Regan's Planet

ONE

The view, from sixteen miles above sea level, was a fine one. It was a cloudless day, and North America lay spread out for the Factor Claude Regan like an unrolled map. Down there was the great gouge of Hudson Bay, and Canadian soil, white and brown and green, and along the curved plane lay the United States, to the south. Claude Regan looked out with pleasure, as though he were looking down on his own personal kingdom.

Strictly speaking, it was not true. Claude Regan did not own North America, though sometimes in recent months he had been tempted to think he did. He did not even own the luxurious private jet that was carrying him over the Pole from China to Denver at 2,800 miles an hour. The plane was the property of Global Factors, Inc., which was not yet quite the same thing as being the property of the Factor Claude Regan. And North America was the property of-well, not his, nor even the company’s.

Regan turned away from the port. “It’s a splendid view,” he remarked to the aide nearest him.

‘It certainly is, Factor Regan.“

‘You can see how the globe is curved,“ Regan went on. ”Just in case you had your doubts.“

‘I never doubted it, Factor Regan.“

‘That’s good. I’m glad to hear that,“ Regan said. The aide did not redden. They were impervious to needling, Regan thought. He opaqued his window-the glare was a little uncomfortable-and glanced again at the papers in his lap. It was the text of a financing agreement between the People’s Republic of China, on the one hand, and Global Factors, Inc., on the other, whereby a loan of 600,000,000 platinum-based dollars was to be advanced to the party of the first part, the said loan to bear interest at the rate of eight percent per annum, with sinking fund provisions commencing the first of July, 1994, and continuing at the rate of $30,000,000 per annum until Regan nodded. Everything was in order. Chairman Ch’ien had howled at the interest rate, and probably was still howling. Regan had listened patiently, had smiled, had quietly said, “Well, in that case, perhaps you had best turn elsewhere for the loan, Chairman Ch’ien…”

It was done. The People’s Republic of China had come, hat in hand, to Claude Regan’s company for a loan, and now the agreement was signed. Regan thumbed his eyes tiredly. An aide saw the gesture.

‘Can I get you a stimmo, Factor Regan?“

‘Get me a glass of water,“ Regan said. ”Straight.“

He leaned back against the upholstery and flicked the vibrator. His back muscles were cramped and tense. Never any time for decent exercise any more, Regan thought. Too damn busy holding the hands of Heads of State.

But wasn’t that what you wanted, he asked himself?

The glass of water arrived. Regan gulped it, glanced at the steno, and said, “Letter. To His Serene Highness, Sir Bawala Abukawa Ngdala, Prime Minister of the Federation of Nigeria, Lagos. Dear Bobo: It was terribly kind of you to invite me to the opening of the new hydroelectric project, and I wish I could have been there. Unfortunately, my presence was required in Peking at that time, and…”

Eyes closed, Regan droned out the rest of the letter. It was the sort of thing he usually delegated to an aide, but there was nothing he could do, up here in this jet, except work and sleep, and he preferred to work. When the letter was done, there was another, and then another. And then it was time to receive the afternoon report from the Denver office.

At thirty-five, Claude Regan was at the top of the world’s largest corporate entity, Global Factors, Inc. Both he and the company had come a long way in the past twenty years.

Regan had been a fifteen-year-old high school student in 1970 when Global Factors was organized, under its original name of Appalachian Acceptance Corporation-a small firm, headed by Regan’s uncle, the main business of which was financing automobile purchases. The Boom of 1973-74 had seen Appalachian Acceptance Corporation thrive and expand its operations; and the Panic of 1976, with its wave of foreclosures, had left the company owning half a dozen miscellaneous and scruffy companies in fields ranging from rocketing to real estate. Somehow old Bruce Regan had held the fledgling empire together through the hard times that followed. Today it dominated the international financial community and dealt with the nations of the world almost as a sovereign entity itself.

Bruce Regan was in retirement now-involuntary, to be sure. Young Claude had mounted a proxy fight against his uncle only the year before, in 1989. “Time for a change,” Claude had declared, and Bruce was pensioned off as Chairman of the Board, with Claude replacing him as chief executive officer.

An aide came stumbling up the aisle-one of the faceless men with whom Regan liked to surround himself.

