Ben Bova - The Rock Rats

Humphries awoke that morning and smiled. It’s all coming together nicely, he told himself as he got out of bed and padded into his tiled lavatory. Amanda’s here without Fuchs. By the time the conference is over he’ll be totally cut off from her and everybody else. I’ll have the chance to show her what kind of life she can have with me.

The mirror above the sink showed him a puffy-faced, bleary-eyed unshaven image. Will she want me? he asked himself. I can give her everything, everything a woman could possibly desire. But will she turn me down again? Will she stick with Fuchs?

Not when the man is dead, he thought. Then she’ll have no choice. The competition will be over.

His hands trembled as he reached for his electric toothbrush. Frowning at this weakness, Humphries opened his medicine cabinet and rummaged through the vials lined up there in alphabetical order. A cure for every malady, he said to himself. Most of them were recreational drugs, cooked up by some of the bright researchers he kept on his payroll. I need something to calm me down, Humphries realized. Something to get me through this conference without losing my temper, without making Amanda afraid of me.

As he pawed through the medicine cabinet, the image of Diane Verwoerd’s troubled, frightened face flashed in his mind. I wiped her superior smile away, he thought, relishing the memory of her surprise and fear. He tried to remember how many women had carried clones of his, all to no avail. Several had died; one had produced a monstrosity that lived less than a day. Diane’s strong, he told himself. She’ll come through for me. And if she doesn’t—he shrugged. There are always other women for the job.

He found the little blue bottle that he was looking for. Just one, he said silently; just enough to get me through the meeting on an even keel. Later on, I’ll need something else, something stimulating. But not yet. Not this morning. Later, when Amanda’s here with me.

Pancho dressed carefully for the conference in a pumpkin orange silk blouse and slacks with a neat patchwork jacket embellished with highlights of glitter. This is an important conference and I’m representing Astro Corporation, she told herself. Better look like a major player. She thought she would be the first one to show up for the conference, but when she got there Doug Stavenger was already standing by the big window that swept along one wall of the spacious room, looking relaxed in an informal cardigan jacket of teal blue.

“Hello,” he called cheerfully. Gesturing toward the side table laden with coffee urns and pastries, he asked, “Have you had your breakfast?”

“I could use some coffee,” Pancho said, heading for the table.

The conference room was part of the suite of offices that Selene maintained in one of the twin towers that supported the expansive dome of the Grand Plaza. Gazing through the window down into the Plaza itself, Pancho saw the lovingly maintained lawn and flowering shrubbery, the fully-leafed trees dotting the landscape. There was the big swimming pool, built to attract tourists, and the outdoor theater with its gracefully curved shell of lunar concrete. Not many people on the walks this early in the morning, she noticed. Nobody in the pool.

Stavenger smiled at her. “Pancho, are you seriously going to try to hammer out your differences with Humphries, or is this conference going to be a waste of time?”

Pancho grinned back at him as she picked up a coffee cup and started to fill it with steaming black brew. “Astro is willing to agree to a reasonable division of the Belt. We never wanted a fight; it was Humphries who started the rough stuff.”

Stavenger pursed his lips. “I guess it all depends, then, on how you define the word ’reasonable.’”

“Hey, look,” Pancho said. “There’s enough raw materials in the Belt to satisfy ever’body. Plenty for all of us. It’s Humphries who wants to take it all.”

“Are you talking about me, Pancho?”

They turned and saw Humphries striding through the door, looking relaxed and confident in a dark blue business suit.

“Nothing I haven’t said to your face, Humpy, old buddy,” Pancho replied.

Humphries raised an eyebrow. “I’d appreciate it if you referred to me as Mr. Humphries when the other delegates get here.”

“Sensitive?”

“Yes. In return for your consideration I’ll try to refrain from using phrases such as ‘guttersnipe’ or ‘grease monkey.’ ”

Stavenger put a hand to his forehead. “This is going to be a lovely morning,” he groaned.

Actually, the conference went along much more smoothly than Stavenger had feared. The other delegates arrived, and Humphries turned his attention to Amanda, who smiled politely at him but said very little. He seemed almost to be a different person when Fuchs’s wife was near: polite, considerate, earnestly trying to win her admiration, or at least her respect.

Stavenger called the meeting to order, and everyone took seats along the polished oblong conference table. Pancho behaved like a proper corporate executive and Humphries was affable and cooperative. Each of them made an opening statement about how they wanted nothing more than peace and harmony in the Asteroid Belt. Willi Dieterling then said a few brief words about how important the resources of the Belt were to the people of Earth.

“With so many millions homeless and hungry, with so much of our global industrial capacity wiped out, we desperately need the resources from the Belt,” he pleaded. “This fighting is disrupting the supply of raw materials that we need to recover from the climate catastrophe that has brought civilization to its knees.”

Stavenger pointed out, “The people of Selene are ready to help as much as we can. We have industrial capacity here on the Moon, and we can help you to build factories and power-generation stations in Earth orbit.”

It was Big George who ended the platitudes.

“We all want peace and brotherhood,” he began, “but the painful truth is that people are killin’ each other out in the Belt.”

Dieterling immediately replied, “The world government is prepared to offer Peacekeeping troops to you to help you maintain order in the Belt.”

“No thanks!” George snapped. “We can maintain order for ourselves—” he turned to look squarely at Humphries “—if the corporations’ll stop sending killers to us.”

“Corporations, plural?” Pancho asked. “Astro hasn’t sent any killers to the Belt.”

“You’ve sent your share of goons, Pancho,” said George.

“To protect our property!”

Humphries made a hushing motion with both hands. “I presume you’re both referring to certain actions taken by employees of Humphries Space Systems.”

“Fookin’ right,” George blurted.

With all eyes on him, Humphries said calmly, “It’s perfectly true that some of the people my corporation sent to Ceres have been… well, roughnecks.”

“Murderers,” George muttered.

“One man committed a murder, true enough,” Humphries conceded. “But he acted on his own. And he was punished for it swiftly enough.”

“By Lars Fuchs, I understand,” said Dieterling.

Humphries nodded. “Now we’re getting down to the crux of the problem.”

“Wait a minute,” George interjected. “Let’s not start dumpin’ on Lars. Plenty of ships have been knocked off out in the Belt, and it was HSS that started it.”

“That’s not true,” Humphries said.

“Isn’t it? I was fookin’ attacked by one of your butcher boys. Took me arm off. Remember?”

“We went through an IAA hearing over that. No one was able to prove it was one of my ships that attacked you.”

“That doesn’t mean it wasn’t one of ’em, does it now?”