Ben Bova - The Sam Gunn Omnibus

“That’s right, pal,” said Sam. “They don’t want to see diamonds manufactured in space kicking the bottom out of their market.”

“But the crisis in Geneva,” I mumbled.

Sam laughed. “The argument in Geneva is between the diamond cartel and your own government. It’s got nothing to do with Star Wars or Red Shield. They’ve forgotten all about that. Now they’re talking about m oney!”

I could not believe what he was saying. “Our leaders would never stoop—”

Sam silenced me with a guffaw.

“Your leaders are haggling with the cartel like a gang of housewives at a warehouse sale. Your president is talking with the cartel’s leaders right now over a private two-way fiber-optic link.”

“How do you know this?”

He reached into the big pocket on the thigh of his suit. “Special video recording. I brought it just for you.” With a sly smile he added, “Can’t trust those guys in Amsterdam, you know.”

It was difficult to catch my breath. My head was swimming.

“Listen to me, Greg. Your leaders are going to join the diamond cartel; they’re just haggling over the price.”

“Impossible!”

“Hard to believe that good socialists would help the evil capitalists rig world prices for diamonds? But that’s what’s going on right now, so help me. And once they’ve settled on their terms, the conference in Geneva will get back to dealing with the easy questions, like nuclear war.”

“You’re lying. I can’t believe that you are telling me the truth,”

He shrugged good-naturedly. “Look at the video. Watch what happens in Geneva. Then, once things settle down, you and I can start doing business again.”

I must have shaken my head without consciously realizing it.

“Don’t want to leave all those profits to the cartel, do you? We can make a fair-sized piece of change—as long as we stay small enough so the cartel won’t notice us. That’s still a lot of money, pal.”

“Never,” I said. And I meant it. To do what he asked would mean working against my own nation, my own people, my own government. If the secret police ever found out!

I personally ushered Sam back to the docking compartment and off the station. And never allowed him back on Mir 5 again, no matter how he pleaded and wheedled over the radio.

After several weeks he finally realized that I would not deal with him, that when Grigori Aleksandrovich Prokov says “never” that is exactly what I mean.

“Okay friends,” his radio voice said, the last time he tried to contact us. “Guess I’ll just have to find some other way to make my first million. So long, Greg. Enjoy the workers’ paradise, pal.”

The old man’s tone had grown distinctly wistful. He stopped, made a deep wheezing sigh, and ran a liver-spotted hand over his wrinkled pate.

Jade had forgotten the chill of the big lunar dome. Leaning slightly closer to Prokov, she asked:

“And that was the last you saw or heard of Sam Gunn?”

“Yes,” said the Russian. “And good riddance, too.”

“What happened after that?”

Prokov’s aged face twisted unhappily. “What happened? Everything went exactly as he said it would. The conference in Geneva started up again, and East and West reached a new understanding. My crew achieved its mission goal; we spent two full years in Mir 5 and then went home. The Russian Federation became a partner in the international diamond cartel.”

“And you went to Mars,” Jade prompted.

Prokov’s wrinkled face became bitter. “No. I was not picked to command the Mars expedition. Zworkin never denounced me, never admitted his own involvement with Sam, but his report was damning enough to knock me out of the Mars mission. The closest I got to Mars was a weather observation station in Antarctica!”

“Wasn’t your president at that time the one who—”

“The one who retired to Switzerland after he stepped down from leading the nation? Yes. He is living there still like a bloated plutocrat.”

“And you never dealt with Sam Gunn again?”

“Never! I told him never and that is exactly what I meant. Never.”

“Just that brief contact with him was enough to wreck your career.”

Prokov nodded stonily.

“Yet,” Jade mused, “in a way it wa s you who got Russia into partnership with the diamond cartel. That must have been worth hundreds of millions each year to your government.”

The old man’s only reply was a bitter, “Pah!”

“What happened to your Swiss bank account? The one Sam started for you?”

Prokov waved a hand in a gesture that swept the lunar dome and asked, “How do you think I can afford to live here?”

Jade felt herself frown with puzzlement. “I thought the Leonov Center was free….”

“Yes, of course it is. A retirement center for Heroes of the Russian Federation. Absolutely free! Unless you want some real beef in your Stroganoff. That costs extra. Or an electric blanket for your bed. Or chocolates—chocolates from Switzerland are the best of all, did you know that?”

“You mean that your Swiss bank account…”

“It is an annuity,” said Prokov. “Not much money, but a nice little annuity to pay for some of the extra frills. The money sits there in the bank and every month the faithful Swiss gnomes send me the interest by e-mail. Compared to the other Heroes living here I am a well-to-do man. I can even buy vodka for them now and then.”

Jade suppressed a smile. “So Sam’s bank deposit is helping you even after all these years.”

Slowly the old man nodded. “Yes, he is helping me even after his death.” His voice sank lower. “And I never thanked him. Never. Never spoke a kind word to him.”

“He was a difficult man to deal with,” said Jade. “A very difficult personality.”

“A thief,” Prokov replied. But his voice was so soft it sounded almost like a blessing. “A blackmailer. A scoundrel.”

There were tears in his weary eyes. “I knew him for only a few months. He frightened me half to death and nearly caused nuclear war. He disrupted my crew and ruined my chance to lead the Mars expedition. He tricked me and used me shamefully….”

Jade made a sympathetic noise.

“Yet even after all these years the memory of him makes me smile. He made life exciting, vibrant. How I wish he were here. How I miss him!”

“Hey, that’s not bad,” said Jim Gradowsky as he turned off the recorder. He grinned across his desk at Jade. “You did a good job, kid.”

She was sitting on the front inch and a half of her boss’s couch. “It’s only a voice disk,” she said apologetically. “I couldn’t get any video.”

Gradowsky leaned back and put his slippered feet on the desktop. “That’s okay. We’ll do a simulation. There’s enough footage on Sam Gunn for the computer graphics program to paint him with no sweat. The viewers’ll never know the difference. And we can recreate what Prokov must’ve looked like from his current photo; I assume he’ll have no objection to having his portrait done in 3-D.”

“He might,” Jade said in a small voice.

Shrugging, her boss answered, “Then we’ll fake it. We’ll have to fake the other people anyway, so what the hell. Public’s accustomed to it. We put a disclaimer in small print at the end of the credits.”

So that’s how they do the historical documentaries, Jade said to herself, suddenly realizing how the networks showed such intimate details of people long dead.

“Okay, kid, you got the assignment,” Gradowsky said grandly. “There must be dozens of people here in Selene and over at Lunagrad that knew Sam. Track ’em down and get ’em to talk to you.”