Empire Builders (8 page)
TWELVE
DAN’S LAUGHTER ENDED soon enough.
“I don’t see anything funny about this situation,” Jane said coldly.
Wiping at his eyes, Dan replied, “When they hand you a lemon, make lemonade.” ‘A what?”
Gesturing to the moonlit beach and the star-filled sky, he said, “Here we are, alone on a tropical island, far away from the rest of the crazy world. Let’s make the most of it.”
Her nostrils flared angrily. “Is that all you can think of?”
He quoted:
“Ah, love, let us be true
To one another; for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain . . .”
Jane got to her feet so quickly that her chair fell over behind her. “Vasily Malik will be here tomorrow to explain the fine details of the confiscation procedures.”
“Great,” said Dan, grinning ruefully up at her.
“You will remain incommunicado on this island until the Council deems it proper for you to be released.”
“Released? To where? Debtors’ prison’?. Or will the Council send me to Malik’s Gulag up at Anstarcnus.
Jane huffed at him, turned on her heel and walked away so fast that she was almost running. Go on, Dan called after her silently. Run away. You can run, gorgeous, but you can’t hide.
Then he waved at one of the waiters who had been hovering off at the edge of the patio. The young man came over and picked up Jane’s chair, then asked, “Sir?”
“The best bottle of Armagnac you’ve got,” Dan ordered. “And a large snifter.” “Armagnac?’ The kid’s brow furrowed. “I don’t know if we have---” “You’ve got it. Just ask the bartender.”
Two minutes later the youngster came back with a green bottle shaped like a flat canteen and a snifter big enough to keep goldfish in. Dan smiled and poured for himself. The waiter retreated back to the shadows.
Holding his glass high, pointing it in the direction that Jane had taken, Dan finished his quotation aloud: “’And we are here as on a darkling plain,
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night.’”
Then he laughed softly to himself. “But we’re going to clash in broad daylight, Malik and me.
Tomorrow.”
He awoke with the sun. And a thundering headache. Too much of a good thing, Dan grumbled to himself as he squinted blearily at the morning brightness.Armagnac goes down smooth, but leaves a reminder the next day. Or maybe you’re just getting old, pal. Seems to me you could drink a whole flagon of the stuff without a twinge, way back when.
Like all the rooms at the hotel, his hut consisted of a thatched roof and bamboo screening that reached neither the ground nor the roof. Most of the insects native to the island had been eliminated by biogenetic controls, but Dan still was not happy about the sand that inevitably seeped onto the floor matting.
Shrugging, he padded naked to the bathroom, took one bleary look at himself in the mirror, and decided that corrective action had to be taken right away. Still naked, he walked out of the hut, away from the hotel’s office and restaurant, toward the lagoon. He splashed into the water; it was not as warm as he had expected, but that didn’t matter. He dove in, came up sputtering and spouting, then began methodically swimming parallel to the beach.
He reached the channel between islets, felt the current rushing outward, and reversed his course. By the time he got back to where he had started, one of the hotel’s boys was standing ankle-deep in the water, patiently holding a towel for him.
Dan came out of the lagoon and wrapped the towel around his middle. He was puffing like an old man: swimming was a new sport to him. He had never had the opportunity to do much of it back in the days when he lived in orbital space, and somehow when he was on Earth he was always too busy to take the time to paddle around in a pool.
It was only a year earlier that he had finally allowed himself to order a swimming pool built into his quarters at Alphonsus. It had taken a real effort of mind to convince himself that water, manufactured from lunar oxygen baked out of rocks and hydrogen scooped up in the regolith, was no longer as rare on the Moon as it had once been. It took a lot of energy to produce water, which made it very expensive.
But once Dan realized with a happy surprise that he could easily afford a hundred swimming pools, he had his own private one built.
As he started back toward his hut he could feel the tropical sun baking him dry. He asked the young man walking slightly behind him, “Is there a plane scheduled to come in today?”
“I don’t know. I can check.”
“Yeah, please do. I’ll be going to the patio for breakfast.” “Yes sir.”
