Privateers (8 page)

Where else could I go, Dan fumed silently, after you forced America to give up space operations? Aloud, he said merely, “It’s near the equator. That gives us some advantage from the Earth’s spin.”

“And the Venezuelan government is very cooperative,” the Russian said.

Dan sensed a trap ahead. “This entire operation,” he answered slowly, “belongs to the Venezuelan government. To the people of Venezuela, since this country is a democracy. Astro Manufacturing Corporation operates this facility under contract to the government. This is not a privately owned facility.” Otherwise, he added silently, you would never have gotten past the front gate without a squad of tanks.

“Yes, of course,” Malik agreed easily, still grinning. “But you manage to make a profit from all this, even though it belongs properly to the people of Venezuela.”

“1 manage to eke out a living,” Dan replied, smiling back at him. “And so do the people of this country. This space manufacturing operation accounts for as much of Venezuela’s gross national product as her oil exports, and twice as much as her agricultural exports.”

“But how much profit do you make?” Malik asked, his smile looking slightly sardonic now.

“As much as the government allows.”

“And how much is that?”

“Ask Seńor Hernandez. He has the figures.”

Malik would not be deterred. “Enough to feed the poor people living in those miserable hovels outside the city? Would you say that your profits could help to feed the poor, rather than making a very rich man even richer?”

“This operation makes jobs for thousands. …”

“Of engineers and tax accountants.”

“And butchers, bakers, telescope makers”-Dan found himself enjoying the challenge of argument-“cooks, babysitters, auto mechanics, salespeople of all kinds, gardeners, truck drivers-you name it. We bring money into this country, and each bolivar that space operations produces gets spent eight or ten times over, within the country’s internal economy. That’s a considerable multiplier, and it’s fed more Venezuelans than all the damned welfare programs the government’s ever funded!”

Malik laughed derisively. “And yet there are still many hungry people, while you live in luxury.”

Dan started to reply, but held himself in check for a moment. He saw something in Malik’s eyes, something crafty and dangerous. The other Russians were watching the two of them; even those who claimed they could not understand English could see the sparks that the two men struck off each other.

“You really want to feed those hungry people?” Dan asked coolly.

“Yes, certainly.”

“Then lower the prices you charge us and the other Third World space operations.”

That caught Malik by surprise. “Lower the prices for the ores we mine from the Moon?”

“Right,” Dan said with a grin. “All the Third World space manufacturers-even the Japanese-have to buy their raw materials from the Soviet Union. You control the lunar mines and you set the prices for the ores.”

Malik nodded. The smile was gone from his face, replaced by a skeptical, almost worried expression.

“Lower the prices for our raw materials, and we can lower the prices for the finished manufactured products. That means we’ll be able to sell more of our products. Which means we can increase production. Increased production means more jobs. More jobs means fewer hungry people. So if you really want to feed those hungry squatters …”

“No, no, no!” Malik waggled a finger in Dan’s face. “You would not hire those unskilled men and women to be astronauts or engineers.”

“Maybe not. But we’d hire some of them to drive trucks and do maintenance work. Others would get all sorts of jobs in the city, working in restaurants, driving taxicabs, all sorts of things. And we could help to build schools for their children, so that they could become astronauts and engineers.”

“Capitalist propaganda.” Malik smirked.

Dan laughed. “Propaganda or not, friend, that system has produced more wealth for more people than all the Socialist planning in the world.”

The Russian shook his head.

“Try it!” Dan urged. “Try it for one year. Just twelve months. Lower the prices you make us pay for the lunar ores, and I guarantee you that those shacks on the hills will start to disappear.”

“No,” Malik said. “That is not the way to end poverty.”

“Then how do you propose to do it?”

His handsome smile returned. “In the proper Socialist manner, of course. The Soviet Union will increase its voluntary contribution to the International People’s Investment Council. That will provide more funds for alleviating hunger in nations such as Venezuela.”

