“Rising slightly.”
Nobu folded his hands across his vest, a gesture he remembered his father using often.
“Can we afford to lose eight percent of our profits?” asked the youngster.
“Not if we don’t have to,” said the comptroller.
“We own part of this skytower project, don’t we?” Nobu asked.
“We bought into it, yes. We have a contract to supply engineers and other technical staff and services. But it’s only a minor share of their operation, less than five percent. And the contract will terminate once they begin operations.”
Nobu felt his brows rise. “We won’t share in their operating profits?”
The comptroller hesitated. “Not unless we negotiate a new contract for maintenance or other services, of course.”
“Of course,” Nobuhiko muttered darkly. Sweat broke out on the comptroller’s forehead.
The office fell silent. Then the director of the corporation’s aerospace division cleared his throat and said, “May I point out that all of our discussion is based on the premise that the skytower will be successful? There is no guarantee of that.”
Nobuhiko understood him perfectly. The skytower could be a failure if we take action to make certain it fails. Looking around the conference table, he saw that each and every member of the executive committee understood the unspoken decision.
CIUDAD DE CIELO
Elliott Danvers was not brilliant, but he was not stupid, either. And he possessed a stubborn determination that allowed him to push doggedly onward toward a goal when others would find easier things to do.
Why is a biologist working on the skytower project? When he asked Molina directly, the man became reticent and evasive.
“What’s a New Morality minister doing here, in Ecuador?” Molina would counter.
When Danvers frankly explained that his mission was to provide spiritual comfort to all who sought it, Molina cocked an eyebrow at him. “Aren’t you here to snoop on us, Elliott?” Molina asked, good-naturedly. “Aren’t your superiors in Atlanta worried that this project is a modern Tower of Babel?”
“Nonsense,” Danvers sputtered.
“Is it? My take on the New Morality is that they don’t like change. They’ve arranged North America just the way they like it, with themselves in control of the government—”
“Control of the government!” Danvers was truly shocked at that. “We’re a religious organization, not a secular one.”
“So was the Spanish Inquisition,” Molina murmured.
Despite their differences, they remained friends of a sort. Bantering, challenging friends. Danvers knew quite well that the only other man in Sky City that Molina regarded as a friend was the project director, Mance Bracknell. But something had come between them. No, not something, Danvers thought. Someone. Lara Tierney.
Molina invited Danvers to have dinner with him from time to time. Once, they joined Bracknell and Lara on a quick jaunt to Quito and dined in the best restaurant Danvers had ever seen. It didn’t take long for Danvers to understand Molina’s problem. Before the main courses were served he realized that Molina was in love with her, but she loved Bracknell. The eternal triangle, Danvers thought. It has caused the ruin of many a dream.
For himself, Danvers treasured Molina’s company. Despite his atheistic barbs, Molina was the only close friend Danvers had made in this city of godless technicians and dark-skinned mestizos who worshipped their old blood-soaked gods in secret.
Yet the question nagged at him. Why is Molina here? What can a biologist do for this mammoth project?
After many weeks of asking everyone he knew, even men and women he had barely been introduced to, the path to understanding suddenly came to him, like a revelation from on high.
The woman. Lara Tierney. She is the key to Molina’s presence here. To get him to tell the truth, Danvers realized, to open up his inner secrets, I must use his love for this woman. That’s his vulnerable spot. Still, he wavered, reluctant to cause the pain that he knew Molina would feel. Danvers prayed long hours kneeling by his bedside, seeking guidance. Do I have the right to do this? he asked. The only answer he received was a memory of his mentor’s words: Remember that you are doing God’s work.
And then the revelation came to him. The way to promotion, the path to advancement within the New Morality, was by stopping this godless project. That’s why they sent me here, he realized. To see if I can prevent these secularists from succeeding in their blasphemous project. That’s how they’re testing me.
Danvers rose from his knees, his heart filled with determination. The hour was late, but he told the phone to call Molina. He got the man’s answering machine, of course, but made a date with him for dinner the following night. Not lunch. What he had to do would take more time than a lunch break. Better to do it after the working day is finished, in the dark of night. Be hard, he advised himself. Show no mercy. Drive out all doubts, all qualms. Be a man of steel.
Dinner wasn’t much, and afterward Danvers and Molina walked slowly up the gently rising street toward the building where they both were quartered. The skytower was outlined by safety lights, flashing on and off like fireflies, trailing upward until they disappeared into the starry sky. A sliver of a Moon was riding over the mountains to the east. The sky was clear, hardly a cloud in sight, the night air crisp and chill.
All through dinner Danvers had avoided starting this probe into his friend’s heart. But as they approached their building, he realized he could delay no longer.
“Victor,” he began softly, “you and Bracknell and Ms. Tierney seem to be old friends.”
“We all went to university together,” Molina replied evenly.
The lamps along the street were spaced fairly widely, far apart enough for the two men to stroll through pools of shadow as they walked along. Danvers saw that Molina kept his eyes down, watching where he was stepping rather than gazing up at the skytower looming above them.
“You studied biology there?”
“Yes,” said Molina. “Mance bounced around from one department to another in the school of engineering.”
“And Ms. Tierney?”
Through the shadows he could hear Molina’s sudden intake of breath. “Lara? She started out in sociology, I think. But then she switched to engineering. Aerospace engineering, can you believe it?”
“That was after she’d met Bracknell.”
“Yeah, right. After she met Mance. She went so goofy over him that she switched her major just to be closer to him.”
“You were attracted to her yourself, weren’t you?”
“Fucking lot of good it did me once she met Mance.”
Danvers walked on for a few steps in silence. He heard the bitterness in Molina’s voice, and now that he had touched on the sore spot he had to open up that wound again.
“Did you love her then?” he asked.
Molina did not answer.
“You still love her, don’t you?”
“That’s none of your damned business, Elliott.”
“I think it is, Victor. You’re my friend, and I want to help you.”
“How the hell can you help me? You want to pray for a miracle, maybe?”
“Prayer has its powers.”
“Bullshit!”
Danvers nodded in the darkness. Victor’s in pain, no doubt of it. My task is to use his pain, channel it into a productive course.
“Why did you come here, then? If you knew that Bracknell was heading this project, didn’t you expect her to show up, sooner or later?”
“I suppose I did, subconsciously. Maybe I thought she wouldn’t, that they were finished. I don’t know!”