But he planted his fists on his hips and demanded, “Why not? I’m going to recommend to the board that we shut down Moonbase for good. There’s nothing we’re doing up here that we can’t do in Kiribati and you know it!”
My god, Joanna thought, his mind’s made up and he won’t listen to any alternatives. He doesn’t care what happens to Doug. He doesn’t care about anything at all.
She heard herself reply, “Very well, then, Greg. I’ll fight you every inch of the way on this. And in the meantime I’m going to buy an LTV and pay for adapting it for the asteroid rendezvous.”
The blood seemed to drain from Greg’s face. “You’re going … to buy…’ He couldn’t choke out the rest of the words.
“With my own money,” Joanna said. “It’ll be a private venture.”
“You can’t…”
“Yes I can,” said Joanna, trying to keep her voice down, hating having to say this within earshot of so many strangers.
“And I can rent space from Moonbase for doing the necessary refurbishing work on the LTV.”
Greg visibly struggled to regain control of himself. Some color returned to his cheeks. His eyes seemed to calm down somewhat.
“It’s your money,” he said. Then he pushed past his mother and strode back toward the door to the control center, leaving Joanna standing there.
Spend Christmas on Christmas Island, Ibriham al-Rashid grumbled to himself. Only an advertising executive who’s never left Manhattan could come up with such an idiotic idea.
It had been three months since Rashid had been named chief operations officer of the new Kiribati Manufacturing and Entertainment Corporation, a weirdly structured company that included luxury vacation centers alongside all of Masterson Corporation’s former space operations division, including Moonbase.
Just like that, with little more than a few strokes on a keyboard, he had been removed from his directorship of Masterson’s space division and made chief operating officer of this ridiculous new corporation. His work with the fusion energy system was put on hold. “No need for that if we can still use nanotech in space, or out there on the islands,” the corporate president told him. “Don’t look so grim! This is a promotion for you.”
A promotion, Rashid thought bitterly. They’re throwing away the fusion development and sticking me here on this miserable little island. I’ve been destroyed by corporate politics.
As part of their deal with Kiribati, Masterson Corporation was setting up the new company with seats on the board of directors for each of the council chiefs. In addition to transferring Moonbase and the entire space operations division to the new corporation, Masterson was funding construction of two major tourist complexes, with hotels and casinos and all the amenities, one on Tarawa and another on Kiritimati — the atoll that Westerners still called Christmas Island. “Spend your holidays on Christmas Island,” was going to be their advertising slogan.
Rashid stood on the atoll’s highest point, Joe’s Hill, all of twelve meters high, and stared at the devastation that last week’s typhoon had left. The sandy islands had been scrubbed clean by the ferocious winds and a storm-driven tide that had surged completely across them, leaving nothing standing but a few battered palm trees.
The islanders had been moved to safety days before the storm struck, of course, and now were trickling back from the shelters to which they had scattered, most of them thousands of miles away, across the broad Pacific.
There were more construction workers than natives on the atoll now, and Rashid’s ears rang with the grating whine of power saws and the incessant thumping of electric staple-drivers. Huge trucks groaned and rumbled all over the tiny island.
They were building a luxury casino hotel, an amusement center, and an airfield that could handle Clippership rockets as well as supersonic jets. International relief crews would be arriving soon to start helping the returning natives to rebuild their homes, but the corporate task of turning this smashed atoll into a vacation paradise was moving ahead without delay. Every gram of building materials had to be flown in. Four thousand palm trees were due to arrive today, Rashid knew. Tomorrow’s Clippership cargo would include enough sod to grass over the ’championship eighteen-hole golf course’ that the advertising brochures promised.
It would almost be as easy to build a resort complex at Moonbase, Rashid thought sourly.
Construction had been behind schedule when the typhoon struck. Now it was seriously lagging. Rashid, who hated to leave Savannah, and actually preferred New York, had rocketed out to Tarawa once the storm had spun away, and then flown on a corporate jet to what was left of Christmas Island.
Not this Christmas, he knew. There’d be no tourists visiting this atoll for many months to come.
His only consolation on this trip was the new assistant he had hired, a tall, sleek dark woman named Melissa Hart who had gladly accompanied him on this depressing journey to this miserable little lonely island.
Rashid had been impressed with her good looks and smooth self-confidence when she had first appeared at his office seeking a job on his staff. Her personnel file said that she had been a faithful Masterson employee for more than ten years, with an excellent record.
She was older than the women Rashid usually went after. And rather too thin for his taste. Yet she was alluring: cool yet tempting, proper in dress and demeanor while her smile seemed to suggest everything a man could desire. She spoke modestly, worked efficiently, and smiled deliciously. When she agreed to accompany him as his assistant on this trip to the Pacific, Rashid’s fantasies kept him awake and sweating for the entire flight.
Now, with the sun setting and the infernal racket of the trucks and construction crews beginning to ease off, Rashid walked along the sandy beach toward the little tent city that had been put up to house the workers. The largest tent of all had been erected for him. Melissa slept in a tent with three other women, all construction workers, all bigger, more muscular, and much tougher-looking than Rashid himself.
Yet he grinned as he walked along the curving beach. At least now that the construction crews were knocking off for the evening he could hear the hiss and boom of the surf. There would be a moon tonight. Very romantic, looking out across the lagoon at the night sky.
And Melissa had agreed to have dinner with him. In his tent. Just the two of them, alone. Rashid felt like a sheik of old as he prepared his mind for the night’s pleasure.
Melissa Hart had not been surprised at how easy it was to get close to Rashid. New Morality cohorts in Masterson’s personnel department had faked a record for her, and Rashid hadn’t bothered to check any of the recommendations that were signed by department heads from across the continent.
No, the man had taken one look at her and hired her with a wolfish smile.
Sex is a weapon, Melissa told herself. But a weapon is powerful only when it’s used wisely. Keeping Rashid wanting her was the important thing; as long as his desire was alive, she had the power. Allowing him to have her would diminish that power she knew. She would give Rashid smiles and glances, even kisses and fondling. But they would consummate his lust only when it suited Melissa’s goal.
Tonight we have dinner in his tent, she told herself as she clipped on a pair of faux pearl earrings. One of them was a microminiaturized radio that would transmit every word of their conversation to the solid-state recorder hidden beneath her cot.
“Big night with the big shit boss, huh?” said one of the construction workers with whom Melissa shared the tent. She was a short, burly woman with a good-natured laugh and a vocabulary from the docks. The other two had not come in yet.
Melissa nodded as she studied her image in the only mirror she had, a small hand-sized one.
“How do I look?” she asked.
The woman eyed her critically. Melissa was wearing flowing light pink silk harem pants slitted from hip to cuff, with a loose long-sleeved overblouse.