“Increase their dole, eh?” Dan grumbled. “Make them more dependent on the Soviet Union’s largesse.”

“We will feed the hungry,” Malik said firmly. “Of course, to do this, it is necessary for us to generate more revenues for the Soviet treasury.”

Dan saw it coming, but it was far too late to do anything about it. He felt like a tenpin in a bowling alley, watching the inevitable rolling toward him.

“And to generate such increased revenue,” Malik was saying, his grin widening, “it will, of course, be necessary to raise the prices charged for lunar raw materials.”

“Raise them,” Dan echoed.

Malik nodded smugly. “You may not like it, but that is the decision that the Council of Ministers reached last week. The prices for all lunar ores will be increased by approximately twenty-five percent, as of the first of next month.”

Dan’s first impulse was to take a swing at the Russian. Then he shrugged and laughed. It was all nonsense, a game that they played. The pious pronouncements they made about feeding the hungry and helping the poor was nothing more than a sham; the Russians’ real goal was to drive the last vestiges of capitalism out of the orbital factories and to monopolize every aspect of space industries. He knew it;

Malik knew it. But still they maintained the pretense. What else was there to do but laugh?

Malik’s dour-faced aides glanced uneasily at each other. Here the American capitalist had just been told that his costs for raw materials were going to be increased by twenty-five percent, and he was laughing. Even Malik looked surprised. Laughter was not what he had expected.

When he was angry, really angry, Dan took a shower. It was a trick he had learned the hard way, back in the years when he had been an astronaut working on the earliest primitive space platforms, where water was so precious that even a sponge bath was something worth fighting over.

He had cut short the tour with Malik as gracefully as he could and turned the Russian group over to one of his assistants, who headed them off toward the airfield. Dan’s smile evaporated as he went by helicopter to the roof of his office tower in Caracas and rode down the elevator to his apartment. Stalking past the robot butler before it could finish reading off the messages waiting for his attention, Dan went straight to the bathroom and stepped into the shower stall still fully clothed. The household computer sensed the presence of his body in the shower and turned on the water at precisely the mixture that Dan preferred.

For long minutes Dan stood unmoving and let the steaming hot water bake the knots out of his tensed shoulders and neck. He kicked off his sodden loafers, then slowly stripped off his soaked coveralls and underwear. Alone in the shower he could shout, bellow, curse until he got his equilibrium back. He could pound the marble walls if he wanted to. Instead, he found himself laughing sardonically at the madness of it all. The world and everybody in it was crazy, and he was the craziest one of them all. He nudged the pile of soaked clothing to a corner of the shower stall with a bare toe, then stood luxuriating in the fact that he could have all the hot water he wanted, for as long as he wanted it.

Finally he felt calm enough, in control of himself enough, to step out of the shower and begin toweling himself dry. The water turned off automatically; the heat lamp in the ceiling glowed as long as he stood on the floor plate beneath it.

Freshly shaved and dressed in a pair of light slacks and an open-neck shirt, Dan went to the desk in his study, followed at a respectful distance by the butler robot. It was a squat fireplug of a machine that rolled across the thickly carpeted floor on noiseless trunnions. As a butler it was more of a curiosity than a servant: it could carry a tray of drinks or hors d’oeuvres, it could gather up empty glasses and take them back to the kitchen, but it was useless as a dresser or housecleaner.

“There have been several phone messages, sir,” it said in the cultured voice of a distinguished British actor, long deceased. The robot’s inner computer was electronically linked, of course, to the phone and the household computer.

“Hold them,” Dan commanded, “and get me a glass of sherry.”

One good thing about a robot: it never argued, never insisted. “The amontillado, sir?”

“Right. Straight up. Make it a double.”

“Yes, sir.” The machine trundled off toward the bar.

“Phone!” Dan called.

“Yes, sir?”

“Get me Saito Yamagata, wherever he is.”

The phone was silent for the flicker of a second, then said, “Sir, it is six-ten in the morning in Tokyo.”

