The Silent War

SELENE: WINTER SOLSTICE PARTY

It was the social event of the year. Everyone who meant anything in Selene City was invited and everyone who was invited dressed up and came to the party. Douglas Stavenger, the scion of the lunar nation’s founding family, brought his wife. The ambassador from the Global Economic Council, Earth’s world government in all but name, brought two of his four wives. Pancho Lane, head of the rival Astro Corporation, came unescorted. Nobuhiko Yamagata, head of the giant Japanese corporation, made a special trip to Selene for the occasion. Even Big George Ambrose, the shaggy red-maned chief of the rock rats’ settlement at Ceres, traveled on a torch ship all the way from the Belt to be at Martin Humphries’s Christmas party.

The invitations called it a Winter Solstice Party, artfully avoiding any religious sensitivities among the Moslems, Buddhists, Hindus and die-hard atheists on the guest list. Some of the Christian conservatives grumbled at the lack of proper piety, but then Martin Humphries never pretended to be a believer. Big George complained, with a mug of beer in each beefy paw, that back in his native Australia this time of the year marked the onset of winter darkness, not the gradually longer days that led to springtime.

One of the reasons for the full turnout was that Humphries gave the party in his palatial home, built deep in the lowest level of Selene City. He rarely invited anyone to his mansion, and curiosity—more than holiday good cheer—impelled many of the hundreds of guests.

Technically, the sprawling, low-roofed mansion was the property of the Humphries Trust Research Center, a legal fiction that was a monument to the ingenuity of Martin Humphries.

The airless surface of the Moon is exposed to temperature swings of four hundred degrees between sunlight and shadow, drenched in hard radiation from the Sun and deep space, and peppered with a constant infall of microscopic meteoroids. Human settlements are built underground, and the deeper below the surface, the more prestigious and expensive the habitation.

Humphries built his home in the deepest grotto below the original Moonbase, seven levels beneath the surface. He established an extensive garden that filled the grotto with the heady scents of roses and lilacs, irrigated by water manufactured from oxygen and hydrogen smelted out of the lunar surface rocks, lit by long strips of broad-spectrum lamps fixed to the rough rock ceiling to simulate sunshine. The garden was a little over one square kilometer in extent, slightly more than ten hectares. It cost a fortune to maintain this improbable paradise, with its showy azaleas and peonies always in bloom, its alders and white-boled birches and graceful fronds of frangipani. Flowering white and pink gardenia bushes grew tall as trees. Humphries had established a research trust to finance his garden, and had even gotten the government of Selene to accept the slightly absurd justification that it was a long-term study in maintaining a man-made ecology on the Moon.

The truth was that Humphries wanted to live on the Moon, as far away as he could get from his coldly crusty father and the storm-racked world of his birth. So he built a mansion in the middle of his underground Eden, half of it taken up by research laboratories and botanical workshops, the other half an opulent home for none other than Martin Humphries.

The residential half of the mansion was big enough to take a couple of hundred guests easily. The big living room accommodated most of them, while others roamed through the formal dining room and the art galleries and outdoor patios.

Pancho headed straight for the bar built into the book-lined library, where she found Big George Ambrose with one hand wrapped around a frosty-looking beer mug, deep in intent conversation with a slinky, low-cut blonde. George was unconsciously worming a finger of his free hand in his collar, obviously uncomfortable in a tux. Wonder who did the bow tie for him, Pancho asked herself. Or maybe it’s a clip-on.

Grinning, Pancho worked her way through the chattering crowd and ordered a bourbon and ginger ale from one of the three harried-looking men working behind the bar. Dozens of conversations buzzed around her; laughter and the tinkle of ice cubes filled the big, beam-ceilinged room. Pancho leaned both her elbows against the bar and searched the crowd for Amanda. “Hey, Pancho!” Big George had disentangled himself from the blonde and pushed toward her, the crowd parting before him like sailboats scampering out of the way of a lumbering supertanker.

