He turned around, glancing at his uncle and his uncle’s supporters. Even Bruce Regan looked a little bemused by this new line of argument.
Regan said, “None of you ever thought about any of this, did you? Of course not. You silver-haired captains of industry can’t see beyond the next quarter’s earnings. You’ve got no idea of planning ahead. It’s a chess game, don’t you see, and I’m three moves ahead of everybody else. But you can’t stand that, so you have to tear me down. All right. Go ahead. I’ve said all I’m going to say. Take your vote, throw me out, hold your press conference. I wish you the best of everything, believe me.”
Regan slumped into his seat. He was flushed, sweating, drained.
There was a long silence in the room.
Finally Bruce Regan said, in a barely audible voice, “Are there any further statements?”
There were none. He waited a long, long time, but no one seemed to want to say anything.
‘I call for the vote, then.“
The electronic panel came to life. Green for Yes and ouster, red for No and retention. Idly, Regan moved his stud toward the red, and a light appeared. A moment later, two green lights appeared-Bruce and Bennett, unconvinced-and an instant afterward, a second red light flashed on. Tim Field, loyal to the last.
A moment passed. Somebody started to vote for ouster and changed his mind, a green light flickering on and abruptly flickering off. An instant later it went on again. A final decision-or somebody else’s vote?
Two more red lights. Slidell and Kennan, Regan guessed. A third red light. Orenstein. Regan had five votes in his favor, now. I’ve had it, he thought. Unless I swayed Olcott and Harris both, I’m cooked!
One thing puzzled him. So far, there were only three votes against him. Bruce and Bennett, undoubtedly, and probably Holt afterward. But why not four? Bruce, Bennett, Holt, and Emery always voted in a block, practically simultaneously. One member of Bruce’s faction seemed to be hesitating.
My God, don’t tell me I’ve converted one of them, Regan thought in shock.
He watched the panel. Three votes for ouster, five for retention. He waited for the remaining three votes against him to flash on. No doubt Olcott and Harris were weighing the odds and waiting for the others to make their moves. And one of the other faction too.
Another red light flashed, and Regan came to the startled realization that he had won. A fraction of a second later there were two more votes in his column. He had won and he had actually gained a vote from the opposition!
Bruce Regan looked suddenly like a man of a hundred and twenty years. “Three votes in favor of ouster, eight against,” he said hollowly. “There is no other business on the agenda of this special meeting. I-I declare the meeting-adjourned.”
NINE
Regan was back in Washington by nightfall, weary but more confident than ever. He had weathered the storm, had held onto control of Global Factors. But he had won not a war but a skirmish, and on a secondary front at that. His display of self-confidence had wowed the Board of Directors, but it didn’t necessarily mean that the 1992 Columbian Exposition was ipso facto a going proposition. The Saudi Arabian pullout had been crushing in its effect on Global Factors’ relationship to the holding company that had underwritten the bonds, not to the Fair itself-but he needed much more support to get the Fair moving.
The Brazilians were doing nobly. They were actually five days ahead of the official construction schedule. The main struts and trusses of the Fair Satellite were in place, and it was possible now to view the orbiting moonlet through a telescope and get a reasonable idea of how it would look when completed, seventeen months from now.
Signs of public interest were growing, too. Visiting New York one day, Regan was delighted to see a man in Times Square selling telescope peeks at a dime apiece-offering views not of Saturn’s rings or the canals of Mars, but of the new World’s Fair Satellite. “See the World’s Fair orbiter!” he was yelling, and he was doing good business.
If people were willing to pay a dime in the spring of 1991 for a peek at the Satellite, Regan thought, they ought to be willing to pay a few hundred dollars in the fall of 1992 for a visit to the Fair itself. Yes?
It remained to be seen, of course. Commercial space travel was a relatively new thing. Commercial space lines, with routes to the Moon and Mars, went back only to 1985. It cost five thousand dollars one way to the Moon, ten times as much to Mars, and only an infinitesimal fraction of the world’s population had ever been on a space trip. Space travel was as much of a novelty now as commercial air travel had been in, say, 1928.
How many people had gone for airline rides in 1928, Regan wondered?
Not very many. And not many were likely to hop a rocket to the World’s Fair, either. A Fair staged on Earth could expect hundreds of thousands of visitors a day, while he anticipated no more than five thousand a day visiting the satellite. But the Fair would draw only the big spenders. The station-wagon crowds who would come to a terrestrial Fair would leave no money behind; those who made the initial heavy investment of buying a rocket ticket would be more free with their funds once up there. The Fair would rise and fall on the success of its concessions, after all.
The prospects looked good, anyway, if people were interested enough in the Fair to pay a dime to see its site. But there was plenty of work ahead, and no time for counting chickens in advance.
The Brazilians had to be paid. That money came out of the bond proceeds-inexorable millions flowing towards Brasilia at a steady pace. There was an interest payment to meet; even on a three percent bond, the semiannual interest cost amounted to a cool $90,000,000. That had to be paid, too.
The Fair corporation did not have much of an income, as yet. Contracts were being signed for display space, and advance rental began to trickle in from the exhibitors and concessionaires-not much, yet, but it was enough. Enough to cover the payrolls of Regan’s staff, which grew from day to day as new chores made then: demands.
He kept busy. In his capacity as head of the Fair, he was occupied in lining up exhibitors. In bis capacity as head of Columbus Equities Corporation-and a twenty percent stockholder-he devoted a fair amount of his time to peddling World’s Fair bonds in order to get Global Factors off that particular hook. The bonds sold. Not heavily, but steadily, and that was some comfort. And finally, as head of Global Factors, Inc., Regan had plenty to do, delegated authority notwithstanding.
There was progress on all fronts.
There were also some setbacks, both big and small. The big troubles included a one-day strike of construction workers in Brazil, which was settled by a hasty pay increase, and then by an even hastier visit by high Aero do Brasil officers to Regan’s Washington headquarters.
‘We will lose money on the contract,“ they told Regan. ”This strike has crippled us. We must renegotiate the terms at once!“
Regan lifted an eyebrow. “I don’t remember any renegotiation clause in our contract.”
‘Nonetheless-simple equity demands-“
‘We have our financing problems too,“ Regan declared blandly. ”I can’t help but sympathize, but all the same, there’s a contract between us, and I think it should be abided by. Perhaps later on, once the Fair has begun to turn a profit, we can work out some kind of compensation for the losses you’ve suffered as a result of this strike.“
The Brazilians left, muttering and grumbling. Construction continued. Regan felt only faintly sorry for them. He had known from the start, even if they hadn’t, that they would lose money building the satellite-maybe as much as two billion dollars. It was their hard luck if they hadn’t been able to foresee that. And if they had foreseen it, but had hoped somehow to muddle through and wring a little extra out of the Fair as time went along-well, hard lines, Aero do Brasil, hard lines!