. Like…super detailed with every potential failure case analyzed and covered. I need you to get ahold of those documents. I know you work in a totally different part of KSC, but you still have access most people don't. Feel free to spread some money around in the process. I'll pay you back.

Dear Jazz,

The plans are enclosed. They were surprisingly easy to get. No part of them was considered a company secret or industrial process. Sanchez kept the exact chemistry in the smelter to themselves, but everything else was right there in the architectural plans.

I have a drinking buddy in the metallurgy lab in Building 27. They'd been consulted as part of the safety overview. He pulled the plans up on his boss's computer (which has no password protection). All I had to do was buy him a beer.

So the cost was two beers (had to have one myself, of course). Call it 50 slugs.

Dear Kelvin

Thanks, buddy. Make it 75 slugs and have another beer on me.