The Sam Gunn Omnibus

The Show Must Go On!

“Pretty shaky,” Gradowsky muttered, after listening to Griffith’s narration. “Even with his sworn testament the lawyers aren’t going to like this.”

Jade slumped in the battered old couch, feeling exhausted from her weeks of travel and tension.

“You don’t mean that we can’t use any of it, do you?”

“That’s not my decision, kid,” said Gradowsky from behind his desk. “We’ll have to let the lawyers listen to what you’ve got.”

She nodded glumly, too tired to argue. Besides, it would do no good to fight Gradowsky on this. His hands were tied. She began to get an inkling of how Sam Gunn had felt about being hemmed in by office procedures and red tape.

“So where do you go from here?” Gradowsky asked her.

Jade pulled herself up straighter in the chair, startled by the question. “You mean we’re going on with the project?”

“Sure. Until the lawyers pull the plug on us. Why not? I think what you’re getting is great stuff. I just worry about people suing us, that’s all.”

Jade’s weariness seemed to wash away like water-paint under a fire hose.

“Well,” she said, “several of the people I talked to said there’s a man at space station Alpha who—”

“Alpha? That’s in Earth orbit.” “Right.”

“We don’t have the budget to send you out there,” Gradowsky said.

“We don’t?”

“Hell, kiddo, you’ve just about used up the whole expense budget I gave you just traipsing around the different lunar settlements. Do you have any idea of what it costs to fly back Earthside?”

“I wouldn’t be going all the way to Earth,” Jade answered. “Just to the space station.”

“Yeah, I know.” Gradowsky seemed embarrassed with the recollection that Jade could not go to Earth even if she wanted to.

“I’ve covered just about everybody I could find here on the Moon,” she said. “But there are plenty of people elsewhere: on Alpha, in the Lagrange habitats, even out in the Belt.”

Gradowsky puffed his cheeks and blew out a heavy sigh. “The Asteroid Belt. Christ!”

Jade knew she had to do something, and quickly, or the Sam Gunn project was finished.

“When I first started this job,” she said to her boss, “you told me that a good reporter goes where the story is, regardless of how far or how difficult it might be.”

He grinned sheepishly at her. “Yeah, I know. But I forgot to tell you the other half of it—as long as the big brass okays the expenses.”

Straightening her spine, Jade replied, “We’ll have to talk to the big brass, then.”

Gradowsky looked surprised for an instant. Then he ran both his hands over his ample belly and said, “Yeah. I guess maybe we will.”

Several weeks later, one of the corporation’s big brass came to Selene City for the annual “fear of god” meeting that every branch office of Solar News Network received from management.

His full name was Arak al Kashan, although he smilingly insisted on being called Raki. “Raki,” he would say, almost self-deprecatingly, “not Rocky.” Yet Jade overheard Gradowsky mumble to one of the technicians, “Count your fingers after you shake hands with him.”

Raki was tall and tan and trim, dark of hair and eye, old enough to be a network vice president yet young enough to set women’s hearts fluttering. The grapevine had it that he was descended from very ancient blood; his aristocratic lineage went all the way back to the earliest Persian emperors. He had the haughtiness to match the claim. Jade heard him with her own ears saying disdainfully, “The unlamented Pahlavi Shahs were nothing more than upstart peasants.”

Jade thought he was the handsomest man she had ever seen. Raki dressed in hand-tailored suits of the latest fashion, darkly iridescent lapel-less jackets in shades of blue or charcoal that fit him like a second skin over pale pastel turtlenecks. Tight slacks that emphasized his long legs and bulging groin.

If Raki noticed Jade among the half-dozen employees at the Solar office he gave no outward sign of it. His task, as vice president in charge of human resources, was to have a brief personal chat with each man and woman at the Selene City office, review their job performances, and assure them that headquarters, back in Orlando, had their best interests at heart—even though there were to be no salary increases this year.

“Be careful of him,” Monica warned Jade when she saw the look in her young friend’s eyes. “He’s a lady-killer.”

Jade smiled at Monica’s antique vocabulary. With the Sam Gunn project stalled, Jade had been assigned to covering financial news. Her current project was a report on the growth in tourism at Selene. Next she would tackle the consortium that was trying to raise capital for building a new mass driver that would double Selene’s export capacity. Hardly as thrilling as tracking down Sam Gunn’s old lovers and adversaries.

