Read Empire Builders Online

Authors: Ben Bova

Tags: #Science Fiction, #Fantasy

Empire Builders (4 page)

Bazain was small, light of frame, almost delicate. His face, though, was fleshy with the beginnings of jowls. His thinning hair was slicked back as if he were about to go out on a date. He wore a custom-tailored silk business suit. As far as Alvarez could tell, he was unarmed.
Sergio Alvarez, regional director of the GEC’s reforestation program, looked every inch the grandee from Madrid. Thin aristocratic nose, sculpted cheekbones, hair as silver as a newly minted coin. Yet he wore a faded windbreaker and chinos that had lost their crease years ago.
“Listen to reason,” Bazain said, almost pleading. “The very fact that I’m on this plane with you proves that we have no intention of doing harm.”
“Not yet.”
“Not at all—if you simply divert the funds as you’ve been asked to do.”
Alvarez felt his blood seething. “That money is for the reforesting of this jungle! How dare you and your … your thugs—how dare you demand extortion money from this program?”
Bazain hunched forward in the bucket seat, rubbing his palms on the knees of his expensive trousers. “It’s not, me. I only work for them.”
“The Mafia.” Alvarez spat the word.
“That’s an old-time phrase. Nobody uses that term anymore.”
“Whoever they are, they are crooks.”
“They are businessmen.”
“Who want to steal money that is needed to bring this rain forest back to health!”
Bazain sighed deeply. Then, with obviously strained patience, he explained once again, “What does it matter if we get a share of the program’s money? The money comes from the Global Economic Council, doesn’t it? And where do they get it? From taxes. They take it from all the national governments in the world, and from the big multinational corporations.”
“It doesn’t matter where the funding comes from.”
“Certainly it matters! They collect billions, hundreds of billions. Every year! So you siphon some of the money they give you to us. All you have to do is go back and tell them that you need more funding.

Tell them that the program is more expensive than you had thought it would be. That’s what everybody else does.”

“I will not?’ Alvarez snapped. “Every centavo given to this program will be spent on reforesting the jungle.”

Bazain shook his head sadly.

“Don’t you understand?” said Alvarez. “The world is being choked to death by the greenhouse effect. The best way to reverse the greenhouse is to plant trees. Billions of trees! Replace what has been cut down and then go on to plant still more. Others are seeding the oceans to grow more algae; they take up carbon dioxide and . . .”

“Spare me!” Bazain raised his hands.

“You don’t want to understand, is that it? You don’t want to know.”

“You must understand something,” said Bazain, his voice taking on a hard edge. “Unless we get our share of your money, you will be killed. That is the message I was told to give you. My superiors have been very patient, but their patience is finished. You pay or you die. This plane will be blown out of the

air. Your young scientist up there will be killed. Maybe your wife and children, too. They are capable of it.”

Alvarez said nothing. He was panting, his nostrils flaring like a thoroughbred racehorse’s.

“And if such violence happens,” Bazain went on smoothly, “what will come of your precious program then? Even if the GEC presses on with it, it will cost much more, won’t it? Dealing with us is far cheaper. And safer.”

Alvarez had no answer.

