Moonrise (11 page)

Do I love Joanna? he asked himself again. If you have to ask, the answer must be no. What the hell is love, anyway? Then why did you marry her? He knew the answer, or at least he thought he did. To take control of the corporation. To keep them from scrapping Moonbase.

But you must have loved her, he insisted to himself. You were wild about her. Yeah, before we got married. Before all this corporate crap got in the way. Before this mess with Greg came up.

I did love her. Maybe I still do. But Greg’s between us now.

And then Paul realized the truth. I don’t know if she cares more about him than me. If we get right down to the crunch, would she take me over her son?

No, he realized. Never. She picked me as a stand-in to hold things together until Greg’s ready to take over. She didn’t realize that he’d challenge me right off the bat. And now that he has challenged me, will she back me or him?

Paul thought he knew the answer.

And here’s Melissa sitting close enough to touch, smiling and sad at the same time, talking about old times and looking at me like she needs me again. And I need her. I really do. I need
somebody
. I’m all alone in this.

“You’re awful far away,” Melissa said softly.

Paul drank the last of his wine. “Got a lot on my mind, Mel.”

She closed her eyes briefly. Then, “You know what I wish?”

“What?”

“I wish we had a time machine.”

He wanted to laugh. “A time machine.”

“Yes. So we could back one year.”

One year ago he and Melissa were in the midst of their affair.

“You know,” she said softly. “Before all this other shit happened. When it was just you and me.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “That’d be nice.”

Neither of them said another word about it, but once they finished dinner Paul brought Melissa to his suite and slowly, deliciously took off her clothes while she nuzzled him and crooned softly and smiled as he lifted her naked body in his arms and brought her to his bed.

When Paul woke the next morning to the buzzing of the alarm clock she was gone. Not a trace of her left, except the slight musky smell of her on the pillow he had slipped beneath her hips.

That was pretty stupid, Paul told himself. If Joanna finds out— Suddenly he realized that he had done to Joanna exactly what Gregory had done. Betrayed her.

For somebody who doesn’t really love her, he thought, you feel pretty damned shitty this morning.

Joanna could hear the thumping and banging from Greg’s rooms, even from all the way down the hall. She had gone up to her own sitting room, part of the master bedroom suite, when Greg had shown up with two husky movers and a small van to clean out his rooms.

“I’m taking all my belongings,” Greg said tightly to his mother. “That includes my furniture.”

Joanna simply nodded and fled upstairs to her sitting room, not wanting to be in her son’s way, not daring to let him see how miserable it made her to see him moving out.

But there was no other option. Greg and Paul could not live under the same roof.

After what seemed like hours, the noise stopped. Joanna looked up from the hand-held screen of her cyberbook reader. It was only midday; Greg had taken less than an hour to remove his belongings—and the furniture that she had bought for him.

He can’t leave without saying goodbye, she thought. Should I go out and see him before they drive away?

Then she heard his tap on her door. It hadn’t changed since he’d been a little boy. A single gentle tap. She had always responded to it immediately.

“Come in, Greg,” she called, shutting down the screen and placing the cyberbook reader on the end table beside her.

He looked tense, quivering with suppressed anger. Yet his shirt and slacks were neatly pressed, no perspiration stains. If he had physically helped with the moving, it did not show. Joanna remained seated in the comfortable armchair as Greg crossed the room toward her.

“Did you get everything?” she asked.

“Yes. I think so.”

“There’s quite a lot of things in the basement. Mostly old toys and school papers.”

He shook his head. “I won’t have room for that. My condo’s too small.”

“I’ll keep it all here for you.”

Greg swallowed hard. “I—I suppose it’s time that I moved into a place of my own.”

Smiling as gently as she could, Joanna said, “Greg, dearest, you’ve had a place of your own in New York for quite a while now.”

“I mean … moving out of this house.” His voice almost broke. “My home.”

She held her arms out to him and he dropped to his knees and let her embrace him.

“Oh, Greg, I’m so sorry that things have worked out this way. I didn’t want it to happen like this.”

“I know,” he said, his head on her lap. “It’s not your fault.”

“It’s not anyone’s fault.”

