“I know the wages you’ve paid are above industry standards, but I still don’t see how you’ve done so well.”
There’s a lag of almost three seconds in conversations from the Moon; it takes that long for a signal to get there and back again. I sat at my desk watching Sam’s self-satisfied smirk, waiting for his response.
“It’s not the wages,” Sam said at last. “It’s the bribes.”
“Bribes!” I yelped.
Again the wait. Then, “Oh come on, now, Mr. Straight Arrow. You don’t think that Rockledge people have paid off a building inspector here and there, or bought protection from the local union goons? You’re not that naive, are you, Pierre, mon infant?”
Bribes. All I could think of was the corporate CEO and the board of directors. Bad enough to be building a Sin City, but spending Rockledge money on bribery! I began to wonder if they’d give me a golden parachute when they pushed me out the window.
“Don’t be so uptight about it,” Sam advised me. “Your CEO’s a sporting type, from what I hear. He’s gonna love the idea, wait and see.”
I decided not to wait. Better to make a clean breast of it before it was too late. So the next time the CEO came to Montreal I asked for a private meeting with him, away from the office. We met in a dinner-theater restaurant. The food was mediocre and the musical revue they were playing featured more nudity than talent. But the CEO seemed to enjoy himself, while I wondered if the other patrons thought we might be a gay couple, sitting off in a shadowy corner at a table for two.
He looked every inch the successful modern business executive: handsome, lean and youthful (thanks to his unabashed patronage of rejuvenation clinics). I felt almost shabby next to him; my hair had turned silver before I was thirty.
I had to wait until the intermission before I could get his undivided attention. To my surprise, when I told him that I had invested in a resort facility on the Moon, he smiled at me. “I was wondering when you’d bring up the subject. Hell Crater, isn’t it?”
I expressed a modicum of astonishment at his knowledge of the project.
“You don’t stay at the top of the heap, D’Argent, unless you have excellent information conduits. One of the comptroller’s people has been keeping me informed about the Hell Crater project.”
It was Ms. Marlowe, I realized. She was climbing up the corporate ladder in her own inimitable style.
“There’s something about the project that you don’t know yet,” I said, dreading the confession I was about to make. “About the firm that’s actually building the complex—”
“It’s Sam Gunn,” he replied easily.
“You know?”
“As I said, I have my sources of information.”
Sweat broke out on my upper lip. “I didn’t mention it until now because—”
“I understand completely. You’ve been very clever about this entire operation. If it flops, it’s Sam Gunn’s failure.”
“And if it succeeds?”
“We’ll squeeze him out, of course.”
I felt immensely relieved. “That’s exactly what I had planned to do all along,” I said, stretching the truth a little.
“We’re making money on the orbital hotel,” said the CEO. “A resort facility on the Moon makes sense. Especially if it’s beyond the legal strictures of terrestrial moralists.”
He had no qualms about the den of vice Sam was building!
“Besides,” the CEO added, “it will be a great place to meet agreeable young women.”
Just at that moment the three-piece orchestra blared a fanfare and the entire cast of the revue came capering out onto the stage once again, without a stitch of clothing in sight.
Despite the CEO’s smiling approval of the Hell Crater resort, I was understandably edgy when the board meeting came around. Twenty-two men and women sat around the long polished table in our Amsterdam office: most of them gray-haired and grumpy-looking. I doubted they would look so favorably on our being a partner in a lunar Sin City.
The youthful-looking CEO was also the board chairman. He sat at the head of the long conference table, impeccable in a form-fitted dark blue suit and butter-yellow turtleneck shirt. I envied him. I wanted his job. I wanted his power. But I feared that once the board of directors found out about Hell Crater I could kiss my ambitions goodbye.
Like a dozen other division chiefs, I sat along the side wall of the rectangular conference room, squarely between the comptroller himself and the head of human resources, widely known as Sally the Sob Sister. Sally was a “three-fer” in our corporate diversity program: she was female, black Hispanic, and handicapped (as far as the government was concerned) by her obesity. She was munching something, as usual, slyly reaching down into the capacious tote bag she had deposited at her feet. On the comptroller’s other side sat Ms. Marlowe, golden blonde, radiantly beautiful, her china-blue eyes fastened on the CEO’s chiseled features.
The meeting went along well enough; only a few points of disagreement and the usual grumbles from directors who felt that a nine percent increase in the corporation’s net income wasn’t good enough to suit them.
They droned on all morning. We broke for lunch and adjourned to the next room, where a sumptuous buffet table had been laid out. Sally the Sob Sister made a virtual Mt. Everest on her plate and gobbled it all down fast enough to come back for more. I couldn’t eat a thing, although I took a few leafs of salad and pretended to nibble on them, standing in a corner by the windows that looked out on the canal that runs through the heart of Amsterdam.
“I say, Pierre, I want to ask you about something.”
I turned to see one of the women directors, Mrs. Haverstraw. She was British, an elegant lady with snow-white hair beautifully coiffed and a long, horse-like face complete with huge projecting teeth. She could barely keep her lips closed over them. She wore a light blue skirted suit, touched off with massive sapphires at her wrists, throat, and earlobes.
“Mrs. Haverstraw,” I said, in my best fawning manner. “And how is Mr. Haverstraw?”
“He’s dead. Kicked off last month. Skydiving accident.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“I’m not. He always was a pompous twit. Rich as Croesus, though, I’m happy to say.”
“I’m so glad.”
“Yes, rather. I wanted to ask you, though, about this invitation to go to the Moon.”
I felt the blood drain out of my face.
“Does Rockledge have a tourist center on the Moon now?” Mrs. Haverstraw asked. “And if we do, why hasn’t the board been informed of it?”
I swallowed hard and asked her, in a very small voice, “Um, may I see the invitation, please?”
“I haven’t it with me. It came electronically, just this morning, as I was leaving for this meeting.” She smiled toothily. “I remember the first line of it, though. It said, ‘Go to Hell.’ ”
I wanted to throw up.
If Mrs. Haverstraw had received an invitation to visit Hell Crater, then every member of the board must have as well. So that was Sam’s plan all along. He conned me into this scheme to destroy me, to humiliate me in front of the board of directors, to get me fired, ruined, disgraced. I could hear his mocking laughter in my mind.
“I say, Mr. D’Argent, are you quite all right?”
I focused on Mrs. Haverstraw, who was staring at me quizzically.
“I’m … I’m a little surprised, that’s all,” I said, thinking faster than I ever had before in my life. “We had … planned to announce the, eh, tourist facility at the meeting today. Under new business.”
“Oh, goodie,” said Mrs. Haverstraw, suddenly almost girlish in her enthusiasm. “I love surprises.”
I went back into the conference room, my mind spinning. The meeting resumed, dragging along. Next to me, the comptroller sat staring blankly into space, stupefied into quiescence by the boring proceedings. On my other side, Sally continued to sneak food into her mouth. Crumbs littered the carpeting around her. Ms. Marlowe breathed deeply and continued to focus on the CEO.