FIVE
DAN RANDOLPH STOOD at the long, sweeping glassteel observation window that curved across the far end ofAlphonsusCity ’s main dome. Away from the GEC tribunal and the need to be dressed respectably, he wore his usual sky blue coveralls, faded from long use, wrinkled and comfortable. No name patch on its breast; merely the sturdy simple logo of Astro Manufacturing. He had no need to be recognized.
“The people who know who I am don’t need to be reminded,” he often said. “The ones who don’t, don’t need to know.”
The great ringed plain of Alphonsus was so wide that Dan could not see its far side from the observation port where he stood. The Moon’s abrupt horizon cut across the tired old ringwall mountains like the brink of eternity, nothing but utterly black sky and solemn unblinking stars hanging beyond its edge.
The floor of the plain was dotted with lunar factories, open to vacuum of course, tended by sterile robots under remote control by sweaty, breathing humans sitting safely underground in their offices inside Alphonsus City . Each factory was protected from the occasional meteoroid by a gracefully curved roof of light honeycomb metal. Most of the roofs bore the flying-heron symbol of Yamagata Industries. A few were marked with the more prosaic STRO logo of Dan’s company.
On the other side of the ringwall, Dan’s company ran a fleet of automated vehicles patiently plying the Mare Nubium, scooping up the top layers of the lunar regolith the way a herd of cows grazes a field. There was oxygen in the powdery upper layers of the lunar soil, and aluminum, titanium, plenty of silicon and even some iron. But the most precious element in the regolith was an isotope of helium—helium-three—born in the Sun and carried across interplanetary space on the solar wind to be imbedded in the porous regolith over long eons.
Helium-three made fusion power practical on Earth. Lunar fuel was beginning to light the overcrowded cities of Earth, cleanly, cheaply, with minuscule pollution and radioactive waste.
It was making Dan Randolph a new fortune.
If he had thought about it, he would have grinned at the cosmic justice of it. Helium-three was created in the Sun by the fusion processes that made Earth’s daystar shine. Some of it was wafted off into space; a scant fraction of that found its way to the Moon. Humans mined the stuff and shipped it to their home world, where it was used to power fusion generators: man-made artificial suns that generated the electrical power to run an overpopulated world. It was elegantly beautiful. And profitable.
But Dan was thinking of other things as he waited for the shuttle to land. In the hip pocket of his
coveralls was a message from Jane Scanwell inviting him to meet her at Tetiaroa. No reason given. Just a one-line note, as impersonal as a bill of lading:

IMPERATIVE WE MEET AT TETIAROA AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. JANE.

