The Silent War

SELENE: HOTEL LUNA RESIDENTIAL SUITE

Pancho could not sleep that night. She roamed the rooms and corridors of her residential suite, her mind in a turmoil over Amanda and Humphries.

It had taken Pancho years to realize that, as the top executive of one of the largest corporations in the solar system, she could afford luxuries. It wasn’t until her younger sister left on the five-year expedition to Saturn that it finally hit her: Sis is on her own now, I’m not responsible for her anymore. I can start living any way I want to. She changed her lifestyle, but only minimally. Her wardrobe improved, although not grandiosely so. She didn’t become a party-goer; she never got mentioned in the tabloid shows. She still worked nearly every waking moment at her job as chief executive officer of Astro Corporation, still spent as much time in the factories and research labs as in the corporate offices and conference rooms, still knew each of the division heads and many of the lower-echelon managers on a first-name, drinking buddy basis.

Her one obvious change was her domicile. For years Pancho had lived with her sister in a pair of adjoining two-room units on Selene’s third level. When she traveled to Earth she stayed at corporate-owned suites. After her sister left, Pancho spent several months feeling lonely, betrayed by the sister she had raised from infancy—twice, since Sis had died and been cryonically preserved for years while Pancho watched over her sarcophagus and waited for a cure for the cancer that took her first life.

Once Sis was revived from her liquid-nitrogen immersion, Pancho had to train her all over again to walk, to use the toilet, to speak, to live as an adult. And then the kid took off for distant Saturn with a team of scientists and their support personnel, starting her second life in independence, as far from her big sister as she could get.

Eventually Pancho realized that now she could live in independence, too. So she splurged for the first time in her life. She leased several units from the nearly bankrupt Hotel Luna and brought in contractors who broke through walls and floors to make her a spacious, high-ceilinged, thoroughly modern home that was perfectly suited to her personality. The double-height ceilings were a special luxury; no one else in Selene enjoyed such spaciousness, not even Martin Humphries in his palatial mansion.

Some said she was competing with Humphries, trying to show that she too could live in opulence. That thought had never occurred to Pancho. She simply decided to build the home of her dreams, and her dreams were many and various.

In every room, the walls and floors and ceilings were covered with smart screens. Pancho could change the decor, the ambiance, even the scent of a room with the touch of a button or the mere utterance of a word. She could live in the palace of the Caliph of Baghdad, or atop the Eiffel Tower, or deep in the fragrant pine forest of the Canadian Rockies, or even out in the flat dusty scrubland of her native west Texas.

This night, though, she walked on the barren, pockmarked surface of the Moon, as the cameras on the floor of the crater Alphonsus showed it in real time: silent, airless, the glowing blue and white crescent of Earth hanging in the black star-strewn sky.

Mandy doesn’t want Lars to know what she’s been going through, Pancho finally realized, because he’d go wild and try to kill Humphries, but Humphries’s people would kill Lars long before he got anywhere near the Humper.

She stopped her pacing and stared out across the dark uneven floor of Alphonsus, dotted with smaller craterlets and cracked here and there by rilles. Maybe that’s what Humphries wants. He promised Mandy he wouldn’t try to kill Fuchs if Mandy married him, but now he’s making her life so miserable that Lars’ll come after him. And get himself killed.

That’s just like the Humper. Make the other guy jump to his tune. He won’t go after Lars; he’ll make Lars come after him.

What’ll Lars’s reaction be when he finds out Mandy’s going to have a baby? Will that be enough to set him off? Is that why Humphries impregnated Mandy? He’s got one son already, somebody to carry on his gene line. Rumor is the kid’s his clone, for cripes sake. Why’s he need another son?

To kill Lars, that’s why, Pancho answered herself.

What should I do about it? Should I do anything? Warn Lars? Try to help Mandy, show her she’s got somebody she can depend on? Or just stay the hell out of the whole ugly mess?

Pancho gazed out at the tired, worn, slumped ringwall mountains of Alphonsus. They look like I feel, she said to herself. Weary. Worn down.

What should I do? Without thinking about it, she called out, “Decor scheme, deep space.”

The lunar surface abruptly disappeared. Pancho was in the midst of empty space, stars and glowing nebulas and whirling galaxies stretching out into the blackness of infinity.

“Saturn vicinity,” she called.

The ringed planet appeared before her eyes, hovering in emptiness, a splendid, eye-dazzling oblate sphere of delicate pastel colors with those impossible bright-white rings floating around its middle.

That’s where Sis is, Pancho thought. Hundreds of millions of kilometers away.

Abruptly, she shook her head, as if to clear it. “Versailles, Hall of Mirrors,” she called. And instantly was in the French palace, staring at her own reflections.

What should I do about Mandy? she asked herself again. Then a new thought struck her: What do I want to do?

Me. Myself. What do I want to do?

Once Pancho had been a roughneck astronaut, a tomboy who dared farther and played harder than all the others. But ever since her younger sister was struck down by cancer, so many years ago— so many lifetimes ago—Pancho had lived her life for others. Her sister. Then Dan Randolph came along, hired her as an astronaut and, as he lay dying, bequeathed his share of Astro Corporation to her. Ever since, she had been fighting Dan’s fights, striving to hold Astro together, to make it profitable, to keep it out of Humphries’s clutching paws. And now—Amanda?

What about me? she wondered. What do I want to be when I grow up?

She studied her reflection in the nearest mirror and saw beyond the floor-length party skirt and glittering lame blouse, beyond the cosmetic therapies, to the gawky, gangling African-American from west Texas that lay beneath the expensive exterior. What do you want out of life, girl?

Her reflection shook its head at her. Doesn’t matter. You inherited this responsibility from Dan Randolph. It’s on your shoulders now. Mandy, Humphries, even this guy from Nairobi Industries, it’s all part of the game you’re in. Whether you like it or not. What you want doesn’t matter. Not until this game is finished, one way or the other. Especially not now, with the Humper starting to peck away at Astro again. He’s starting the war again. I thought it was all finished and over with eight years ago, but Humphries is starting again. Third freighter in as many weeks, according to this morning’s report. He’s only knocked off unmanned freighters so far, but this is just the beginning. He’s probing to see how I’m gonna react.

And it’s not just Humphries, either, Pancho reminded herself as she walked slowly along the mirrored corridor. It’s the whole danged world. Earth’s just starting to recover from the greenhouse cliff a li’l bit. Raw materials from the Belt are so blasted cheap they’re providing the basis for an economic comeback. But if Humphries gets complete control of the Belt he’ll jack up prices to wherever he wants ’em. He doesn’t care about Earth or anybody besides himself. He wants a monopoly. He wants a goddam empire for himself.

You’ve got responsibilities, lady, she said to her reflection. You got no time to feel sorry for yourself.

“Acropolis,” she commanded, striding back to her bedroom through colonnades of graceful fluted columns, the ancient city of Athens visible beyond them, lying in the hot summer sun beneath a sky of perfect blue.

Once in her bedroom Pancho made two phone calls: one to the investment firm in New York that she always used to check out potential business partners or rivals; the other was a personal call to Big George Ambrose, in his room in the very same Hotel Luna.

She was surprised when the phone’s synthesized voice told her that George Ambrose had already left Selene; he was returning to Ceres.

“Find him, wherever he is,” Pancho snapped at the phone. “I want to talk to him.”