“Sai’s an early riser. Get him.”

“Yes, sir.”

Dan’s apartment was the home of a man who could buy anything that struck his wide-ranging fancy. It was filled with electronic gadgetry and so highly automated that he could live in it for weeks without allowing another human being to intrude on his privacy. His office was little more than an alcove off the spacious living room, but he could screen it off at the touch of a button on his desk. The living room itself was built for meetings and parties, dramatically designed with slashing diagonal beams framing the windows and forming intimate alcoves. Small sofas and comfortable chairs dotted the carpeted floor, and a large round polished teak conference table dominated one comer of the huge room. The windows gave a panoramic view of Caracas, and there was a marble fireplace that was utterly useless in the climate-controlled building, but which Dan had insisted on. Another, smaller fireplace was in his bedroom. He slept on a waterbed because it was as close to sleeping in weightlessness as he could find on Earth. The big mirror over the bed was also a television screen. There were cameras behind the mirror, too, in case Dan got the urge to watch an instant replay.

He could have virtually any woman he wanted, and he chose many of them. But they seldom lasted more than a few weeks, at most. The apartment was often filled with visitors, businessmen, friends, people seeking help or interviews or jobs or money or advice or influence. The long marble-topped dining room table was frequently lined with glittering guests, powerful and famous men, beautiful and willing women. Yet Dan actually shared his home with no one. He treasured solitude, although he knew the uses of society. He shared his life with no one, not since he had left the States, not since Morgan Scanwell had died and he had fled from the wife of his best friend because she was too needing, too vulnerable, too strong a temptation.

More and more, lately, Dan ate alone in his sumptuous dining room and kept the apartment empty of other people. He did not even like the presence of human servants; only the unavoidable cleaning crew, and they worked under the strictest of rules never to be present when he was in the apartment. Sometimes, when Dan remained in his rooms for several days on end, the clutter accumulated to the point where it drove him out so that the crew could set things right again. He paraded a succession of exquisite women through his bedroom, but even sex was becoming meaningless to him; he had not bothered with the video camera above the bed for months.

Now, as he sat at his desk and drummed his fingers, impatiently waiting for the phone to connect him with his old Japanese friend, Dan realized that his insistence on privacy was slowly turning him into a recluse. Solitude is one thing, he thought; loneliness is very different. You’re going to end up as crackers as Howard Hughes was, if you’re not careful.

“Mr. Yamagata, sir,” the phone’s soft voice announced.

Dan touched the ON pad on the phone keyboard and Saito Yamagata’s image appeared before his desk. His round face, usually as jovial as a chubby Buddha’s, looked puffy and still half-asleep. Sitting on his heels, he was wrapped in a midnight-blue kimono decorated with white herons, the family symbol. Sai’s getting old, Dan thought, remembering when the two of them worked as construction engineers on the first solar power satellite project, back at the turn of the century. Sai had been whipcord lean in those days and as agile as a kung fu master. But the years of easy living had fattened him, softened him.

“Did I wake you?” Dan asked.

Sai’s old grin snaked across his jowly face. “Does the sun rise in the east?”

“You used to be up and around before the sun,” Dan said.

“And you, old friend, were once a penniless engineer.”

They both laughed. Their friendship went back to the days when Dan had to use his fists as well as his wits to gain the grudging respect of the Japanese construction crew. Americans had not been welcome on the solar power satellite project; Dan earned their respect by working harder, taking more chances and fighting better than any of the Japanese.

“Times have changed,” Dan said.

“They have and they have not,” replied Yamagata. “You always had more than your share of audacity. Calling me before six-thirty in the morning! I’d have the head of any employee of mine who dared to disturb me at this hour!”

“I hope I haven’t disturbed anyone else.” Dan knew that Sai’s wife, the eldest daughter of a very ancient and noble family, slept in her own quarters. And that Sai seldom slept alone.

Yamagata made an elaborate shrug. “That is of no consequence.”

“Your son is well?” Dan asked.