“Jumbo Jim says that Raki could get headquarters to okay my Sam Gunn project,” Jade told Monica.

“Honey, I’m warning you. All he’ll want to do is get into your bed.”

They were sitting in Monica’s cubbyhole office, sipping synthetic coffee before starting the day’s tasks. Through the window that took up one whole wall they could see the dimly lit editing room where two technicians were bent over their computers, using the graphics program to “recreate” the construction of the new mass driver, from the first ceremonial shovel of excavation to the ultimate finished machine hurling hundreds of tons of cargo into space per hour.

Monica’s office was too small for a desk. There were only the two chairs and a computer console built into the back wall. Its keyboard rested on the floor until Monica needed it.

Jade appreciated Monica’s warning. “Mother Monica,” she called her older friend. But she had other ideas in mind.

Trying not to smile too broadly, she told Monica, “You know, Sam Gunn used to say that he wanted to get laid without getting screwed. Maybe that’s what I’ve got to do.”

Monica gave her a long, troubled look.

“I mean,” Jade said, “I wouldn’t mind having sex with him. It might even be fun. The question is: how do I make sure that he’ll okay the project afterward?”

Shaking her head like the weary mother superior of a rowdy convent, Monica said, “My god, you kids have it easy nowadays. When I was your age we had to worry about herpes, and chlamydia—and AIDS. Sex was punishable by death in those days!”

Somewhat surprised, Jade said, “But you managed …”

With a huff, Monica replied, “Sure, we managed. But you had to get a guy’s blood report first. There were even doctors making fortunes faking medical records!”

“That must have been tough,” Jade said.

“Why do you think people got married back then? And then divorced?”

“But Monica, he’ll only be here for another three days. I’ve got to get him to okay the Sam Gunn biography by then!”

Monica’s disapproving expression softened. “I know, honey. I understand. It’s just that I hate to see you using yourself like this. Meaningless sex might seem like fun at first….”

“Sam always said that there’s no such thing as meaningless sex.”

“Sam’s dead, child. And he left a trail of hurt people behind him. Women, mostly.”

Jade had to admit that she was right. “There was one woman I interviewed. She works at Dante’s Inferno, over in Hell Crater. She was Sam’s fiancée. She claims he left her at the altar and went off to the Asteroid Belt.”

“I’ll bet. And what kind of work does she do at Dante’s?” Monica asked, her eyes narrowing.

Ishtar’s was acknowledged to be the finest restaurant not merely in Selene, but the finest in all the Moon. Carved out of the lunar rock at the end of a long corridor, Ishtar’s interior was shaped like a dome, with video screens showing views of the heavens so cunningly devised that it actually looked as though the dome were up on the surface.

The restaurant was small, intimate. Each table was niched into its own semicircular banquette of high, plush lunar pseudo-leather, creating a semicircle of virtually complete privacy. Lovers could snuggle close, although at the prices Ishtar’s charged the restaurant’s clientele was mostly executives who had access to golden expense accounts. All the waiters were human; there were no robots at all, not even as busboys.

“I’ve never had champagne before,” Jade said, with a slight giggle.

Arak al Kashan leaned back in the plush banquette and steepled his long manicured fingers in front of his chin, admiring her from across their damask-covered table.

“You should have it every evening,” Raki said, smiling. “A creature as lovely as you should have oceans of champagne. You should bathe in champagne.”

Jade lifted an eyebrow slightly. “I don’t think there’s that much champagne in Selene.”

“Then you can come to France with me. We’ll rent a chateau and bathe in champagne every night.”

“Oh, I can’t come to Earth,” Jade said lightly.

“I could see to it that you get a much better position with the network. In France. Or in Florida. We could see each other every day if you came to Florida.”

She had already drunk enough champagne to dull the pain of what she had to tell him. “I can never come to Earth, Raki. My bones are too brittle for it.”

His mouth dropped open for an instant, but he immediately recovered his composure.

“Then I must come to Selene more often,” he said gallantly.

Jade accepted the compliment with a smile and a totally unpremeditated batting of her eyelashes. In the center of the restaurant the head waiter supervised the creation of a spectacularly flaming dish that brought murmurs of approval from the watching diners.

He’s a doll! Jade thought to herself. Raki is a handsome, elegant, charming, living doll.

He was also an accomplished lover, as she found later that night, in the suite that the network maintained for visiting executives. Jade felt herself swept away like a cork in a tidal wave under Raki’s experienced hands and tongue. She felt as if she would suffocate; she felt as if her heart would burst in her chest. Electric thrills tingled every square centimeter of her skin.

Slowly, ever so slowly, she floated back to reality. As if awakening from a dream, Jade gradually sensed the bed firmly beneath her, the darkness of the room eased only by the luminous digits of the clock on the night table, the animal heat of the man sleeping next to her naked body.

Jade could make out the form of Raki’s body, coiled like a panther, his face half buried in his pillow.

She took a long shuddering breath. Now you’ve done it, she told herself. It’s over and done with. It was exciting, but it’s finished now. Tomorrow he’ll be leaving. Tomorrow he’ll go back to Earth and you’ll be alone again.

“What’s the matter?” Raki’s voice was whisper-soft.

Startled that he was awake, she said, “What?”

“You were muttering. I thought you might be talking in your sleep.”

Jade almost laughed. “Just talking to myself. Sorry if I woke you.”

“It’s all right,” he said, turning over onto his back.

“You’ll be going home tomorrow.”

“The day after—oh, yes, it’s Tuesday morning now, isn’t it? Yes, tomorrow.”

“Do you live in Orlando?” Jade asked, her voice as flat and unemotional as she could make it.

He laughed softly. “You want to know if I’m married, don’t you?”

“I already know that. I looked up your personnel file.”

“You have access to the files?” He sounded surprised.

“No,” she said. “But I’m a reporter.” “Ah.”

Silence. Jade had watched enough old videos to know that this was the moment the lovers usually lit cigarettes. She wondered what it would taste like, whether she would feel the carcinogens attacking her lungs.

“You know that I am married and have two children,” Raki said. “Statistically, it should be one point seven, but we found it difficult to produce only seven-tenths of a child.”

Jade did not laugh. “Is it a happy marriage?”

“Yes, I’m afraid it is.”

“I’m glad,” she lied.

“As a practicing Moslem,” Raki said lightly, “I can take four wives, you know. The state of Florida would object, I’m sure, but I doubt that the government of Selene would mind.”

“A wife in every port,” Jade muttered. “That might get expensive.”

“My wife is a practicing psychologist. She makes an excellent living. And you, of course, are employed as a reporter….”

“Don’t joke about it!” Jade burst. “It isn’t a joking matter.”

“No, of course not. I’m sorry.”

Silence again.

At length, Raki asked, “What is it you want?”

Jade tried to swallow down the lump in her throat.

Raki turned toward her. “I know I am devilishly handsome and utterly suave and urbane, practically irresistible. But you accepted my invitation to dinner knowing that it would lead here, and you accepted that because you want something from me. What is it?”

Jade blinked back tears.

“It’s happened before, you know,” Raki said. His voice was still gentle, almost sad. “Women seem so willing to offer their bodies in trade.”

“You make it sound dirty.” “Oh no! Not dirty. There’s nothing dirty about making love. It’s just… disappointing.”

“Disappointing?”

He sighed like a heartbroken lover. “I had hoped that you liked me for myself, not for what I could do for you. But I knew better, all along. You want something: a raise in salary, a promotion … something.”

Jade felt her spirits sinking out of sight.

“Well,” Raki said, “you might as well tell me what it is.”

Confused, Jade stammered, “There … there was something… I thought…” She did not know what to say.

Raki whispered, “You can tell me. I’m accustomed to being used.”

“It isn’t like that!” Jade burst. “Yes, all right, I admit that I wanted something from you—at first. But now, now that I know you …”

Raki smiled in the darkness and reached for her young trembling body. Jade flung herself into his arms and they made love until they both fell asleep exhausted.

“And then what happened?” Monica asked as they walked down the busy corridor from the cafeteria toward her office. It was nearly 0800 hours, the start of the business day. The women were dressed in their business clothes: Monica in comfortably loose black slacks and sweatshirt, Jade in a stylish auburn jumpsuit and glossy thigh-length boots.

