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  “We’re still weak in aerospace,” Reno says. “Almost forty percent of our cargoes are moved in carriers belonging to other companies. Although we can begin to build our own fleet, it will have to be done almost from scratch, and will prove an unacceptable drain on our now-scarce capital. The board should contemplate a takeover attempt.”

  Board members cast surreptitious glances at one another. On the video monitors, heads appear to be consulting their control switches.

  “Albrecht,” says Viola Ling, the head of the Pharmaceutical Division. Her eyes are uneasy. “Your predecessor...”

  “My predecessor failed in just such an attempt at takeover,” Reno says. “Yes. That is correct.” He looks at each of the members in turn and sees them full of doubt. He tries to think of Roon sitting in his alloy house in the Cordillera Oriental, alone in the dark with his phantom stars. Tries to think of the mind that built the place, the flowing corridors, arching ceilings, swollen-bellied holographic reminders of squalor and death. Tries to remember the incantatory, evocative way he spoke, as if delivering his monologues to the stars themselves.

  “My predecessor was unsubtle,” he says. “He had a military background: his actions were direct and easy to counter. Stock manipulation, direct action, sabotage ... inelegant. Inefficient.” He looks at each again, turning at the last to van Allen, seeing the answering resonance in van Allen’s expectant eyes. “We must learn to be more subtle than Mr. Couceiro,” he says. “More careful in our movements. We have some time before we move into the next stage. And when we do, we must be ready.”

  Reno turns to Viola Ling and smiles. “Don’t worry, Viola. Your Research Division is our mainstay. You won’t lose your funding. Not this time.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Roon,” she says. He senses something wrong in the way she reacts to him, as if she finds him distasteful. She has turned her head away, and Reno wonders if Roon used his corroded teeth as a weapon, smiling when he wished to intimidate, make people give way. Yet Viola Ling has always been one of Roon’s allies, had been exiled to a research lab in central Russia after she backed one of his attempts to return to power.

  Perhaps, he thinks, she’s heard about the children.

  *

  Reno rates a room with an actual window to the outdoors, one at the far end of the Orbital habitat, insulated from his employees by a screen of Japanese security and from Earth by vacuum and radiation. The room is paneled in teak. A Miró and a Velazquez watch each other from opposite walls; a giant hologram-simulation of the station, slowly rotating, faces his desk. He plants his bare feet on Navajo rugs worth tens of thousands of dollars and watches Earth, the startlingly pure blue and white, the brown and silver snakes that are rivers filled with erosion, the fragmented coastlines where the rising seas are eating the land, just as Earth’s remaining resources are being eaten by the population. Soon the population may be the only resource left. The Orbitals were once their hope, a gateway to new resources. Now the Orbitals stand like a wall between Earth and its broken dreams, claiming the future for their own.

  Reno can’t change that, not even with Black Mind. The Orbitals hold the high ground, and the Earth hasn’t anything left with which to take it.

  All Reno can do is try to give Earth some relief. “I want a private comm link set up between my office and this address in Havana,” he says. He holds out a data cube.

  “Yes, sir.” Akinari is one of his Japanese mercenaries. Reno likes the Japanese for their stylish sense of loyalty: if they ever betray him, it will be in a big way, no sniveling half measures hut a true apocalypse, death and mad excess and a rain of blood. ...

  “Please tell Mr. van Allen he can come in.”

  “Sir. Thank you, sir.”

  Akinari leaves, taking with him Reno’s private link with his ghost self. He needs a way to communicate with his friends on the ground.

  Van Allen enters and takes the drink and the chair that Reno offers him. He looks clumsier in gravity than in freefall, and paunchier.

  “You’ve settled in?” van Allen asks.

  Reno nods. “I want to tour everything in my first week,” he says. “Every lab, every office. Let everyone know I’m here and responsive.”

  “I’m sure they’ll be reassured to know you’re among us.”

  “I hope so.” That really isn’t the reason for his intended tours: in reality Reno’s trying to find reasons to delay making any major decisions until he feels more confident.

