Ben Bova - Moonwar

“As Yamagata is doing in Japan?”

“Yes, exactly. If we can work together with Yamagata we can open up the market for fusion power plants in North America. The market is worth trillions of dollars!”

“As long as you can import helium-three from the Moon.”

Rashid kept the disappointment from showing on his face. She knows the whole story; there’s no way to fool her about this.

“Yes,” he admitted. “Fusion power makes economic sense only if we can use helium-three as a fuel.”

“Which is why Yamagata wants Moonbase.”

“Yamagata is producing helium-three at its own base in Copernicus.”

“But without nanomachines to do the work, their costs are prohibitively high.”

“I wouldn’t say prohibitively,” Rashid argued.

Bonai smiled brightly. “Then why do they want Moonbase, if not for our nanotechnology?”

“With nanomachines extracting helium-three from the Moon’s soil,” Rashid said, warming to his subject,’the costs of fusion power go down dramatically. We could offer the world the ultimate energy system, the energy source the stars themselves use! It would be cheap, efficient, and clean: no radioactive wastes!”

“No radioactive waste?” Bonai probed.

Rashid waved a hand in the air. “Well, some, of course. But very little, and totally manageable. Not like the old-style fission reactors, with their uranium and plutonium.”

“I see.”

“We could be the primary producer of fusion power systems for North and South America,” he said, regaining his enthusiasm. “The market will be trillions of dollars every year! Think of the profits!”

“And who would make these profits? Masterson Corporation or Yamagata?”

“Both,” Rashid answered.

She said nothing for several moments. Then, rather thoughtfully, Bonai offered, “We must talk about this in more detail.”

“Yes. When you visit Washington. Before the board meeting.”

She nodded. “Yes. Before the board meeting, certainly.”

Rashid felt delighted. I’m winning her over! he told himself.

“He makes a certain amount of sense, Doug,” Bonai was saying. “Fusion power could be an enormous market.”

Tamara and Doug were strolling along the beach, side by side, even though separated physically by nearly four hundred thousand kilometers.

Doug had gone to Moonbase’s virtual reality studio and donned a full-body sensor suit. Instead of the cumbersome helmets that VR systems had once required, he wore contact lenses over his eyes. Produced by nanomachines, the contacts served as miniaturized television screens that fed visual input to his retinas from a microcamera mounted just above his eyes on a headband. Equally tiny microphones were plugged into his ears.

As far as Doug could see, hear or touch, he was sloshing through the gentle surf on Bonai’s private islet, on the far side of the Tarawa lagoon, away from Bonriki and Betio, where the airport and hotels were.

It was beautiful, Doug had to admit. Gorgeous, with the sun dipping down toward the ocean horizon and the trade wind bending the palm trees. The surf broke out on the coral reef with booming roars; here in the lagoon it lapped softly at their feet as they walked along the golden beach.

Tamara was beautiful, too, in a wraparound flowered pareo of blue and gold, her bronzed shoulders bare, her lustrous black hair cascading down her back. She stumbled slightly on the wet sand and Doug reached out a hand to steady her. Even with the three-second lag between Earth and Moon, her hand was still there for him to grasp. He felt her hand clutch his, and she smiled up at him as they continued down the beach, hand in hand.

She could have stayed in her office and simply programmed the VR equipment to show us this beach scene, Doug knew. But Tamara actually was strolling on one of the small islets up at the far end of the lagoon, wearing a full-body sensor suit and a set of microminiaturized cameras that ringed her head like a diadem to provide a complete picture of the island environment for the virtual reality link.

Sweeping his gaze from her lovely face to the curving length of the beach, the graceful palms, the brilliant white clouds parading across the bright blue sky, Doug realized why he had been so reluctant to meet with Tamara in virtual reality. This was the world that was denied him. This was the world that humans were meant to live on, not the harsh lifeless Moon, but this tropical island where you could stand naked in the warm breeze and breathe free.

I could live here, he thought. I’d be safe enough here; nanoluddite fanatics wouldn’t even know I’m down here.

There was another world, though: stark, barren, dangerous -yet full of promise. We can make a paradise on the Moon, Doug told himself. We can build a world that’s fair and free, a world where people can live and work and create a better future.

But it’ll never be like this, he knew. The world I left behind me. Someday we’ll have something approaching this on the Moon. Someday. But it will never be the same.

A powered outrigger was chugging along slowly in the lagoon, heading their way, its electric motor almost completely silent as it sluiced through the marvelously clear water. Doug could see its shadow undulating across the white sandy bottom of the lagoon, hardly a meter deep.

“I thought this was your private islet,” Doug said to Tamara.

She followed his gaze. “Everybody knows the islands up on this end of the lagoon are off-limits. The boys who handle the boats tell tourists not to come this far.”

Frowning, Doug said, “Well, there’s one tourist who didn’t listen.”

Bonai watched intently as the outrigger hit the current flowing between islets and slewed badly. The man in the canoe worked the gimballed engine back and forth to straighten out again.

“He’ll get himself in trouble,” she said.

“Serves him right,” said Doug.

Still watching, she said, “But he might overturn the canoe.”

“An outrigger?”

He waited, then heard her reply. “It’s been done before.”

Doug laughed. “Then he can walk back to Bonriki. The lagoon’s not deep and the water’s warm.”

Another electric-powered outrigger came into view, bigger, more powerful, faster. KIRIBATI CORP. was painted on its prow in bright orange letters.

“Here come my bodyguards,” Bonai said.

“Bodyguards?”

She smiled at him. “The beach patrol from the hotel. They make sure none of the tourists comes up this way.”

Doug watched as the beach patrol boat pulled up even with the smaller outrigger. Three men were in the bigger canoe, he saw: young, muscular, bronzed skin. One of them had an electric bullhorn in his hand.

“I’M SORRY, SIR, BUT THIS PART OF THE LAGOON IS OFF-LIMITS TO VISITORS. PLEASE TURN AROUND AND HEAD BACK TOWARD THE HOTEL.”

For a moment Doug thought that the visitor would try to defy the patrol. But then he turned around and both canoes slowly headed back down the lagoon.

“You see?” Bonai said teasingly. “We can be alone together. I have my bodyguards to ensure our privacy.”

“You mean that if I tried to come here in the flesh, they’d stop me?”

“No, Doug. Not you,” she said, growing serious. “I would always allow you to come here whenever you wanted to.”

He realized he was still holding her hand. Tamara looked up at him. “You did promise, you know. This virtual reality visit doesn’t count.”

“I know,” he said. She gave no indication that she wanted him to release her hand, and he felt too awkward to let go.

So they walked in silence, hand in hand, for several moments.

“When do you go to Savannah?” he asked.