Imperative, Dan repeated to himself. What could be so imperative? Why Tetiaroa, way out in the middle of the Pacific? Why won’t she answer my calls to her? What’s happening down there that she has to see me as soon as possible?
A flicker of light caught his eye.
Craning his neck, Dan could just make out the angular ungainly shape of the shuttle falling like a rock in slow motion. Another puff of its retros, the cold gas glittering briefly in the sunlight, and the
spraddle-legged vehicle slowed. It seemed to rock slightly, then squirted several brief jets of retro fire as it steadied and settled down softly on the landing pad, a full kilometer out on the floor of the plain from the edge of the dome where Dan was standing.
Half an hour later, Zach Freiberg lay sprawled across the couch in Dan’s office, a morose expression on his boyish face. In the ten years Dan had known Freiberg , it still surprised him to realize how tall the scientist really was. Zach gave the impression of being a small, soft pooh-bear of a guy. But when they stood face-to-face, he was several inches taller than Dan.
“It’s real, boss,” he was saying mournfully, his head resting on one arm of the couch, his booted feet on the other. “I’ve had the best people in the business check out the numbers.”
Dan, seated tensely behind his desk, said, “Now let me get this straight. You’re saying that the greenhouse effect is going to hit suddenly, within ten years. Right?”
Freiberg stared up at the paneled ceiling. “It’s already hitting, Dan. You know that. Droughts in the middle latitudes; floods in the tropics. Killer storms getting worse every year.”
“Yeah, but you were saying that the ice caps-“ “Will melt suddenly, right. Not gradually. Ten years from now the Antarctic and Greenland caps will start to melt down. Ten years after that, sea levels all around the world will be five-ten meters higher than they are now.”
“Fifteen to thirty feet?” Dan’s voice sounded hollow, even to himself. Freiberg nodded.
“What can we do about it?” “Not a helluva lot,”Freiberg said. “There must be something!”
Freiberg pulled himself up to a sitting position and faced Dan. He had been a planetary geochemist ten years earlier, when Dan had hired him. Since then he had been forced to dabble in so many disciplines that now Dan thought of him as Astro’s resident genius: a man who understood what made planets work.
“Dan,” he said slowly, “it’s taken a couple of hundred years for the greenhouse effect to make itself felt.
It’s an accelerating phenomenon. Every year it goes faster. It builds and builds. And then it hits a discontinuity. In ten years it’ll reach the point where the ice caps start to go.”
“But I thought the greenhouse was mostly due to industrial pollution: carbon dioxide and other crap that we pour into the atmosphere.”
Freiberg nodded.
“Then, if we stop polluting the atmosphere,” Dan said, “won’t the greenhouse effect stop, too?”
The nod turned into a weary shake of his head. “Nice try, boss. But there are two problems with it: One, the greenhouse effect is already here. Global temperatures are already high enough to cause disastrous changes in climate, worldwide.”
“Yeah, I know,” said Dan impatiently. “But if we stop” Pulling himself up to a sitting position,Freiberg said, “That’s the second problem.” His round-cheeked face went tense, grim. “How the fuck are you going to stop twelve billion people from shitting up the atmosphere? In ten years or less.”
Dan leaned back in his chair, shocked at the younger man’s sudden fury.
“I’ve done my homework, boss,”Freiberg said. “I’ve gone through the numbers. You know what we’re up against? We’d have to cut down on the cee-oh-two we put into the atmosphere by ninety percent.
Ninety percent! For starters?’
“Well,” Dan said weakly, “I didn’t say it would be easy.”
Freiberg’s anger dissipated. He went back to being melancholy. “It can’t be done, Dan. There’s nothing that you or I or anybody can do. Mother Nature’s going to solve the problem for us—by killing several billion people.”
But Dan said, “Goddammit to hell and back, I’m not going to sit here and watch the world drown! There must be something we can do!”
“Like what?”
“Shut down all the goddamned factories. Move ‘em into orbit.
Stop burning fossil fuels. Convert every motor on the planet to electricity. Use fusion and solar power. We’ve got the technology, for god’s sake!”
“How’re you going to get the whole flipping world to change over in ten years?” “The Global Economic Council,” Dan said. Then he snorted with disdain.
“The GEC? Don’t make me laugh.”
“They’re the only organization in the whole world that has anywhere near the clout to get the job done. You’ve got to show findings to them.”
“I already have.”
“Huh? What’d they say?”
“They laughed in my face,”Freiberg said. “What?”
“I said they laughed at me. Their scientists told me I’m crazy.” Dan felt the breath rush out of him. “Son of a bitch,” he said slowly.
