Well, not together in the physical sense, precisely. Spence was in another room, some twenty meters down the hall from my mission control desk. But somehow, when I was not on duty I often found myself walking down that hallway to watch him at work. He sat in an astronaut’s contoured couch, his hands covered with metallic gloves that trailed hair-thin fiber-optic cables, the top half of his handsome face covered by the stereo screens that showed him what the OTV’s cameras were seeing.
I told myself that I was studying his moves, learning how to sabotage the repair missions. When the time came I would strike without mercy. When I was not hanging by the doorway to the remote manipulator lab, studying him like a avenging angel, I was at my mission control console, actually speaking with Spence, connected electronically to him, closer to him than anyone else in the world. Including his wife. I wanted to be close to him; that made it easier to find a way to sabotage his work, his company, his life.
“You planning to attend the stockholders’ meeting?” Spence asked me during a lull in one of the missions.
I was startled that he asked a personal question. “Say again?” I asked, in the professional jargon of a mission controller.
Spence chuckled. “It’s okay, Juanita. The OTV’s still in coast mode. It’ll be another hour before we have to get to work. Loosen up.”
“Oh. Yes. Of course.”
“You bought some stock, didn’t you?”
“A few shares,” I said. In actuality I was spending my entire salary on shares of VCI. If there had been a way to buy up all the existing shares I would have done it, using my father’s treasury to deliver the company into his hands.
As fate would have it, the annual stockholders’ meeting took place on the same day that my father gave his famous speech at the United Nations.
He told me about the speech the night before the meeting. As usual, I had driven to the consulate late at night and called him on the videophone. At least he had the good sense to receive my calls in his office, when he knew I was going to contact him.
My father was glowing with pride. His smile was brilliant, the shoulders of his suit wider than ever. He had even faced the necessity of replacing his thinning hair. Although his new mane of curly brown hair looked as if it had been stolen from a teenaged rock star, it was so wild and thick, it obviously made him feel younger and more vigorous.
“With Brazil in the chair at the Security Council and the Committee of the Twelve Equatorial Nations lining up support among the small nations in the General Assembly, I have high hopes for our cause.”
“And your speech?” I asked him. “What will you say?”
His smile became even wider, even more radiant. “You must watch me on television, little one. I want you to be just as surprised as the rest of the world will be.”
He would tell me no more. I of course reported in full to him about VCI’s continuing success in repairing and refurbishing satellites remotely. And of the growing strains in the company’s management.
“You still have the capability of destroying their spacecraft?” he asked me.
“Yes,” I replied, thinking of how much damage I could do to Spence.
“Good,” said my father. “The time is fast approaching when we will strike.”
“Will it be necessary—”
But his attention was suddenly pulled away from me. I heard an aide shouting breathlessly at him, “The rebels have ambushed General Quintana’s brigade!”
“Ambushed?” my father snapped, his eyes no longer looking at me. “Where? When?”
“In the mountains of Azuay, south of Cuenca. The general has been captured and his troops are fleeing for their lives!”
My father’s face went gray, then red with fury. He turned back to me. “Excuse me, daughter. I have urgent business to attend to.”
“Go with God,” I mumbled, feeling silly at using such an archaic phrase. But it was all I could think to say.
The rebels were very clever. They must have known that my father was scheduled to fly to New York to deliver his speech to the United Nations. Now he either had to cancel his speech and admit to the world that his nation was in the throes of a serious internal conflict, or go to New York and leave his army leaderless for several days.
I could not sleep that night. When I arrived at the stockholders’ meeting my eyes were red and puffy, my spirits low. How can I help my father? I kept asking myself. What can I do? He had sent me here to help him triumph over Sam Gunn and these other gringos. But he was being threatened at home and I was thousands of kilometers away from him. I felt miserable and stupid and helpless.
Spence noticed my misery.
More than a hundred people were filing into the room in the big hotel where the stockholders’ meeting was being held. Employees and their spouses, all ages, all colors. Blacks and Hispanics and Asians, women and men, Sam had brought together every variety of the human species in his company. He hired for competence; VCI was truly a company without prejudice of any kind. Except that it helped if you were female and young and attractive. That was Sam’s one obvious weakness.
Out of that throng Spence noticed me. He made his way through the crowd that was milling around the coffee and doughnuts and came to my side.
“What’s the matter, Juanita?”
I looked up into his clear blue eyes and saw that he too was sad-faced.
“Family problems,” I muttered. “Back home.”
He nodded grimly. “Me too.” “Oh?”
Before he could say more, Sam’s voice cut through the hubbub of conversations. “Okay, let’s get this show on the road. Where’s our noble president? Hey, Spence, you silver-haired devil, come on up here and preside, for god’s sake, will ya?”
Spence lifted my chin a centimeter and gave me a forced grin. “Time to go to work,” he said. Then he turned and almost sprinted up to the front of the room and jumped up onto the makeshift dais.
Sam, Bonnie Jo, and two other men flanked Spence at the long table set up on the dais. The board of directors, I realized. Each of them had a microphone and a name card in front of them. I was fairly certain that the older of the two strangers—Eli G. Murtchison—was Bonnie Jo’s father.
There were two mammoth television sets on either side of the dais as well. I wondered if the hotel kept them there all the time, or if they had been brought in for some specific reason.
The rest of us took the folding plastic chairs that the hotel had set along the floor of the meeting room. They were hard and uncomfortable: a stimulus to keep the meeting short, I thought. The meeting began with formalities. Spence asked that the minutes of the last meeting be accepted. Bonnie Jo read her treasurer’s report so fast that I could not understand a word of it.
Then Sam, as chairman of the board, began his review of the year’s business and plans for the coming year.
I could feel the tension in the air. Even as Sam spoke glowingly to the stockholders about VCI’s new capabilities in remote satellite repair, even while they loudly applauded his announcement of a dividend, the room seemed to crackle with electricity.
And all the while I wondered where my father was, what he was doing, what decisions he was making.
A stockholder—Gene Redding, of all people—rose to ask a question. “Uh, Sam, uh, why isn’t our dividend bigger, if we’re, uh, making such good profits now?”
I turned in my chair to see Gene better. He was standing: portly, bald, looking slightly flustered. I had never before seen him in a suit and tie; he had always worn jeans and sports shirts at the office. But his suit was rumpled and his tie hung loosely from his unbuttoned shirt. It seemed to me that he felt guilty about asking his question. He was on Bonnie Jo’s side, I realized.