“It’s his!” Greg snarled, looking up from his mother’s lap, his eyes red and burning. “He’s done this to us!”

“If you mean Paul—”

“He murdered my father!”

Joanna stroked his midnight hair, trying to soothe him. “Greg, I told you … I was with Paul all that afternoon. I really was.”

Shaking his head stubbornly, Greg insisted, “He didn’t have to do it himself. He could have hired someone.”

“He couldn’t have.”

Greg looked into his mother’s eyes. “You have no idea of how low he really is, do you?”

“Now, Greg, I won’t listen—”

“You think he loves you? He loves the corporation! He loves that stupid Moonbase!”

“He’s my husband,” Joanna said.

“Right. Sure. And last night he was in bed with Melissa Hart. Some husband.”

Joanna could feel her face flame. “That’s not true!”

“Isn’t it? Do you think it’s a coincidence that Melissa’s been at the Houston and LA divisions the same time he’s
been there? Is it an accident that they both booked the same hotel in San Francisco?”

Joanna’s breath caught in her chest. She could not answer.

“Why shouldn’t he take his pick of younger women?” Greg went on. “He’s the top dog now, isn’t he? He’s an important man, thanks to you. He can have any woman he wants.”

“You’re lying!”

“Check with the travel office. The two of them have been travelling across the country together. Your black CEO and his black mistress.”

“But I thought Melissa …” Joanna ran out of words. Her thoughts were tumbling through her head.

“Melissa’s a slut who’ll sleep wherever the power is. You gave Paul the power so she’s gone back to him.”

“No …” she said weakly.

“He murdered my father and he’ll spit on you now that he’s got what he wants.”

“No,” Joanna repeated desperately. “Paul’s not like that. He isn’t!”

“He’s a cheat and a murderer.”

“No!”

“He is! I know he is! He murdered my father and now he’s cheating on you.”

“But why? Why would he murder your father?”

“To get you!” Greg blurted. “To get control of the corporation. To save his precious Moonbase.”

Trying to drive thoughts of Paul in bed with Melissa out of her mind, Joanna shook her head stubbornly.

“But he already had me, Greg. I loved him and he loved me. We were going to tell your father, sooner or later. I was going to get a divorce.”

“But if you divorced Dad, then Paul could never hope to get control of the corporation. He had Dad murdered so he could make himself CEO.”

Joanna said again, “No, Greg. Paul had no idea that he could become CEO. He was shocked when I told him I was going to nominate him.”

“But—”

“And that was just a few minutes before the board meeting
started,” Joanna continued. “You were there. Didn’t you see how stunned he looked?”

“I was there, all right,” Greg growled.

“I know, it was a shock to you, too, dear. But I had to make Paul take over the company. I’m sorry I couldn’t explain it to you beforehand.”

“He forced you into it, didn’t he?”

“No, dear. He didn’t know anything about it until just before the meeting started.”

“You didn’t trust me to run the corporation. You still don’t.”

Patiently, trying her best to mollify her son, Joanna explained, “Greg, dearest, you’re not ready yet.”

“I’m twenty-eight years old. Dad wasn’t much older when he took over from his father.”

Joanna remembered. Gregory hadn’t been ready, either. And he never really learned how to make the corporation profitable. Under his direction Masterson Aerospace staggered along from one crisis to another. Until Paul pushed through the development of the Clipperships. That saved us, she thought.

“Greg,” she said to her son, “I know that Brad Arnold has been telling you he thinks you’re capable of running the corporation, but Brad’s merely flattering you.”

“Flattering?”

“Brad thinks that he can control you, and through you control the company. That’s why I had to put Paul in charge. To stop Brad.”

“He couldn’t control me.”

“He’s very clever,” Joanna said. “And much more experienced in this kind of infighting.”

“He could never control me.”

Joanna hesitated. Then she said, “Now that I think of it, the only one who could possibly have thought he’d benefit from your father’s death is Brad.”

Greg’s body twitched as if a live electric wire had touched him. He looked into his mother’s eyes. “Brad?” he whispered, unbelieving.