Freiberg inhaled. “Maybe they’re right. Maybe I am crazy.” Dan shook his head. “If I have to choose between them and you, I’d say they’re the ones who’ve nuts.”
“I did have all this checked out by the best people I know,”Freiberg said.
Dan rapped nervously on his desktop with his knuckles. “No. If the GEC refuses to listen to you, it’s for some reason.”
“They can’t want half the world to drown!” Dan said nothing; he was thinking furiously. “Can they?”Freiberg asked plaintively.
“We’ll find out,” said Dan. Leaning across his desk, he said to his computerized communicator, “Get me on the next flight to Sydney . Book it under the name of Maxwell E. Rutherford.”
“Maxwell E. Rutherford?”Freiberg asked.
Dan grinned at him. “Never let the authorities know what you’re doing, if you can avoid it. I want to see what’s going on down there before I meet with Jane or anybody else.”
“Does the ‘E’ stand for Einstein, maybe?” “Could be.”
Freiberg almost smiled. There’s nothing that Dan or anyone else on Earth can do, he realized. But still he felt an illogical glimmer of hope that Dan was gearing up for battle.
SIX
DAN WAS ABOUT to leave his office on the way to the launch facility when his desk phone buzzed. The screen spelled out: URGENT.
Grumbling slightly, he pulled his personal phone from the breast pocket of his coveralls and flipped it open. As he dashed through his outer office, past his lone human secretary and out to the electric cart waiting to whisk him through the tunnel out to the launch site, he told the phone to pick up Yamagata ’s call.
Nobuhiko Yamagata’s angular, high-cheeked face appeared in the phone’s tiny screen. He looked solemn, very unlike his usual cheerful smiling self.
“Nobo, what’s wrong?” Dan asked as he clambered aboard the little cart. His single travel bag was already sitting next to the driver, a tong-legged mestizo with raven-black hair, beautiful enough to be a
video starlet back on Earth. She had been raised on the Moon because her parents had suffered terribly from allergies in the smog and grime of their native Caracas .
“My father,” said Nobuhiko gravely. “He is dying.” “What! Sai?”
With a barely perceptible nod, Nobo said, “The cancer has returned. It is spreading through his body. There is no longer any hope.’
“Oh for god’s sake,” Dan muttered. All the medical advances that they’ve made, he said to himself, and still cancer cuts us down. It’s been getting worse, seems like. More people die of it every year.
He asked aloud, “How long..?”
“My father has decided to end it himself. He “Nobuhiko faltered, swallowed, then went on, “He asks that you assist him.” “Me?”
Nobo nodded, eyes closed.
Saito Yamagata had been Dan’s boss, back in those early days on the Moon. Dan had battled for respect from the Japanese, and Sai had rewarded his toughness and drive by protecting him from the chauvinists and sadists who looked on an American as fair game for bullying—and worse. They had become friends, and together built the first of the giant solar power satellites that eventually made Japan independent of Middle Eastern oil. When Dan had gone into business for himself, Sai had backed him with investment capital. Eventually they became more than friends: associates, equals, even business partners on more than one venture.
Dan had known Nobo from the day of his birth in the orbital infirmary attached to their construction center. Nobo with his father’s power behind him—had rescued Dan from certain death at the hands of Vasily Malik, ten years earlier. Saito’s political connections and economic strength had helped Dan to break the Russian stranglehold on space industries.
“How soon?” Dan asked the tiny image on the hand-held phone. “Tomorrow, just after sunset,” Nobo replied.
“Where?”
“At the family home in Kyoto .” “I’ll be there,” Dan said.
There was no need to change his flight to Sydney . Maxwell E. Rutherford would ride the high-boost rocket from Alphonsus to the transfer station in low Earth orbit. There Rutherford would clear customs and immigration, and hop aboard the shuttle to Sydney . Once in Australia he would take a commercial hypersonic transport to Tokyo , where a security team from Yamagata Industries would take him to Saito’s estate.
And then Dan Randolph would help his old friend to die.
Hell, thought Dan. Sai’s not that much older than I am. He’s too young to die.
Jane Scanwell hosted a party that evening. Although her home was still in Texas , as the head of the American delegation to the Global Economic Council she spent so much time in Paris that she had leased an apartment in the embassy district, out past l’Etoile and the Arc de Triomphe, within walking distance of the Bois de Boulogne for a long-stridingTexas woman.
This evening, though, she felt a far distance from Texas . Almost all her life had been spent in politics, and she knew that more could be accomplished at a social gathering than in a committee meeting. But she felt weary of it all: the posturing, the jockeying for position, the constant competition to get your point across, your program adopted, your pork barrel filled.