  He can’t delay this, however. Van Allen and Roon had been close; van Allen is obviously expecting something from him.

  “Jackie,” Reno says. His voice is tentative, his nerves hum in fear. That’s what van Allen’s dossier said his friends called him.

  “Al.”

  Reno feels his tension ease. That wasn’t the wrong opening. “I wanted to have a talk with you about how I see things,” Reno says.

  “I’m flattered. Thank you.”

  “You’ve earned my confidence. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you.” Which is probably not true, but seems a good opening.

  Van Allen looks at his drink. “Thank you, Al.”

  Reno perches on the edge of his desk. Earthlight burns on van Allen’s face, showing the broken veins, the pouched cheeks, the puffiness around the eyes of someone who spends a lot of time in freefall. “I’m trying to look at the long term, Jackie,” Reno says. “I’ve been into the deep crystal here, and I’ve seen some things that bother me.”

  Van Allen seems surprised. “Projections are up.”

  “Short-term projections, yes. But the primary market for pharmaceuticals is on Earth, and Earth is running out of the resources to pay for them. A large percentage of our profits has been from the manipulation of the market, and the Earth people have been getting smarter in ways of circumventing our manipulations. No, Jackie, we’ve got to look outward.”

  Van Allen looks up involuntarily, past Reno and the rotating globe to the cold glitter of the stars beyond. “We’re not suited for that.”

  “We’ve got to be ready for the next step. We—the Orbital blocs—have been diverting too much of our attention, and too many of our resources, to keeping the Earth under our dominion. There’s no reason for that. The Earth is finished anyway. We’ve got to be ready for the next fight, and that’s going to be waged beyond Earth orbit, for the resources that lie out there.”

  Van Allen nods slowly. “So that’s why you want transportation.”

  “We’ve got what we want from Earth, Jackie,” Reno says. “We’ve got our freedom. But what have we done with it?”

  Van Allen considers. He hasn’t resisted the idea at all: he’s already considering how to implement it.

  “Ling isn’t going to like this. It will mean degrading the Pharmaceutical Division.”

  “The PD’s vital. But it’s not the future.”

  Van Allen’s tongue, a washed-out pink in Earthlight, touches his lips. “We could give her a directorship of another division. One that will be emphasized under your program. Promise her that in return for a few more years’ good work with Pharmaceuticals.”

  Reno feels relief turn to triumph. “Very good, Jackie.” Van Allen looks up at him. “I think we’re going to make this transition work.” Reno looks into van Allen’s eyes, seeing the Earthlight shining there. He puts a hand on van Allen’s shoulder. “I want you to help me manage it. No one can do it better.”

  “Thank you, Al. You know, it sounds strange speaking to someone who looks as young as you—" He grins uncertainly. “But you’ve always been a father to me.”

  “Welcome to the top,” Reno says, and answers the grin. “My son.”

  *

  The little man smiles at the sight of two women engaged in mutual foreplay. One is black, the other blonde. “I like the blonde,” says the little man.

  Reno smiles back. “She can be yours,” he says.

  The little man raises an inhaler of snapcoke to his nose and fires a pair of torpedoes to his brain.
“I’ll take my time,” he says.

  The black woman has just produced a little crystal dildo attached with laseroptic wire to her head studs. She begins to copulate with the blonde via computer interface. Reno has to admit a certain imagination is present in the staging, on the blue and red spotlights that highlight the action, that gleam off the shining phallus.

  The little man’s name is Lippman, and he is Reno’s guest at Tempel’s executive brothel. Lippman is a major figure in transport in South America west of the Andes, his firm moving Tempel’s product from the Gran Sabana spaceport. He’s just come up the well to sign a new contract that should allow him to finance an expansion of his company and provide him with a lot of Tempel’s business, in return for which Lippman and his family will forfeit most of their control and receive their ticket off the dead zone of Earth and into the Orbital ruling class. It’s a perfectly sensible arrangement, one that Albrecht Roon had been trying to make previous to his re-ascension, and that his enemies had blocked for reasons more political than economic.

