CHAPTER 59
Lars Fuchs looked up in surprise when he heard the knock at his door. He shut down the drama he’d been watching—Sophocles’ Antigone—and called out, “Come in.” It was George again, looking grim. Fuchs rose from his chair. “To what do I owe this honor?”
“Time to go,” George said.
Even though he knew this moment was inevitable, Fuchs felt startled. His insides went hollow. “Now?”
“Now,” said George.
There were two armed men outside his door, both strangers to Fuchs. He walked stolidly beside George up the dusty tunnel, trying to suppress the irritation that rasped in his lungs and throat. He couldn’t do it, and broke into a racking cough. “Shoulda brought masks,” George mumbled. “What difference does it make?” Fuchs asked, as he tried to bring his coughing under control.
George hacked a bit, too, as they walked along the tunnel. Fuchs realized they were headed upward, toward the airlock that opened onto the surface. Maybe that’s how they’ll execute me, he thought: toss me outside without a suit.
But they stopped short of the airlock. George ushered Fuchs into a sizable chamber while the two armed guards stayed out in the dust.
Fuchs saw that his former crew were all there. They all turned toward him.
“Nodon… Sanja… you’re all right, all of you?”
The six of them nodded and even smiled. Nodon said, “We are quite all right, Captain sir.”
“They’re leavin’,” George said. “Your ship’s been refitted and fueled up. They’re headin’ out into the Belt.”
“Good,” Fuchs said. “I’m glad.”
“And you’re goin’ with them,” George added, his shaggy face deeply creased with a worried frown.
“Me? What do you mean?”
George took a heavy breath, then explained, “We’re not goin’ to execute you, Lars. You’re bein’ exiled. For life. Get out and don’t come back. Ever.”
“Exiled? I don’t understand.”
“We talked it over, me an’ the council. We decided to exile you. That’s it.”
“Exile,” Fuchs repeated, stunned, unable to believe it.
“That’s right. Some people won’t like it, but that’s what we fookin’ decided.”
“You’re saving my life, George.”
“If you call flittin’ out in the Belt like a bloody Flyin’ Dutchman savin’ your life, then, yeah, that’s what we’re doin’. Just don’t ever try to come back here, that’s all.”
For weeks Fuchs had been preparing himself mentally to be executed. He realized now that his preparations had been nothing short of a pitiful sham. An enormous wave of gratitude engulfed him. His knees felt watery; his eyes misted over.
“George … I … what can I say?”
“Say good-bye, Lars.”
“Good-bye, then. And thank you!”
George looked decidedly unhappy, like a man who had been forced to make a choice between hideous alternatives.
Fuchs went with his crew to the airlock, suited up, and climbed into the shuttlecraft that was waiting to take them to Nautilus, hanging in orbit above Ceres.
Half an hour later, as he sat in the command chair on Nautilus’s bridge, Fuchs sent a final message to Big George:
“Finish the habitat, George. Build a decent home for yourselves.”
“We will,” George answered, his red-bearded face already small and distant in the ship’s display screen. “You just keep yourself outta trouble, Lars. Be a good rock rat. Stay inside the lines.”
It was only then that Fuchs began to understand what exile meant.
CHAPTER 60
It was the biggest social event in the history of Selene. Nearly two hundred wedding guests assembled in the garden outside Humphries’s mansion.
Pancho Lane wore a pale lavender mid-calf silk sheath that accented her slim, athletic figure. Sapphires sparkled at her earlobes, wrists, and her long, graceful throat. Her tightly curled hair was sprinkled with sapphire dust.
“You look like a fookin’ million dollars on the hoof,” said Big George.
Pancho grinned at the Aussie. He looked uncomfortable, almost embarrassed, in a formal suit of dead black and an old-fashioned bow tie.
“The way I figure it,” she said, “if I’ve got to play the part of a corporate bigwig, I should at least look like one.”
“Pretty damned good,” said George.
“You don’t look too bad yourself,” Pancho said.
“Come on,” George said. “We’d better find our seats.”
Every aspect of the wedding was meticulously controlled by Humphries’s people. Each white folding chair set up on the garden’s grass had a specific guest’s name stenciled on its back, and each guest had been given a specific number for the reception line after the ceremony.
Almost as soon as they sat down, Kris Cardenas joined Pancho and George, looking radiantly young in a buttercup-yellow dress that complemented her golden hair.
“Amanda’s really going through with it,” Cardenas said, as if she wished it weren’t true.
“Looks that way,” George replied, leaning forward in his chair and keeping his voice low. “Don’t think she’d let things get this far and then back out, do you?”
“Not Mandy,” said Pancho, sitting between George and Cardenas. “She’ll go through with it, all right.”
“I feel bad for Lars,” Cardenas said.
Pancho nodded. “That’s why Mandy’s marrying Humphries; to keep Lars alive.”
“Well, he’s alive, at least,” said George. “Him and ’is crew are out in the Belt someplace.”
“Prospecting?”
“What else can they do? If he tries to put in here at Selene or anywhere on Earth they’ll arrest ’im.”
Cardenas shook her head. “It doesn’t seem fair, exiling him like that.”
“Better than killin’ him,” said George.
“I suppose, but still…”
“It’s done,” George said, with heavy finality. “Now we’ve got to look forward, to the future.”
Pancho nodded agreement.
“I want you,” George said to Cardenas, “to start figurin’ out how we can use nanos for mining.”
Cardenas stiffened slightly. “I told you that I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“Stuff it,” George snapped. “It’s a great idea and you know it. Just because—”
The live orchestra that Humphries had brought to Selene for the occasion began to play the wedding march. Everyone got to their feet and turned to see Amanda, in a white floor-length gown, starting down the aisle several paces ahead of the other women in their matching aqua gowns. Amanda walked alone and unsmiling, clutching a bouquet of white orchids and pale miniature roses in both hands.
It won’t be that bad a life, Amanda was telling herself as she walked slowly up the aisle to the tempo of the wedding march. Martin isn’t a monster; he can be positively sweet when he wants to. I’ll simply have to keep my wits about me and stay in command of the situation.
But then she thought of Lars and her heart melted. She wanted to cry, but knew she shouldn’t, mustn’t. A bride is supposed to smile, she thought. A bride is supposed to be radiantly happy.
Martin Humphries was standing at the makeshift altar up at the head of the aisle. Two hundred-some guests were watching Amanda as she walked slowly, in measured tread, to him. Martin was beaming, looking resplendent in a tuxedo of deep burgundy velvet, standing there like a triumphant champion, smiling at her dazzlingly.
The minister had been flown to Selene from Martin’s family home in Connecticut. All the other members of the bridal party were strangers to Amanda.