“It was morning when we woke up,” Jade answered with a small shrug. “I had to dash back to my place to change for work.”

With an unhappy shake of her head Monica replied, “And Raki’s in Jim’s office bragging about how he screwed you all night long.”

“No! He wouldn’t….”

“Want to bet?”

Jade could not look Monica square in the face. “I’ve got to get to work,” she said. “I’m interviewing that architect at ten sharp.”

“Want to bet?” Monica repeated sternly.

“Yes!” Jade snapped, feeling anger surging within her. “I’ll bet he’s conducting ordinary business with Jim.”

They had reached the door to Solar News’s suite of cubbyhole offices. With a sweeping gesture, Monica ushered Jade through, then led the way past the trio of unoccupied desks to her own office. Gradowsky’s office door was closed, Jade saw.

Monica plopped into her chair and picked the keyboard off the floor.

Jade remained standing, her back to the window that looked into the editing room. No one was in there yet.

“Don’t you ever tell Jumbo that I’ve bugged his office,” Monica said, frowning slightly as she worked the keyboard.

“Bugged it! Why?”

“I might marry the bum one of these days, but that doesn’t mean I altogether trust him.” She pulled a pair of wire-thin headsets from the cabinet in the corner of the room and handed one of them to Jade.

Reluctantly Jade slipped the set over her hair. Monica plugged them both in, then held one earphone to her ear, her head cocked like a fat robin looking for a juicy worm.

“… if I say so myself, I’m a very good teacher.” Raki’s voice. Unmistakable.

“Well, uh, you know she’s just a kid. Got some good ideas, though.” Gradowsky sounded uncomfortable, embarrassed.

“Really? I’ll bet she’s got better ones now.” Raki laughed. Jade heard nothing from Jumbo Jim.

After a brief silence Raki asked, “You said she wants to do a biography?”

“Yeah. Of Sam Gunn. I think …”

“Sam Gunn! No, that would never wash.”

“I dunno, Raki. She’s already gotten a lot of really good stuff. Sam’s good material. Sex, adventure, excitement.”

Raki made a humming noise. Then, “You think so?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“No, the executive board would never buy it. Half of them hate Sam’s guts, even now, and the other half wouldn’t give a damn.”

“But if you recommended it,” Gradowsky suggested.

“Listen, my friend, I didn’t get this far in the network by sticking my neck out.”

Jade sensed Jumbo Jim shaking his head. “Then what’re you gonna tell her?”

“Me? Nothing?”

“You’re not gonna see her again tonight?”

“Of course not. Why should I?”

Monica’s face looked like a stone carving of vengeance. Jade felt her own cheeks flaming.

“I thought, well, after you had such a good time last night.”

Raki laughed again. It sounded cruel. “The thrill is in the chase, James. Now that I’ve bagged her, what is there to getting her again? No, tonight I’ll go to Hell Crater and enjoy myself with the professionals. I’ve had enough of little girls who must be taught everything.”

Jade ripped the headset off so hard she thought her ears were coming off with it.

Monica looked as if she would cry. “I’m sorry, honey. But you had to know.”

Jade went through her morning as if disembodied, watching this redheaded young woman from an enormous distance as she made her way down the gray tunnels of Selene, conducted a perfunctory interview with a dull whining architect, then ate a solitary lunch in the darkest corner of the Pelican Bar, speaking to no one, not even a robot waiter. She punched up her order on the keyboard built into the wall of her booth.

There is no one you can trust, Jade told herself. Absolutely no one. Not even Monica. She’s bugged her fiancé’s office. Not one single human being in the whole solar system can be trusted. Not a damned one. I’m alone. I’ve always been alone and I always will be.

A robot brought her lunch tray. She ignored its cheerful programmed banter and it rolled away.

Jade could not eat more than a single mouthful. The food stuck in her throat. The cola tasted flat and sour.

She leaned her head against the back of the booth, eyes filling with tears, alone and lost in a world that had never cared whether she lived or died. It’s not fair! she cried silently. It’s just not fucking goddamned shitting fair.

Life is never fair. She remembered somebody told her that Sam Gunn had often said that. No, not quite. Sam had put it differently. “Life isn’t fair, so the best thing you can do is load the dice in your own favor.” That’s what Sam had said.

