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"They plan to. But if you want, I'm sure I can get you private interviews with Boweto andEl Libertador before they
leave."
"If I want to!"
"You're in a good position, you know," David told her. "You have the only firsthand experience of the PRU's takeover
here."
BEN BOVA " 488
Her face clouded over momentarily. "There's not going to be any legal trouble about me being with the PRU, is there?"
"None at all," he answered. "£7Libertador got the World Government to agree to a general amnesty."
"Thatis news! If I weren't blacklisted...."
"You're not blacklisted in Island One. You can file your story from here. Every news desk on Earth will pick it up.
You'll be very famous."
Clasping her hands together, "My God, David, that's fantastic!"
"And your reports on the PRU and the conference here will break the blacklist, anyway. But, why bother? Why don't
you stay here in Island One?"
"No," she said quickly. "I can't."
"Cobb only sent you away so that I'd go chasing after you," David explained. "He won't..."
' 'But while you were chasing after me, you found Scheherazade."
He hesitated. Then, "Yes, I did."
"And you're in love with her."
"Maybe I shouldn't be," David admitted, "but I am."
Evelyn was trying to control her face, but not quite succeeding. David felt his own insides wrench as he watched her.
"Island One is a big place," he said. "There's no reason why you can't stay here if. .."
"Yes, there is," she interrupted quietly. "For me there is a reason. This colony isn't big enough for all of us, I'm afraid."
David didn't know what to say. "I'm sorry," he murmured.
"There's nothing to be sorry for. It's not your fault not anyone's fault." She forced herself to brighten. "Besides, I
don't think I'd ever feel comfortable in a world that's inside-out. I want to see a proper sky over my head, and a real
horizon."
He nodded mutely.
"You don't suppose," Evelyn asked, "that you could arrange for me to fly back to Messina on the same shuttle
COLONY " 489
that the politicians are taking? Could that be done?"
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 He grinned at her. "I'll see."
They chatted for a few moments more, but Evelyn cut the conversation short. David felt grateful. She got to her feet
and he stood and walked her to the office door. For an awkward moment he didn't know what to do. Should he shake
hands, embrace her, avoid contact altogether? She settled it by reaching up and pecking at his lips.
"Good-bye, David."
"Good-bye," he echoed.
She left, dry-eyed, striding strongly down the corridor, never glancing back at him. David stood at the door and
watched her for several moments.
The insistent buzzing of the phone finally pulled him back from the door. He flopped on a couch and touched the
phone console's on button. A life-sized wall screen lit up and Dr. