He saw that Rev. Danvers was already seated at a table, chatting with the restaurant’s owner and host, a tall suave Albanian who towered over his mestizo kitchen staff. As soon as the host saw Bracknell and Lara enter, he left Danvers in midsentence and rushed to them.
“Slow night tonight,” he said by way of greeting.
Bracknell said, “Not for much longer. Lots of people heading here. By this time next year you’ll have to double the size of this place.”
The host smiled and pointed out new paintings, all by local artists, hanging on the corrugated metal walls. Village scenes. Cityscapes of Quito. One showed the mountains and the skytower in Dayglo orange. Bracknell thought they were pretty ordinary and said nothing, while Lara commented cheerfully on their bright colors.
The dinner with Rev. Danvers started off rather awkwardly. For some reason the minister seemed guarded, tight-lipped. But then Lara got him to talking about his childhood, his early days in the slums of Detroit.
’You have no idea of what it was like growing up in that cesspool of sin and violence. If it weren’t for the New Morality, Lord knows where I’d be,” Danvers said over a good-sized ribeye steak. “They worked hard to clean up the streets, get rid of the crooks and drug pushers. They worked hard to clean
Lara asked lightly, “Were you all that dirty?”
Danvers paled slightly. “I was a prizefighter back then,” he said, his voice sinking low. “People actually paid money to see two men try to hurt each other, try to pound one another into unconsciousness.”
“Really?”
“Women, too. Women fought in the ring and the crowds cheered and screamed, like animals.”
Bracknell saw that Danvers’s hands were trembling. But Lara pushed further, asking, “And the New Morality changed all that?”
“Yes, praise God. Thanks to their workers, cities like Detroit became safer, more orderly. Criminals were jailed.”
“And their lawyers, too, from what I hear,” Bracknell said. He meant it as a joke, but Danvers did not laugh and Lara shot him a disapproving glance.
“Many lawyers went to jail,” Danvers said, totally serious, “or to retraining centers. They were protecting the criminals instead of the innocent victims! They deserved whatever they got.”
“With your size,” Lara said, “I’ll bet you were a very good prizefighter.”
Danvers smiled ruefully. “They could always find someone bigger.”
“But you beat them, didn’t you?”
“No,” he answered truthfully. “Not very many of them.”
“And now you fight for people’s souls,” Lara said.
“Yes.”
“That’s much better, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
Bracknell looked around the restaurant. Only about half the tables were taken. “Looks like a slow night,” he said, trying to change the subject.
“Mondays are always slow,” said Lara.
“Not for us,” Bracknell said. “We topped off the LEO platform today. It’s all finished and ready to open for business.”
“Really!” Lara beamed at him. “That’s ahead of schedule, isn’t it?”
Bracknell nodded happily. “Skytower Corporation’s going to make a public announcement about it at their board meeting next month. Big news push. I’m going to be on the nets.”
“That’s wonderful!”
Danvers was less enthusiastic. “Does this mean that you’re ready to launch satellites from the LEO platform?”
“We already have contracts for four launches.”
“But the geostationary platform isn’t finished yet, is it?”
“We’re ahead of schedule there, too.”
“But it’s not finished.”
“Not for another six months,” Bracknell said, feeling almost as if he were admitting a wrongdoing. Somehow Danvers had let the air out of his balloon.
By the time they finished their desserts and coffee, theirs was the only occupied table in the restaurant. The robot waiter was already sweeping the floor and two of the guys from the kitchen were stacking chairs atop tables to give the robot leeway for its chore.
Danvers bade them good night out on the sidewalk and headed for his quarters. Bracknell walked with Lara, arm in arm.
As they passed through the pools of light and shadow cast by the streetlamps, Lara said, “Rev. Danvers seems a little uncomfortable with the idea that we’re living in sin.”
Bracknell grinned down at her. “Best place to live, all things considered.”
“Really? Is that what you think?”
Looking up at the glowing lights of the tower that split the night in half, Bracknell murmured, “Urn … Paris is probably better.”
“That’s where the board meeting’s going to be, isn’t it?”
“Right,” said Bracknell. “That’s where Skytower Corporation turns me into a news media star.”
“My handsome hero.”
“Want to come with me?” he asked.
“To Paris?”
“Sure. You can do some clothes shopping there.”
“Are you saying I need new clothes?”
He stopped in the darkness between streetlamps and slipped his arms around her waist. “You’ll need a new dress for the wedding, won’t you?”
“Wedding?” Even in the shadows he could see her eyes go wide with surprise.
Bracknell said, “With the tower almost finished and all this publicity the corporation’s going to generate, I figure I ought to make an honest woman of you.”
“You chauvinist pig!”
“Besides,” he went on, “it’ll make Danvers feel better.”
“You’re serious?” Lara asked. “This isn’t a joke?”
He kissed her lightly. “Dead serious, darling. Will you marry me?”
“In Paris?”
“If that’s what you want.”
Lara flung her arms around his neck and kissed him as hard as she could.
GEOSTATIONARY PLATFORM
“Look on my works, ye mighty,” quoted Ralph Waldo Emerson, the chief engineer, “and despair.”
In a moment of whimsy brought on by their joy at his birth, his parents had named him after the poet. Emerson suspected their euphoria was helped along by the recreational drugs they used; certainly he saw enough evidence of that while he was growing up in the caravan city that trundled through the drought-dessicated former wheat belt of Midwestern America.
His father was a mechanic, his mother a nurse: both highly prized skills in the nomadic community. And both of them loved poetry. Hence his name.
Everybody called him Waldo. He learned to love things mechanical from his father and studied mechanical engineering through the computer webs and satellite links that sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t. Once he grew into manhood Emerson left the caravan and entered a real, bricks-and-mortar engineering college. All he wanted was a genuine degree so that he would have real credentials to show prospective employers. No caravan
