The Sam Gunn Omnibus (90 page)

We
ran. Of the four of us I was the slowest. Josella sprinted ahead on her long
legs, with Greg not far behind. Sam stayed back with me, puffing almost as
badly as I was.

“We’re
both out of shape,” he panted.

“We’re
both too old for this kind of thing,” I said.

He
looked surprised, as if the idea of getting old had never occurred to him.

“What
did you do back there?” I asked, as we staggered down the corridor.

“Miniaturized
high-intensity flash lamp,” Sam said, puffing. “For priming mini-lasers.”

“You
just happened ...” I was gasping.”... to have one ... on you?”

“Been
carrying a few,” he wheezed, “ever since the fanatics started making threats.”

“Good
thinking.”

We
found a shaft and climbed up into the sweet clean air of a pine forest. It was
cold; there was a dusting of snow on the ground. Our feet got thoroughly soaked
and we were shivering as Sam pushed us through the woods.

“Clearing,”
he kept telling us. “We gotta get to a clearing.”

We
found a clearing at last, and the thin sunshine filtering through the gray
clouds felt good after the chill shadows of the forest. Sam made us close our
eyes again and he set off another of his flash bulbs.

“Surveillance
satellites oughtta see that,” he said. “Now it’s just a matter of time to see
who gets us first, the Peacekeepers or the dog-pig guys.”

It
was the Peacekeepers, thank goodness. Two of their helicopters came clattering
and whooshing down on that little clearing while a pair of

jump-jets
flew cover high overhead. I was never so happy to see that big blue and white
symbol in my life.

The Peacekeepers had mounted a full
search-and-rescue operation. Their helicopter was spacious, comfortable, and
even soundproofed a little. They thought of everything. While Sam filled in one
of their off
i
cers on the layout of the
Rumanian shelter complex, two enlisted personnel brought us steaming hot coffee
and sandwiches. It made me realize that we hadn’t eaten or slept in close to
twenty-four hours.

I
was starting to
drowse when I heard Sam ask, over the muted roar of the ‘coptor’s turbines, “Who
were those guys?”

The Peacekeeper officer, in her
sky-blue uniform, shook her head. “Neither the Daughters of the Mother nor the
Warriors of God are listed in our computer files.”

“Terrorists,” Greg Molina said. “Religious
fanatics.”

“Amateurs,” said Josella Ecks, with
a disdainful curl of her lip.

That startled me. The way she said
it. But the need for sleep was overpowering my critical faculties. I cranked my
seat back and closed my eyes. The last thing I saw was Sam holding Josella’s
hand and staring longingly into her deep, dark, beautifully lashed eyes.

I
wanted to murder
her but I was too tired.

SAM WENT TO
Selene the next day and, sure
enough, Josella went with him. Greg Molina returned to Quito, dropping in to my
office just before he left.

“Will the trial be held in The
Hague or at Selene?” he asked.

“Wherever,” I groused, seething at
the thought of Sam and Josella together a quarter-million miles away.

“I assume there will be a trial,
since there was no agreement at the pretrial hearing,” he said.

Grimly, I answered, “It certainly
looks that way.”

Looking slightly worried, “If it’s
on the Moon, will I have to go there? Or can I participate electronically?”

“It would be better if you were
there in person.”

“I’ve never been in space,” he
admitted.

“There’s nothing to it,” I said. “It’s
like flying in an airplane.”

“But the lack of gravity...”

“You’ll get used to it in a day or
so. You’ll enjoy it,” I assured him.

He looked unconvinced.

It took me a whole day of fussing
and fuming before I bit the bullet and rocketed to the Moon after Sam. And
Josella. Pride is one thing, but I just couldn’t stand the thought of Sam
chasing that willowy young thing—and catching her. Josella Ecks might think she
was smart and cool enough to avoid Sam’s clutches, but she didn’t know our
sawed-off Lothario as well as I did.

And it would be just like Sam to
try to get the other side’s lawyer to fall for him. Even if he wasn’t bonkers
about Josella, he’d want to sabotage her ability to represent his adversary in
court.

So I told myself I was doing my job
as a judge of the International Court of Justice as I flew to Selene.

I
hadn’t been to
the Moon in nearly five years, and I was impressed with how much bigger and more
luxurious the underground city had grown. Selene’s main plaza had been mostly
empty the last time I’d seen it, an immense domed structure of bare lunar
concrete rumbling with the echoes of bulldozers and construction crews. Now the
plaza—big enough to hold half a dozen football fields—was filled with green
trees and flowering shrubbery. On one side stood the gracefully curved
acoustical shell of an open-air theater. Small shops and restaurants were
spotted along the pleasant winding walk that led through the plaza, all of them
decked out with Christmas ornaments. The trees along the walk twinkled with
lights.

There were hundreds of people
strolling about, tourists walking awkwardly, carefully, in their weighted boots
to keep them from stumbling in the one-sixth gravity. A handful of fliers
soared high up near the curving dome, using colorful rented plastic wings and
their own muscle power to fly like birds. For years Sam had said that tourism
would become a major industry in space and at last his prediction was coming
true. Christmas on the Moon: the ultimate holiday trip.

The lobby of the Selene Hotel was marvelous,
floored with basalt from Mare Nubium polished to a mirror finish. The living
quarters were deeper underground than the lobby level, of course. There were no
stairs, though
;
too easy for newcomers
unaccustomed to the low gravity to trip and fall. I walked down a wide rampway,
admiring the sheets of water cascading noiselessly down tilted panes of lunar
glass on either side of the central rampway into spacious fish ponds at the
bottom level. Freely flowing water was still a rare sight on the Moon, even
though aquaculture provided more of the protein for lunar meals than
agriculture did.

