The Sam Gunn Omnibus

The Audition

It took Jade three months to get herself hired as an assistant video editor for the Selene office of the Solar News Network. She took crash courses in Video Editing and News Writing from the electronic university, working long into the nights in front of her interactive computer screen, catching a few winks of sleep, and then going to the garage to put in her hours on the surface driving a truck.

At first Zach Bonner, her supervisor, scowled angrily at her baggy eyes and slowed reflexes.

“Tell your boyfriend to let you get more sleep, little girl,” he growled at her. “Otherwise you’re going to make a mistake out there and kill yourself—maybe kill me, too.”

Shocked with surprise, Jade blurted the truth. “I don’t have a boyfriend, Zach. I’m studying.”

Bonner had three daughters of his own. As swiftly as he could, he transferred Jade to a maintenance job indoors. She gratefully accepted.

“Just remember,” he said gruffly, “what you’re doing now is holding other guys’ lives in your hands. Don’t mess up.”

Jade did her work carefully, both day and night, until her certificates of course completion arrived in her e-mail. Then she tackled the three network news offices at Selene. Minolta/Bell, the largest, turned her down cold; they had no job openings at the moment, they said, and they only hired people with experience. BBC accepted her application with a polite version of the classic, “Don’t call us; we’ll call you.”

Solar News, the smallest of the three and the youngest, was an all-news network. They paid much less than Jade was making as a truck driver. But they had an opening for an assistant video editor. Jade took the job without thinking twice about it.

Zach Bonner shook his head warily when she told him she was quitting. “You sure you want to do this?”

“Yes,” Jade said. “I’m sure.”

He gave a sigh that was almost an exasperated snort. “Okay, kid. If things don’t work out for you, come on back here and I’ll see what I can do for you.”

She had more than half expected him to say that, but his words still warmed her. She stood up on tiptoes and pecked a kiss on his cheek. He sputtered with mixed embarrassment and happiness.

Dr. Dinant was pleased that Jade was moving to a job belowground. “I still would like to do the procedure on you,” she said, “before I finish my tour here and return home.”

Jade put her off, hoping she would return to Earth and forget about her. Just as her adoptive mother had.

She started her new job, surprised that there were only six people in the entire Selene office of Solar News. Two of them were reporters, one male and one female, who went to the same hairdressing salon and actually appeared on screen now and then, when the network executives permitted such glory. Otherwise, their stories were “reported” by anchorpersons in Orlando who had never been to the Moon.

It took her nearly a year to work up the courage to tell her new boss about her idea of doing a biography of Sam Gunn.

“I’ve heard of him,” said her boss, a middle-aged woman named Monica Bianco. “Some sort of a con man, wasn’t he? A robber baron?”

Although Monica affected a veneer of newsroom cynicism, she could not hide her basic good nature from Jade for very long. The two women had much in common in addition to their jobs. Monica had come to Selene to escape pollution allergies that left her gasping helplessly more than half the year on Earth. When Jade confided that she could never go to Earth, her boss broke into tears at the memory of all she had been forced to leave behind. The two of them became true friends after that.

Monica was good-looking despite her years, Jade thought. She admitted to being over forty, and Jade wondered just how far beyond the Big Four-Oh she really was. Not that it mattered much. Especially in Selene, where men still outnumbered women by roughly three to one. Monica was a bit heavier than she ought to be, but her ample bosom and cheerful disposition kept lots of men after her. She confessed to Jade that she had been married twice. “I buried one and dumped the other,” she said, without a trace of remorse. “Both bastards. I just seem to pick rotten SOBs for myself.”

Jade had nothing to confess beyond the usual teenager’s flings. So she told Monica what she knew of Sam Gunn and asked how she might get the decision-makers of Solar News to assign her to do a biography.

“Forget it, honey,” advised Monica. “The only ideas they go for are the ones they think up for themselves—or steal from somebody they envy. Besides, they’d never let an inexperienced pup like you tackle an assignment like that.”

Jade felt her heart sink. But then Monica added, “Unless …”

So several weeks later Jade found herself at dinner with Monica and Jim Gradowsky, the Solar News office chief. They sat at a cozy round table in a quiet corner of the Ristorante de la Luna. Of Selene’s five eating establishments, the Ristorante was acknowledged to be the best bargain: lots of good food at modest prices. It was Jumbo Jim Gradowsky’s favorite eatery.

Monica wore a black skirt and blouse with a scooped neckline. At Monica’s insistence, Jade had spent a week’s salary on a glittering green sheath that complemented her eyes. Now that she saw the checkered tablecloths and dripping candles, though, she thought that Monica had overdressed them both.