“How’re the bots bitin’, old gal?” George asked, in his surprisingly high, sweet tenor.

Pancho laughed. While she had worked for years to smother her West Texas accent as she climbed the slippery ladder of Astro Corporation, George’s Aussie argot seemed to get thicker every time she saw him.

“Some bash, isn’t it?” she shouted over the noise of the crowd.

George nodded enthusiastically. “ ’Nuff money in this room to finance a trip to Alpha Centauri.”

“And back.”

“How’s it goin’ with you, Panch?”

“No major complaints,” she lied, unwilling to talk about the missing freighters. “What’s new with the rock rats?”

“Closed down the last warehouse on Ceres,” George said. “Everything’s up in Chrysalis now.”

“You finally finished the habitat?”

“Naw, it’ll never be finished. We’ll keep addin’ to it, hangin’ bits and pieces here and there. But we don’t have to live down in the dust anymore. We’ve got a decent gravity for ourselves.”

Searching the crowd as she spoke, Pancho asked, “A full one g?”

“One-sixth, like here. Good enough to keep the bones producin’ calcium and all that.”

“You seen Mandy?”

George’s shaggy-bearded face compressed into a frown. “You mean Mrs. Humphries? Nope. No sign of her.”

Pancho could hear the scorn in the big redhead’s voice. Like most of the other rock rats, he loathed Martin Humphries. Is he sore at Amanda for marrying the Hump? Pancho wondered. Before she could ask George about that, Humphries appeared in the doorway that led to the living room, clutching Amanda by the wrist at his side.

She was splendidly beautiful, wearing a sleeveless white gown that hung to the floor in soft folds. Despite its slack cut, anyone could see that Amanda must be the most beautiful woman in the solar system, Pancho thought: radiant blond hair, a face that would shame Helen of Troy, the kind of figure that makes men and even other women stare in unalloyed awe. With a slight grin, Pancho noticed that Amanda’s hairdo, piled high atop her head, made her a centimeter or so taller than Humphries, even with the lifts he always wore in his shoes.

When Pancho had first met Humphries, more than a decade earlier, his face had been round and puffy, his body soft, slightly potbellied. Yet his eyes were hard, piercing gray chips of flint set into that bland face. Since he’d married Amanda, though, Humphries had become slimmer, straighter; his face thinned down, too. Pancho figured he had partaken liberally of nanotech therapies; no need for cosmetic surgery when nanomachines could tighten muscles, smooth skin, erase wrinkles. Those gray eyes of his were unchanged, though: brutal and ruthless.

“Can I have your attention, please?” Humphries called out in a strong baritone.

The room fell silent and everyone turned to face their host and hostess.

Smiling broadly, Humphries said, “If you can tear yourselves away from the bar for a minute, Amanda and I have an announcement to make, in the living room.”

The guests dutifully trooped into the living room. Pancho and George lingered at the bar, then at last followed the others. George even put his beer mug down. The living room was packed now with women in opulent gowns and dazzling jewelry, men in formal black attire. Peacocks and penguins, Pancho thought. Only, the women are the peacocks.

Despite the room’s great size it felt slightly uncomfortable with that many bodies pressed together, no matter how well they were dressed. Pancho’s nostrils twitched at the mingled scents of perfume and perspiration.

Humphries led Amanda by the hand to the grand piano in the middle of the spacious room, then climbed up on its bench. Amanda stood on the floor beside him, smiling, yet to Pancho’s eyes she looked uncomfortable, unhappy, almost frightened.

“My friends,” Humphries began.

Friends my blistered butt, Pancho said to herself. He hasn’t got any friends, just people he’s bought or bullied.

“It’s so good to see all of you here. I hope you’re enjoying yourselves.”

Some sycophant started clapping and in a flash the whole crowd was applauding. Even Pancho slapped her hands together a few times.

Humphries smiled and tried to look properly humble.

