More recently, Sam had begun sending people up to GEO to repair malfunctioning commsats. It was cheaper to fix them than to replace them—in theory, at least. In practice, the costs of sending astronauts to GEO even for a few hours was almost as much as replacing a malfunctioning satellite.
The virtual reality simulation that Sam was frustrated over was one in which an operator could remain aboard the space station in LEO and remotely direct an unmanned spacecraft to repair a malfunctioning satellite in GEO.
“Bring the dead back to life,” as Sam put it.
“It would be much safer for our people if they could stay in the space station rather than fly up to GEO,” Spence explained to me. “GEO’s in the middle of the outer Van Allen Belt. Astronauts can’t stay there very long because of the radiation.”
“I see,” I said.
“We could save a bundle of money if we could do this job remotely,” said Sam eagerly. “Just the drop in our insurance costs could pay for the whole program.”
Spence added, “In the long run we could operate right here from the ground. No need to send people to one of the space stations, even.”
“That’d save even more money,” Sam agreed happily.
“But the simulation keeps glitching,” said Spence.
“And until we get it right in the simulator we can’t try it in the real world.”
Thus the burden of their hopes was placed on my young shoulders. I thought it strange that something so vital would be entrusted to a totally new and untried employee. Was this a trap of some sort? Or a test? Soon enough I learned that it was typical of the way Sam Gunn ran his company. He kept his staff as small as he possibly could, hiring only when there was no other way to get a necessary job done. And make no mistake about it, Sam Gunn ran VCI. Despite his lofty tide, Spence took orders from Sam. Most of the time.
The problem with the simulation was not terribly difficult. If Sam had not been so impatient his own staff personnel or a consultant would eventually have found it. But what Sam wanted was instant results, which meant that I spent virtually twenty-four hours a day working on the problem. Except for the hour or so each day I spent fending off Sam’s invitations to dinner, to lunch, to a suite in the zero-gravity honeymoon hotel he wanted to build in orbit.
Within a few days I had the program running so smoothly that Sam was willing to try a test in orbit. And I realized that I could sabotage his operation quite easily. In fact, I planted a bug in the program that I could activate whenever I chose to.
I discussed my accomplishment with my father on the direct phone link from our consulate in Orlando. I drove to the consulate in the dark of night, well past midnight, to make certain that no one from VCI would see me.
I had feared that I would wake my father from his justly-earned sleep. As it turned out, he was in bed, but not asleep. At first he did not activate the phone’s video, which puzzled me. When he finally did, I realized that he was not alone in his bed. He tried to hide her, but I could see that a tousle-haired young trollop lay beside him, bundled under the sheets. She peeked out from behind my father’s back, showing a bare shoulder, a pair of flashing dark eyes, and piles of raven black hair.
My father was delighted with the progress I had made in little more than a week.
“I can sabotage their mission to repair satellites,” I reported to him, trying to ignore his companion. She could not have been much older than I. “And they will never even know that sabotage has occurred.”
“Good!” He beamed at me. “Excellent! But do not attack them just yet. Let them run a successful mission or two. Wait until the strategic moment to strike.”
“I understand, Papa.”
“You are doing well, my child.”
I looked past him to the young woman sharing his bed. My mother had been dead for many years and my father was still a man of vigor. Yet I felt angry. I did not tell him that Sam Gunn was attracted to me.
“And you are well, Papa?” My question sounded acidly cynical to my own ears.
Yet my beloved father obviously did not feel my anger. “I am in good health,” he reported smilingly. “Although the rebels have surrounded the army base at Zamora.”
“What?” I felt a double pang of alarm. The lieutenant who had been infatuated with me was at the Zamora base.
“Not to worry, my daughter. We are reinforcing the base by helicopter and will soon drive the scum back to their caves in the mountains.”
Yet I did worry. The rebels seemed to get bolder, stronger, each year. I went back to work, angry with my father yet frightened for him. We needed to wrest control of the equatorial orbit from the Gringo corporations, quickly. I began to look for more ways to sabotage VCI. I even let Sam take me out to dinner several times, although each evening ended at the front door of my apartment building with nothing more romantic than a handshake. Sam was not exactly a perfect gentleman: he was as persistent as a goat in mating season. I fended him off, however. My arms were longer than his.
“Esmeralda,” he complained one evening, “you’re turning my love life into the petrified forest.”
We were at the entrance to my apartment building. I thought of it as my castle, its walls and electronic door locks my defense against Sam’s assaults.
“I agreed to have dinner with you,” I said, “nothing more.”
He sighed heavily. “I guess I’m paying you too much.”
“Paying me… ?”
With an almost wicked grin he said, “If you were broke and hungry you’d appreciate me more, I betcha.”
“What an evil thing to say!”
“Well, look at this apartment building,” he went on. “It’s a frigging luxury palace! I’m just paying you too much money. You’re living too well—”
I had to cut off his line of thought before he realized that my salary could never pay the rent on my apartment. Before he began to ask himself how a poor computer programmer from Los Angeles could afford the clothes and the sports car I had.
“So you want women to be starving and poor,” I snapped at him. “Or perhaps you prefer them barefoot and pregnant?”
He shrugged good-naturedly. “Barefoot is OK.”
I did not have to pretend to be angry. I could feel the blood heating my cheeks. “Sam, the days of male domination over women were finished long ago,” I told him. “Don’t you understand that?”
“I’m not interested in domination. All I want is a little cooperation.”
“You are a hopeless chauvinist, Sam.”
He broke into an impish grin. “Not quite hopeless, Esmeralda. I still have some hope.”
It was impossible to dislike Sam, even though I tried. But at least I stopped him from asking himself how I could afford my lifestyle on the salary he was paying me.
Yet it was Spence that I felt drawn to. He was quietly competent, always even-tempered, extremely capable. I knew he was married, but somehow I felt that his marriage was not all that happy for him. Perhaps it was because I wanted to believe so. Perhaps it was because he was a kind, fatherly, caring, truly gentle man.
And then I met Spence’s wife. Her name was Bonnie Jo. Apparendy she had once been engaged to marry Sam Gunn but somehow had married Spence instead. The story I gathered from my fellow workers was that her father had provided the money for Sam to start VCI. Spence had mentioned that he and his wife were both stockholders, which made me wonder if her father was still a financial backer of the company.
But it was not her finances that stunned me. It was her beauty. Bonnie Jo’s hair was the color of lustrous gold, her eyes a rich, deep, mysterious grayish green. She was almost as tall as I, her figure slim and athletic, her clothes always impeccably stylish. Compared to her, I felt fat and stupid. Her voice was low, melodious; not the piercing high-pitched shrill of so many Gringo women. But her eyes were hard, calculating; her beauty was cold, like an exquisite statue or a fashionably-draped mannequin.