Don’t get mad, Jade told herself. Get even.

Grimly she slid out of the booth and headed for the ticket office of Lunar Transport.

“This is going to be kind of tough for me to talk about,” Jade said.

“Don’t give it a second thought, little one,” said Yoni, Mistress of Ecstasy. “Monica filled my ears with the whole story while you were on your way here.”

Here was the employee’s lounge of Dante’s Inferno, the biggest casino/hotel/house of pleasure in Hell Crater. It had been Sam Gunn’s sardonic idea of humor to turn Hell into a complex of entertainment centers. The crater had been named after an eighteenth-century Jesuit astronomer, Maximilian Hell, who once directed the Vienna Observatory.

Jade had overspent her personal credit account to ride the passenger rocket from Selene, after telling Monica what she was going to do. Mother Monica apparently had gotten on the fiber-optic link with Yoni as soon as Jade hung up.

The lounge was small but quite plush. Yoni sat on a small fabric-covered couch; Jade on a softly cushioned easy chair.

Jade had interviewed the Mistress of Ecstasy weeks earlier. Yoni had been left at the altar by Sam Gunn more than twenty years ago. But although she had every reason to hate Sam, she said, “I guess I still have a soft spot in my heart for the little SOB.”

Yoni claimed to be the child of a mystical pleasure cult from deep in the mysterious mountains of Nepal. Actually she had been born in the mining settlement at Aristarchus, of Chinese-American parents from San Francisco. She was tall for an oriental, Jade thought, and her bosom was so extraordinary, even though the rest of her figure was willowy slim, that Jade decided she must have been enhanced by implants. She wore a tight-fitting silk sheath of shining gold with a plunging neckline and skirt slashed to the hip.

She had worn a luxurious auburn wig when Jade had first interviewed her. Now she sat, relaxed, her hair cropped almost as short as a military cut. It was sprinkled with gray. Yoni was still beautiful, although to Jade she seemed awfully elderly for her chosen line of work. Cosmetic surgery had done its best, but there were still lines in her face, veins on the backs of her hands. Her dark almond eyes seemed very knowing, as if they had witnessed every possible kind of human frailty.

“Then you know,” Jade choked out the words, “about Raki… and me.”

Yoni smiled sadly and patted Jade’s knee. “You’re not the first woman to be roughed up by a man.”

“Can you help me?”

Yoni’s almond eyes became inscrutable. “In what way? I won’t risk damaging this house’s reputation just to help you get even with a jerk.”

Jade blinked at her. “No, that isn’t what I want at all.”

“Then what?”

“I want him to approve my doing a biography of Sam Gunn.”

It was Yoni’s turn to look surprised. “Is that what you’re after?”

“Yes.”

Yoni leaned back in her couch and crossed her long legs. “Let me get this straight. You want me to make him change his mind about this video biography you want to do.”

Jade nodded.

“Why should I help you?”

For a moment Jade had no answer. Then she heard herself say, “For Sam’s sake.”

“For Sam’s sake!” Yoni tilted her head back and laughed heartily. “Why in the name of the seventy-seven devils of Tibet should I care an eyelash about Sam? He’s dead and gone and that’s that.”

Jade said, “I thought you had a soft spot in your heart for him.”

“In my heart, little one. Not my head.”

“You don’t feel any obligation toward Sam?”

“If he were here I’d kick him in the balls. And he’d know why.”

“Even though he gave you the controlling interest in Dante’s Inferno?”

After her interview with Yoni, Jade had accessed all the records she could find about Dante’s. S. Gunn Enterprises, Unlimited, had originally built the place. Yoni had been a licensed prostitute in the European lunar settlement, New Europa, when Sam had briefly fallen in love with her. He had left her at the altar, true enough. He had also left her fifty-five percent of the shares of the newly opened Dante’s Inferno. The rest he had sold off to help finance a venture to the Asteroid Belt.

Yoni gazed up at the smooth, faintly glowing ceiling panels, then across the lounge at the computer-graphics images mounted on the walls. They were all of tall, buxom women, blonde, redheaded, gleaming black hair. They wore leather, or daintily feminine lace, or nothing but jewelry. They were all Yoni, Mistress of Ecstasy, in her various computer-simulated embodiments.