By the time he had finished a large glass of orange juice the youngster came back to report that a plane was indeed due to land shortly afternoon . Dan thanked him, then started in on his breakfast of ham and eggs. The hotel kept its livestock on one of the islets on the other side of the lagoon. Even when the wind blew from that direction, the isle was far enough away so that the smell did not bother the guests.
What guests? Dan thought sourly as he ate. This operation can’t be making a profit with only two people here. The double-damned GEC won’t pay enough to break even. Those bureaucrats don’t believe in making profits; just in getting all the privileges of living like millionaires for themselves.
Jane stayed in her hut all morning and refused to answer his phone calls. He was supposed to be kept incommunicado from the rest of the world, so Dan did not even bother to try contacting his offices. He took out one of the outrigger canoes, paddled around the lagoon, visited the pigs and chickens on the farthest islet, and managed to overturn the outrigger in the current between islands, to the uproarious delight of the Polynesian staff of the hotel, who apparently had nothing better to do than watch him from the beach. Standing in four feet of sun-warmed water, Dan righted the canoe, tilted it to drain the water from inside it, and then rowed with as much dignity as he could muster back to the hotel’s beach. He had to grin to himself, though: overturning an outrigger must be a rare sight to these kids.
Dan was lying on the beach, letting the sun dry him and his swim trunks, when Malik’s plane made its appearance. At first it was only a barely visible dot in the bright blue sky, a foreign intruder in paradise. Then it came lower, grew into a dark swept-wing shape, shrieking like a turbine-powered banshee, and finally settled onto the ground, flaps dangling down, wheels kicking up coral dust when they touched the runway.
He watched Jane go across the bridge in the electric cart and, a few minutes later, come back again with Vasily Malik sitting beside her. Dan smiled to himself at Malik’s light blond hair and pale pink skin.
Maybe he’ll get sunstroke, he thought happily.
The ozone layer was so damaged that you could get skin cancer from solar ultraviolet if you weren’t careful. But Dan found that he could not wish cancer on Malik. Not that. Not even for him. As he got to his feet and brushed the sand off, he saw the cart go back across the bridge again. The plane’s staying, Dan realized. Malik’s planning to leave after he has the chance to gloat over me. With a grin, he wondered what Malik would do if he swam out to the plane and took off in it.
“No,” Dan muttered to himself. “The son of a bitch would probably order the Peacekeepers to shoot me down. He’d tell ‘em I’m a terrorist on my way to nuke the Vatican .”
So he walked slowly toward the patio dining area. Sure enough, Malik and Jane were sitting at a table shaded by a broad, gaily striped umbrella, their heads together like a pair of conspirators. “What a surprise? Dan shouted as he stepped onto the iron-wood-floored patio. “Vasily—you’ve flown all the way from Paris just to see me’. I’m honored.”
Malik returned his smile. “I wouldn’t have missed this occasion for the world,” he said.
Jane looked just as edgy as she had the night before. Maybe more so, thought Dan. She was wearing a dark blue pair of shorts and a sleeveless white blouse. Dark glasses were her only concession to the hot tropical sun overhead. She tans well, Dan remembered, hoping that she was smart enough to use sunblock anyway. Malik always seemed to have precisely the correct wardrobe for every occasion. He looked as if he had just stepped out of a video advertisement: casual whipcord slacks of light tan, an ivory-colored short-sleeved shirt with blue-tabbed epaulets, and a woven straw hat with a snap brim slanted at a rakish angle. No sunglasses, but his icy blue eyes looked darker than usual. Contact lenses, Dan concluded. He’s too damned conceited even to wear sunglasses.
In nothing but his swim trunks and an unbuttoned open-weave shirt, Dan pulled up a chair and joined them in the shade of the umbrella.
“So tell me,” he said cheerfully to Malik, “how busy you’re going to make my lawyers.”
Malik gave him a smile full of teeth. “Your lawyers can become as busy as they like; there is no way for them to save you. You have clearly broken GEC regulations, which have the force of international law.”