“I’m so glad,” he said. “I’m especially happy to be able to tell you our good news.” He hesitated a moment, savoring the crowd’s obvious anticipation. “Amanda and I are going to have a son. The exact delivery date hasn’t been determined yet, but it should be in late August.”

The women cooed, the men cheered, then everybody applauded and shouted congratulations. Pancho was tall enough to see past the heads bobbing in front of her. She focused on Amanda. Mandy was smiling, sure enough, but it looked forced, without a trace of happiness behind it.

The crowd formed an impromptu reception line, each guest shaking Humphries’s hand and congratulating him and the expectant mother. When Pancho’s turn came, she saw that Amanda’s china-blue eyes looked bleak, miserable.

She had known Amanda since they’d both been astronauts working for Astro Corporation. Pancho had been there when Mandy had first met Lars Fuchs, and when Fuchs proposed to her. They were old friends, confidants—until Amanda had married Humphries. For the past eight years she had seen Mandy only rarely, and never alone.

“Congratulations, Mandy,” Pancho said to her, grasping her hand in both of her own. Amanda’s hand felt cold. Pancho could feel it trembling.

“Congratulate me, too, Pancho,” said Humphries, full of smiles and good cheer. “I’m the father. She couldn’t have done it without me.”

“Sure,” Pancho said, releasing Amanda’s hand. “Congratulations. Good work.”

She wanted to ask him why it had taken eight years, but held her tongue. She wanted to say that it didn’t take skilled labor to impregnate a woman, but she held back on that, too.

“Now I’ve got everything a man needs to be happy,” Humphries said, clutching Amanda’s hand possessively, “except Astro Corporation. Why don’t you retire gracefully, Pancho, and let me take my rightful place as chairman of the Astro board?”

“In your dreams, Martin,” Pancho growled.

With a brittle smile, Humphries said, “Then I’ll just have to find some other way to take control of Astro.”

“Over my dead body.”

Humphries’ smile turned brighter. “Remember, you said that, Pancho. I didn’t.”

Frowning, Pancho left them and drifted off into the crowd, but kept an eye on Amanda. If I can just get her alone, without the Humper hanging onto her …

At last she saw Amanda disengage herself from her husband’s hand and make her way toward the stairs that led up to their bedroom. She looked as if she were fleeing, escaping. Pancho slipped back through the bar, into the kitchen and past the busy, clanging, complaining crew that was already starting to clean up the plates and glasses, and went up the back stairs.

Pancho knew where the master suite was. More than eight years ago, before Mandy married Fuchs and the Humper was pursuing her fervently, Pancho had broken into Humphries’s mansion to do a bit of industrial espionage for Astro Corporation. With the noise of the party guests filtering up from below, she slipped along the upstairs corridor and through the open double doors of the sitting room that fronted the master bedroom.

Holding her long skirt to keep it from swishing, Pancho went to the bedroom door and looked in. Amanda was in the lavatory; she could see Mandy’s reflection in the full-length mirror on the open lavatory door; she was standing in front of the sink, holding a small pill bottle. The bedroom was mirrored all over the place, walls and ceiling. Wonder if the Humper still keeps video cameras behind the mirrors, Pancho asked herself.

“Hey, Mandy, you in there?” she called as she stepped into the plushly carpeted bedroom.

She could see Amanda flinch with surprise. She dropped the vial of pills she’d been holding. They cascaded into the sink and onto the floor like a miniature hailstorm.

“Jeeps, I’m sorry,” Pancho said, coming up to the open lavatory door. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

“It’s all right, Pancho,” said Amanda, her voice trembling almost as much as her hands. She began to scoop the pills out of the sink and tried to return them to the little bottle. She dropped as many as she got in.

Pancho knelt down and started scooping the oval, blood-red lozenges. No trademark embossed on them.

“What are these?” she asked. “Somethin’ special?”

Leaning on the sink, trying to hold herself together, Amanda said, “They’re rather like tranquilizers.”

