We’ve been talking about making Moonbase self-sufficient for years. Paul wanted to do it, even back then. And now Doug’s found the way to do it, if we can only get it started. Greg will be dead-set against this, though.
Aloud, she told her son, “Let me talk to Greg about it first. Alone.”
Doug nodded as if that was what he had expected. Maybe what he had hoped she would say.
“I think he’ll take it better if he hears it from you, Mom.”
Joanna sighed. “I think so too.”
Doug got to his feet and Joanna stood up beside her son. It always surprised her that Doug was so much taller than she, taller than his father had been. He looks so much like Paul, she thought, solid and compact. But he’s really much bigger. Almost Greg’s height.
And he’s still growing, she realized. Mentally. He’s challenging Greg already, although he doesn’t really understand that. Greg does, though. Greg will see exactly what this means.
I mustn’t let them clash over this Operation Bootstrap. I’ve got to get them to work together, not against one another.
Wilhelm Zimmerman almost toppled off his bar stool as he flinched away from his friend’s blazing anger. His huge bulk teetered on the swivelling stool. He had to grab the edge of the bar with both hands to steady himself.
Verban took no notice of his obese friend’s struggle to stay on the stool.
“Are you mad?” Verban hissed, his teeth showing. “Do you want to ruin us all?”
The bar was of the American type, in the old Osborne Hotel where the tourists stayed. Verban had insisted on their meeting there, rather than the ratskeller next to the campus where they usually had their seidels of beer.
It was late in the afternoon, yet the place was almost empty. Muted bland music issued thinly from the speakers in the ceiling. A few elderly couples, obviously tourists from Japan or one of the Asian rim tigers, sat together at one circular table, their heads together over a vidcam as they viewed their day’s videodiscs.
Verban had suggested this hotel bar as a place where they would not be seen. Zimmerman thought they looked as obvious as a syphilitic chancre on a nun’s face. How much better he would have felt in the noisy fellowship of the beer hall!
Zimmerman steadied himself, then said, “No one is going to be ruined just because I occasionally help a wealthy foreigner.” He whispered in the quiet, almost deserted bar.
“Madness!” Verban repeated. “Sheer madness.”
Zimmerman had known the man for nearly thirty years. Verban had always been the jittery type, scarecrow thin, nervous, given to smoking illicit cigarettes when he thought no one was watching. He was a professor in the university’s law school, on the verge of graduating into the bliss of a professor emeritus’ well-earned retirement.
“I’ve been doing it for so many years,” Zimmerman said. “Why does it upset you now?”
“Because the pressures are stronger now than ever! Don’t you watch the news? Don’t you see what’s going on around you — all over the world!”
“You mean that assassination in New York?”
“That’s only part of it.”
“And the treaty that the United Nations is sponsoring.” Zimmerman smiled at his old friend. “You see, I do keep an eye on events outside my laboratory.”
“Switzerland will sign the treaty.”
Zimmerman shrugged and reached for his glass of beer, a delicate thing that held only a fraction of a seidel’s worth. It was almost empty. At their favorite haunt the barmaids always made certain that the mugs were topped off regularly.
“So Switzerland will sign the stupid treaty. So what? The authorities have never bothered me.”
“They will now,” Verban whispered harshly. “They will close your laboratory entirely.”
“No, they won’t stop research—”
“Yes they will! And they’ll come looking for you first of all, you with your proud announcement that you saved that boy’s life on the Moon with nanckherapy.”
“But it’s true,” Zimmerman insisted. “I did.”
“And you had to tell the world about it?”
“I had to tell the world that nanotherapy is useful, therapeutic, and — used properly — it isn’t harmful.”
“So now you are a marked man. They will close your laboratory.”
Feeling sudden panic, Zimmerman blurted, “But what am I to do?”
“Retire as gracefully as you can. You certainly have enough money to live well.
He shook his fleshy head. “Not really. Most of my income I spent on new research, once the university stopped funding nanotechnology work.”
“It’s over, Willi,” Verban said, half annoyed, half sorrowful. “You mustn’t fight against them. Just take this peacefully and go off into retirement.”
“Never!”
“You’ll get the entire university shut down, you fool! Don’t you understand what kind of power they have?”
Zimmerman wanted to laugh. “They can’t shut down the entire university.”
“They can and they will, if you try to struggle against them.”
“But…’ Zimmerman’s words died in his throat. He stared at his old friend. Verban was terrified. If the university shut down, who would pay out his pension?
His voice suddenly heavy, Zimmerman said, “What they are doing is terribly, terribly wrong.”
“Yes, I know it,” said Verban. “But they have the power. And they will use it mercilessly.”
“I can’t stop my life’s work. I won’t! There must be some university, somewhere. Perhaps in America.”
“Hah!”
“Or Canada?” Zimmerman asked hopefully.
Verban shook his head.
Zimmerman realized he was perspiring. A fear reflex, he knew. They’re making me afraid. He felt a sudden surge of hatred for the faceless people who ladled out fear as part of their power.
Verban said, “It’s all finished, Willi. Nanotechnology — even theoretical research on the subject will be outlawed once the treaty goes into effect.”
“There must be someplace…’ Zimmerman muttered.
“Nowhere on Earth,” said Verban sadly.
Zimmerman heaved an enormous sigh. But then he remembered that his protege, Kris Cardenas, was now living in Canada. Vancouver, he recalled. Perhaps she can help; after all, she won the Nobel Prize. She must have some influence.
CHELSEA, MASSACHUSETTS
She was good-looking. Older than Killifer would’ve liked, but a real stunner despite her age. Skinny, though. Her arms were rail-thin and he guessed her legs were, too, beneath the tight ankle-length skirt she wore. No way of telling how much of a figure she had under that severe outfit. It was plain dull gray from the choker collar down to her plain dull gray shoes. Killifer almost wondered why she didn’t wear gloves, every other part of her body was covered. No jewelry at all.
But her face was enough to kill for. A sculptor’s dream. The kind of face video stars wished they had. A black Venus, a chocolate-cream-colored goddess of beauty.
As she walked up to Killifer, he was totally unable to stop himself from staring at her. Automatically he got up from the bench where he had been waiting. But then he saw something in her eyes that almost frightened him. Her eyes were pained, haunted, rimmed with red like the fires of hell.
“Jonathan Killifer?” she asked needlessly. Her voice was smokey, low, inviting.
“Jack,” he managed to choke out.
“I’m Melissa Hart. Pleased to meet you, Jack.” Without a smile, without any change in those burning eyes. “Would you follow me, please?”
Killifer wanted to tell her he would follow her off the edge of a cliff, but her eyes stopped him. In silence he walked beside her down the busy corridor. He noticed that all the people here dressed in gray, men and women alike, the only difference was that the men wore trousers while all the women wore tight ankle-length skirts. Well, Killifer thought, they sure can’t run away from you in those hobbles.
He expected her to lead him into her office, or maybe a conference room. Instead he followed her to the end of the hallway, up a narrow flight of stairs, and then through a metal door out onto the building’s roof. The open sunlight made Killifer’s eyes water.