‘Call for you, Factor Regan!“ the man gasped. ”Your private line!“ ”My wife?“

‘No, sir. It’s Washington calling!“ ”The Washington office?“ Regan asked. ”No, sir! Washington! The White House!“ ”Oh. All right.“ Regan scowled and jabbed the button in the arm of his chair. The switchboard girl in the cockpit flipped the call to Regan. Yellow and green streaks swirled and danced on the screen for a moment, and then, as the scrambler pattern cleared, the jowly face of the President of the United States appeared. ”Claude.“

‘Hello, Tom. How’s the country treating you?“ President Hammond laughed hollowly. ”Wonderful sense of humor! I think it’s marvelous that a man with your responsibilities can crack a joke!“

Regan managed a faint smile. He tried to keep the irritation from showing. The President of the United States was a foolish, pathetic figure, and not simply because he happened to be foolish, pathetic Tom Hammond. The job itself had lost its aura. There the man sat, at the nation’s capital, amid all the trappings of power-but only the trappings. “What’s the problem, Tom?” “I’d like to see you,” the President said. “You’re seeing me now.” “No. I mean at the White House.”

‘Don’t you trust your scrambler system?“ Regan asked.

President Hammond shrugged. “It’s not that. This-well, this ought to be handled in person, that’s all. Can you stop by for a while?”

Regan resisted the temptation to fob Hammond off with an appointment for the middle of the next month. Certain fictions had to be maintained, after all. This man was the President of the United States, and Claude Regan was just a whippersnapper who had wheeled and dealed himself into a brand new position of great power.

‘I can be there at seven,“ Regan said. ”Just let me tell the pilot.“

They met in the Monroe Room. Lincoln and his generals had discussed strategy there. McKinley had read the despatches from Cuba there. Roosevelt and Churchill had pored over war maps there. Kennedy had had his famous meeting with Castro there. And Thomas Hammond, forty-first President of the United States, now wrapped a clammy hand around that of the Factor Claude Regan.

The contrast was striking. President Hammond was a shambling bear of a man, vast and soft, six-feet-five and bulkier than Taft. Regan was small, compact, spare of build, almost fleshless. The President was balding and middle-aged; Regan had a thick mop of red hair and looked younger than his years. Hammond had been born during the Hoover Administration, which practically made him a contemporary of Garfleld or Grant in the eyes of Regan, a product of Eisenhower’s second presidency.

Hammond’s bland brown eyes met Regan’s blue, almost faded-looking ones. The President said, “I’ve got an assignment for you, Claude. I realize you’re a busy man, but I’ve had the whole cabinet kicking this thing around for a week, and we decided you were the only one for it.”

A muscle flickered in the Factor’s cheek. “Go on, Toni.”

Hammond sighed and turned away, hulking ponderously around the room as though he could not bring himself to go on. Finally he said, “You know about the World’s Fair, don’t you?”

‘The Columbian Exposition? Sure.“

‘It’s due to open in less than two years. July fourth, 1992. Claude, we’re in an unholy mess. The whole planning commission just resigned in a huff. We aren’t going to make it by opening day unless we get somebody dynamic and forceful to run the show. You, Claude.“

Regan stared. “Me? Run a world’s fair?”

‘It’s vital to the security of the Western world.“

‘Just a silly sideshow, and-“

‘No. It’s more than that.“ Hammond squared his vast shoulders and seemed to take on oratorical fervor. ”The whole hemisphere is on trial, Claude. This fair has to be a display of our vigor, our purpose, our national strength. We’ve got to stand up on our hind legs and show all these assorted yellow and black bastards that we’ve still got what it takes. We need to make the world tremble, Claude. We-“

‘Why don’t we just H-bomb Nigeria?“ Regan asked wearily. ”That’ll accomplish the same thing in a whole lot less time, and-“

‘You’re being facetious,“ the President said, in a depressed tone. He came forward, towering over the Factor. ”Claude, don’t play with this. I tell you it’s essential that we run this fair the right way, and that you run it. You’re the only man who can. You must do it.“

Regan looked at him stonily.

‘You’ll take it, won’t you?“ Hammond said. ”Do it for me, Claude. For all of us?“

‘You must think I’m crazy,“ Regan said. ”Well, you’re probably right.“

It was just what he needed: averaging only sixteen hours a day as head of Global Factors, he now had a full-time job as Chairman of the 1922 Fair as well. But some obligations are unavoidable. In his ticklish position as head of a quasi-sovereign entity within the United States, he had to make certain concessions. Hammond wanted him, and in all likelihood had already leaked the news of his appointment to the newsfax sheets. The publicity would not be good if he refused.

Regan thought about the job all the way home-home being a hilltop palace of redwood, glass and steel, looking down on the sprawling metropolis of Denver. The company jet took him westward out of the capital in an hour, and a limousine was waiting at the airport. Sirens shrilled ahead of him all the way home, and traffic obediently pulled off the road to let Factor Regan pass.

Nola was waiting for him, slim and sleek in a black sheath of spun silk. She greeted him coolly, with a chaste kiss on the cheek. She had been his wife nine years, long enough to lose her awe of him. They stood together on the terrace, moonlight highlighting her pale face, with its bladelike cheekbones. He had been gone four days.