Gradowsky, who showed up in a wrinkled short-sleeved shirt and baggy slacks, did not seem to notice what they were wearing. He was called Jumbo Jim because of his girth. But never to his face.

“So you can never go Earthside,” Gradowsky was saying through a mouthful of coniglio cacciatore. His open-collared shirt was already stained and sprinkled with the soup and salad courses.

“It’s a bone condition,” Jade replied. “Osteopetrosis.”

Gradowsky took a tiny roasted rabbit leg in one big hand. Red gravy dripped onto his lap. “Isn’t that what little old ladies get? Makes ’em stoop over?”

“That’s osteoporosis,” Jade corrected. “The bones get soft with age. I’ve got just the opposite problem. My bones are too brittle. They’d snap under a full Earth gravity. They call it Marble Bones.”

He shook his head and dabbed at the grease around his mouth with a checkered napkin. “Gee, that’s too bad. I could go back Earthside if I wanted to, but the medics say I’d hafta to lose forty-fifty pounds first.”

Jade made a sympathetic noise.

“You know, Jim,” said Monica, sitting on his other side, “Jade here’s got a terrific idea for a special. If you could sell it back in Orlando it’d be quite a feather in your cap.”

“Yeah? Really?”

Jade explained her hope to do a biography of Sam Gunn. Gradowsky was obviously cool to the idea, but Monica slid her chair closer to his and insisted that it was the kind of idea that Solar’s upper echelons would go for.

“It could mean a boost for you,” Monica said, leaning so close to Gradowsky that Jade could see her cleavage from across the table. “A big boost.”

The two women went to the ladies’ room together as the waiter cleared their table in preparation for dessert. Jade saw that there were greasy paw stains on Monica’s skirt.

“You’re not throwing yourself at him for me?” Jade asked.

Monica smiled. “Don’t worry about it, honey. Jumbo’s kind of cute, if you don’t mind his table manners.”

“Cute?”

“After three bottles of wine.”

“Monica, I can’t let you …”

The older woman smiled sweetly at Jade. “Don’t give it another thought, child. Who knows, I might marry the bum and try to civilize him.”

Thus it came to pass that Jim Gradowsky sold his idea of doing a biography of Sam Gunn to the top brass of the Solar News Network. He even won the responsibility of picking the reporter to handle the interviews.

Jade faced him alone in his office, a minuscule cubbyhole crammed with a desk, two computer terminals, a battered pseudo-leather couch, and a whole wall full of TV screens.

“Monica says you oughtta get the job of doing the Sam Gunn interviews,” Gradowsky said, his eyes narrowing as Jade sat demurely on the couch.

She thought to herself, If he gets up from behind that desk I’ll run out of here and to hell with the interviews. Or will I?

Gradowsky stayed in his creaking desk chair. “Well, I’m not sure that somebody with no real experience can handle the assignment. You’re awfully young….”

Jade made herself smile at him. “That’s just the point. Most of Sam’s friends—even his enemies—wouldn’t talk to a regular news reporter. But they’ll talk to me.”

“Why’s that?” Gradowsky seemed all business, thank goodness.

“I don’t come across as a reporter. I’m a lunar worker, one of the guys.”

“Hardly one of the guys” Gradowsky smirked.

The phone built into one of the computers chirped. Grunting, he leaned forward and punched a button on its keyboard.

Monica’s face took form on a wall screen. “How’s it going?” she asked cheerfully.

Gradowsky raised both hands, palms out, as if to show he was unarmed. “Okay so far. We’re talkin’.”

“Are we set for dinner tonight?”

“Yeah, sure. Where d’you wanna go?”

“I thought I’d cook for you tonight. How about my place at seven-thirty. You bring the wine.”

Gradowsky grinned. “Great!”

“See you then.”

When he turned back to Jade he was still grinning.

“Okay, listen up, kid. Here’s what I’m prepared to do. There’s a Russian living over at the retirement center next to Lunagrad. From what my contacts tell me, he knew Sam Gunn back in the old days, when Gunn was still a NASA astronaut. But he’s never talked to anybody about it.”

“Has anyone tried to interview him?” Jade asked.

“Yeah—BBC was after him for years but he always turned them down.”

Jade clasped her hands together tightly, surprised to find that her palms were sweating.

“You get the Russkie to talk and the assignment’s yours. Fair enough?”

She nodded, almost breathless. “Fair enough,” she managed to say.