“New government?”
“General Quintana will head the provisional government,” my father explained, “until new elections are held.”
“Quintana?” I blurted. “The traitor?”
Ric’s face clouded over. “The army will run the government and find excuses not to hold elections. It’s an old story.”
“What else could I do?” my father asked sadly.
Still seated in the oversized chair, Sam grinned up at us. “You didn’t do too badly, Carlos old buddy.”
Sam Gunn, on a first-name basis with my father?
Getting to his feet, Sam said to me, “Meet the new co-owner of OrbHotel, Inc.”
One shock after another. It took hours for me to get it all straight in my head. Gradually, as my father and Sam told me slightly conflicting stories, I began to put the picture together.
Sam had barged into my father’s hotel suite just as the rebel assassination team had arrived, guns in hand.
“They had bribed two of my security guards,” my father said grimly. “They just walked in through the front door of the suite, wearing those ridiculous ski masks.”
Sam added, “They were so focused on your father and the other two guys in his security team that I walked in right behind them and they never even noticed. Some assassins. A trio of college kids with guns.”
Once they realized that an American citizen was in the suite the student-assassins became confused. Sam, of course, immediately began bewildering them with a nonstop monologue about how rich they could become if they would merely listen to reason.
“They’re all shareholders in my new corporation,” Sam told us happily. “Sam Gunn Enterprises, Unlimited. Neat title, isn’t it?”
“They refrained from assassinating my father in exchange for shares in a nonexistent corporation?” I asked.
“It’ll exist!” Sam insisted. “It’s going to be the holding company for all my other enterprises—VCI, OrbHotel, I got lots of other ideas, too, you know.”
My father’s face turned somber. “They did not settle merely for shares in Sam’s company.”
“Oh? What else?”
“I had to resign as president of Ecuador and name Quintana as head of the interim government.”
“Until elections can be held,” Ric added sarcastically.
“Who is this young man?” my father asked.
“I am Ricorio Esteban Horacio Queveda y Diego, son of Professor Queveda, who fled from your secret police the year you became president.”
“Ah.” My father sagged down onto the sofa and picked up his cigarette holder once again. “Then you want to murder me, too, I suppose.”
“Papa, you’re murdering yourself with those cigarettes!”
“No lectures today, little one,” he said to me. Then he puffed deeply on his cigarette. “I have been through much these past twenty hours.”
“Ric did not condone assassinating you,” I told my father. “He wanted me to warn you.” That was stretching the truth, of course, and I wondered why I said it. Until I took a look at Ric, so serious, so handsome, so brave.
For his part, Ric said, “So you have joined forces with this gringo imperialist.”
“Imperialist?” Sam laughed.
“I have invested my private monies in the orbital hotel project, yes,” my father admitted.
“Drug money,” Ric accused. “Cocaine money squeezed from the sweat of the poor farmers.”
“We’re going to make those farmers a lot richer,” Sam said.
“Yes, of course.” Ric looked as if he could murder them both.
“Listen to me, hothead,” said Sam, jabbing a stubby finger in Ric’s direction. “First of all, I’m no flogging imperialist.”
“Then why have you claimed the equatorial orbit for yourself?”
“So that nobody else could claim it. I don’t give a crap whether the UN recognizes our claim or not, I’m giving all rights to the orbit to the UN itself. That orbit belongs to the people of the world, not any nation or corporation.”
“You’re giving… ?”
“Yeah, sure. Why let the lawyers spend the next twenty years wrangling over the legalities? I claim the orbit, then voluntarily give up the claim to the people of the world, as represented by the United Nations. So there!” And Sam stuck his tongue out at Ric, like a self-satisfied little boy.
Before either of us could reply, Sam went on, “There’s big money to be made in space, kids. VCI’s just the beginning. OrbHotel’s gonna be a winner, and with Carlos bankrolling it, I won’t have to fight with VCI’s stockholders for the start-up cash.”
“And how are you going to make the farmers of Ecuador rich?” Ric asked, still belligerent.
Sam leaned back in the plush chair and clasped his hands behind his head. His grin became enormous.
“By making the government of Ecuador a partner in Sam Gunn Enterprises, Unlimited.”
Ric’s face went red with anger. “That will make Quintana rich, not the people!”
“Only if you let Quintana stay in office,” Sam said smugly.
“A typical gringo trick.”
“Wait a minute. Think it out. Suppose I announce that I’m willing to make a democratically elected government of Ecuador a partner in my corporation? Won’t that help you push Quintana out of power?”
“Yes, of course it would,” I said.
Ric was not so enthusiastic. “It might help,” he said warily. But then he added, “Even so, how can a partnership in your corporation make millions of poor farmers rich?”
“It won’t make them poorer,” replied Sam. “It may put only a few sucres into their pockets, but that’ll make life a little sweeter for them, won’t it?”
Sam had made a bilingual pun! I was impressed, even if Ric was not.
“And we’ll be buying all our foodstuffs for OrbHotel from Ecuadorian producers, naturally,” Sam went on. “And I’ll sell Ecuadorian produce to the other orbital facilities, too. Make a nice profit from it, I betcha. Sure, there’s only a few hundred people living in orbit right now but that’s gonna grow. There’ll be thousands pretty soon, and once the Japanese start building their solar power satellites they’re going to need food for a lot of workers.”
Without seeming to draw a breath Sam went on, “Then there’s the hotel training facility we’re gonna build just outside Quito. We’ll hire Ecuadorians preferentially, of course. Your father drove a hard bargain, believe me, Esmeralda.”
My father smiled wanly.
“And one of these days we could even build a skyhook, an elevator tower up to GEO,” Sam continued. “That’d make Ecuador the world’s center for space transportation. People won’t need rockets; they’ll ride the elevator, starting in Ecuador. It’ll cost peanuts to get into space that way.”
He talked on and on until even Ric was at least halfway convinced that Sam would be good for the people of Ecuador.
It was growing dark before Sam finally said, “Why don’t we find a good restaurant and celebrate our new partnership?”
I looked at Ric. He wavered.
So I said, for both of us, “Very well. Dinner tonight. But tomorrow Ric and I leave for Quito. We have much work to do if Quintana is to be prevented from cementing his hold on the government.”
Sam smiled at us both. “You’ll be going to Quito as representatives of Sam Gunn Enterprises, Unlimited. I don’t want this Quintana character to think you’re revolutionaries and getting you kids getting into trouble.”
“But we are revolutionaries,” Ric insisted.
“I know,” said Sam. “The best kind of revolutionaries. The kind that’re really going to change things.”
“Do you think we can?” I asked.
My father, surprisingly, said, “You must. The future depends on you.”