‘Were you bored, darling?“ he asked.

‘Of course not,“ she said crisply. ”I played the Chaplin tapes, and I rode through the hills, and I sunbathed nude on the patio and took a shot at a reporter who came by in a helicopter. It was a very quiet time, Claude. I played the stock market, too. I sold Global Factors short, a thousand shares. Wasn’t that a coy thing to do?“

Regan spun round, angrily jabbed the autobar. A cold martini spurted out. “Did you really do that, Nola?”

‘Do you think I did?“

‘You’re capable of anything. Even breaking the law about insider transactions.“

‘I did it through the Swiss account,“ she said. ”No one will ever know. I lost two grand, Claude. The filthy stock went up. It always goes up. But I was bored, darling. I like to play the market when I’m bored. How was China? Did you see the Great Wall?“

‘I saw Ch’ien,“ Regan said. ”And nothing else. We closed the deal this morning.“

‘And the World’s Fair?“ Nola asked. ”I heard it on the newsfax five minutes before you came in. What kind of thing is that?“

‘They didn’t lose any time, did they?“ he muttered. ”Well, it’s true. I’m heading the Fair.“

‘I think that’s amusing.“

‘Do you?“ he snapped. He scowled at her. ”If it amuses you so much, you take charge of it.“

‘Oh, no, darling. It’s all yours!“

They ate, on the roof terrace-real steak, real French wine. Being a millionaire had its advantages. During the meal, Regan painfully made conversation with his wife, and somehow dealt with a constant stream of memoranda as well. Nola faced him across the table, glacially cool, radiantly lovely. Regan could feel the waves of hatred emanating from her. His steak took on a coppery taste. She ruined everything, puncturing his happiness with a glance, with a pucker of her cheeks. Bitch, he thought, and signed a voucher.

They had no children. They had taken the Sterility Pledge in ‘84, at the height of the fashion, and of course there was no undoing that. Regan had had no use for children on his way up, but now, at the summit, he needed an heir. Nola would not tolerate an adoption. If children came to live with them, her life might take on a purpose, and she would no longer have the luxury of tormenting herself and him with her boredom.

‘Tell me about this World’s Fair, darling,“ she said, turning the innocent sentence into a biting sarcasm by inflection alone.

He chose to ignore the inflection. “It’s the five-hundredth anniversary of Columbus’ discovery of the New World,” he explained. “The United States wants to throw a big fling to celebrate. A kind of muscle-flexing to impress the Asian-African nations. Hammond wants me to run it. That’s all.” “Why you? Don’t you have enough to do?” “They had a committee,” Regan said. “The whole thing fell apart. Hammond seems to think I can work miracles.” “Can’t you?”

‘Not all the time. Will you excuse me?“ He left the table, not having touched dessert or the cognac that accompanied it. The liftshaft took him down to his den, a hundred feet deep in bedrock. It was the sanctum sanctorum, and nothing, not even the messenger bearing word of Judgment Day, could reach him here. He slipped off his tunic and lowered himself into a vibrobath.

His mood of tension and depression slipped away as the gentle eddying motion rocked him into relaxation. He was a man with a tiger by the tail, and that can get wearing at times. The highest rung of global finance is a slippery one. There he was, at the top, nowhere higher to go. In a way, the new assignment would be an interesting challenge, he thought. Whipsawing prime ministers was growing dull.

And-now that he had thought about it-he could see the importance of the Fair. The United States was past its peak as a nation, sliding gracefully down into old age. Nigeria, Brazil, China-those were the countries to reckon with today. Russia and America, two sleepy titans, drained of vitality by long years of cold war, were comical staggering figures to the sharpshooters of the new industrial powers.

The 1992 Fair might help to change all that. Regan knew his Image Dynamics. The shadow was the substance; content was form; power was the display of intent. Put on a good show and hold back the tide-for a while.

It was midnight Denver time when he went to his bedroom. He had been through so many time zones today that he had little idea how long he had been awake, but he was tired. Tomorrow there were the reins of Global Factors to pick up. And then, he thought, he would have to see about getting this World’s Fair on the move.

Nola had not waited for him. He glanced at the burnished redwood paneling of the door separating their bedrooms, and saw that it was locked. He had expected it. Shrugging, he undressed quickly, prepared for bed. Glancing out, he saw a streak of light crossing the sky at a sharp angle-the Mars rocket, climbing fast. Give my best to the Martians, Regan thought.

He switched off the light, and moments later switched himself off with the same ease. His sleep was deep and dreamless almost until morning-when, suddenly, the gaudy midways of the 1992 World’s Fair came to blazing life in his awakening brain.