Soft music wafted through hidden
speakers, and tourists tossed chunks of bread to the fish in the pools, not
realizing that sooner or later the fish would be feeding them. I saw that
others had thrown coins into the water and laughed to myself, picturing Sam
wading in there every night to collect the loose change.

I
hadn’t told Sam I
was coming, but he must have found out when I booked a suite at the hotel.
There were real flowers and Swiss chocolates waiting for me when I checked in.
I admired the flowers and gave the chocolates to the concierge to distribute to
the hotel’s staff. Let them have the calories.

Even before I unpacked my meager
travel bag I put in a call to Sam’s office. Surprisingly, he answered it
himself.

“Hi, there!” Sam said brightly, his
larger-than-life face grinning at me from the electronic window
t
hat covered one whole wall of my sitting
room. “What brings you to Selene?”

I
smiled for him. “I
got lonesome, Sam.”

“Really?”

“And I thought that I’d better make
certain you’re not suborning an officer of the court.”

“Oh, you mean Josella?”

“Don’t put on your innocent face
for me, Sam Gunn,” I said. “You know damned well I mean Josella.”

His expression went serious. “You
don’t have to worry about her. She’s got more defenses than a porcupine. Her
arms are a lot longer than mine, I found out.”

He actually looked sad. I felt
sorry for him, but I didn’t want him to know it. Not yet. Sam had a way of
using your emotions to get what he wanted.

So I said, “I presume you’re free
for dinner.”

He sighed. “Dinner, lunch,
breakfast, you call it.”

“Dinner. Seven o’clock in the hotel’s
restaurant.” All the lunar facilities kept Greenwich Mean Time, which was only
an hour off from The Hague.

I
had expected Sam
to be downcast. I’d seen him that way before, moping like a teenaged Romeo when
the object of his desire wouldn’t go along with him. Usually his pining and
sighing only lasted until he found a new object of desire; I think twenty-four
hours was the longest he’d ever gone in the past. Like a minor viral infection.

But when I got to the restaurant
Sam was practically bouncing with excitement. As the maitre d
’
led me to the table, Sam jumped to his feet
so hard that he rose clear above the table and soared over it, landing on his

toes
right in front of me like a star ballet dancer. People stared from their
tables.

Gracefully,
Sam took my hand and bent his lips to it. His lips were curved into a
tremendously self-satisf
i
ed smile.

Alarm
bells went off in my head. Either he’s finally scored with Josella or he’s
found a new love. I knew he couldn’t possibly be this happy just to see me
again.

Sam
shooed the maitre d’ away and helped me into my chair. Then he chugged around
the table and sat down, folded his hands and rested his chin on them, and
grinned at me as if he was a cat who’d just cornered the canary market.

I
saw that there was a chilled bottle of French
champagne in a silver bucket next to the table. A waiter immediately brought a
dish of caviar and placed it in the center of the table.

“What’s
going on?” I asked.

Sam
cocked an eyebrow at me. “Going on? What do you mean?”

“The
champagne and caviar. The grin on your face.”

“Couldn’t
that be just because I’m so happy to see you?”

“No
it couldn’t,” I said. “Come on, Sam, we’ve known each other too long for this
kind of runaround.”

He
laughed softly and leaned closer toward me. “He’s coming here.”

“Who’s
coming here?”

“Il
Papa
himself,” Sam
whispered.

“The
Pope?” My voice squeaked like a surprised mouse.

His
head bobbing up and down, Sam said, “William I. The bishop of Rome. Vicar of
Christ. Successor to the prince of the Apostles. Supreme pontiff of the
universal church. Patriarch of the west, primate of Italy, archbishop and metropolitan
of the Roman province, sovereign of the state of Vatican City, servant of the
servants of God.” He took a breath. “That one.”

“The
Pope is coming here? To the Moon? To Selene?”

“Just
got the word from Cardinal Hagerty himself. Pope Bill is coming here to deal
with me personally.”

I
felt as if I was in free fall, everything inside me
sinking. “Oh my God,” I said.

“Nope,”
said Sam. “Just His representative.”

IT WAS SUPPOSED
to be very hush-hush. No news
reporters. No leaks. The Pope came incognito, slipping out of Rome in plain
clothes and riding to the Moon in a private rocket furnished by Rockledge
Industries and paid for by Frank Banners insurance consortium.

For once in his life Sam kept a
secret that wasn’t his own. He bubbled and jittered through the two days it
took for the Pope to arrive at Selene. Instead of putting him up in the hotel,
where he might be recognized, Sam ensconced Pope William, Cardinal Hagerty and
their retinue of guards and servants—all male—in a new wing of Selene’s living
quarters that hadn’t been opened yet for occupancy.

Their quarters were a little rough,
a little unfinished. Walls nothing but bare stone. Some of the electrical
fixtures hadn’t been installed yet. But there was comfortable furniture and
plenty of room for them.

Suddenly I was a World Court judge
in charge of a pretrial hearing again. I set up the meeting in the Pope’s
suite, after a half-day of phone discussions with Sam and Cardinal Hagerty.
Greg Molina reluctantly came up from Quito; Sam provided him with a special
high-energy boost so he could get to us within twenty-four hours.