Hidden Variables (4 page)

"Fifty, sixty billion a year," said Meyer at last. "That's assuming the sources dry up as completely as we think they will."

"All right. Now look at the taxes on
legal
gambling—forget the other parts for the moment. How much are they, worldwide?"

"Thirty billion a month, maybe forty—depends what you call legal. So what? We can't find a home for drug production—you know they sniffed out and closed down the last three sooner than you could wink—and if we can't find a safe place for gambling activities, then what's the use of talking about it?"

Len reached over to the other side of the desk and pulled out another printed sheet. "I've got a place for drug production— one that won't get raided in a hurry by any government agency. Take a look at that while I get a cup of coffee."

The prose was flowery enough to raise Meyer's eyebrows as he read.

'A ghost still walks above the Earth. Blue-grey and silver, a hundred feet tall, it moves silently through the night and through the day, never pausing above any point. Like an uneasy spirit, it travels on and on . . .

'Who is this spectre? It is the most expensive shade in man's history, a sad reminder of what might have been. It is the unoccupied hulk of
Lungfish,
the empty space shell that still sits up near synchronous orbit. The U.S. and European industrial consortium who funded the launch and assembly of
Lungfish
at a cost of more than two hundred million dollars have declared that the project to make use of it has been abandoned.

'The future of the empty shell (four million cubic feet of working space!) is now uncertain. The consortium would certainly accept any reasonable or even nominal offer—but who is likely to make one?

'Meanwhile, get out your telescope some clear night just after sunset. With a two-inch refractor you'll easily be able to see
Lungfish.
And broken dreams are up there with that ghost.'

"What the hell
is
this, Lips?" Meyer was still frowning over the piece when Len came back into the room.

"Space for sale—working space."

"Up
there?
You're out of your mind."

"Not if you try logic. Point one: you'll be outside the jurisdiction of any Government. They can't come in and close you down, because even if they could ever agree who would do it they don't have a space force in the U.N. Point two: I've looked at the economics of it. We could carry our materials up and our products down for a tiny fraction of their value. It wouldn't add more than a couple of hundred dollars a pound. For what we work with, that's like nothing."

"You'd never be able to land it."

"Not true. The Free Trade Zones would welcome a space facility. You'd have to grease a few palms with each cargo, but that's something we already know all about."

Meyer leaned back in his seat. "You're
serious
about this! I should live so long."

"Sure I'm serious—but we can't take step one with that damned Senator Macintosh blocking all movement on space manufacturing." Len came over to Meyer's side. "I'm dead serious. I'm even volunteering to set up the whole thing. Before I can do that, I need some encouragement from the rest of the operations that there's interest. Are you willing to carry it up the line for me?"

Meyer looked up at him sharply. "What's your angle? You looking for control?"

"I'd never be given it. No, I'm simple-minded. I want one percent of operations. And I'm willing to wait until everybody else has earned out their investment before I begin taking my percent."

"That keen, eh?" Meyer whistled softly. "You know, Lips, you've come on fast the past four years—some of the local operators say it's been too fast, but I don't agree. Tell you what I'll do. I'll take this over to the Central Council meeting—give me all the facts you have—just to see what reaction it gets. There's no way it'll fly first time around, everybody has to let it stew for a while and look for loopholes. If you rush things, that's the death of 'em."

"I've waited a long time. I can wait longer." Len had automatically reached over into the left hand desk drawer and pulled out an indigestion tablet. Sal Meyer watched the movement, shook his head unhappily.

"Still got the ulcer? You should take a break sometime, go off to Vegas and get laid. When you get to my age, you lose interest in raising hell." Meyer stood up, grunted, and rubbed at his chest. "And the damn doctors won't let you do it anyway, even if you feel like it."

Len was watching him shrewdly. "You ought to be up in
Lungfish
yourself, Sal. You'll add years to your life—that's a nice effect of low gravity, no heart strain."

Meyer didn't speak, but Len saw the change in the hard old face. Converts were sometimes made in the strangest ways. Len spoke as Meyer was turning to leave.