  Now all that’s needed is the appropriate thumbprints and an appropriate South American bonding ritual, in this case a visit to the whorehouse. The whorehouse itself is a private club catering to high-level executives and their guests, the walls black, the floor and ceiling mirrored. There are floor shows and a very good litejack band. The hostesses mix dangerous martinis and also sleep with you. They’re on salary and are ordered to refuse all tips.

  The official reason for the place is that unlicensed sex is a security risk. It’s better to get laid in a place where hygiene is taken care of and blackmail is an impossibility—unless of course it’s Tempel I.G. doing the blackmailing with recordings made through two-way mirrors and concealed audio pickups.

  But that’s the official reason. The real reason for rhe place has to do with power. The Orbitals embrace a wide variety of passions, but the greatest is the need for strength, for potence. Weakness is forbidden; rhe Orbitals are winners in war and everything else, and as powerful a passion as sex can threaten the illusion of omnipotence. Here, sex is removed from anything real, anything threatening. The parody of sex exhibited in the floor show is intended as an exorcism of the real thing and the passions it implies. Passion is to be made harmless here, turned into something hygienic, sterile, acceptable. Anyone foolish enough to do something genuine, anything worth getting blackmailed over, deserves only what he gets.

  Reno’s ordered a clean room for Lippman. Tempel already owns him: the company doesn’t need to gather compromising data on a loyal subject.

  The drum synthesizer beats seven against sixteen. Lippman leans closer to get a better view of the action. Reno reaches into his pocket and takes out an envelope. He pushes it across the table to Lippman.

  “A year’s complimentary membership,” he says.

  Lippman laughs and buys Reno a drink. Shortly thereafter he’s got the black girl and the little blonde bouncing on his knees. Reno decides it’s time to make his own choice.

  He finds a hostess who approximates his type: tall, rangy, young enough not to seem too jaded. She has a wicked laugh that he finds attractive. The sex is technically perfect; but somehow it doesn’t interest Reno very much. Too hygienic, he concludes.

  He returns to the brothel in the next few weeks, visits the tall hostess again, then others. The sex grows more imaginative, but the experience doesn’t change much.

  Strange. They were all his type.

  *

  He stares at the rolling planet and listens to his own voice clanging in his head, vibrating his implant crystal. He’s worked out security procedures with his ghost brother: the scrambler code will be changed daily, and the codes generated on Earth, a week’s worth of codes brought up at a time, straight from Havana to Reno’s office.

  “I have a few ideas,” Reno says. “I’ve been into the deep crystal here. I’ve got access to everything: I think there are things here that no one knows about. But I can’t deal with it all. I’m working twelve, sixteen hours per day. I’ve got the access, but I don’t have the time.”

  The other Reno, the crystal ghost, burbles his answer. “Send it to me. I can sift the data faster than you.”

  “Good. I’ll do that.“ He flexes a shoulder. He’s been working out, trying to tone Roon’s slack muscles, and his frame is full of minor aches these days.

  “One thing more,“ he says. “We’ve got to guard Black Mind.“

  “Yes.”

  “How many people know about it?”

  “Cowboy and Sarah, among our own people.”

  “They can be trusted.”

  “Outside of our group, a dozen or so. All CIA or computer jocks.”

  “That’s too many,” Reno says.

  The ghost’s answer is prompt. “That is correct.”

  It’s the right decision, but Reno wonders at the calm way the ghost can condemn a dozen people to death. Reno thinks of the pattern in its crystal matrix, its lightspeed thought. He thinks of all the things he had to relearn— walking, smelling, what it meant to be thirsty. The ghost, he thinks, is growing more and more remote from those memories, growing away from them. Losing all humanity as it waits in its tank.

  The clone is almost ready. Reno wishes his brother well, but he needs to make use of the ghost before he transfers.