What have we accomplished? she asked herself as she looked across the roomful of guests. The women wore knee-length frocks decked with jewelry, the men Western business suits no matter what their native tradition. They stood and chatted and laughed, sipped drinks and nibbled canapes.
But what have we accomplished? Jane asked silently once again. I’ve been to a thousand parties such as this, ten thousand. I’ve spent my life in politics. So has almost everyone here. Is the world any better off? Are the people happier, healthier, richer?
She shook her head slightly. There are certainly more people than ever before. Twelve billion of them. Maybe we’ve stabilized population growth. That would be a major accomplishment. Stabilized it at a level where half the world is constantly hungry and the other half resists helping them with every ounce of their strength. At least we’ve stopped the wars. I suppose that’s something to be proud of. We have famines and droughts and floods and millions killed by storms each year—but at least we’re not killing each other anymore.
“You seem troubled.”
Startled out of her reverie, Jane saw that it was Rafaelo Gaetano who had spoken to her. Young, tall and slim as a cypress tree, darkly handsome, Gaetano was the chief of the Italian delegation to the GEC. The youngest member of the GEC board. And the most ambitious. He was rumored to be strongly linked to the international crime syndicate, especially since his first official act upon joining the GEC board had been to propose that the organization move its headquarters from Paris to Palermo , in Sicily . Since that day, almost everyone in the GEC sniggered that Gaetano was “the Mafia representative.”
Whether it was true or not, whether he heard the whispers or not, Gaetano remained a smiling, hardworking, thoroughly charming member of the GEC board.
“A lady as lovely as you, my dear Jane, should never have to frown,” he said, handing her a tulip glass of bubbling champagne. His voice was a deep baritone, melodious. “Tell me what dragon is annoying you and I will go forth and slay it.”
Despite her cares, Jane Scanwell smiled back at him. “I wish it were that simple, Rafe. I really do.”
Gaetano gently took her arm and led her toward the ceiling-high windows of her own living room. “Look,” he said softly. Yet his voice penetrated the background babble of the crowd. “All of Paris is out there. You should be enjoying yourself. This is the city of romance, you know.”
She arched a brow slightly. “I’m getting a bit too old for romance, Rafe.”
“Nonsense! You are in the prime of your life.” “I wish that were so.”
“Let me prove it to you,” he said, running a finger across his pencil-thin moustache.
She looked at him. Is he serious? she asked herself. He gazed back at her, smiling a smile that might have been amorous, or just friendly. Or perhaps it was the self-confident smile of a healthy young male with a sensitivity for lonely older women.
“There are plenty of younger women here,” Jane said at last. “Yes, that is true,” he admitted, somewhat ruefully. Then his grin returned. “But it took you several moments to arrive at that conclusion. I consider that a good sign.”
Then he moved away, without another word. Jane stared after him. What’s he after? she heard a voice in her mind ask.
And she replied to herself silently, Jane Scanwell, you’ve been in politics too damned long if you’re automatically suspicious of some good-looking young Italian making a pass at you!
Trying to force Gaetano’s suggestion to the back of her mind, Jane busied herself attending to her guests. Malik had showed up without his wife, as usual. And, as usual, he was the center of a cluster of admiring women of all ages. Jane made polite conversation, saw that the robots weaving through the crowd with trays of drinks were functioning properly, and tried to avoid whichever part of the big, high-ceilinged room Gaetano happened to be in. Eventually, inevitably, she slipped out of the crowded
living room and strode swiftly down the hall to her cubbyhole of an office. Closing the door firmly behind her, she leaned across her desk and swiveled the phone screen around. She touched a couple of keys and her messages scrolled silently across the screen.
There! Dan’s reply to her invitation:
ON MY WAY. YOU-KNOW-WHO.
Jane crossed her arms over her chest and frowned at the screen. Damn you, Dan Randolph. Just like him. “On my way.” Doesn’t say when he’ll arrive. Doesn’t even say where he’s going, although it’s bound to be Tetiaroa. The big oaf wouldn’t even sign his name. What’s he afraid of?
But then she realized that Dan Randolph had much to be afraid of. She was luring him into a trap, not a romantic rendezvous. She was going to defeat him, crush him, once and for all.
She fought back the tears that were welling in her eyes.
