The Sam Gunn Omnibus (104 page)

“For a corporate bigshot, you’re
damned perceptive, Pierre. But the castle I want to build isn’t in the sky. It’s
on the Moon. Hell Crater, to be exact.”

I
didn’t have to
say another word, not for the better part of the next hour. Sam spun out his
grandiose plan to build what he called a resort facility at Hell Crater:
hotels, restaurants, gambling casinos, legalized prostitution (which Sam called
“sexual therapy”), electronic games and virtual reality simulations based on
the completely realistic holographic system he had used to stun me and the
other commuters.

Hell Crater, it turns out, was
named after a nineteenth-century Jesuit astronomer, Maximilian J. Hell; an
Austrian, I believe. Sam loved the idea of turning the thirty-kilometer-wide
crater into a lunar Sin City, a couple of hundred kilometers south of
Alphonsus, where the lunar nation of Selene stood.

“We can string up a cable car
transportation system from Selene to Hell,” Sam enthused, “and show the
tourists some terrific scenery on the way: Mare Nubium, the Straight Wall, Mt.
Yeager—lots to see.”

He finally took a breath.

I
countered, “Sam,
you can’t expect me to recommend to Rockledge’s senior management that we
invest in a den of vice. Prostitution? Gambling? Impossible.”

“It’s all completely legal,” he
pointed out. “The nation of Selene doesn’t have jurisdiction, and even if they
did we wouldn’t be breaking any of their laws. This isn’t the Vatican, for
cryin’ out loud.”

“Rockledge’s board of directors—”

“Would go to Hell as fast as they
could,” Sam said, grinning. Then he admitted, “As long as they could go
incognito.”

“It’s impossible, Sam. Forget about
it.”

He shrugged. “I’ll have to go
elsewhere, then.”

I
wasn’t frightened
by that. “And just who do you think would be foolish enough to finance your
crazy scheme?”

“I dunno. Maybe the D’Argent Trust.”

I
laughed in his
face. “My wife controls the Trust. If you think for one nanosecond that she’d
invest in a glorified whorehouse—”

“She might,” Sam said, “in exchange
for some information about the activities of certain Rockledge employees.”

I
felt my brows
knit. “Which Rockledge employees?”

“A certain knockout blonde named
Marlowe.”

“She’s in the comptroller’s office.”

“But she spends a lot of time with
the head of the space operations department.”

“That’s not true! And besides, it’s
strictly business!”

Sam chuckled. “Pierre, your face is
as red as a Chinese pomegranate.”

“You’re the one who had an affair
with that woman!” I remembered. “You and she—”

“It was a lot of fun,” Sam said,
with a sly smile. “Until I found out she was working for you and trying to
slick me out of my share of the orbital hotel. She was screwing me, all right.”

“Industrial espionage,” I said,
with as much dignity as I could manage.

“Yeah, sure.” He sighed. “Well, I’ve
got my memories. And some damned good pictures of her.”

“I don’t care what you have. My
relationship with Ms. Marlowe has always been strictly professional. I mean,
business.”

“You think your wife would believe
that?”

“You’re making totally unfounded
accusations,” I snapped. “Ms. Marlowe and I—”

“Make a beautiful couple. Wanna see
the pictures?”

“They’re fakes! They’ve got to be!
I never—”

“You never,” Sam said. “But would Mrs.
D’Argent believe you? One look at your blonde bosom buddy and you’re in deep
sheep dip, Pierre, m
on vieux.”

“It’s a filthy lie!” I screamed. I hollered.
I lost my cool. I ranted and threatened to have Sam assassinated or at least
take him to court. He simply sat there and grinned that maddening gap-toothed
grin of his at me while I fussed and fizzed and finally gave in to him.

That’s how Rockledge Industries and
S. Gunn Enterprises, Unlimited, went into partnership.

I
squeezed the
funding from various Rockledge projects and kept it as quiet as I could. Half a
billion dollars might seem like small change to a hundred-billion-dollar corporation
such as Rockledge, but still, one should be careful. For nearly two years I didn’t
see Sam at all (much to my relief), except for monthly progress reports that he
sent through my private laser link from the Rockledge office in Selene. I lived
in fear that I’d be discovered, and in dread of the next annual meeting of the
board of directors.

The corporate comptroller assigned
Ms. Marlowe, of all people, to the Hell Crater project. I spoke to her only by
phone or e-link. I was very careful not to have any face-to-face meetings with
her, which Sam could turn into more material for his blackmail.

I m
ust confess that
Sam ran the project efficiently and energetically. Major construction projects
always run into snags, but the Hell Crater complex was built smoothly and
swiftly.

“We’ll be ready to open by the time
your next annual board meeting convenes,” Sam told me, by laser link from the
Moon.

I
confessed, “I can’t
understand how you managed to get it built so quickly.”

He grinned that lopsided pumpkin
grin of his. “I paid off the right people, Pierre.”

“I know the wages you’ve paid are
above industry standards, but I still don’t see how you’ve done so well.”

There’s a lag of almost three
seconds in conversations from the Moon; it takes that long for a signal to get
there and back again. I sat at my desk watching Sam’s self-satisfied smirk,
waiting for his response.

“It’s not the wages,” Sam said at
last. “It’s the bribes.”

“Bribes!” I yelped.

