Ben Bova - The Rock Rats

“Looks that way,” George replied, leaning forward in his chair and keeping his voice low. “Don’t think she’d let things get this far and then back out, do you?”

“Not Mandy,” said Pancho, sitting between George and Cardenas. “She’ll go through with it, all right.”

“I feel bad for Lars,” Cardenas said.

Pancho nodded. “That’s why Mandy’s marrying Humphries; to keep Lars alive.”

“Well, he’s alive, at least,” said George. “Him and ’is crew are out in the Belt someplace.”

“Prospecting?”

“What else can they do? If he tries to put in here at Selene or anywhere on Earth they’ll arrest ’im.”

Cardenas shook her head. “It doesn’t seem fair, exiling him like that.”

“Better than killin’ him,” said George.

“I suppose, but still…”

“It’s done,” George said, with heavy finality. “Now we’ve got to look forward, to the future.”

Pancho nodded agreement.

“I want you,” George said to Cardenas, “to start figurin’ out how we can use nanos for mining.”

Cardenas stiffened slightly. “I told you that I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“Stuff it,” George snapped. “It’s a great idea and you know it. Just because—”

The live orchestra that Humphries had brought to Selene for the occasion began to play the wedding march. Everyone got to their feet and turned to see Amanda, in a white floor-length gown, starting down the aisle several paces ahead of the other women in their matching aqua gowns. Amanda walked alone and unsmiling, clutching a bouquet of white orchids and pale miniature roses in both hands.

It won’t be that bad a life, Amanda was telling herself as she walked slowly up the aisle to the tempo of the wedding march. Martin isn’t a monster; he can be positively sweet when he wants to. I’ll simply have to keep my wits about me and stay in command of the situation.

But then she thought of Lars and her heart melted. She wanted to cry, but knew she shouldn’t, mustn’t. A bride is supposed to smile, she thought. A bride is supposed to be radiantly happy.

Martin Humphries was standing at the makeshift altar up at the head of the aisle. Two hundred-some guests were watching Amanda as she walked slowly, in measured tread, to him. Martin was beaming, looking resplendent in a tuxedo of deep burgundy velvet, standing there like a triumphant champion, smiling at her dazzlingly.

The minister had been flown to Selene from Martin’s family home in Connecticut. All the other members of the bridal party were strangers to Amanda.

As the minister started to speak the words of the ceremony, Amanda thought of the fertilized embryos that she and Lars had left frozen in the clinic in Selene. The zygotes were Lars’s children, his offspring. And hers.

She glanced at Martin, who would be her legal husband in a few moments. I’ll have sex with him, Amanda thought. Of course. That’s what he wants. That’s what he expects. And I’ll give him everything he expects. Everything.

But when I bear a child, it will be Lars’s baby, not Martin’s. I’ll see to that. Martin will never know, but I will. I’ll bring Lars’s son into the world. That’s what I’ll do.

When Amanda had to say, “I do,” she smiled for the first time.

Martin Humphries stood beside the most splendidly beautiful woman in the solar system and knew that she would be his and his alone for as long as he wanted her.

I’ve got everything I want, he told himself. Almost. He had seen Pancho among the wedding guests, standing there with that big red-headed oaf and Dr. Cardenas. Amanda had invited them, they were her friends. Humphries thought he himself would have invited Pancho, just to let her watch him take possession of Amanda.

Pancho thinks the war’s over. We have the rock rats under control and the fight between Astro and me can be channeled into peaceful competition. He almost laughed aloud. Amanda glanced at him. She probably thinks I’m smiling for her, Humphries thought. Well, I am. But there’s more to it than that. Much more.

I’ll have a son with Amanda. The clones will come to term soon and I’ll pick the best of the litter, but I’ll have a natural son with Amanda, as well. The old-fashioned way. I’ll make her forget about Fuchs. I’ll drive him out of her memory completely, one way or the other.

Fuchs is finished. They may have let him loose, but he’s a dead man anyway. He can’t do anything to hurt me now. He’s an exile, alone and without friends to help him. I promised Amanda that I wouldn’t harm him and I won’t have to. He’s out of my way now and the rock rats are under control. Now the real battle against Astro can begin. I’ll take control of Astro Corporation, and the Belt, and the whole goddamned solar system.

At that moment the minister asked Humphries if he would take Amanda Cunningham as his lawful wedded wife.

His answer to that question, and to his own ambitions, was, “I will!”

Dorik Harbin writhed and groaned in his drugged sleep as he rode the fusion ship out to the Belt again. Humphries’s psychologists had done their best with him, but his dreams were still tortured by visions of Diane dying at his feet. Their drugs couldn’t erase the memory; sometimes they made it worse, distorted: sometimes it was Harbin’s mother drowning on her own blood while he stood helplessly watching.

When he awoke the visions of her death still haunted him. He heard her last gurgling moans, saw the utter terror in her eyes. She deserved to die, he told himself as he stared out the spacecraft’s thick quartz port at the star-flecked emptiness beyond the ship’s hull. She lied to me, she used me, laughed at me. She deserved to die.

Yes, said the voice in his mind that he could never silence. Everyone deserves to die. Including you.

He grimaced, and remembered Khayyam’s quatrain:

Deep in the Asteroid Belt, Lars Fuchs sat uneasily in the command chair of Nautilus, staring into the bleak emptiness outside.

This ship is my whole world now, he told himself. This one ship and these six strangers who crew it. Amanda is gone; she is dead to me. All my friends, my whole life, the woman I love—all dead and gone.

He felt like Adam, driven out of the garden of Eden, kept from returning by an angel with a flaming sword. I can never return. Never. I’ll spend the rest of my days out here in this desert. What kind of a life do I have to look forward to?

The answer came to his mind immediately. Martin Humphries has everything I worked for. He possesses my wife. He’s driven me into exile. But I will get back at him. No matter how long it takes; no matter how powerful he is. I will have my revenge.

Not like Adam. Not like that sniveling weakling. No, he told himself. Like Samson. Betrayed, blinded, chained and enslaved. Eyeless in Gaza. Yet he prevailed. Even at the cost of his life he had his vengeance. And I will have mine.