LaNague checked the controls. “Watch up ahead.”
Broohnin looked down toward the ocean.
“No,” LaNague told him. “Ahead. Straight ahead.”
There was nothing straight ahead but clouds. No. there was something-they speared into a patch of open air, and there it was, straight ahead as LaNague had said: a sprawling Tudor mansion with a perfect lawn and rows of English hedges cut two meters high and planted in devious, maze-like patterns. All floating three kilometers in the sky.
“Ah!” LaNague said softly at Broohnin's side. “The humble abode of Eric Boedekker.”
CHAPTER NINE
Competition is a sin.
John D. Rockefeller, Sr.
Eric Boedekker's home sat in a shallow, oblong, six-acre dish rimmed with batteries of anti-aircraft weapons. The general public looked on the skisland estates as mere toys for the obscenely rich, totally devoid of any practical value. The general public was wrong, as usual.
“Looks like a fort,” Broohnin said as they glided toward it.
“It is.”
Members of the uppermost layers of Earth's upper-upper class had long ago become regular targets of organized criminal cartels, political terrorists, and ordinary people who were simply hungry. Open season was declared on the rich and they were kidnapped and held for ransom at an alarming rate. The electronic currency system, of course, eliminated the possibility of monetary ransom, and so loved ones were held captive and returned in exchange for commodities useful in the black market, such as gold, silver, beef.
Huge, low-floating skislands had long been in use as vacation resorts, guaranteeing the best weather at all times, always staying ahead of storms and winter's chill. Seeing the plight of the very rich, an enterprising company began constructing smaller skislands as new homes for them, offering unparalleled security. The skisland estates could be approached only by air, and were easily defensible against assault.
There were a few drawbacks, the major one being the restriction from populated areas, which meant any land mass on the planet. Huge gravity-negating fields were at work below the skislands and no one knew the effects of prolonged exposure to the fields on human physiology. No one was volunteering, either. And so the skislands were all to be found hovering over the open sea.
A holographic message was suddenly projected in front of LaNague's flitter. Solid-looking block letters told them to approach no further, or risk being shot from the sky. A vid communication frequency was given if the occupants wished to announce themselves. LaNague tapped in the frequency and spoke.
“This is Peter LaNague. I desire a personal meeting with Eric Boedekker on a matter of mutual interest.”
There was no visual reply, only a blank screen and a curt male voice. “One moment.” After a brief pause, the voice spoke again. “Audience denied.”
“Tell him I bring word from Flint,” LaNague said quickly before the connection could be broken, then turned to Broohnin with a sour expression. “‘Audience denied’! If it weren't so vital that I see him, I'd-”
A bright crimson light began blinking on and off from the roof of a squat square structure to the left of the main buildings. The male voice returned, this time with a screen image to go with it…a young man, slightly puzzled, if his expression was a true indicator.
“You may land by the red flasher. Remain in your flitter until the escort arrives to take you inside.”
THEY WALKED IDLY about the great hall of the reconstructed Tudor mansion, waiting for Boedekker to appear. After being carefully scanned for anything that might conceivably be used as a weapon, they had been deposited here to await the great man's pleasure.
“He doesn't appear to be in much of a hurry to see you,” Broohnin said, staring at the paintings framed in the gold leaf ceiling, the richly paneled walls, the fireplace that was functional but unused-nobody on Earth burned real wood any more.
LaNague appeared unconcerned. “Oh, he is. He's just trying hard not to show it.” He ambled around the hall, thin arms folded across his chest, studying the collection of paintings which seemed to favor examples of the satyr-and-nymph school of art.
“Boedekker's probably one of your heroes, isn't he?” Broohnin said, watching LaNague closely for a reaction. He saw one he least expected.
LaNague's head snapped around; his thin lips were drawn into an even thinner line by anger. “Why do you say that? Are you trying to insult me? If you are-”
“Even I've heard of Eric Boedekker,” Broohnin said. “He singlehandedly controls the asteroid mining industry in Sol System. He's rich, he's powerful, he's big business…everything you Tolivians admire!”
“Oh. That.” LaNague cooled rapidly. He wasn't even going to bother to reply. Broohnin decided to push him further.
“Isn't he the end product of all the things you Tolivians yammer about-free trade, free economy, no restrictions whatsoever? Isn't he the perfect capitalist? The perfect Tolivian?”
LaNague sighed and spoke slowly, as if explaining the obvious to a dim-witted child. It irked Broohnin, but he listened.
“Eric Boedekker never participated in a free market in his life. He used graft, extortion, and violence to have certain laws passed giving him and his companies special options and rights of way in the field of asteroid mineral rights. He used the Earth government to squash most of the independent rock jumpers by making it virtually impossible for them to sell their ore except through a Boedekker company. Nothing you see around you was earned in a free market. He doesn't eliminate his challengers in the marketplace by innovations or improvements; he has his friends in the government bureaus find ways to put them out of business. He's a corruptor of everything a Tolivian holds dear! He's an economic royalist, not a capitalist.”
LaNague paused to catch his breath, then smiled. “But there's one Earth law even he hasn't been able to circumvent, despite every conceivable scheme to do so: the one person/one child law.”
“I would think that'd be the easiest to get around.”
“No. That's the one law that can have no exceptions. Because it affects everyone, applies to everyone the same. It has been held as an absolute for as long as any living human can remember. If you allowed one person to have one extra child-no matter what the circumstances-the entire carefully structured, rigidly enforced population control program would fall apart once word got out.”
“But he has two children…doesn't he? What's he want another for?”
“His first born was a son, another Eric, by his second wife. When they were in the process of dissolving their marriage, they fought over custody of the child. With Boedekker pulling the strings, there was no chance that the wife would keep the boy, even though by Earth law he was rightfully hers because she had him by intrauterine gestation. In a fit of depression, the woman poisoned herself and the child.
“He fathered a second child, a girl named Liza, by his third wife. Liza was gestated by extrauterine means to avoid potential legal problems should the third marriage break up-which it did. She grew to be the pride of his life as he groomed her to take over his mining empire-”
“A girl?” Broohnin said, surprise evident on his face. “In charge of Boedekker Industries?”
“The pioneer aspects of out-world life have pushed women back into the incubator/nest-keeper role, and it'll be a while before they break out of it again. But on Earth it's different. Anyway, Liza met a man named Frey Kirowicz and they decided to become out-worlders. It was only after they were safely on Neeka that she sent her father a message telling him what he could do with Boedekker Industries. Eric tried everything short of abducting her to get her back.