“And just which regulations have I broken?”
Malik explained with great patience and obvious relish, citing specific clauses and dates. Dan listened, but his eyes strayed to Jane. She looked as tense as a prisoner facing a firing squad.
“So you see,” Malik concluded, “that if any of your lawyers decide to try to help you, they will have to do it on a pro bono basis. As ofnoon tomorrow,Paris time, all of Astro Manufacturing will be closed down.”
“Closed down?” Dan snapped. “You mean you’re throwing all my people out of work’?”
Malik raised a placating hand. “An unfortunate choice of words, excuse me. Astro will continue to operate, but it will be managed by specialists from the GEC. Under my direction.”
“Holy sheep dip,” Dan grumbled.
“It’ll be like what happens when a corporation goes into bankruptcy,” Jane said, her first words since Dan had come to their table. “Yeah,” Dan replied. “The company staggers on, profits drop to zero, and before you know it the whole organization falls apart.” “Don’t be so gloomy,” Malik said. “Your employees will remain faithful to Astro Corporation. They will not be allowed to quit.” Dan fixed him with a sour look. “Another one of your double-damned regulations” “Yes. Of course.” Malik looked wonderfully happy.
With a snort of disdain, Dan leaned both his elbows on the round table and said, “Okay. Now I’ve got something real important to tell you about.”
Malik looked surprised. “More important than losing your company?”
Nodding, Dan said, “I told Jane about it last night. This is global trouble: the greenhouse cliff.” “Cliff?”
Dan explained Zach Freiberg’s hypothesis about the sudden warming of the Earth. After he finished, Malik remained silent for several moments.
“We haven’t seen anything like this from our scientific staff,” Jane said at last. “Yes, we have,” said Malik.
“We have?”
“Your scientists have come to the same conclusion?” Dan asked, suddenly eager with hope. Malik nodded warily. “It’s been kept in deepest secrecy—“
Jane blurted, “You didn’t even tell the rest of the Council!”
“How could I?” Malik said to her. “This is catastrophic news. It must not leak out to the general public. There would be panic everywhere,”
Dan gaped at him. “You knew?”
“Of course I knew. I knew when your naive Dr. Freiberg brought his findings to my—our—scientific staff.”
“But you should have informed the Council, Vasily,” said Jane. “Break this news to doddering old fools like Sibuti? Or gangsters like Gaetano? That would be a disaster piled on top of a catastrophe.”
“I don’t get it,” Dan said. “What in the name of bell’s angels are you doing with the information?”
“Taking your corporation away from you. All of the Big Seven space corporations must be confiscated.Yamagata comes next.” Dan’s temper snapped. He leaped across the table, hands going for Malik’s throat. But the Russian blocked him, grabbed him by the hair and one arm, and flipped him expertly to the ironwood floor of the patio. Dan landed with a painful thump, the wind knocked out of him. Malik stood over him, fists clenched, hat still in place, a twisted little smile on his lips.
“We are not in zero gravity now,Randolph . I know how to defend myself. Shall I show you a few karate kicks?”
Squinting up into the afternoon brightness, Dan saw Jane clutch at Malik’s arm and a pair of beefy hotel boys rushing toward them. Dan climbed slowly to his feet and waved the boys away. “I’m okay,” he told them. “No problem. We’re just having a little fun.” “I’ve kept up my martial arts training,” Malik said, smirking. “Apparently you’ve spent all your time in low gravity making money.”
Dan picked up his chair and sat on it, fuming to himself, I’ll kill this sonofabitch one of these days. Too bad I didn’t do it when I had the chance, ten years ago. His backside hurt where he had landed on the floor, but his only serious injury seemed to be to his pride. Jane returned to her seat. Malik sat down, too.
“Let me explain something to you, Mr. taptans, Malik said. “You may think that I am carrying out a personal vendetta against you, but believe me, that is not the case.”
“Sure,” Dan muttered.
“I learned about the greenhouse disaster more than a year ago.” “And you’ve done nothing about it.”
