The Rock Rats

CHAPTER 55

The conference ended at last. As the delegates got up from the table and made their way to the door, Humphries remained seated, hands clasped on the tabletop, deep in thought.

“Ain’t you goin’ home?” Pancho asked as she came around the table. “In a while,” Humphries said. “Not right this moment.” Stavenger was going through the doorway with Dieterling and his two nephews. Big George and Dr. Cardenas were already gone; George had been the first out the door, like a schoolboy racing away from the classroom once the bell has rung.

“I don’t think Mandy’ll be comin’ back here,” Pancho said. Humphries made himself smile up at her. “We’ll see.”

“Suit yourself,” Pancho said.

Humphries watched her saunter out the door, leaving him alone in the conference room. So we’ll have peace in the Belt, he said to himself. And the rock rats will enforce it. Sure they will.

He got to his feet and went to the slim little podium that had been wheeled into a corner of the room. The audio-visual controls on its surface were simple enough. With a touch of his finger, Humphries lit up the wallscreen at the other end of the conference room. It showed Selene’s logo: the androgynous outline of a human being against the full Moon. Scrolling idly through the computer’s stored images, he stopped when a map of the Belt came up: the wild tangle of orbits looked like a long-exposure view of a mad raceway.

So we won’t bother the independents anymore, Humphries said to himself. We won’t call down the wrath of the rock rats and their fledgling government. We won’t have to. All the independents will be selling to me or to Astro; there’s no third choice. They’ll all fall into line now.

He drew in a breath, thinking, Now the fight’s between Astro and HSS. Now the real war begins. And when it’s over, I’ll have Astro in my pocket and total control of the Belt. Total control of the whole fricking solar system and everyone in it!

As if on cue, Amanda entered the conference room.

Humphries stared at her. Somehow she looked different: still the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, the most desirable. Yet there was something else about her now, something that almost unnerved him. She looked back at him, her eyes steady, dry. She’s not shedding any tears for her husband, Humphries told himself.

“They won’t let me speak to him,” Amanda said, her voice so soft he could barely make out the words. She walked along the length of the conference table toward Humphries.

“He’s too far out for a two-way conversation,” he said.

“I put through a call to him and they wouldn’t even accept it. They told me he’s not allowed to receive any messages from anyone.”

“He’s being held incommunicado.”

“On your orders.”

“Yes.”

“You intend to kill him, don’t you?”

Humphries evaded her unwavering blue eyes. “I imagine they’ll put him on trial at Ceres. He’s killed a lot of people.”

“Will he live long enough to face a trial?” Amanda asked, her voice flat, calm, not accusative so much as resigned.

Uncomfortably nervous, Humphries shifted his weight from one foot to another. “He’s a violent man, you know. He might try to escape custody.”

“That would be convenient, wouldn’t it? Then he could be killed while trying to escape.”

Humphries came around the podium and stepped toward her, reaching his arms out to her.

“Amanda,” he said, “it’s all over. Fuchs has dug his own grave and-”

“And you’re going to see that he goes into it.”

“It’s not my doing!” At that moment he almost felt that it was true.

Amanda simply stood there, unmoving, unmoved, her arms at her sides, her eyes focused on him, searching for something, something. He wished he knew what it was.

“What do you want from me?” he asked her.

For a moment she said nothing. Then, “I want your promise that you won’t allow him to be harmed in any way.”

“The rock rats are going to put him on trial for murder.”

“I understand that,” Amanda said. “I still want your promise that you won’t do anything to harm him.”

He hesitated, then asked coldly, “And what will you do in exchange for my promise?”

“I’ll go to bed with you,” Amanda said. “That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

“No!” he blurted. Almost pleading, he said, “I want to marry you, Amanda. I love you! I want to give you…everything you’ve ever wanted.”

She waited a heartbeat, then said, “All I want is Lars’s safety.”

“And not me?”

“I owe it to Lars. All this has happened because of me, hasn’t it?”

He wanted to he, wanted to tell her that everything he had done he had done for her and for her alone. But he couldn’t. Facing her, so close to her, he could not he.

“You were a part of it, Amanda. But only a part. Something like this would have happened anyway.”

“But Lars wouldn’t have been caught in the middle of it, would he?”

“Probably not,” Humphries agreed.

“Then I’ll marry you, if that’s what you want. In exchange for your promise to leave Lars alone.”

Humphries’s throat felt dry, parched. He nodded mutely.

“Now you have everything you want, don’t you?” Amanda said. There was no rancor in it. No trace of anger or bitterness. At last Humphries understood what was different about her, what had changed. She’s not the innocent, naive girl she once was. Those blue eyes are unsmiling now, calculating.

He couldn’t find words. He wanted to make her feel better about this, wanted to make her smile. But he couldn’t find any words.

“That is what you want, isn’t it?” Amanda insisted.

“Not like this,” he said, finding his voice. And it was the truth. “Not as part of a…an arrangement.”

Amanda shrugged slightly. “This is the way it is, Martin. There’s nothing either one of us can do to change it. I’ll marry you if you swear that you won’t harm Lars.”

He licked his lips. “He’ll still have to face trial on Ceres. I can’t stop that.”

“I know,” she said. “I accept that.”

“All right, then.”

“I want to hear you say it, Martin. I want your promise, here and now.”

Drawing himself up to his full height, Humphries said, “Very well. I promise you, Amanda, that I will do nothing to harm Lars Fuchs in any way.”

“You won’t give anyone orders to hurt him.”