Again the wait. Then, “Oh come on,
now, Mr. Straight Arrow. You don’t think that Rockledge people have paid off a
building inspector here and there, or bought protection from the local union
goons? You’re not that naive, are you, Pierre,
mon infant?”

Bribes. All I could think of was
the corporate CEO and the board of directors. Bad enough to be building a Sin
City, but spending Rockledge money on bribery! I began to wonder if they’d give
me a golden parachute when they pushed me out the window.

“Don’t be so uptight about it,” Sam
advised me. “Your CEO’s a sporting type, from what I hear. He’s gonna love the
idea, wait and see.”

I
decided not to
wait. Better to make a clean breast of it before it was too late. So the next
time the CEO came to Montreal I asked for a private meeting with him, away from
the office. We met in a dinner-theater restaurant. The food was mediocre and
the musical revue they were playing featured more nudity than talent. But the
CEO seemed to enjoy himself, while I wondered if the other patrons thought we might
be a gay couple, sitting off in a shadowy corner at a table for two.

He looked every inch the successful
modern business executive: handsome, lean and youthful (thanks to his unabashed
patronage of rejuvenation clinics
).
I felt
almost shabby next to him; my hair had turned silver before I was thirty.

I
had to wait until
the intermission before I could get his undivided attention. To my surprise,
when I told him that I had invested in a resort facility on the Moon, he smiled
at me. “I was wondering when you’d bring up the subject. Hell Crater, isn’t it?”

I
expressed a modicum
of astonishment at his knowledge of the project.

“You don’t stay at the top of the
heap, D’Argent, unless you have excellent information conduits. One of the
comptroller’
s
people has been keeping me
informed about the Hell Crater project.”

It was Ms. Marlowe, I realized. She
was climbing up the corporate ladder in her own inimitable style.

“There’s something about the
project that you don’t know yet,” I said, dreading the confession I was about
to make. “About the firm that’s actually building the complex—”

“It’s Sam Gunn,” he replied easily.

“You know?”

“As I said, I have my sources of information.”

Sweat broke out on my upper lip. “I
didn’t mention it until now because—”

“I understand completely. You’ve
been very clever about this entire operation. If it flops, it’s Sam Gunn’s
failure.”

“And if it succeeds?”

“We’ll squeeze him out, of course.”

I
felt immensely
relieved. “That’s exactly what I had planned to do all along,” I said,
stretching the truth a little.

“We’re making money on the orbital
hotel,” said the CEO. “A resort facility on the Moon makes sense. Especially if
it’s beyond the legal strictures of terrestrial moralists.”

He had no qualms about the den of
vice Sam was building!

“Besides,” the CEO added, “it will
be a great place to meet agreeable young women.”

Just at that moment the three-piece
orchestra blared a fanfare and the entire cast of the revue came capering out
onto the stage once again, without a stitch of clothing in sight.

Despite the CEO’s smiling approval
of the Hell Crater resort, I was understandably edgy when the board meeting
came around. Twenty-two men and women sat around the long polished table in our
Amsterdam office: most of them gray-haired and grumpy-looking. I doubted they
would look so favorably on our being a partner in a lunar Sin City.

The youthful-looking CEO was also
the board chairman. He sat at the head of the long conference table, impeccable
in a form-fitted dark blue suit and butter-yellow turtleneck shirt. I envied
him. I wanted his job. I wanted his power. But I feared that once the board of
directors found out about Hell Crater I could kiss my ambitions goodbye.

Like a dozen other division chiefs,
I sat along the side wall of the rectangular conference room, squarely between
the comptroller himself and the head of human resources, widely known as Sally
the Sob Sister. Sally was a “three-fer” in our corporate diversity program: she
was female, black Hispanic, and handicapped (as far as the government was
concerned) by her obesity. She was munching something, as usual, slyly reaching
down into the capacious tote bag she had deposited at her feet. On the
comptroller’s other side sat Ms. Marlowe, golden blonde, radiantly beautiful,
her china-blue eyes fastened on the CEO’s chiseled features.

The meeting went along well enough;
only a few points of disagreement and the usual grumbles from directors who
felt that a nine percent increase in the corporation’s net income wasn’t good
enough to suit them.

They
droned on all morning. We broke for lunch and adjourned to the next room, where
a sumptuous buffet table had been laid out. Sally the Sob Sister made a virtual
Mt. Everest on her plate and gobbled it all down fast enough to come back for more.
I couldn’t eat a thing, although I took a few leafs of salad and pretended to
nibble on them, standing in a corner by the windows that looked out on the canal
that runs through the heart of Amsterdam.

“I
say, Pierre, I want to ask you about something.”

I
turned to see one of the women directors, Mrs.
Haverstraw. She was British, an elegant lady with snow-white hair beautifully
coiffed and a long, horse-like face complete with huge projecting teeth. She
could barely keep her lips closed over them. She wore a light blue skirted
suit, touched off with massive sapphires at her wrists, throat, and earlobes.

“Mrs.
Haverstraw,” I said, in my best fawning manner. “And how is Mr. Haverstraw?”

“He’s
dead. Kicked off last month. Skydiving accident.”

“I’m
so sorry.”

“I’m
not. He always was a pompous twit. Rich as Croesus, though, I’m happy to say.”

“I’m
so glad.”

“Yes,
rather. I wanted to ask you, though, about this invitation to go to the Moon.”

I
felt the blood drain out of my face.