He’d begun working it out on the globe at the Foundation, simply inputting rate of leakage data and the presence and speed of movement of underground water supplies. The hope was for a prediction, well ahead of time, as to where and how the disease would spread itself to the body of the planet, so that mankind would know where to entrench to fight the invader. But to some, the poisoning of the Earth’s water supply seemed like a reasonable perdition. Every age has its optimists.
The globe was a wonder, his wife’s living legacy. Many issues like the radioactivity project had been run through its cogitative senses and resulted in real conclusions. But it had broken down in some ways, which he knew would not have happened had Lanie lived. The result was disappointments, unpredicted quakes, for example, including one in California. Until now, the globe had seemed infallible.
It always made him think about Lanie’s theories of swimming pools dug in Rome starting quakes in Alaska. In fact, two of the unpredicted quakes had finally been attributed to lakes being dug, one as far as five hundred miles away, water filling the lake, filtering down into the cracks in the rocks and lubricating hidden faults. He wondered if one day, though, it would be possible to know enough to tell people where not to dig lakes … or swimming pools.
“Here we go, Misters,” Ali said, pointing through the windshield at a glowing area several miles distant. “I had them turn the lights on for you.”
Crane wondered what Lanie would think of this—him buying a piece of the Moon with Stoney’s three-billion-dollar endowment. Stoney had told him to use it to buy another dream; now, ten years later, he was taking the man at his word.
Ali reversed the thrust fans to slow them, the skimmer bumping rudely into the middle of a small ghost town of interconnected domes and square, metal prefab buildings stacked like the holoblocks Charlie had used to play with on the elevator ride in the Imperial Project.
“Are the mine shafts still open?” Crane asked as he looked at a series of abandoned restaurants with familiar names.
Ali hesitated. “We can discuss the shafts. I’m not sure how much happiness it will bring YOU-LI to come in and fill—”
“I want the shafts,” Crane said. “I’m going to tap the core for heat and power.”
“You want shafts,” Ali said happily, twirling his hand in the air. “You got shafts. They’re everywhere … all over this damn place. The man wants shafts. He wants them!”
Ali eased them to the lock, bumping up, magnetic clamps catching and sealing tight. “You’ve got to put on the helmet,” he said. “I can’t afford to turn on the life support in here just to show the place.”
“How much space does the entire operation cover?” Crane asked, as Ali put on his helmet, then pointed to Crane’s.
Crane let Burt help him into the helmet. “Think of these constructions as the center point,” Ali said. “The operation extends for a thousand square miles all around us. You’ll own the Van de Graaff Crater, the Leibnitz Crater and the Von Karman Crater. The Sea of Ingenuity is yours, all of it.”
“The price?”
“Three point two billion,” Ali said. “Now, I know that’s a whole lot’a money. I got smaller plots on the lightside that—”
“Make it three billion even and you’ve got a deal,” Crane said.
“You’ve got that kinda collateral?” Ali asked. “Not to be blunt, sir.”
“We’ll be paying cash.”
“My friend!” Ali said. “You have made an old camel trader very happy. Nobody wants the darkside.”
“I insist on it. Shall we tour the facility?”
The tour lasted less than an hour, Ali anxious to get back to the lightside and Crane not all that interested in the accommodations. The YOU-LI camp had been a typical mining operation, spartan and barely supported from corporate. Crane would be tearing down the buildings in due time, constructing his own. But the existing construction would house the initial planners and engineers whose task it would be to turn a darkside mining camp into a new civilization. It would be a long and difficult project, but Crane had undertaken many such projects before.
Later, back at the Moonbase Marriott, Crane and Hill sat at a table in the bar, Crane’s back to the magnificent Earthrise shining through the huge, thick windows. The hotel was full, the area around the hotel beginning to look like a small city of domes and skydecks. The Moon was new territory, optioned for quick sale by YOU-LI, the previous owners. The Chinese were consolidating their holdings and the Moon didn’t figure in their future. So, a piece at a time, it was being developed by the people who always open new territories and settlement—rogues and heroes. Crane wasn’t sure which category he fit into.
Hill, frail and quiet since being wounded years before, raised a beer. “I guess this is to you,” he said. “I’m not sure what you did, but congratulations.”
“We’re taking advantage of an opportunity while we can,” Crane said, touching his glass of Scotch to the beer bottle, then sipping. “I always wanted to run my own government.”
“Bullshit,” Hill said. “All you ever wanted to do was kill EQs. All of a sudden we’re buying up the Moon.”
“It’s not sudden. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time … years. It was never feasible until now. I don’t tell you everything on my mind, Burt.”
“That’s a fact. You never told me Sumi was a woman.”
“I figured that if you were dumb enough not to know,” Crane said, “I wasn’t going to be the one to tell you.”
It was an old joke between them. Truth to tell, neither of them had had the vaguest idea about Sumi. Her story had been fascinating and most nearly tragic. So much had happened over the years.
Barely a month after the attack on the Imperial Project, President Gideon had slipped on a bar of soap in the bathtub and promptly died—at least that was the story released by the White House. Sumi had become President, immediately appointing Kate Masters as her VP. Because Liang Int and Yo-Yu had split the electorate, Sumi was able to beat both companies’ tickets and get elected President without affiliation in the November ’28 elections.
It was Sumi who’d laid the groundwork for what had ultimately resulted in the Islamic State. Because of what she termed “health reasons” she chose not to run again in ’32, even though she’d been a balanced and respected Chief Executive during her term in office. Then, at the same news conference, she’d revealed her true gender, saying she could “no longer pretend” to be a male.
Kate Masters had run and won big, leapfrogging from her already huge power base and cashing in on anti-Chinese sentiment. The economy continued to falter because of a barrage of sanctions imposed upon Chinese business interests by a worldwide Islamic movement whose global view was ethnocentric, to say the least.
The reasons for Sumi Chan’s declining to run again then became immediately apparent when she was checked into a mental institution. Paul, the lover devolved from her chip, had managed to take over her life completely, making all her decisions, choosing her advisors, and drawing her into an ever-downward spiral of xenophobia and closed-mindedness. She’d become the entire loop of humanity all within herself. No one else was allowed in by Paul.