“Okay,” he said lightly. “See you tomorrow morning.”
“Nine sharp,” said Melissa.
“Right.”
He left her at the street corner and went into his apartment building. She didn’t seem to have the slightest fear of being alone on the dark street.
Jinny Anson stared at her husband. “What do you mean?” she demanded.
“Just what I said,” he replied calmly, his teeth clamped on his favorite briar pipe.
“You’ve got to submit your syllabus to a freakin’ committee?”
His studied composure irritated her. “It’s not as if this is the first time,” he said.
“But this committee’s got nothing to do with the university,” she said.
Her husband shrugged. “It’s a local citizens’ group. They call themselves the Moral Watchdogs or something like that.”
“Moral dipshits,” Anson ’muttered.
Her husband gave her a disapproving frown. He was obviously afraid his young daughters might hear her language, even though the door to their bedroom was firmly shut and the kids were down in the rec room watching video on their new wall-to-wall Windowall screen.
Quentin Westlake was a sweet, gentle professor of English literature at the University of Texas. It had taken him ten years to work his way from various outlying campuses in the vast hinterlands of the state to the main campus at Austin. Along the way he had married, fathered two daughters, and divorced when his first wife fell in love with an investment broker from Chicago.
Jinny Anson had met him at a seminar in Lubbock, where she had been invited to participate in a panel discussion of ’Literature in the Space Age.” Jinny had been the only panel member who was not an English lit professor and Quentin had been the only one among them who had treated her with kindness.
It was a different kind of romance, with Jinny commuting every few months from Moonbase to Texas, and Quentin trying to convince his two pre-pubescent daughters that he wouldn’t marry anyone who would turn into a wicked stepmother. When Jinny took her regular annual leave from the directorship of Moonbase the commute became easier: merely from Savannah to Austin. By the time she returned to the Moon they had decided to get married.
Their wedding was at the Alamo, as scheduled, with Quentin’s two daughters serving as bridesmaids and Joanna Stavenger among the guests. Joanna’s best wedding present was to allow Jinny to transfer to the corporation’s manufacturing facility in Houston; she could commute to work now on the high-speed levitrain from Austin. In addition to her regular duties, Jinny was supervising construction of a model water recycling center for the city of Houston, based on the technology perfected at Moonbase. It made for very long days, but at least she was home each night with her husband. Most nights.
For nearly six months, now Jinny had lived in his three-bedroom ranch-style house in suburban Austin, getting acclimatized to raising two half-grown daughters and to the intricate jealousies and competitions of a major university’s faculty. She quickly fell in love with the girls; the other faculty wives and women professors — and administrators — she felt she could gladly do without.
Now, as they were undressing for bed, Quentin told her about the new committee that would be reviewing his work. She knew he was concerned about it, despite his easy-going attitude. He wouldn’t have brought up the subject if it didn’t bother him.
“But what right does a self-appointed gaggle of uptight New Morality people have to pass judgment on your syllabus?” Jinny asked, aggrieved.
Quentin smiled wearily and rubbed the forefinger of his right hand against its thumb. “Money talks, sweetheart. Some of those committee members are among the biggest contributors to the university.”
“It’s an invasion of academic freedom!” Jinny snarled.
“Sure it is,” he agreed amiably. “But what can I do about it? The Jews don’t like “The Merchant of Venice,” the Africans don’t like “Othello.” The Baptists say “Hamlet” is smutty and the feminists complain about “Macbeth,” for lord’s sake! What can I do?”
That stopped her. What could they do about it if the university administration and the faculty leaders permitted it? Probably a lot of New Morality members among them, she realized.
“You know the old Chinese advice about getting raped,” Quentin said softly, as he took off his trousers.
“You shouldn’t relax,” she said, from her side of the bed. “And you sure as hell shouldn’t enjoy it.”
Naked, he flopped onto the bed. “Ah, love, let us be true to one another, for this world has neither certitude nor peace nor help for pain,” he misquoted slightly.
Jinny sat on the bed beside him. “This world,” she replied.
DIRECTOR’S OFFICE
“Operation Bootstrap?” Greg echoed, from behind his desk. “Are you joking?”
“No,” said Doug. “It’s not a joke.”
The two of them were alone in Greg’s office: Doug in his usual spot on the couch by the door, Greg sitting upright behind his desk.
With a shake of his head, Greg said to his brother, “When Mom told me about it I thought perhaps it was some kind of prank you and Brudnoy had cooked up.”
“Greg, it’s something we have to do,” Doug said earnestly.
“Really?”
“Sooner or later.”
“It won’t be sooner.”
For all the urgency in his words, Doug looked calm and relaxed, almost insolently at ease, Greg thought His young half-brother slouched back in the couch all the way across the office. He expects me to get up from my desk and go over to him, Greg told himself. No way.
I’m the director of Moonbase. I called him here into my office; he’s not going to make me jump through his hoops.
“Look, Doug, I asked you to come here without Mom so we could talk over this crazy idea of yours—”
“It’s not a crazy idea,” Doug said.
“Come on, now—”
“I’ve worked out the numbers, Greg. We can build Clipper-ships that’ll outperform anything that’s ever flown. And that’s just the beginning. There’s aircraft, automobiles — we can transform the whole world!”
Greg frowned at his half-brother. “Pie in the sky. Nothing but pipedreams.”
“Look at the numbers!” Doug urged. “I can bring them up on your computer.”
“I’m sure you can put numbers on a screen that say anything you want them to say,” Greg replied, acidly. “But that doesn’t mean I’m going to get as crazy as you are.”
“It’s not crazy!”
“Operation Shoelace,” Greg sneered.
Doug jolted to his feet and strode up to the curving desk. Greg had to look up at his younger half-brother, leaning both fists on the desk top menacingly.
“Operation Bootstrap will not only save Moonbase, Greg,” Doug said, as calm and implacable as a brick wall, “it’ll make Masterson Aerospace the most powerful corporation on Earth. “Sit down,” Greg snapped.
Doug pulled up the nearest webbed chair and sat in it.
“Now listen to the realities,” Greg said, tapping a fingernail on his desk top.
Doug smiled slightly. “Okay, I’m listening.”
“I’ve spent the past six months searching for a way to keep this base afloat—”
“Operation Bootstrap is the way to do it!”
“All that you’ll accomplish,” Greg countered annoyedly, “is to push Moonbase into the red deeper and faster. It’s nonsense! Absolute nonsense!”
“But it’s not—”
“For chrissake, Doug, we can’t even get the mass driver finished!”
“I know that.”
“It’s taking every bit of energy and manpower that I can spare. I’ve got to get the mass driver built and still show a profit every quarter. Do you know how tough that is? Do you have any idea of the pressures I’m under?”
“Okay,” Doug said, raising his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Forget everything I just said, then.”