‘Happy New Year,“ Factor Davidson said. Regan filled his glass. The champagne tasted like water to him. An orchestra was playing Auld Lang Syne. The distinguished guests were laughing and singing, just a trifle raucously. Regan’s head pounded. He had to get away, if only just for a moment.
He passed through a double doorway and found himself at the entrance to a balcony. He wrenched open the French doors and stepped out. The thirty-degree cold did not trouble him. He looked up, hoping to catch a glimpse of ruddy Mars, or of the metal moon he had put in the sky.
The swirling snow was too thick. Regan was unable to see anything. After a moment, he went back inside, rejoined the party. A smiling waiter handed him more champagne. He accepted it gladly-Mumm’s, ‘85 brut. A vintage year. It still tasted like water to him. The fault, he knew, was not with the champagne.
March, 1992.
Seven months to Opening Day.
‘Do you think it’s that bomb-scare article that’s keeping them away?“ Hal Martinelli asked.
Lyle Henderson shook his head. “That’s part of it, but only a very small part.”
‘Yes,“ Regan said. ”Only a small part.“
‘What’s the trouble, then?“ Martinelli demanded. ”Why aren’t they booking reservations?“
Regan stared at his assistants solemnly. “Half of them are afraid,” he said. “They don’t want to get into a spaceship and go anywhere. And the other half, well, maybe they don’t want to spend the money. A trip to the Fair can cost five, six hundred dollars, figuring the cost of getting to the spaceport, the space fare, admission, and all the rest. Maybe we guessed wrong. Maybe there just aren’t that many people around who are willing to go to that kind of expense.”
‘The polls we took-“ Henderson began.
Regan scowled. “Polls! What can they prove?”
His temper was starting to fray. He had been riding the whirlwind for a year and a half, and he was coming close to his breaking point now. He was beginning to doubt that he would make it through the remaimng seven months.
Everything was on schedule. The Satellite was finished, and so was the spaceline. Every pavilion was contracted for. Several of them had been completed, most were well along, and all would be ready by October 12. The concessions had been sold. The Fair’s bills were mostly paid. The claims of pre-Columbian discoverers of America had not greatly interfered with the progress of the Fair.
Everything was fine.
The only thing wrong was that people were not buying tickets to attend.
The Fair’s finances were predicated on a healthy advance sale. Many of the concessionaires and exhibitors had contracts calling for rent reductions if advance ticket sales fell below a certain point. The failure to make advance sales thus had a doubly crippling effect on the Fair’s budget. Not only was less money coming in than anticipated from ticket sales, but that led directly to a drop in rent money received. It was a situation that could quickly set in motion a snowball effect of disastrous proportions.
The Fair had obligations to meet. It had day-by-day expenses, payrolls, fees, publicity costs. Regan had long since used the money raised the year before for capital expenditures. The six billion dollars obtained through the sale of bonds, and the additional money received as outright grants from several governments-that was all gone.
The bond issue would soon be coming back to haunt. Under the sinking-fund clause of the debenture issue, the World’s Fair corporation had to begin redeeming those bonds in June, 1993. A billion dollars’ worth of bonds had to be bought in then, and the same amount each June until 1998, when the entire issue would have been redeemed. Regan had planned to pay off those bondholders out of Fair profits. But if there were no profits to distribute, the creditors would close in, the assets would be dismembered, and the Fair would spiral down into bankruptcy before it was a year old.
‘We’ve got to sell more tickets,“ Regan declared.
But selling them was harder than making declarations. No one wanted to dig down. It was understood that space was limited aboard the ships, it was well advertised that only the fortunate few who hurried, hurried, hurried would get to see the Fair at all. And yet nobody was doing much hurrying.
Some corporations had taken tickets to distribute to their employees. That accounted for most of the sales so far. The general public had not yet begun to buy tickets in any significant number.
‘They’re waiting for it to open,“ Lyle Henderson muttered. ”There’ll be a rush once we’re in business.“
‘But we can’t work it that way,“ Martinelli answered. ”We’ve got to sell the tickets in an orderly way. And that means we’ve got to be selling them steadily, month by month, all spring and summer.“
Regan had been silent a long while. Now the Factor turned and said, slowly, “I know what the trouble is. We need some kind of smash exhibit, something to pull ‘em in like a magnet. We’ve got a bunch of fancy pavilions, plenty of interesting stuff, but there’s got to be more.”
‘What, though?“ Henderson asked.
Regan said, “They’ve got to be able to see something at the Fair that they can’t possibly see on Earth, and I don’t mean just a view of space. We’re selling them novelty, uniqueness. They can see museums and pavilions on Earth. But there’s one thing we can give them that isn’t in the plan now, something millions of people will pay to see.”
‘Bubble-dancers?“ Henderson said. ”Sensie shows? Gladiators? We’ve got all that planned already.“
‘You aren’t listening,“ Regan said. ”They can see all those things on Earth, in their own home towns. I’ve got something else in mind. Martians.“
Henderson and Martinelli blinked. “Martians?” they said, almost in unison.
Regan nodded. “The Martian Pavilion. Sure! Well put it on Level Five, right next to the Global Factors Pavilion. Five or six Old Martians in their native habitat. A cave, some Martian plants, a Martian family. People will fall all over themselves to get to see them.”
‘Real Martians?“ Martinelli asked.
‘What else?“ Regan replied. ”The genuine articles.“
‘Can we get them?“
‘I think so,“ Regan said. He fought back the writhings of his conscience. ”When I was on Mars last summer, I visited the Martian caves, as you know. This idea of a Martian Pavilion occurred to me then, and I broached the idea to some of the Martians. They seemed to understand, but they were cool to the idea, so I let it drop.“
‘And now you think you can talk them into coming?“
‘No,“ Regan said. ”I don’t.“ He looked at Martinelli. ”Hal, what’s the legal status of the Old Martians?“
‘I don’t understand, sir.“
‘Are they protected by law? Are they wards of the United Nations, or anything like that?“
Martinelli shook his head. “I could check it, sir. But I don’t think there’s been any decision concerning them. They’re still too new to us.”
‘All right,“ Regan said. ”You research it for a day or so. In the meanwhile I’ll operate under the assumption that we have a clear shot at them. Lyle, call in half a dozen technical boys and an ecologist or two and we’ll start planning this thing. I want a habitat group so perfect that a Martian won’t be able to tell it from his own cave. The same temperature, the same atmosphere, the same relative humidity-the works. I don’t care if it costs fifty million bucks. We’re in a desperate position now, and we’ve got to shoot the works.“
Regan moistened his lips. His heart was racing, his hands felt cold.
Everything within him rebelled against doing this. But his back was against the wall. The Fair was in danger of collapsing before it even opened. And he had staked everything on keeping it open and making it a success.
He cursed the day he had ever gotten involved in this whole misbegotten project. The Factor had engaged in slippery dealings in his day, but he had never before done anything that he considered downright contemptible.