"If we did go ahead with this—in a year or two, I mean—we'll need to put political pressure on a few people. For a start, that Lunar Agreement has to go."

"Well, if that's all we have to do, I'll be surprised." Meyer laughed. "I'll push it along, Lips—but don't hold your breath waiting."

* * *

"They'll buy it, Garry. But they want me to prove myself one more time. I don't know how."

Garry Scanlon looked across at Len, slumped in the rocker. The dark hair was grey, as grey as the face beneath it.

Have I aged that much?
Garry thought.
God knows, I've had the reasons. The baby, then Jennie.

"I can help, Len. Just tell me what you need. I didn't get much from the move to Headquarters, but at least I can pull a few strings if I have to."

"Not these strings, Garry. Who do you know over at the Department of Justice?"

"Couple of neighbors are there. You want me to keep you out of jail?"

Len smiled wanly. "It may come to that—I haven't told you what I've been doing, but I've gone a long way past old Uncle Seth. A long way. Right now, I want to arrange a meeting with somebody, as high up as you can get me."

"You're part of the group that's bidding on
Lungfish,
that ought to get their attention. What else do you need from me? "

"Nothing. The less you know, the better. Believe me, when the time comes for a trip out, you'll know the minute that I do."

"How long?"

A weary shrug. "Three years? As my ex-boss says, don't hold your breath waiting. Maybe you'll beat me to it, doing it the regular way."

"Uh-uh." Garry stood up. He was developing signs of a paunch and the rounded shoulders of a desk worker. "You should see the budget for next year. It's a disaster—we spend more in welfare in one week than we do on space in two years. Got a job for me out there, Len?"

Len Martello had closed his eyes. He was silent for so long that Garry wondered if he were in pain.

"Not right now, Garry."

And not this year. It's bad enough that I have to do what I'm doing.

"Maybe when we get the operation going," he said at last.

"You'll need specialists in chemical plants if you're really going into space pharmaceuticals."

"There's a few bridges to be crossed before we're there. Big ones. Got a Congressional Directory? I need to dig out Senator Macintosh's address."

'Most men and women, at their deepest levels, are a complex combination of bravery and cowardice. It is the rare individual who has the pure essence, the complete courage or the true cowardice. Of all the professions, politics draws an unusually high percentage of both pure types. The difficult task is to determine with which one is dealing, since there are strong resemblances in their superficial behavior.

'It is much the same when we look at corruption. Politics presents a strange mixture of high and low ideals, the naturally corrupt and the incorruptible. The 101st Congress is no exception . . .'

Len read on, marking certain passages for future use. At nine p.m., the preset alarm sounded. The sixteen inch refractor set into the roof of his penthouse apartment was ready, computer-controlled on its target.
Lungfish
was rising. Slightly above synchronous orbit, its twenty-seven hour period took it slowly across the star field; it had less apparent motion than any other body in the sky except for the synchronous satellites.

The consortium was ready to prove their statement:
Lungfish
still had working communications with ground-based stations, and enough fuel in the mickey-mouse external thrusters to achieve attitude stabilization.

Len watched closely, but he could see no change.
Lungfish
was still only a point of light. He would have to wait for attitude telemetry to come down and prove that the station was still live and controllable, even though it was no more than the hollow husk of a working space station.

On impulse, he keyed in lunar coordinates. The microcomputer that controlled the telescope tracking took a fraction of a second to compute the relative positions, then swung the system quickly to its new target. The Taurus-Littrow Range was at the center of the field of view. For the thousandth time, Len peered at the image, seeking in his own inner vision the tiny speck of the Lunar Rover from Apollo 17. The last trip out . . .

A sudden razor's edge of pain from his stomach made him gasp, then reach for an antacid pill. They were scattered all over the apartment, never more than a couple of paces away. The ulcer was under control, no worse than it had been a year ago—but no better.

Reluctantly, Len turned from the telescope and sat down to word the next letter.