Finally she looked back at Jade. “You’re right,” she admitted. “I owe the little bastard.”

“Then you’ll help me?”

Without answering, Yoni got to her feet and started for the door. “Come on down to my office. I’ll have to look up your john’s file.”

Yoni’s office looked to Jade like a millionaire’s living room. Bigger than any office she had ever seen; bigger than any apartment, for that matter. And there were doors leading to other rooms, as well. Oriental carpets on the floor. Video windows on every wall. The furniture alone must have cost millions to tote up from Earth: Chinese prayer tables of real wood, lacquered and glistening; long low settees covered in striped fabrics; even a hologram fireplace that actually threw off heat.

Jade stood in the middle of the huge room, almost breathless with admiration, while Yoni went straight to a delicately small desk tucked into a corner and tapped on the keyboard cunningly built into its gleaming top.

The silk painting of misty mountains above the desk turned into a small display screen.

“Most johns don’t use their real names here,” Yoni muttered, mostly to herself, “but we can usually trace their credit accounts, even when they’ve established a temporary one to cover their identity.”

Jade drifted toward the desk, resisting the urge to touch the vases, the real flowers, the ivory figurines resting on an end table.

“You said he calls himself Rocky?”

“Raki.”Jade spelled it.

“H’m. Here he is, full name and everything. He’s not trying to hide from anybody.”

“He’s married….”

“Two wives,” Yoni said, as the data on the screen scrolled by. “One in Orlando and one in Istanbul. Plus a few girlfriends that he sees regularly, here and there.”

Jade let herself drop into the little straight-backed chair beside the desk.

“He doesn’t make any secret of it, so there’s no way to use this information as leverage on him.”

“Does he have … girlfriends … here on the Moon?”

Yoni gave her a sidelong look. “No, when he’s here he comes to us. To me.”

Jade felt her face redden.

Yoni smiled knowingly at her. “He’s never seen me, little one. Not in the flesh. It’s been years since I’ve done business with anyone flesh-to-flesh.” “Oh?”

“The VR nets,” Yoni said, as if that explained everything. When she saw that Jade did not understand she went on, “Most of my customers come here for our simulations. They’re quite lifelike, with the virtual reality systems. We just zip them up into a cocoon so the sensory net’s in contact with every centimeter of their body, and then we play scenarios for them.”

“They don’t want sex with real women?” Jade felt stupid asking it.

“Some do, but what men want most is not sex so much as power. For most men, they feel powerful when they’re screwing a woman. It makes them feel strong, especially when the woman is doing exactly what they desire. That’s why the VR nets are so popular. A john can have any woman he wants, any number of women, for the asking.”

“Really?”

Yoni gave her a knowing smile. “We have vids of Cleopatra, Marilyn Monroe, Catherine the Great. One john wants Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis; nobody else, just her. Another has a fixation on Eleanor of Aquitaine. Thinks he’s Richard the Lionheart, I guess.”

“And it’s all preprogrammed simulations?”

“The basic scenario is preprogrammed. We always have a live operator in the loop to make sure everything’s going right and to take care of any special needs that come up.”

Jade completely missed Yoni’s pun. But she caught the unspoken implication.

“You keep disks of each session?”

“No!” Yoni snapped, almost vehemently. Then, more gently, “Do you realize the kinds of corporate and government people we have as clientele here? One hint, even the slightest rumor, that we record their sessions and we would be out of business—or dead.”

“Oh. I didn’t realize …”

Yoni smiled mysteriously. “We don’t have to blackmail our guests, or even threaten to. These VR sessions can be very powerful; they have a strong impact on the mind. Almost like a posthypnotic suggestion, really.”

“You can influence people?” Jade asked.

“Not directly. But—no one actually understands what long-term effects these VR sessions have on a person’s mind. Especially a habitual user. I have commissioned a couple of psychologists to look into it, but so far their results have been too vague for any practical use.”

“Could you—influence—Raki?”

With a shrug, Yoni said, “I don’t know. He’s been here often, that’s true. But he’s not an addict, like some I could name.”

Jade hesitated, feeling embarrassed, then asked, “What kind of sex does he go in for?”