“Paul had no idea I’d nominate him,” Joanna repeated slowly, thinking out loud. “But Brad would have known that if your father died, he could make you CEO and run the whole company through you.”

“I told you he couldn’t control me!” Greg snapped.

“Yes, yes, I know,” Joanna said quickly, stroking his hair again. “But Brad thought otherwise, I’m certain.”

For several moments Greg remained still, his head in his mother’s lap, as she stroked him soothingly.

At last he said, “Do you really think Brad murdered my father?”

“No,” Joanna said softly. “I think your father committed suicide.”

“But you said—”

“I said that the only one who would have profited from your father’s death was Brad.” Before her son could insist he couldn’t be controlled again, she added, “At least, he was the only one who thought he might have profited.”

“Brad,” Greg breathed.

He stayed there kneeling at his mother’s feet until the butler rang from downstairs to say that the moving men were waiting in their van for Greg to direct them to his new home.

Then he kissed his mother’s cheek and left the house.

Joanna sat alone for most of the afternoon, trying to keep herself from phoning the travel office to see if Greg’s accusation was true. Her son’s voice kept ringing in her ears, half triumphant, half sneering:
Why shouldn’t he take his pick of younger women? He’s the top dog now, isn’t he? He’s an important man, thanks to you. He can have any woman he wants
.

The Moon turns very slowly on its axis: one complete revolution in just under twenty-eight days. That’s why Paul did not have a GPS signal to guide him as he pushed himself across the mare, hoping that he was heading for the ringwall mountains of the giant crater Alphonsus.

On Earth, two dozen global positioning satellites are enough to provide pinpoint locating fixes for virtually any
spot on the globe. The satellites’ orbits are fixed in space while the Earth spins below them. No matter where on Earth you are, there are always at least two satellites above your horizon to give you a precise navigational fix.

To get the same kind of coverage on the Moon, with its slow rotation rate, takes many more satellites. The consortium of private companies and government agencies that had cooperatively set up the lunar GPS system had tried to strike a careful balance between practicality and cost. They had started with a network of six positioning satellites and were adding to the web from time to time.

Just my luck to be out here at a time when the two closest satellites are both too low on the horizon for my suit radio to pick up their signals, Paul grumbled. Maybe it isn’t luck. Maybe Greg timed it all. Is the kid that smart?

What difference does it make? he asked himself as he plodded across the barren lunar plain. Every few minutes he stopped to turn and see if his path remained straight, but he knew that was only the roughest of guides. You could be drifting off to one side or the other and never know it.

He sucked up a mouthful of water, sloshed it around his teeth and then swallowed it.

“Hell,” he muttered, “for all you know you’re heading for the pissin’ south pole by now.”

One of the GPS signals oughtta come through pretty soon. I’ll straighten out my course then. In the meanwhile, keep pushing ahead.

In the back of his mind Paul knew, as every astronaut knew, that what killed people on the Moon was fatigue. More than equipment failure or ignorance or even bad judgment, simple fatigue could wear you down to the point where you forgot just one little, vital thing. And then you were dead.

Paul forgot about the dust.

That powdery, fine dust, like beach sand underfoot, was electrically charged by the constant infall of ionized particles from the solar wind. No matter how carefully you stepped, your boots stirred up little clouds of dust, and some of the stuff inevitably clung electrostatically to your suit.

Through hard experience the men and women who worked on the Moon had learned to include a hand vacuum cleaner in the airlocks of their buried shelters. After an hour or so out on
the surface, the suit needed a thorough cleaning. Otherwise the dust would get into everything inside the shelter itself.

It was more than an annoyance. Gritty dust particles worked their way into the hinges of space suits. If enough dust clogged the knees or other joints the suit would stiffen up just like the Tin Woodsman of Oz, left out in the rain. The experienced astronaut listened carefully for grating noises in his suit; kept sensitive to whether or not the joints of his suit were moving smoothly.

When they weren’t too tired to remember.

Paul plodded along. He knew that he had been down on all fours back at the glass-smooth crater that he had slid into. He knew, if he had thought about it consciously, that his gloves probably had a thin sheen of lunar dust clinging to them electrostatically.