* * *

"Congressman Willis? I think you ought to see this for yourself."

The aide had been waiting patiently outside the Committee Hearings. He passed a sheet of plain white paper across to the Congressman.

"Another one! This is intolerable." Congressman Willis was a big man, close to three hundred pounds, but the suit did a good deal to hide the swelling belly and thick neck. "What's in this one?"

"The same sort of thing—you'll be hearing more in the future, but you ought to look closely at your voting record."

"Hmph. Didn't do a bit of good last time, giving this to the FBI. Let me take a closer look."

"Congressman"—the aide was greatly daring—"Do you think this is genuine? This is the third one, and nothing has happened."

"And nothing will happen!" Willis stuffed the paper into his pocket and patted the young aide with a thick hand. "You go on back to the office, Ron. Don't worry about it, and I'll take care of the whole thing."

"Yes, sir." The aide's face cleared and he hurried off along the corridor, back to the Rayburn Building office. Behind him, Willis put one hand out to steady himself against the corridor wall. A thin line of sweat had appeared up where his forehead met his thinning hair. Another one! The threat was vague, but it was there. And it was not the usual hint of financial pressure, of blackmail for past activities, of defamation. It would be physical violence, broken bones, torn flesh . . .

Congressman Willis had a vivid imagination. He could turn this one over to the FBI and have them again fail to find anything. Fail to protect him, too, when the trouble (the gun, the knife?) came to him. Or else he could take the phone call when it came, vote as he was directed to vote. That was a cheap price for freedom from the terrible fears that had been with him since the first letter. Damn the Free Trade Zone controls—first things first.

He leaned against the wall, white suit blotched with perspiration, and waited for the end of the Hearing Recess.

* * *

Len had made the decision personally. Now everything was falling apart, and there was no doubt who would get the blame. Already, Sal had called in and was telling him that the heat was on, that he had better have something worked out.

"I'll do what I can, Sal, but I need more
facts.
What made Mesurier renege on the deal?"

Meyer's voice was quavery over the line, and his video image showed him looking older than ever. He was being eaten away inside, the drugs doing no more than slowing the spread. "He's greedy, Lips. Pure greed."

"How much does he want?"

"I don't know. We promised him a hundred million."

"Right. Damn it, I picked the Cook Islands for the launch and free trade site because it's nicely out of the way, and because the price was less than half we'd have had to pay to Papa Haynes in Liberia. Who's Mesurier's number two man?"

"Bartola." Meyer had caught Len's expression. "He'd maybe be easier to work with, but he's an unknown quantity. You thinking of putting out a contract on Mesurier?"

"No." Len was silent for a few moments. "Make that maybe. I'm not going to let a tin-pot dictator stop us when everything else is going well."

"So what are we going to do?"

Strange how their roles had reversed. Sal Meyer had become the dependent one, looking to Len for guidance . . .

"I think the threat should be more than enough. He'll get the choice, a hundred million for Mesurier, tax-free in a Swiss bank; or a dead Mesurier, and a deal with his second-in-command. He's no fool. The decision shouldn't be too difficult." Len glanced down at his desk. "Not like that damned Senator Macintosh. I can't see any way round him, and he's too brave to scare and too honest to buy. We need some angle on him."

"Stick at it, Lips." Meyer sounded a lot better now that the decision on Mesurier had been made. "I'll get the message back out to the Cook Islands. Rocky Courtelle's the right man to deliver it, he looks as though he'd kill his mother for a good cigar. What's the launch date going to be?"

"Two months from now. We've got the boosters for the upper stage, and we'll be taking the first work crew out there on the second mission. I'll be ready to brief the Council in two weeks, but I can already tell you that a lot of the usual production problems will disappear when we've got the Lungfish Station running smoothly. Then I want to hit them with the next step."

"Next step! I thought we were in business with
Lungfish.
"

"You'll be all right, Sal. We'll have you up there as soon as there's a medical facility running. But I mean the next
big
step. I want Council approval for a Lunar Base."