Glancing back at the computer screen, Yoni said, “I don’t think you understand, little one. The man doesn’t come here for sex. He gets his sexual needs fulfilled from flesh-and-blood creatures like yourself.”

“Then what… ?”

“For power, little one. Not sexual power. Corporate power.”

Jade’s eyes went wide. She understood. And she knew what had to be done.

Arak al kashan gazed through his office window at the Orlando skyline: tower after tower, marching well past the city limits, past the open acreage of Disney World, and on out to the horizon. There was power there, majesty and might in the modern sense. Beyond his line of sight, he knew, construction crews were hard at work turning swampland and citrus groves into more corporate temples of enduring concrete, stainless steel and gleaming glass.

He leaned back in his plush leather chair and sighed deeply. The moment had come. His trip to the Moon had been relaxing, diverting. Now the moment of truth had arrived.

Getting to his feet, Raki squared his shoulders as he inspected his image in the full-length mirror on the door to his private lavatory. The jacket fit perfectly, he saw. Its camel’s-hair tone brought out his tan. Good.

He snapped his fingers once and the mirror turned opaque. Then he stepped around the desk and started toward the door and the meeting of the board of directors of Solar News Network, Inc. This was going to be the meeting. The one where he took charge of the entire corporation, where he seized the reins of power from the doddering old hands of the CEO and won the board’s approval as the new chief of Solar News.

The day had come at last.

But before he could take three steps across the precious Persian carpet, the door opened and a short, disheveled man rushed in.

“You’re in trouble, pal. Deep shit, if you don’t mind the expression.”

“Who the hell are you?” Raki demanded.

“That’s not important. You’ve got a real problem and I’m here to help you.”

Raki took a step backward, then another, and felt his desk against the back of his legs. The little man seemed terribly agitated, perhaps insane. His wiry rust-red hair was cropped short, yet it still looked tangled and dirty. He wore coveralls of faded olive green, stained here and there with what looked like grease or machine oil.

Raki groped with one hand toward the intercom on his desk, still facing the strange intruder.

“Never mind calling security,” the man said. “I’m on your side, pal. I can help you.”

“Help me? I don’t need—”

“The hell you don’t need help! They’re waiting for you upstairs,” he cast his eyes toward the ceiling, “with knives sharpened and a vat of boiling oil. All for you.”

“What do you mean?”

The man smiled, a lopsided sort of grin in his round, snub-nosed face.

“You think you’re gonna waltz right in there and take control of the corporation, huh? You think the CEO’s just gonna bend over and let you boot him in the butt?”

“What do you know about it?”

“Plenty, pal,” said the little man. “I was never the guy for corporate politics. Had no time for boards of directors and all the crap that goes with a big bureaucracy. But lemme tell you, they’re out to get you. They’re gonna pin your balls to the conference table, Raki, old pal.”

Raki felt his knees giving way. He sank to a half-sitting position on the edge of his desk.

His visitor strutted across the carpet, looked out the window. “Nice view. Not as good as the view from Titan, but what the hell, this is the best you can do in Florida, I guess.”

“What did you mean?” Raki asked.

“About the view from Titan?”

“About the board of directors. They’re waiting for me upstairs—”

“You bet your busy little ass they’re waiting. With assorted cutlery and boiling oil, like I said.”

“You’re crazy!”

“Mad?” The little man screwed up his face and crossed his eyes. “Hannibal was mad. Caesar was mad. And surely Napoleon was the maddest of them all.”

“Talk sense, dammit!”

The man chuckled tolerantly. “Look. You’re going up to the board of directors to tell them that the corporation would be better off with you as CEO instead of the old fart that’s running the network now. Right?”

“Right,” said Raki.

“Well, what’s your plan?”

“My plan?”

“Yeah. You need a plan to lay out on the table, a blueprint to show them what changes you’re gonna make, how you’re gonna do bigger and better things for dear ol’ Solar News.”

“I… I…” Raki suddenly realized he did not have a plan. Not an idea in his head. He could feel cold sweat breaking out all over his body.

“C’mon, c’mon,” the little man demanded, “the board’s waiting. What’s your plan?”

“I don’t have one!” Raki wailed.

His visitor shook his head. “Just as I thought. No plan.”

“What can I do?” Raki was trembling now. He saw his dream of conquest crumbling. They’ll fire me! I’ll lose everything!

