The Rock Rats

Turning back to her, Humphries said, “Fuchs is coming here to surrender. He’ll try to wheedle as much of the ten million we offered him as he can get. But he’s bringing Amanda because he knows—maybe in his unconscious mind, maybe not consciously—but he knows that what I really want is Amanda.”

“I think we should look at this a little more realistically,” Verwoerd said, stepping slowly toward the desk.

Humphries eyed her for a moment. “You think I’m being unrealistic?”

“I think that Fuchs is coming here to negotiate your buyout of his company. I very much doubt that his wife will be part of the deal.”

He laughed. “Maybe you don’t think so. Maybe he doesn’t think so. But I do. That’s what’s important. And I bet that Amanda does, too.”

Verwoerd had to deliberately keep herself from shaking her head in disagreement. He’s insane about this woman. Absolutely gonzo over her. Then she smiled inwardly. How can I use this? How can I turn his craziness to my advantage?

DOSSIER: OSCAR JIMINEZ

When he finished the New Morality high school, at the age of seventeen, Oscar was sent to far- off Bangladesh for his two years of public service. It was compulsory; the New Morality demanded two years of service as partial repayment for the investment they had made in a youth’s education and social reformation. Oscar worked hard in what was left of Bangladesh. The rising sea levels and the terrifying storms that accompanied each summer’s monsoon inundated the low-lying lands. Thousands were swept away in the floods of the Ganges. Oscar saw that many of the poor, miserable wretches actually prayed to the river itself for mercy. In vain. The swollen river drowned the heathens without pity. Oscar realized that just as many of the faithful were drowned, also.

Luck touched him again, once he finished his two years of public service. The New Morality administrator in Dacca, an American from Kansas, urged Oscar to consider accepting a job in space, far away from Earth.

Oscar knew better than to argue with authority, but he was so surprised at the idea that he blurted, “But I’m not an astronaut.”

The administrator smiled a kindly smile. “There are all kinds of jobs up there that need to be filled. You are fully qualified for many of them.”

“I am?” Oscar’s qualifications, as far as he knew, were mainly lifting and toting, handling simple invoices, and following orders. With a nod, the administrator said, “Yes. And, of course, there is God’s work to be done out there among the godless humanists and frontier ruffians.”

Who could refuse to do God’s work? Thus Oscar Jiminez went to Ceres and was hired by Helvetia, Ltd., to work in their warehouse.

CHAPTER 16

Selene’s Hotel Luna had gone through several changes of management since it was originally built by the Yamagata Corporation.

In those early days, just after the lunar community had won its short, sharp war against the old United Nations and affirmed its independence, tourism looked like a good way to bring money into the newly-proclaimed Selene. Masterson Aerospace’s lunar-built Clipperships were bringing the price of transportation from Earth down to the point where the moderately well-heeled tourist—the type who took “adventure vacations” to Antarctica, the Amazonian rain forest, or other uncomfortable exotic locales—could afford the grandest adventure vacation of them all: a trip to the Moon.

Sadly, the opening of the hotel coincided almost exactly with the first ominous portents of the greenhouse cliff. After nearly half a century of scientific debate and political wrangling, the accumulated greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere and oceans started an abrupt transition in the global climate. Disastrous floods inundated most coastal cities in swift succession. Earthquakes devastated Japan and the American midwest. Glaciers and ice packs began melting down, raising sea levels worldwide. The delicate web of electrical power transmission grids collapsed over much of the world, throwing hundreds of millions into the cold and darkness of pre-industrial society. More than a billion people lost their homes, their way of living, everything that they had worked for. Hundreds of millions died.

Tourism trickled down to nothing except the extremely wealthy, who lived on their financial mountaintops in ease and comfort despite the woes of their brethren.

Hotel Luna became virtually a ghost facility, but it was never shut down. Grimly, hopefully, foolishly, one owner after another tried to make at least a modest success of it.

To a discerning visitor, the lavish, sprawling lobby of the hotel would appear slightly seedy: the carpeting was noticeably threadbare in spots, the oriental tables and easy chairs were scuffed here and there, the ornate artificial floral displays drooped enough to show that they needed to be replaced.

But to Lars Fuchs’s staring eyes, Hotel Luna’s lobby seemed incredibly posh and polished. He and Amanda were riding down the powered stairway from the hotel entrance up in the Grand Plaza. Glistening sheets of real, actual water slid down tilted slabs of granite quarried from the lunar highlands. The water was recycled, of course, but to have a display of water! What elegance!

“Look,” Fuchs exclaimed, pointing to the pools into which the waterfalls splashed. “Fish! Live fish!”

Beside him, Amanda smiled and nodded. She had been brought to the hotel on dates several times, years ago. She remembered the Earthview Restaurant, with its hologram windows. Martin Humphries had taken her there. The fish in those pools were on the restaurant’s menu. Amanda noticed that there were far fewer of them now than there had been back then.

As they reached the lobby level and stepped off the escalator, Fuchs recognized the music wafting softly from the ceiling speakers: a Haydn quartet. Charming. Yet he felt distinctly out of place in his plain dark gray coveralls, like a scruffy student sneaking into a grand palace. But with Amanda on his arm, it didn’t matter. She wore a sleeveless white pantsuit; even zippered up to the throat it could not hide her exquisitely-curved body.

Fuchs didn’t pay any attention to the fact that the spacious lobby was practically empty. It was quiet, soothing, an elegant change from the constant buzz of air fans and faint clatter of distant pumps that was part of the everyday background of Ceres.

As they reached the registration desk, Fuchs remembered all over again that Martin Humphries was footing their hotel bill. Humphries had insisted on it. Fuchs wanted to argue about it as they rode a Humphries fusion ship from Ceres to Selene, but Amanda talked him out of it.

“Let him pay for the hotel, Lars,” she had advised, with a knowing smile. “I’m sure he’ll take it out of the price he pays you for Helvetia.”

Grudgingly, Fuchs let her talk him into accepting Humphries’s generosity. Now, at the hotel desk, it rankled him all over again.

When it had originally opened as the Yamagata Hotel, there had been uniformed bellmen and women to tote luggage and bring room service orders. Those days were long gone. The registration clerk seemed alone behind his counter of polished black basalt, but he tapped a keyboard and a self-propelled trolley hummed out of its hidden niche and rolled up to Fuchs and Amanda. They put their two travel bags onto it and the trolley obediently followed them into the elevator that led down to the level of their suite.

Fuchs’s eyes went even wider once they entered the suite.

“Luxury,” he said, a reluctant smile brightening his normally dour face. “This is real luxury.”

Even Amanda seemed impressed. “I’ve never been in one of the hotel’s rooms before.”

Suddenly Fuchs’s smile dissolved into a suspicious scowl. “He might have the rooms bugged, you know.”

“Who? Martin?”