“Not so.” Malik glanced at Jane, then returned his attention to Dan. “But before I tell what I have done, tell me—what would you do to save the world from the coming catastrophe?”
“I’d move heaven and earth to avoid triggering that cliff!” “Yes, of course. But how?”
“Stop burning fossil fuels, for one thing. It’s the carbon dioxide and methane we pour into the atmosphere that’s causing the warming.” “Not natural causes?” Jane asked.
Both men shook their heads. Malik said, “Astronomers and geophysicists agree that neither solar activity nor ordinary climate cycles are causing the global warming trend. Our friend here is correct: the greenhouse is man-made, almost entirely.”
“There’s some contribution from cow farts and termite burps,” Dan added, “but the overwhelming cause of the warming is the crap we’re putting into the air.”
Malik smiled at him. “To get back to my question: How would you correct this situation?”
“Like I said, stop burning fossil fuels. Go to fusion and solar power. Move as much as possible of the world’s industrial base off-Earth and into orbit. We can make superconducting electrical motors and batteries in orbit, you know. They can replace petroleum-powered vehicles.”
“All around the world?” “Right.”
“In ten years?”
“What choice do you have? Maybe we can’t get it all done in ten years, but we’ve got start now and do as much as we can.” Malik drummed his fingertips on the table for a silent moment, then said, “I agree entirely.”
Dan blinked at him. “Then why in hell are you wasting time trying to drive me out of business?” “I don’t understand it either,” Jane said.
“Think about it for a moment,” Malik said, with an expression on his face almost of pity. “It is necessary to make the whole world convert from fossil fuels to nuclear and solar energy. The entire world!”
“Yes,” Jane said.
“The task cannot be done piecemeal. It cannot be done on a voluntary basis. We cannot ask people to stop driving their petrol-burning cars and wait until we can replace them with electrical vehicles. We cannot expect major corporations to shut down entire industrial plants for months or years while their electrical power plants are replaced. For that matter, how can we raise the capital required to build all these fusion power plants and solar power satellites—in ten years?”
“What choice do we have?” Dan snapped.
Malik took a breath. “A global problem requires global coordination. And global control.”
Dan felt his jaw clench. “I knew it,” he muttered. “The whole frigging world facing disaster and you see it as an opportunity to establish a double-damned dictatorship.”
“Dan, that’s not fair!” Jane said. “Vasily has an important point here. How can you expect-”
“How can you expect free men to act in their own best interest?” Dan felt the anger rising in him again. “A lot better than they’d be able to act when some double-damned global bureaucracy is grinding them down.”
Malik raised his hands in an I told you so gesture. “You see? That is exactly how I expected you to
react. You and your fellow capitalists. That is why it is necessary to remove you from control of Astro Manufacturing. The Council needs Astro’s assets if we are to avert this disaster.”
“And Yamagata ’s?” Dan asked.
“Yamagata also. And all the other privately owned space industries; all seven of them. They are the key to the world’s survival.
Once the Council controls all the Big Seven space industries-” “You’ll have accomplished what you failed to do ten years ago,” Dan said. Ignoring him, Malik finished, “We will be able to begin the process of converting from fossil fuels to nuclear and solar energy, worldwide.”
“And if you succeed, what happens afterward? Will you turn all the space industrial facilities back to their rightful owners?” Malik’s smirking grin returned. “Why, Mr. Randolph, you surprise me. By then, the Global Economic Council will be the legal owner of all space facilities. In the name of the peoples of Earth, of course. For the common good.”
“Bullshit!” Dan answered fervently.
Malik’s expression hardened. “You think that I am doing this for my own personal gain. What do you call it? A power trip?” “An ego trip,” Dan growled.
“That is not the case. What I do I do to save the world from the coming catastrophe. My own personal power, my ego, they mean nothing. I act for the good of all the world’s peoples. Not for profit.” “Sure,” said Dan. “And rain makes applesauce. If you actually believe that, you’re the worst kind of fool.
There’s only one sin in the world: poverty. And there’s only one crime: believing your own propaganda.”
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