“You need tranquilizers?”

“Now and again,” Amanda replied.

Pancho took the bottle from Amanda’s shaking hands. There was no label on it.

“You don’t need this shit,” Pancho growled. She pushed past Amanda and started to pour the pills down the toilet.

“Don’t!” Amanda screeched, snatching the bottle from Pancho’s hands. “Don’t you dare!”

“Mandy, this crap can’t be any good for you.”

Tears sprang into Amanda’s eyes. “Don’t tell me what’s good for me, Pancho. You don’t know. You have no idea.”

Pancho looked into her red-rimmed eyes. “Mandy, this is me, remember? You can tell me whatever troubles you got.”

Amanda shook her head. “You don’t want to know, Pancho.”

She clicked the bottle’s cap back on after three fumbling tries, then opened the medicine chest atop the sink to return the bottle to its shelf. Pancho saw the chest was filled with pill bottles.

“Jeeps, you got a regular drug store,” she murmured.

Amanda said nothing.

“You need all that stuff?” “Now and again,” Amanda repeated.

“But why?”

Amanda closed her eyes and took a deep, shuddering breath. “They help me.”

“Help you how?”

“When Martin wants some special performances,” Amanda said, in a voice so low that Pancho could barely hear her. “When he invites other women to help us in bed. When he wants me to take aphrodisiacs to enhance my response to him and his friends. Some of them are video stars, you know. You’d recognize them, Pancho. They’re famous.”

Pancho felt her jaw drop open.

“And when Martin brings one or two of his strange young male friends to join us, I really need pills to get through that. And for watching the videos he projects on the ceiling. And for trying to sleep without seeing all those nasty, horrible scenes over and over again…”

Amanda was sobbing now, tears streaming down her cheeks, her words incomprehensible. Pancho wrapped her long arms around her and held her tightly. She didn’t know what to say except to whisper, “There, there. It’ll be all right, Mandy. You’ll see. It’ll be all right.”

After several minutes, Amanda pulled away slightly. “Don’t you see, Pancho? Don’t you understand? He’ll kill Lars if I don’t satisfy him. He’s got me completely under his control. There’s no way out for me.”

Pancho had no response for that.

“That’s why I agreed to have the baby, Pancho. He’s promised to stop the sex games if I bear his son. I’ll have to quit the drugs, of course. I’m already started on a detox program.”

Pointing to the bottle of red capsules, Pancho said, “Yeah, I can see.”

“I’m weaning myself off them,” Amanda protested. “It’s just that tonight… I need one.”

“What the news nets would give for this story,” Pancho muttered.

“You can’t! You mustn’t!” Desperate alarm flashed in her tear-filled eyes. “I only told you—” Pancho gripped her quaking shoulders. “Hey, this is me, remember? I’m your friend, Mandy. Not a peep of this gets past that door.”

Amanda stared at her.

“Not even if it could save Astro from being taken over by the Humper. This is between you and me, Mandy, nobody else. Ever.”

Amanda nodded slowly.

“But I’ll tell you one thing. I’d like to go downstairs and punch that smug sonofabitch so hard he’ll never be able to smile again.”

Amanda shook her head slowly, wearily. “If only it were that simple, Pancho. If only—”

The phone in the bedroom buzzed. Amanda took a deep breath and walked to the bed. Pancho swung the lavatory door halfway shut, hiding her from the phone camera’s view.

“Answer,” said Amanda.

Pancho heard Humphries’s irritated voice demand, “How long are you going to stay up there? Some of the guests are starting to leave.”

“I’ll be down in a moment, Martin.”

Amanda returned to the lavatory and began repairing the makeup on her face. Pancho thought that if the Humper even noticed she’d been crying, it wouldn’t make any difference to him.

Then a new thought struck her. If Lars knew about this he’d kill Humphries. He’d fight his way past all the armies in the solar system to get to Humphries and rip his throat out.