“Not to worry, pal. That’s why I’m here. To help you.” The little man pulled a computer disk from his grubby coverall pocket. It was smaller than the palm of his hand, even though his hand was tiny.

He handed the disk to Raki. It felt warm and solid in his fingers.

“Show ’em that, pal. It’ll knock ’em on their asses.”

Before Raki could think of anything to say, he was standing at the foot of the long, long conference table. The entire board of directors was staring at him from their massive chairs. The old CEO and his henchmen sat up near the head of the table, flanking the chairman of the board, a woman upon whom Raki had lavished every possible attention. She was smiling at him, faintly, but the rest of the board looked grim.

“Well,” snapped the CEO, “what do you have there in your hand, young man?”

Raki took a deep breath. “I hold here in my hand,” he heard his own voice saying, smoothly, without a tremor, “the salvation of Solar News.”

A stir went around the conference table.

Holding up the tiny disk, Raki went on, “This is a documented, dramatized biography of one of the solar system’s most colorful personalities—the late Sam Gunn.”

The board erupted into an uproar.

“Sam Gunn!”

“No!”

“It couldn’t be!”

“How did you manage it?”

One of the truly elderly members of the board, frail and pasty-faced, waved his skeletal hands excitedly. “I have it on very good authority that BBC was planning to do a biography of Sam Gunn. You’ve beaten them to the punch, young man! Bravo.”

The chairman turned a stern eye on her CEO. “How come you didn’t do this yourself?” she demanded of the cowering executive. “Why did Raki have to do this all on his own?” And she gave Raki a wink full of promise.

The entire board of directors got to their feet and applauded. Walter Cronkite appeared, in a white linen double-breasted suit, to join the acclamation. The old CEO faded, ghostlike, until he disappeared altogether.

Raki smiled and made a little bow. When he turned, he saw that Yoni was waiting for him, reclining on a bank of satin pillows beside a tinkling fountain in a moonlit garden scented by warm blossoms.

His strange little visitor stepped out from behind an azalea bush, grinning. “Way to go, pal. Give her everything you’ve got.”

JADE KNEW THAT her ploy had failed. Raki had returned to Orlando two weeks ago, and there was no word from him at all. Nothing.

She went through her assignments perfunctorily, interviewing a development tycoon who wanted to build retirement villages on the Moon, a visiting ecologist from Massachusetts who wanted a moratorium declared on all further lunar developments, an astrobiologist who was trying to raise funds for an expedition to the south lunar pole to search for fossilized bacteria: “I know there’s got to be evidence of life down there someplace; I just know it.”

All the help that Yoni had given her, all the support that Monica gave, had been for nothing. Jade saw herself trapped in a cell of lunar stone, blank and unyielding no matter which way she turned.

Gradowsky warned her. “You’re sleepwalking, kid. Snap out of it and get me stories I can send to Orlando, not this high-school junk you’ve been turning in.”

Another week went by, and Jade began to wonder if she really wanted to stay on as a reporter. Maybe she could go back to running a truck up on the surface. Or ship out to Mars: they needed construction workers there for the new base the scientists were building.

When Gradowsky called her in to his office she knew he was going to fire her.

Jumbo Jim had a strange, uncomfortable expression on his face as he pushed aside a half-eaten hero sandwich and a mug of some foaming liquid while gesturing Jade to the chair in front of his desk.

Swallowing visibly, Gradowsky said, “Well, you did it.”

Jade nodded glumly. Her last assignment had been a real dud: the corporate board of Selene City never gave out any news other than their official media release.

“The word just came in from Orlando. You leave for Alpha tomorrow.”

It took Jade a moment to realize what Jumbo Jim was telling her. She felt her breath catch.

“Raki must have fought all the way up to the board of directors,” Gradowsky was saying. “It must’ve been some battle.”

Instead of elation, instead of excitement, Jade felt numb, smothered, encased in a block of ice. I’ve got to make it work, she told herself. I’ve got to get to every person who knew Sam and make them tell me everything. I owe it to Monica and Yoni. I owe it to Raki.

She looked past Gradowsky’s fleshy, flabby face, still mouthing words she did not hear, and realized that Raki had put his career on the line. And so had she.