With a slow shake of his head, Doug replied, “I don’t hate Greg.” He hoped it waas true.
“Do you mean it?” his mother asked.
“It’s just — all mis is new to me. I never thought—”
Joanna got her feet and came around the table to sit at the empty chair beside him.
“I love you, Douglas. I don’t want to lose you. You and Greg are the only people in the world I care about.”
“I know,” he said. And he let her put her arms around him and hold him close. It felt awkward for a moment, but then he melted into his mother’s embrace and it felt warm and safe and soothing.
Joanna could feel the tension between her two sons, crackling like an electrical spark between two electrodes of opposite polarity.
The three of them were standing in Anson’s former office. Now it was Greg’s office. Joanna had moved into her own quarters.
It had been a long day. They had seen Anson off and Greg had formally taken the directorship of Moonbase. Now, the little cluster of people who had crowded the office to congratulate their new boss had left. Greg stood behind his desk, Joanna at his side, Doug in front of the desk.
Even in the sky-blue coveralls that designated management, Greg looked darkly somber. Doug, wearing the pumpkin orange of the research and exploration group, seemed as bright and youthful as a freshly-scrubbed cadet. Joanna wore a flowered dress, insisting that she would not limit her wardrobe to the utilitarian jumpsuits that everyone else wore.
Doug smiled at his half-brother and put his hand out over the desk.
“I haven’t had a chance to congratulate you, Greg’ he said. “Best of luck as director.”
Greg took his hand and smiled back. “Thanks”
“And I want you to know,” Doug said as their hands separated, “that I understand what happened… about my father.”
Greg turned his startled gaze to Joanna.
“She didn’t tell me. Killifer did.”
“Killifer?”
“He left Moonbase a couple days ago. It’s all over with. Finished.”
“Is it?” Greg asked. “Just like that, you find out about your father’s death and you don’t care?”
Doug looked toward Joanna, too, then turned back to his brother. “I care, Greg. But it’s all… kind of abstract. I never knew my father. He died before I was born. Maybe I ought to be angry, furious — but I can’t seem to work up the emotion.”
Greg just stared at him.
“It’s all in the past,” Dqug said. “I don’t like it, but then I guess you don’t either.”
With a quick glance at his mother, Greg said, “No, I’m not happy about the past.”
“Then let’s make the future something we can both be happy about. All of us,” he quickly amended.
“Okay,” Greg said guardedly. “Sounds good.”
Doug caught the slight but definite stress on the word sounds .
“What do you have in mind?” Joanna asked.
Doug shrugged indifferently. “I’ve got a lot of learning to do. I’m signed up with the research and exploration group. We’ll be going back to Mt. Wasser and building the power tower.”
Greg cleared his throat and said, “Yes, I’ve got the mission plan on my list of action items. Top priority.”
“I hope you approve it,” said Doug.
“Don’t worry about it,” Greg replied.
Joanna watched her two sons, thinking, Maybe they can work together. Maybe they’ll learn to trust one another and become as close as brothers. But I’ll have to watch them. Closely. For a long time to come.
“Once we get the water flowing back here,” Doug was saying, “we can start thinking about expanding the base, turning it into a really livable, town.”
Greg said nothing. He was thinking, Doug knows! He knows what I did. He says he doesn’t care, he says it’s all in the past, but he hates me. He’ll do whatever he can to destroy me. He’s already challenging me. He’ll want to keep Moonbase open. He’ll want to be director, sooner or later. Sooner, most likely. I’ll have to keep a couple of jumps ahead of him. I’ll have to make certain that Mom doesn’t give him unfair advantages.
I’ll have to make certain that Moonbase is shut down for good. When I leave here, Moonbase will be history.
PART III: Legacy
MANHATTAN
It was more like a comfortable little lounge than a conference room, thought Carlos Quintana. Richly appointed and furnished with quiet, understated elegance. These diplomats do all right for themselves, he reminded himself.
The Secretary-General gestured him to sit beside her on the bottle green leather sofa. Quintana had known the woman since before she had been Ecuador’s ambassador to the U.N., back when she had been a shy and frightened newcomer to the world of international politics.
She introduced him to the acting president of the Security Council and the chairwoman of the General Assembly, a comely African whose skin glowed like burnished ebony. The Security Council president was from Bangladesh, one of the poorest nations on Earth, yet he was quite overweight and his thick fingers were heavy with jewelled rings.
Nothing is done swiftly among diplomats, Quintana already knew. The four of them had a drink, chatted amiably, and only gradually got down to the reason for which the meeting had been arranged.
“Yes,” Quintana said quietly, once he had been asked, “I am a beneficiary of nanotherapy. I had lung cancer. Now it is gone.”
“You had the therapy illegally?” asked the General Assembly chairwoman.
Quintana smiled. “It is a gray area. Nanotherapy is illegal in many nations, including Mexico. But in Switzerland apparently the authorities allow it to continue.”
“Not for Swiss citizens, however,” said the Security Council president, who had been a lawyen He had rolls of fat instead if a neck, the glistening skin of his face seemed stretched tight like an over-inflated balloon.
“But you did it anyway,” said the Secretary-General.
Still smiling, Quintana said, “It seemed better than surgery or radiation treatments.”
“Or chemotherapy.”
“Or death,” Quintana added wryly.
For a moment they were silent. Then the Secretary-General smoothed her skirt and said, “So you are a supporter of nanotechnology, then.”
“Yes. Very much.”
“And you would speak against the current treaty being negotiated?”
“To outlaw all nanotechnology research? Yes, I am against it.”
“Would you speak publicly against it?”
“If I must.”
“Wouldn’t that involve some element of danger for you, personally?”
Quintana shrugged. “There is always the chance of some fanatic. I can hire bodyguards.”
The Security Council president cleared his throat ostentatiously. All eyes turned to him.
“Isn’t it true,” he asked, in an accusing voice, “that you are a member of the board of directors of Masterson Aerospace Corporation?”
“That’s no secret,” Quintana said evenly.
“And isn’t it true that Masterson Corporation will suffer greatly if all nanotechnology work is prohibited?”
Quintana nodded. “It would mean the end of their base on the Moon. They could not survive up there without nanomachines to process oxygen for them and maintain their solar power farms.”
“It is also true, is it not,” the president continued, “that your corporation stands to make indecently enormous profits from nanotechnology manufacturing.”
“If we manufacture any salable products with nanomachines, the manufacturing will most likely be done in space, not on Earth.”
“The profits will be made on Earth.”
“Yes, certainly.”
“So you are not exactly unbiased in this matter.”
Quintana put his glass down on the marble-topped coffee table. “I am a living example of what nanotherapy can accomplish. As you can see, I am not a monster and the nanomachines that were put into my body have done me nothing but good.”
“But—”