An earthquake shook the Tokyo airport just as Dan was being greeted by the head of the Yamagata security team, a bone-thin man of about fifty, dressed in a severe suit of dead black, who bowed to him and asked:
“Mr. Rutherford-san?”
Dan started to return the bow when the floor beneath him rippled. The crowd streaming past, coming off the plane from Sydney , seemed to freeze and draw in its breath as if preparing to scream. A deep rumble filled the air, like the drawn-out thunder of a dragon lurking beneath the ground. The long decorative streamers hanging from the ceiling high overhead swayed back and forth. Beyond the heads of the people facing him, Dan could see through the big windows on the other side of the terminal that the planes out there seemed to bob up and down, like ships on a choppy sea. Then it was over. The rumble died away. Before anyone could scream. Before Dan had fully registered that an earthquake was happening. It was over. The floor became solid again. The planes outside were still, as if they had never moved at all. The streamers fluttered only slightly, as if a passing breeze had briefly disturbed them. The crowd flowed back into motion, babbling and chattering. “Mr. Rutherford-san,” the security man repeated, his immobile face showing neither anxiety nor relief, “your transportation is waiting for you.”
“Dorno arigato,” Dan replied. He had not spoken Japanese in years, but he had spent his time on the spacecraft and hypersonic transport from Sydney listening to newscasts from Tokyo to revive his ear for the language.
“You have luggage, sir?” the man asked, switching to Japanese. “Only this.” Dan hefted his soft-sided travel bag. Originally dead black, it looked gray and threadbare from much use.
“This way, please.” The security man did not offer to take Dan’s bag. He’s not a porter and he wants to have both his hands free at all times, Dan told himself.
Glad that he had kept up his daily regimen of exercises while on the Moon, Dan followed after the security man on legs that felt only slightly rubbery in the heavy gravity of Earth. He looked around for the rest of the team. The terminal was crowded, abuzz with hundreds of conversations in a score of different languages. People scurrying everywhere: mothers dragging crying children, red-faced businessmen rushing to their heart attacks, tourists looking sweaty and lost. Half a dozen younger men and women hurrying along the terminal corridor looked as if they might be security types, but it was impossible to single them out from the rest of the crowd. So far so good, Dan told himself. Nobody but Sai’s people knows I’m in Japan . I’ll have my Caracas office contact Jane and tell her I’ll be a day or two late for Tetiaroa. Give them a bit of time to check out the island, too.
Abruptly the security man opened an unmarked door along the corridor and brusquely gestured Dan to step through. The door snapped shut behind him and four husky young men in coral pink coveralls bearing the flying-heron symbol of Yamagata Industries snapped to spine-popping attention.
Escorted by this new team, Dan followed the black-suited man through another door to the concrete apron outside the terminal. A palpable wall of noise slammed his ears. An executive-style helicopter stood waiting some twenty meters away, its turbine engine whining, its twin rotors already spinning blurrily. Jet airliners screamed and thundered, making the very air quiver as they swooped in for landings or roared up in takeoffs every few seconds. Planes taxied along the concrete guideways, giant, busy, purposeful aluminum ants directed by the traffic controllers at the hub of this vast nest of humans and machines.
The noise actually made Dan tremble. I’ve been away from all this crap too long, he thought as he clambered up the metal stairs of the copter. It’s so peaceful on the Moon, I’d forgotten how “. raucous things are down here.
He turned as he stepped through the hatch and shouted, “Thank you for your help,” to the security man. The man bowed and said something in return, but it was lost in the uproar of the airport. At least the interior of the chopper was quiet, once the hatch was closed. Good acoustical insulation muffled the helicopter’s engines to a soft purr. Dan sank gratefully into a thickly padded seat and automatically buckled his safety belt as the copter lifted quickly into the busy afternoon air.
He was alone inside the luxuriously appointed passenger compartment.
The two pilots sat up front, separated by a thick slab of clear plastic. Like a New York taxicab, Dan said to himself. But cabs all over the world now isolated their passengers from their drivers. Violence and crime were no longer confined to one city alone. Even in London the streets were no longer safe after dark.
He took a deep breath, then remembered that he was rushing to the side of his dearest and most trusted friend in order to help him commit suicide.
Dan shook his head angrily. “The hell I will,” he muttered.

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