“Yes. Morgan can’t point to you as part of his energy-independence program if you’re owned by a multinational oil company or a Japanese corporation.”
“Scanwell won’t be able to point to me at all if I don’t get some funding damned soon. I’ll be underwater.”
“We’re trying, Dan. But you’ve got to cooperate.”
“I am cooperating! I’m pushing as hard as I can to get the powersat up and running.”
“But you can’t thumb your nose at the FAA the way you just did. You can’t turn NASA into an enemy.”
“Double-damn it to hell and back!” Dan exploded. “That test flight generated more publicity for the idea of energy independence than anything Scanwell’s done! Hell and damnation, I’m even getting nibbles of interest from potential investors, thanks to that flight.”
“It’s not the kind of publicity we need,” Jane said. “It makes you look like a hero, I know, but it’s creating more enemies than friends for you.”
“You mean it’s stealing the spotlight from Scanwell.”
“No, that’s not what I mean.”
“He’s making speeches and I’m doing something. Maybe I ought to run for president!”
Looking up to the ceiling as if seeking divine assistance, Jane said, “Dan you simply don’t understand the way politics works. You have to make friends, not enemies.”
“I’m not a politician, Jane. I’m just a businessman trying to keep my company from going under.”
“You can be a great help to Morgan if you’ll just—”
“I don’t want to help Scanwell or anybody else!” he snapped. “All I want is to get that powersat operating.”
“And the future of the country?”
“The country’s future’ll be a lot brighter once we have a power satellite showing that we can bring in gobs of energy from space.”
“Dan, if you’d only work with Morgan instead of running off on your own tangent.”
“What good would that do me?” he asked.
Her head sank and for a moment Dan thought she was crying. But then she looked up at him again, dry-eyed. “We could get him elected president, Dan. He’s a great man. He could be a great president.”
Anger flared deep inside him, but Dan fought to keep it under control. “Look, I like Morgan Scanwell. I really do. He might make a pretty decent president if he can get himself elected. But that’s his problem, not mine. I’ve got problems of my own, plenty of them.”
“I know that, Dan, but can’t you see that—”
“Jane, can’t you see that you’re the only person in the world I care about?”
Her breath caught in her throat, then she shook her head slowly. “For what it’s worth, Dan, I feel the same way about you.”
He felt as if he’d been dropped out of an airplane.
“I wish I didn’t,” Jane went on, softly, almost as if talking to herself. “You’re nothing but trouble for me. But I’ve never stopped loving you. Even when I was furious with you, I knew I loved you.”
“I love you too, Jane,” he heard himself say, his voice hollow with wonder.
She rose to her feet, facing him eye to eye. “What are we going to do about it?”
Dan wrapped her in his arms and kissed her. She melted into him and it was as if all the years, the separation, the arguments, had disappeared. After a long, long breathless time he slipped his arm around her waist and guided her toward the office door.
He saw the questioning look in her eyes. With a lame grin, he said, “Would you believe that my apartment is just down the catwalk?”
She smiled back at him, her head nestled on his shoulder. “Yes. Knowing you, I’d believe it.”
Dan felt very grateful for Tomasina.
They made love languidly, as if they’d never been apart, as if there was nowhere else on Earth that they had to be, no one else that concerned them. But at last, as late afternoon sunlight lanced through the apartment’s window, Jane sat up in bed.
“I’m afraid I’ll have to get back,” she said.
“No,” Dan whispered. “Stay with me.”
“I wish I could, Dan.”
He nodded reluctantly, knowing the moment was gone. “Okay. I’ll phone the motel and tell them to start your pilot back to the airport.”
She gave him an impish look. “Not yet.”
“No?”
“Do you still like long showers?”
He took his hand away from the telephone and got to his feet. “I’ll turn on the water,” he said, padding toward the tiny bathroom. The shower’s barely big enough for one, Dan thought. This is going to be fun.
And it was. Slippery naked bodies slathered with soap suds. Dan banged his elbows on the tiled shower walls more than once, cracked his knee hard enough to make him yowl with pain, but it didn’t matter, nothing mattered except that Jane was with him and they were together and none of the rest of the world mattered at all.
Until the water at last began to run cold.
“It’s just a small hot-water tank,” Dan apologized.
“It’s time to go,” Jane said, stepping out of the shower stall, reaching for a towel.
Dan patted her dry as slowly as he could, but at last she went back to the bedroom and began picking up the clothes they had strewn across the floor.
Once he was dressed Dan phoned the motel and told Jane’s pilot they would meet him at the airstrip in half an hour.
As they walked out into the humid warmth of the late afternoon, Dan asked, “What happens now, Jane?”
With a moment’s hesitation she said, “I’ve got to get back to Washington and you’ve got to make your power satellite work.”
“And Scanwell?”
As if she hadn’t heard him, Jane said, “I’ll get to the head of the FAA for you. I don’t think I can get NASA on your side, but I can at least keep them from publicly criticizing you.”
“And Scanwell?” he repeated.
She opened the passenger-side door of the Jaguar and got into the car. Dan walked around to the driver’s side without taking his eyes off her.
Once he had started the engine, Jane said, “If you don’t go off thumbing your nose at the FAA again, you can be a great help in getting Morgan elected.”
“That’s not what I mean and you know it,” he said.
She did not reply. Dan put the Jag in gear, backed out of the parking slot, headed toward the airstrip.
“Jane, how involved with Scanwell are you? I mean, if we’re going to—”
“I’m married to him,” she said, looking straight ahead. “He’s my husband.”
Dan felt as if a ton of ice water had just been poured over him. “Married?” he heard himself yelp.
“Almost two years now,” she said, her voice so flat and even that he knew she was struggling inside herself. “He’s so straight-laced… well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“Son of a motherless bitch,” Dan muttered fervently.
“We’ve kept it a secret. Not even our closest aides know. Half my power base in Washington would disappear if they thought of me as Morgan Scanwell’s wife.”
Dan kept his eyes on the road, his grip tight on the steering wheel.
“You left me, Dan. You went off to Japan.”
“I came back.”
“But not to me. You came back and started this company of yours. You were more interested in outer space than in me.”
“I thought you were more interested in being a senator than in me.”
She turned toward him at last. “We’re a couple of prime fools, aren’t we?”
“I guess we are.” He thought a moment. “Do you love him? I mean, you must have, to marry him. But now… ?”
“I thought I loved him. I thought the world of him. I still do. He’s a great man, Dan. A wonderful man in so many ways. He—”
“Uh, you don’t have to tell me how wonderful he is,” Dan grumbled. “The question is, where do we stand, you and me, right here and now?”