The Sam Gunn Omnibus (62 page)

Monica broke the spell. “Well, I’ll
be a daughter of a bitch! How do you like that?”

Fifteen minutes later Jade was back
in Gradowsky’s office and Raki’s handsome face shone on the display screen
built into the office wall.

“Yes, we’ve been notified too,”
Raki was saying. He looked annoyed, tight-lipped. Lawyers and threats to sue
were taken very seriously in Orlando.

“What the hell are they trying to hide?”
Gradowsky asked, his newsman’s nose twitching.

“Whatever it is, we’d better stay
clear of the four remaining survivors for the time being. I’ve got the legal
staff checking into this, but you know how long it takes them to come up with a
recommendation.”

“That’s ‘cause you pay them by the
hour,” Gradowsky said.

Raki was not amused. “They always
give us the most conservative advice. They’ll tell us to avoid the risk of a
lawsuit, stay away from the remaining four.”

Jade was listening with only part
of her mind. An inner voice was puzzling over the fact that Jean Margaux had
detectives investigate her background, and then she was killed in an auto
accident. Was it an accident? Or murder? She remembered hearing somewhere that
many people on Earth commit suicide by crashing their cars and making it look
like an accident. That way they left their heirs the double indemnity money
from their insurance.

Jean Margaux was a very wealthy
woman. Jade knew that from her own research into the survivors of Sam Gunn’s
expedition out to the asteroids. And childless. As far as Jade could learn, she
had no heirs.

I’ll have to check out the terms of
her will, she told herself. Did one of the other four murder her? Not for money,
maybe, but because they were afraid she would eventually talk to me?

“That finishes it,” Raki was
saying, his lips turned down into an unaccustomed frown. “The Sam Gunn bio
stops right here and now.”

“There’s a fifth survivor of the
expedition,” Jade heard herself say. “And he isn’t part of this threatened
lawsuit.”

Gradowsky immediately replied, “Yeah,
but he’s all the way to hell out by Mars on a bridge ship.”

“They’re hiding something,” Jade
snapped. “Something so important to them that Jean Margaux died to keep it
secret.”

It took a couple of seconds for
Raki to answer from Earth, “It was an accident, Jade.”

“Was it? Are we sure of that?”

Neither man replied.

Jade hunched forward in her chair. “The
only other survivor of that expedition is on the bridge ship
Golden Gate.
The sculptress who made Sam’s statue is living out in the Belt. And the
professor who was with Sam when he died is outfitting a deep-space mission at
Titan. I could get to all three of them!”

“And not get back for two years,”
Gradowsky grumbled.

“Okay, so what?” Jade felt
eagerness trembling through her. “Raki, you can put the Sam Gunn bio on hold,
can t you? Let those lawyers think we’ve dropped the project. Meantime I’ll get
out to the
Golden Gate
and see what they’re
trying to hide. And then go on to the other two. I can do it! I know I can!”

Gradowsky was staring at her. Raki
had a faraway look in his eyes.

“We’d have to pay you salary for
two years while you’re doing nothing,” Raki said.

“I’m getting minimum,” Jade shot
back. “You won’t be losing much. Or just pay my travel costs while I
’
m going back and forth; put me on salary
only for the time I’m actually working.”

“H’mm.”

“We could slip her aboard a
high-boost shuttle,” Gradowsky said. “Trade her fare for advertising time. Get
her out to the
Golden Gate
in a few weeks, maybe
for free. Or at a reduced fare, at least.”

Raki fingered his handsome mustache.
Jade felt her heart stop while he pondered.

Finally he said, “Very well. Travel
expenses only unless you’re actually working. Jim, see what you can do about
getting her to that bridge ship quickly. And not a word about this to anybody!”

“We won’t let their lawyers know
what we’re doing,” Gradowsky said, grinning. “Don’t worry.”

“I’m not worried about their damned lawyers,” Raki answered. “I don’t want
the CEO to know what I’ve just agreed to!”

“YES, I WAS ONE OF THE INVESTORS IN THAT
MAD EXPED
ITION
,” said Rick Darling. “It was probably
the most foolish thing I’ve ever done, in a long life of foolishness.”

Jade could not quite fathom the
expression on Darling’s face. He was immensely fat, the kind of obesity that
can only be achieved in a low gravity environment. He looked like a layered mountain,
rolls upon rolls of fat bulging beneath his flamingo-pink robe.

In the shadowy half-light of his
private quarters, his face looked like a gibbous moon, bloated cheeks and tiers
of chins. He was smiling, but his eyes were so deeply set in folds of fat that
Jade could not tell if his smile was pleased or pained.

“Sam Gunn.” Darling sighed heavily
and took a sip from the gem-encrusted goblet engulfed in his fat, bejeweled
hand. “I thought I’d never hear his name spoken in polite society again. The
little bastard.”

Jade felt ill at ease, despite the
fact that Darling’s quarters were at a comfortable lunar gravity. But of all
the people she had interviewed over the months of her travels, of all the
people that Sam Gunn had worked with, lived with, loved and hated with, Rick
Darling gave her a strong sense of foreboding.