  *

  Little movements are made on the planet, propelled by a minuscule fraction of Tempel’s muscle. Eighteen people die in various ways: bullets, poison, accidents. A few others are permitted to live under house arrest in the Tempel compound in Orlando. The lab in Havana becomes a subdivision of Tempel Pharmaceuticals I.G. Akinari’s mercenaries stand guard around the building.

  Black Mind is secured.

  No one, barring some local police making pro forma inquiries, seems interested at all. Few people on the planet want to inquire into why the Orbitals want to do what they do.

  It’s obviously not healthy.

  *

  “Mr. Roon.” She doesn’t look at him, this waif; her vision is focused on his belt buckle. She’s twenty-two and painfully thin; her brown eyes are large, heavy with mascara; her dark hair is short and swept back in wings over her ears. There are face sockets in her head. She holds her briefcase in front of her with both hands.

  Reno sits down in his chair. The Earth spins behind him. “Sit down, Miss Calderón.”

  He finds himself staring at her, and wonders why.

  There’s a problem in the SPS division, Reno has discovered: necessary data hasn’t been arriving on time, or has arrived garbled. It’s difficult to find out what’s happening out on the power satellites. There’s no one out there charged with the responsibility of reporting to Tempel HQ; the managers report when they get around to it, or not at all. Reno concludes he needs a liaison with the bureaucracy in the satellites, a personal representative free to take a tug to the stations and gather the data herself. The job isn’t critical— the future of the company won’t depend on it—and no one in a senior position would be interested. Reno’s had Personnel send five people his way, and Mercedes Calderón is one of them, the last he’s seen.

  A refugee, he knows, from the rock that fell on Panama City; she got a scholarship to the Krupp College of Engineering in Bogotá and has a first-class degree. She knows solar power systems inside-out, she’s familiar with computers and statistics, and has been getting outstanding reports from her superiors.

  There’s something about her, some whisper of memory, like déjà vu. Reno doesn’t know what it is. He’s certain he’s never seen her before.

  “I realize this position is well outside the normal track,” Reno says, “but it isn’t permanent. This job will last a few years at most, and then, assuming all is satisfactory, a promotion will be coming your way. To a supervisory post, if you want it.”

  Her eyes come up, but not to him; she looks at Earth. He can see its crescent reflected in her pupils, a little mad wink of white light. For some reason Reno shivers. “I’d like tha
t, sir,” she says. Her voice is almost inaudible.

  He wonders if she’s got enough drive to confront the SPS people when she needs to, to demand the data they’ve been sitting on. She’s qualified in all other respects.

  She glances nervously at him, then looks down again. Reno feels himself shift uncomfortably in his chair. He keeps looking at her. Wondering.

  “Tell me about yourself,” he says.

  Her eyes turn to his in stunned amazement. He can’t understand why.

  Even after he chooses her for the post, she stays on his mind.

  *

  Thirteen board members face him across the asteroid-slice table: the fourteenth is still in transit from the Belt. She is not made a party to this session: the contents are too sensitive to transmit even by code.

  “I have looked at the profiles for the transportation companies that have been submitted,” Reno says. He holds a data cube in his hands; he tosses it from one hand to the other. “I think that Osmanian A.G. will suit our needs best. A merger would suit both our interests.”

  Reno can see people exchanging glances. “Mr. Roon.” It’s Herschel, the man who conducted the study. He seems to be struggling rather hard to conceal his annoyance. “Osmanian is ostensibly a public company, but in fact its actual ownership is very private. Abdallah Sabah is a very independent man; he has a controlling interest, and the rest of the stock is divided along clan lines. No non-Somali has a substantial interest. And they stick together.”

  “I am aware of that.” Roon looks at him coolly. "There is stiff competition in aerospace, and they can benefit from our financial muscle power. Their orbital assembly plant is new, produces state-of-the-art equipment, and can easily be expanded to meet our increased needs. They have a fifty-year lease on the African Horn launching site. Our marketing division can be put at their disposal. They can teach our own transport division a great deal. The logic,” he smiles, “the logic of the numbers compels our union.”