To Sail Beyond The Sunset

‘No, George, not a speculator - a soothsayer. Me. I could see that you weren't moving fast enough so I optioned as much as I could, using all the liquid capital I could lay hands on, plus all the cash I could raise by borrowing against non liquid assets.'

George looked hurt. I added hastily, ‘I'm turning my options over to you, George. At cost, and you can decide how much to cut me in for after the special position we have begins to pay back.'

‘No, Maureen, that's not fair. You believed in yourself; you got there first; the profits are yours.'

‘George, you didn't listen. I don't have the capital to exploit these options; I put eve cent I could raise into the options themselves - if I had been able to lay hands on another million, I would have optioned still more land further out and for longer terms. I just hope you will listen to me next time. It distresses me to tell you that it is going to rain soup, then have you show up with a teaspoon rather than a bucket. Do you want me to warn you about the next special position? Or shall I go straight to Mr Harriman and try to persuade him that I am an authentic soothsayer?'

He sighed. ‘I'd rather you told me. If you will.'

I said most quietly, ‘Do you have a place where we can shack up tonight?'

He answered just as quietly, ‘Of course. Always, dear lady.'

That night I gave him more details. ‘The next road to be converted will be the Jersey Turnpike, an eighty-mile-per-hour road as compared with this fiddling thirty-mile-per-hour job we saw opened today. But the Harriman Highway -‘

‘Harriman?'

‘The D. D. Harriman Prairie Highway from Kansas City to Denver will be a hundred-mile-per-hour road that will grow a strip city thirty miles wide from Old Muddy to the Rocky Mountains. It will boost Kansas from a population of two million to a population of twenty million in ten years... with endless special positions for anyone who knows it is going to happen.'

‘Maureen, you frighten me.'

‘I frighten myself, George. It's rarely comfortable to know what is going to happen.' I decided to take the plunge. ‘The rolling roads will continue to be built at a frantic pace, as fast as sunpower screens can be manufactured to drive them - down the east coast, along Route Sixty-Six, on El Camino Real from San Diego to Sacramento and beyond - and a good thing, too, as the sunpower screens on the roofs of the road cities will take up the slack and fend off a depression when the Paradise power plant is shut down and placed in orbit.'

George kept quiet so long I thought he had fallen asleep. At last he said, ‘Did I hear you correctly? The big atomic power pile in Paradise, Arizona, will be placed in orbit? How? And why?'

‘By means of spaceships based on today's glide rockets. But operating with an escape fuel developed at Paradise. But, George, George, it must not happen! The Paradise plant must be shut down, yes; it is terribly dangerous, it is built wrong -like a steam engine without a relief valve.' (In my head I could hear Sergeant Theodore's dear voice saying it: They were too eager to build... and it was built wrong - like a steam engine without a relief valve.') ‘It must be shut down but it must not be placed in orbit. Safe ways will be found to build atomic power plants; we don't need the Paradise plant. In the meantime the sunpower screens can fill the gap.'

‘If it's dangerous - and I know some people have worried about it - if it is placed in orbit, it won't be dangerous.'

‘Yes, George, that's why they will put it in orbit. Once in orbit, it would not be dangerous to the town of Paradise, or the state of Arizona... but what about the people in orbit with it? They will be killed.'

Another long wait - It seems to me that it might be possible to design a plant to operate by remote control, like a freighter rocket. I must ask Ferguson.'

‘I hope you are right. Because you will see, when you return to Kansas City and open my envelope number six and also number seven, that I prophesy that the Paradise power plant will be placed in orbit, and that it will blow up and kill everybody on board, and destroy the rocketship that services it. George, it must not be allowed to happen. You and Mr Harriman must stop it. I promise you, dear, that if this can be stopped - if my prophecy can be proved wrong - I will break my crystal ball and never prophesy again.'

‘I can't make any promises, Maureen. Sure, both Delos and I are directors of the Power Syndicate... but we hold a minor position both in stock and on the board. The Power Syndicate represents practically all the venture capital in the United States; the Sherman Anti-Trust Law was suspended to permit it to be formed in order to build the Paradise plant. Hmm... a man named Daniel Dixon controls a working majority, usually. A strong man. I don't like him much:

‘I've heard of him, haven't met him. George, can he be seduced?'

‘Maureen!'

‘George, if I can keep fifty-odd innocent people from being killed in an industrial accident, I'll do considerably more than offer this old body as a bribe. Is he susceptible to women? If I am not the woman he is susceptible to, perhaps I can find her.'

Dixon didn't cotton to me at all (nor I to him, but that was unimportant) and he did not seem to have any cracks in his armour. After the Power Syndicate voted to shut down the Paradise plant ‘in the public interest' I was successful only in getting George and Mr Harriman to vote against reactivating that giant bomb in orbit - theirs were the only dissenting votes. The death scenario rolled on and I could not stop it: power satellite and spaceship Charon blew up together, all hands killed - and I stared at the ceiling for nights on end, reflecting on the bad side of knowing too much about the future.

But I did not stop working. Back in 1952, shortly after I had given George my earliest predictions, I had gone to Canada to see Justin: 1) to set up a front to handle business for my ‘Prudence Penny' column, and 2) to offer Justin the same detailed predictions I was giving George.

Justin had not been pleased with me. ‘Maureen, do I understand that you have been holding all these years additional information you got from Sergeant Bronson - or Captain Long, whatever - the Howard from the future - and did not turn it over to the Foundation?'

‘Yes.'

Justin had shown an expression of controlled exasperation. ‘I must confess to surprise. Well, better late than never. Do you have it in writing, or will you dictate it?'

‘I'm not turning it over to you, Justin. I will continue to pass on to you, from time to time, data that I have conserved, item by item, as you need to know it'

‘Maureen, I really must insist. This is Foundation business. You got these data from a future chairman of the Foundation - so he claimed and so I believe - so I am their proper custodian. I am speaking not as your old friend Justin, but as Justin Weatheral in my official capacity as chief executive officer of the Foundation and conservator of its assets for the benefit of all of us.'

‘No, Justin.'

‘I must insist'

‘Insist away, old dear - it's good exercise.'

‘That's hardly the right attitude, Maureen. You don't own that data. It belongs to all of us. You owe it to the Foundation.'

‘Justin, don't be so tediously male! Data from Sergeant Theodore saved the Foundation's bacon on Black Tuesday, in 1929. Stipulated?'

‘Stipulated. That's why -‘

‘Let me have my say. And that same data also saved your arse and made you rich - and made the Foundation rich. Why? How? Who? Old busy-bottom Maureen, that's who! Because I'm an amoral wench who fell in love with this enlisted man and kicked his feet out from under him - and got him to talking. That had nothing to do with the Foundation, just me and my loose ways. I'll hadn't cut you in on it, you would never have met Theodore. Admit it! True? False? Answer me.'