“And you’ll pour it all out again, won’t you, Sam?” said Bonnie Jo.
She was sitting in the back seat, with me. Gene was up front with Sam.
“I’m gonna invest it in the company’s growth,” Sam said lightly.
“You’re going to sink it into your idiotic orbital hotel scheme.” It sounded to me as if Bonnie Jo was speaking through gritted teeth.
“Idiotic?” Sam snapped. “Whattaya mean, idiotic? People are gonna pay good money for vacations in zero-g. It’s gonna be the honeymoon capital of the world!”
“Sam, if just for once you’d think with your brain instead of your testicles, you’d see what a damned fool scheme this is!”
“Yeah, sure. They laughed at Edison, too.”
“We can’t piss away our profits on your hare-brained schemes, Sam!”
“As long as I’m the biggest stockholder I can.”
I noticed that we were going faster as the argument got hotter. Sam was using neither the highway’s electronic guidance system nor the car’s cruise control; his rising blood pressure made his foot lean harder on the car’s accelerator.
Bonnie Jo said, “Not if I can get a bloc to out-vote you at the annual meeting.”
“You tried that before and it didn’t get you very far, did it?”
“Spence will vote on my side this time,” she said.
The other cars were blurring past us, streaks of headlights on one side, streaks of red taillights on the other. I felt like a crew member in a relativistic starship.
“The hell he will,” Sam yelled back. “Spence is solidly behind me on this. So’s your father.”
“My father has already given me his proxy.”
Sam was silent for several moments. We sped past a huge double trailer rig like a bullet passing a tortoise.
“So what,” he said at last. “Most of the employees’ll vote my way. And that includes Spence.”
“We’ll see,” said Bonnie Jo.
“We sure as hell will.”
So there were internal strains within VCI’s top management. My discovery of this pleased me very much, mainly, I must confess, because I realized that Spence and Bonnie Jo were truly unhappy with one another. I began to think that I might use their differences to destroy VCI—and their marriage.
But Sam had other ideas. So did my father. And also, so did the rebels.
The following Friday afternoon Sam popped into my cubbyhole of an office, whistling off-key and grinning at the same time. It made him look rather like a lopsided Jack-o-Lantern.
“Got any plans for the weekend?” he asked me as he pulled up the only other chair in my cubicle, turned it backwards, and straddled it.
I certainly did. I was planning to spend the weekend at my desk, studying every scrap of data I could call up on my computer about VCI’s finances. I already knew enough about the technical operations of the company. Sam’s argument with Bonnie Jo had opened my eyes to the possibilities of ruining the corporation by financial manipulations.
“I will be working all weekend,” I said.
“You sure will,” said Sam, crossing his arms over the back of the little plastic chair and leaning his chin on them.
His mischievous grin told me that he had something unusual in mind. I merely stared at him, saying nothing, knowing that he was bursting to tell me whatever it was.
Sure enough, Sam could not remain silent for more than two heartbeats. “Ever been in orbit?” he asked. Quickly he added, “Literally, I mean. In space.”
I blinked with surprise. “No. Never.”
His grin widened. “OK, then. Pack an overnight bag. You’re going up tomorrow morning. I’ll have you back here in time to be at your desk first thing Monday morning.”
“You’re taking me into space?”
“Space Station Alpha,” he said. “You’ll love it.”
“With you?”
He tried to put on a serious expression. “Strictly business, Esmeralda. Strictly business. You’ll have a private compartment in the one-g section.”
“But why?”
“Company policy. Everybody who works for VCI gets a chance to go into orbit.”
“This is the first time anyone’s told me about it,” I said.
His grin returned. “Well… it’s a new company policy. I just made it, as a matter of fact.”
I realized his intention. “So you merely want to get me into space with you.”
“It’ll be business, I swear,” Sam said, trying to look innocent.
“What business?” I asked. All my instincts were ringing alarm bells within me.
“I need a woman’s opinion about my plans for the orbital hotel. Can’t ask Bonnie Jo, she’s dead-set against the idea.”
I must have frowned, because he swiftly added, “I’m talking about the way the compartments are done up, the facilities and the decorations and all that. The food service. I need a woman’s point of view, honest.”
He almost sounded reasonable.
But his grin would not fade away. “Of course, if the mood strikes you, and you start to feel romantic, I could show you the zero-g section of the station and we could accomplish feats that could never be done on Earth.”
“No!” I snapped. “Never!”
“Aw, come on,” Sam pleaded like a little boy. “I’ll behave myself, honest. I really do need your opinion. It’s business, really it is.”
My mind was racing furiously. The more I knew about Sam’s operations the easier it would be to trip him up, I reasoned. However, I knew that no matter how much he protested, his lecherous male mind still entertained the hope that he could seduce me, still harbored fantasies of making love with me in zero gravity. I had to admit to myself that I harbored a similar fantasy—except that it was Spence I fantasized about, not Sam.
“Listen,” Sam said, interrupting my train of thought. “I know you think I’m a male chauvinist and all that. OK, maybe I am. But I’m not a rapist. If anything happens between us it’ll be because you want it to happen as much as I do.”
“I should be perfectly safe, then.”
He laughed. “See? You’ve got nothing to fear.”
Still I hesitated. His reputation worried me. Apparently he could be irresistibly charming when he wanted to be.
He heaved a great, disappointed sigh, threw his hands up over his head and said, “All right, all right. You want a chaperon to go with us? You got it. I’ll ask Spence to come along, too. How’s that?”
I had to exert every iota of self-control I possessed to keep myself from leaping out from behind my desk and shouting Yes! Yes! Very deliberately, I turned my gaze away from Sam’s eager eyes and studied the blank wall behind him, pretending to think mightily.
At last I said, “A chaperon is proper. But it should be a woman. A duena.”
Sam sighed again, this time in exasperation. “Look, I can’t shuttle people up and back to a space station just to keep your Hispanic proprieties. D’you know how much it costs?”
“But you are taking me,” I said.
“I need your mother-loving feminine opinion about the hotel accommodations, dammit! And Spence has useful work to do for the company at Alpha. That’s it!”
“Very well,” I said with as much reluctance as I could feign. “Spence is a married gentleman. He is not as good as a proper dueña, but I suppose he can be trusted to act as our chaperon.”
Sam jumped to his feet, bowed deeply, and pranced out of my cubicle. Only when I was certain that he could not see me did I allow myself to smile.
Less than a quarter-hour later a young man appeared at my open doorway. He looked like a Latino: somber dark eyes, thick curly black hair, skin the color of smoked parchment. He was handsome, in a smoldering, sullen way. Sensuous lips.
“Ms. O’Rourke?” he asked.