Okay. That’s it. Funny sitting here listening to my own voice for hours on end. There’s a lot more I could put onto these disks, more details and stuff, but what the hell, enough’s enough.
They’ll be sore as hell at me if any of this leaks out. Every one of my erstwhile partners is telling his or her version of the story. Selling, I should say, not just telling. Sheena’s got a video series going, “Queen of the Asteroids.” She’s fun to watch, but the stories are yecchh.
Oh, yeah. One thing that I shouldn’t forget. The IAA scientists propositioned each of the women partners. I guess “propositioned” isn’t the right word.
Once we were landed at the Moonbase medical facility for further antiradiation therapy and the inevitable psychological counseling, a group of scientists asked each of the women if they would consider having a baby. In the interests of science. To see what effect the radiation exposure would have. Maybe they’d be sterile. Maybe they’d have two-headed triplets.
It would all be clinically clean and scientifically pure. Artificial insemination and all that. Two with sperm from the males who were also on the asteroid, two with donor sperm from strangers. Maybe they even wanted to throw in a placebo, I don’t know.
Each of the women turned them down flat. I think. Jean is staying at Moonbase for the time being, which is not like her at all. Marj set herself up in Bermuda, where she’s franchising various Dupray space-inspired fashion lines to the highest bidders. Good old Grace gave me a kiss goodbye and high-tailed it to California as soon as the medics would let her go. Her book’s going to be a best-seller, I guess, even though what I’ve managed to see of it looks more like fiction to me than fact. But what the hell!
They’ve all gone their separate ways. Rick Darling’s bought himself a villa in the big new bridge ship, Golden Gate.
Me, I’m heading back for Pittsburgh. The asteroid’s swung around the Sun and she’s heading back toward the Belt. She’s still got billions and billions of dollars worth of valuable metals, and I intend to get them, now that the courts have given me clear title.
But this time I’m going alone, except for some really top-notch robots.
It’ll be lonely, out there all by myself.
Thank God!
Bridge Ship Golden Gate
Jade sat in deep silence for a long while before she noticed that the robot had returned, bearing her clothing in its spindly metal arms.
She dressed absently, her thoughts literally millions of kilometers away. The robot gathered up the scattered recording disks and left her alone in the big luxurious room.
It can’t be, she told herself over and over. It just can’t be. If it’s true it means…
“Now you’ve heard Sam’s disks.”
Turning from her pale reflection in the blank screen above the disk player, she asked Darling, “How did you get them?”
He shrugged, a seismic movement of flesh beneath his robes. He had changed into a pure white costume decorated with gold and silver star bursts.
“I stole them,” Darling said. “How else?”
“From Sam?”
Laboriously, Darling lowered himself onto the same pile of pillows he had been sitting on when she had first entered his chamber. He took a deep breath, like an exhausted athlete, as he sank into the cushions.
“Oh no, not from Sam. He was far too clever to allow anyone to steal them from him. But once Sam’s will was probated, we discovered that he had left the disks to Grace Harcourt. Ever since she won the Pulitzer for her expose of Rockledge’s industrial hanky-panky, she’s been living—”
“On Pitcairn Island, I know. I tried to interview her but she wouldn’t see me.” Jade sat on the other set of cushions, facing Darling, her mind seething in growing turmoil.
“Yes, of course. I had the disks purloined from the plane that was taking them out to her.”
“Why?”
Darling’s fleshy face set almost into hardness. “You heard what he said about me. Do you think I want Grace—or anyone else in the world—to hear all that?”
“You fell in love with Sam?”
The hardness melted immediately. “I thought I did. It must have been the radiation. Or the excitement. He certainly did nothing to deserve love. Mine, or anyone else’s.”
“No one else has heard these disks?”
“No one.”
There were more questions Jade knew she would have to ask. But she dreaded them, put them off, while the enormity of what she had just learned from the disks boiled over her like a tidal wave, smothering her, drowning her. She fought to maintain her composure, her life. She did not want Darling to see what was tearing away at her innards.
Darling seemed to sense her apprehension the way a snake senses the terror it instills in a small bird. He thinks it’s because of him, Jade realized. He doesn’t know, doesn’t realize.
“Sheena married Lowell Hubble, after her Queen of the Asteroids series went into syndication,” Darling ticked off on his beringed fingers, his eyes watching her intently. “Marjorie finally retired on Bermuda. Jean Margaux died recently in a traffic accident in Maine, not far from her summer home, I understand. There was some talk about foul play, even suicide.”
Jade’s heart nearly stopped.
“I checked that out,” she said through gritted teeth. “No foul play. Suicide is possible, of course, but all that can be said for certain is that she lost control of her car and went over a cliff into the sea.”
“Strange that she’d be driving her own car, though, don’t you think? I would imagine a woman such as Jean would have a chauffeur on hand at all times. A young handsome chauffeur, undoubtedly.” He smiled wickedly.
Jade barely managed to say, “Maybe.”
“That leaves just me.” Darling heaved a titanic sigh. “Living alone here in the midst of all this splendor.”
Get him talking about himself, Jade thought desperately. Get away from Jean Margaux’s death.
“Why alone?” she asked, trying to sound inquisitive. “You’re wealthy. Your columns about art are world-famous. You could be surrounded by friends, associates, admirers.”
He made a laugh that sounded forced and self-deprecating. “It would take quite a few of them to surround me, wouldn’t it?”
“I didn’t mean …”
“Dear lady, I live the way I live because I choose to. I know my limitations. My columns are frauds; how can anyone write valid art criticism without going to see the artwork in its actual setting? I write about holograms that are sent to me. People read my pieces for the personal nasties I throw in about the artists and dealers and other critics. I’m a worse gossip columnist than Grace Harcourt ever was, on her most vicious day.”
“I see.”
“Do you? Do you know what that radiation did to me? I can never father children! That’s not bad enough. It also unbalanced my entire endocrine system so completely that I’ve blown up to this monstrous size you see!” He spread his arms and the robe billowed out like a silken cloud.
“I didn’t know that,” Jade said softly.
“Sam accused me of gluttony and called me terrible names,” Darling said, his voice shaking, “but the truth is I was a slim and handsome man when I started out on that voyage of his. You saw the pictures! Did I look anything like this?”
“No,” she admitted. “You certainly didn’t.”
“Thanks to that unkind bastard Sam I’ve become a balloon, a blimp, a mountain of fat—and it’s all his fault! I’ve got to hide myself from the rest of the human race, because of that little unloving snot of a man!”