“I swear to you, Amanda.”

The breath seemed to sag out of her. “All right, then. I’ll marry you as soon as a divorce can be arranged.”

Or as soon as you become a widow, Humphries thought. Aloud, he said, “Now it’s your turn to make a promise, Amanda.”

Alarm flashed in her eyes momentarily. Then she understood. “I see. Yes, I promise that I will be your loving wife, Martin. This won’t be merely a marriage of appearances.”

Before he could take her hands in his, she turned and walked out of the conference room, leaving him standing alone. For a few moments he felt rejected, wronged, almost angry. But slowly it dawned on him that Amanda had agreed to marry him, to love him. It wasn’t the romantic perfection he had fantasized about over all the years, but she had promised to marry him! All right, she’s upset about it now. I’ve forced her into it and she doesn’t like that. She feels an obligation to Fuchs. But that will change. In time, she’ll accept it. She’ll accept me. She’ll love me. I know she will.

Suddenly Humphries was laughing out loud, dancing around the conference table like a manic teenager. “I’ve got her!” he shouted to the ceiling. “I’ve got everything I’ve ever wanted! The whole miserable solar system is in my grasp!”

Big George thought they were lucky to snag a ride aboard an HSS ship heading for Ceres on a high-energy trajectory.

“We’ll be there in four days,” he said to Kris Cardenas as they picked meal packages from the galley’s freezer.

Cardenas was more skeptical about their luck. “Why is Humphries sending this ship to Ceres on a high-g burn? It’s practically empty. We’re the only passengers and there isn’t any cargo, far as I can tell.”

Sliding his dinner into the microwave, George said, “From what the crew’s buzzin’, they’re goin’ out to pick up the bloke who captured Lars.”

Comprehension lit Cardenas’s cornflower-blue eyes. “So that’s it! A triumphal return for the conquering hero.”

“It isn’t funny, Kris. We’ve gotta put Lars on trial, y’know. He’s killed people.”

“I know,” she said despondently.

The microwave bell chimed.

“George,” she asked, “isn’t there some way we can save Lars’s neck?”

“Sure,” he said, pulling out the tray. “Sentence ’im to life at hard labor. Or maybe pop ’im into a cryonic freezer for a hundred years or so.”

“Be serious,” Cardenas said.

George sat at the galley’s little table and unwrapped his steaming tray. “Dunno what we can do except give him as fair a trial as we can. He’s made a lot of enemies, y’know.”

She slammed her tray back into the freezer and sat glumly beside him. “I wish there were some way we could save him.”

Already digging into his dinner, George tried to change the subject. “We’ll do what we can for Lars. But, y’know, I been thinkin’ … why can’t you develop nanomachines to take the ores outta the asteroids right there on the spot and refine ’em? That’d make it a snap to mine ’em.”

“It would throw almost all the miners out of work.”

“Maybe so,” George admitted. “But what if we let ’em buy shares of the nanotech operation? That way they could become fookin’ capitalists instead o’ grubbin’ away at the rocks.”

Harbin personally escorted Fuchs from Shanidar to the underground settlement on Ceres. Fuchs was not handcuffed or fettered, but he knew he was a prisoner. Harbin brought two of his biggest men with him; he was taking no chances.

As they rode the ungainly shuttlecraft down to the asteroid’s surface, Fuchs spotted the still-unfinished habitat rotating lazily across the star-flecked sky. Will they ever finish it? He asked himself. Will they ever be able to live the way I wanted Amanda and me to live?

Amanda. The thought of her sapped all the strength from him. At least she will be safe, Fuchs thought. Yes, came a mocking voice from within his mind. She’ll be quite safe once she’s married Humphries. The old anger surged for a moment, but it faded away, replaced with the hopelessness of his situation. He’s won her and I’ve lost, he knew.

As they stepped through the airlock and into the reception area, Fuchs saw a group of four women and three men waiting for him. He recognized them all: former neighbors, former friends.

“We’ll take him from here,” said Joyce Takamine, her gaunt, pinched face blankly expressionless. She would not look Fuchs in the eyes.

“Take him where?” Harbin demanded.

“He’s under house arrest,” Takamine replied stiffly, “pending the return of our Chief Administrator. He’s going to stand trial for piracy and murder.”

Harbin nodded his agreement and allowed them to lead Fuchs away. It’s finished, he told himself. I’ve done my job. Now for the rewards.

He led his two men to the Humphries office, only a short walk through the dusty tunnel. There a smiling young woman got up from her metal desk and personally escorted the trio to quarters deeper inside the warren of tunnels and cubicles. The two men had to share one room; Harbin got a private apartment. It was still just one room, but it was his alone. Someone had even brought his travel bag and placed it on the bed.

A message from Diane was waiting for him.

She should have looked happy, jubilant, Harbin thought, rejoicing in their victory, his triumph. Instead, her face looked serious, almost grave, in the wallscreen image.

“Dorik, I’ve set up a high-g flight for you. I want you here at Selene as soon as you can get here. Now that you’ve taken Fuchs, there’s a lot we have to do, a lot of changes in both our lives. I’ll tell you all about it when you get here.”

The screen went blank. Harbin stared at it for a few moments, thinking, Not a word of congratulations. Not a syllable of warmth. Well, she’s never said she loves me.

He went to the bed and sat on it, suddenly tired. I never expected love, he told himself. Then he realized, Not until now. He opened his travel bag and searched through it for the pills that would bring him peace—at least for a little while.