His private quarters were little
short of sybaritic, from the pile of sumptuous pillows on which Darling
reclined like an overweight maharajah to the splendid tapestries lining the
walls and the richly carved genuine wood low tables scattered across the room.
The tables were the only furniture she could see. Like her host, Jade sat on a
mound of pillows, softly yielding yet comfortably supportive. The scenes
embroidered on the pillows were wildly erotic. The tapestries flaunted every
form of perversion she had ever heard of and several that were totally new to
her.

Darling himself wore more rings and
bracelets and heavy necklaces of gold and glittering jewels than she had ever
seen on one person, male or female. She felt distinctly shabby in her jade
green slacks and vest, adorned by nothing more than a faux pearl necklace and matching
earrings.

The very air of this latter-day
Arabian Nights chamber was sickly

sweet
with perfume. Or was it more than perfume? It would be simple enough for this
smiling pile of flesh to put a narcotic in the air-circulation system. Or an
aphrodisiac.

The
thought alarmed her.

Sitting
up straight, a current of apprehension tingling through her body, she asked in
as businesslike a voice as she could summon up:

“You
didn’t like Sam Gunn?”

“No
one
liked him, dear lady,” replied Rick Darling. His voice was a clear sweet tenor,
almost angelic. “Sam was not a likable person, believe me.”

“Yet
you knowingly invested in his venture. Nobody forced you to go out and spend
two years of your life in that spacecraft with him.”

Darling’s
smile revealed that he even had diamonds set into his teeth. For the first time
she noticed the earrings half hidden beneath his glistening tightly curled
hair. The man looked like a jewelry display case.

“No
one
forced me to go, true enough.” He sighed again, like a mountain heaving. “But
there were circumstances, my dear. Circumstances often force us to do things we
really would rather not do.”

“Really?”

“Certainly.”
Darling reached for the splendid gold pitcher on the low table at his side. He
raised the pitcher and his eyebrows, which were flecked with sparkling chips of
diamond.

“No
thanks, I’m fine,” said Jade. And I intend to stay that way, she added
silently. She had taken one sip of what Darling had claimed to be the finest
wine produced off-Earth. She had no intention of taking more.

“Circumstances,”
Darling went on, as he filled his own cup, “dictate our actions. For example,
you yourself are not comfortable here. You are not comfortable with me, are
you?”

Jade
blinked several times before admitting, “No, I guess I’m not.”

Darling
nodded, sending ripples through his many chins. “You fought and batded to get
to me. You argued and bribed your way past the ship’s security people. You
literally camped at my door until I finally agreed to see you. Now that you are
here, you frown with disapproval at my decor, my lifestyle, myself. Yet you
remain, because of circumstances.”

She
forced a smile. “I thought I was interviewing
you.”

He
smiled back, glittering diamonds at her. “I live the way I live. I am rich
enough to afford whatever it takes to make me happy. And, to a considerable
extent, whoever.”

“You
got rich because of Sam Gunn.”

“Yes,
that’s true. Damn him.” “Why?” She leaned forward, eager for the answer. “I’ve
tried to interview all of the other surviving members of that expedition and
none of them would even speak to me. What happened? What did Sam do?”

Darling
heaved another titanic sigh. “I have his disks, you know.”

“What?”

“I
suppose you could call them the ship’s log. After all, he
was
the captain of the vessel.”

 “You
have Sam’s log of the mission?”

“Yes.”

“In
his own voice?”

“Yes.”

She
could not hide her eagerness. “Can ... can I hear them? Copy them?”

He
hesitated a long moment, whether from true indecision or merely to dangle her
on the hook of her own impatience, Jade could not tell.

Finally
Darling said slowly, “You can listen to them, but not copy them. You must agree
to the conditions I insist on before I will allow you to hear the disks.”

She
tensed. “What conditions?”

He
raised a thick, blunt, ringed finger. “Before that, you must also agree to
grant me one request after you have heard the disks.”

“One
request.”

“You
must agree beforehand. Now.”

“Without
knowing what the request is?”

He
nodded solemnly.

She
glanced around at the scenes on the tapestries. Mother of mercy, suppose he
wants me to do something like that?

“What
are the conditions?”

“You
will listen to the disks here in this room. You will strip yourself naked and
give all your clothing and your shoulder bag to me before I present you with
the disks.”

Jade
felt a surge of bile rising in her throat.

“I
assure you,” Darling quickly added, “that the nudity is entirely a security
precaution. I do not want the disks copied. I must make certain that you do not
have a copying device on you.”

She
stared hard at him, her thoughts swirling.

“I
will leave the room,” Darling said. “A robot will take your clothing and bag to
me.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I will insist, however, on making
certain that you are entirely— unequipped—by making a visual inspection of you
via a video intercom.”

Dieu,
she thought, he’s a
voyeur. And immediately she regretted the three kilos she had gained over the
past month. In low gravity the body puffs up anyway; I’ll look pretty bad. Or maybe
he likes flab. He’s got plenty of his own.

“Do you agree?” Darling asked, just
a hint of anxiousness in his high rich voice.

“To the conditions, yes,” she heard
herself say, almost surprised. “But I can’t agree to grant you whatever request
you want afterward. After all...”