Jack Du Brul - Charon's landing

“I only use my professional title when I call for dinner reservations. Please drop the ‘Doctor’ and just call me Mercer. Everybody does.”

Aggie pulled back a half step. “Are you so ashamed of your accomplishments that you’re trying to hide your identity? My God, you single-handedly destroyed an entire mountain in India when you staked out the Ghudatra mines. What about your work in Australia? How many aborigines had to be relocated after the firm you worked for pegged a hundred thousand acres for an opal mine? Don’t be modest, Dr. Mercer. To some, you’re a hero. Right, Daddy?”

Max Johnston was looking uncomfortable. He glanced around, making sure that none of his well-heeled guests had heard his daughter’s outburst. It was clear he’d listened to her views so many times that he could repeat them by rote.

“That’s enough, Aggie. You promised to be my hostess tonight and not spout your drivel,” Johnston hissed. “Christ, you’re about as considerate as your mother was.”

He turned to Mercer. “Sorry about that. Let’s go get a drink.”

He put a strong arm around Mercer’s shoulder and led him away. Mercer turned his head and saw the look of utter hatred Aggie directed at her father.

“You don’t have any kids, do you?” Max asked as the bartender fixed another gimlet and refilled the host’s champagne flute.

“No. I realized young that I can barely take care of myself, so how the hell could I care for a child?”

Max smiled, relaxing slightly. “She’s my greatest joy and I’ve been proud of every one of her accomplishments, even if they were designed to get back at me. Do you know she graduated at the top of her class at grad school? She got a degree in environmental engineering, of all things. She is quite brilliant, but she wastes it on these quixotic quests. I guess she never really had to grow up. I spoiled the hell out of her. Hell, I still do, by letting her screw around with that ecological group.”

Mercer had no interest in the problems between Max and his daughter. Though he lent a patient ear, he had to make one comment. “Max, she’s a grown woman. Shouldn’t she be making her own choices?”

“If I let other people have choices, none of this would be here today.” Max waved his glass around the room. Mercer couldn’t tell if he was being flippant or serious.

“I shouldn’t burden you with this.” Max’s public persona was back. “She and I still get along on occasion. Here, have another drink.” Mercer allowed Max to put yet another gimlet in his hand. “Will you excuse me? I’ve got to go say hello to Connie Van Buren.”

Max Johnston drifted back into the crowd, leaving Mercer thankfully free again. He finished the first drink Max had given him then took a small sip from the second. He smiled to himself as he looked around the opulent room. It didn’t matter how rich a person was, common problems still reared their ugly heads.

Max Johnston wore his somewhat openly. He was a widower, his wife having succumbed to an alcohol-induced suicide wish. Mercer recalled her drinking problem when he’d first met Max in Houston. An hour into the party, Barbara Johnston was so drunk that Max had to have his chauffeur take her back to their limousine. Six years later, after countless rehab programs that the media intrusively reported, Barbara washed down a bottle of sleeping pills with a fifth of vodka. Her suicide note said, “Gone to sleep, please wake me when life is easier.” And now Max was fighting with his daughter in front of some of the most powerful people in the country.

If that was the price of success, decided Mercer, Max could have it all.

He didn’t see Aggie as he scanned the room, and felt a small measure of relief. Speaking to her now would be uncomfortable at best. Within a few minutes, he was talking with the co-chair of the Johnston Group’s scientific arm, the ugly scene of a moment earlier all but forgotten.

Half an hour later, he became aware of her perfume. He hadn’t noticed it before, it was so subtle. Mercer noted the wolflike stares from the men and the jealous glances from the women and knew Aggie Johnston was behind him. He turned around. She looked as if she’d recovered from the confrontation with her father, but he noticed a shadow behind her impossibly green eyes that hadn’t been there before. Mercer knew it was best to act as if nothing had happened rather than rattle off some platitude about relationships.

“I never got a chance to rebut your attack on my profession.”

Aggie gave Mercer a smile of thanks, a small lift of her lips that pleased him inordinately. Yet when she spoke, sarcasm edged her voice raw. “My father’s company retains four entire law firms and a whole army of public-relations experts. They make excuses faster than the rest of the company produces environmental disasters. I’m sure you can toe the party line with the rest of them.”

She paused, regarding him clinically. “Let me guess. You’ll tell me how what you do creates jobs all over the world and gives hope to starving people who are still living in the nineteenth century. Does this sound about right?”

Mercer guessed she was a typical “cause and effect” protester. If there was an effect in the world, she’d join the cause. She would no doubt belong to numerous organizations, favoring new ones as they gained popularity. Harry White derisively called these people “flavor-of-the-month liberals.” It wouldn’t matter that some of her beliefs might be diametrically opposed to others as long as they were politically correct and au courant.

He used this to his advantage when he came back at her just as hard. “Do you know how many millions of young girls are denied a useful life because they have to carry water to villages often miles away? They are reduced to the level of pack animals because they don’t have access to a well and a mechanical pump. Accessible water is such a commonplace item that you simply take it for granted, but to many in the world it is a luxury that they can only dream of.

“Those jobs that I help create, the ones you scoff at, can free those women. When a company I work for starts paying employees, it affects not only them but their families and villages. It gives people hope. Christ, to deny them that is to return to the colonial period of human exploitation. Is that what you want?”

It didn’t matter how beautiful he thought she was, he would never allow himself to be pushed around. His reputation, both good and bad, stood as his testament and he would defend it no matter what.

Her smile was patronizing and taunting. “Nice try, Dr. Mercer. To most, that would have worked. Though I believe in women’s rights and I deplore our treatment, I am an environmentalist, not a feminist. I’m not a Socialist or an anti-technologist either, so the rest of your arguments are moot. I have my beliefs and you have yours. They do not correspond.”

“Did anything I said during that class yesterday make sense to you?” Mercer was hoping for a common ground, a reason to keep her near him.

“No, not at all. It might have impressed the students, but cliches and hyperbole don’t impress someone who is truly informed. And as to your theory that humans are conforming to evolution by destroying our environment, well that’s just bullshit and you know it.”

He found her use of profanity alluring. “Mark my word, as we learn more about evolution and extinction, we’re going to find that behavior contributes as much to a species’ demise as changes in environment or any other factor. If our actions contribute to our destruction, then that’s the deal nature dealt us. Period.”

“And you see no reason to change that?” she challenged.

“I see no way to stop it. The Chinese government plans to provide refrigerators to every household in the country. The antiquated technology they use would pump out so many CFCs and other ozone-depleting gases that any counteraction in the West would be futile. We couldn’t regulate fast enough to prevent the greenhouse effect you so fear. Why isn’t the Planetary Environment Action League trying to stop them? Groups like yours are adept at stirring controversy and garnering headlines, but you don’t attempt to offer workable solutions. You don’t have enough facts behind your outcries, so you appeal to emotions to get your point across. You probably agree with the results of the Earth Summit in Rio, right?”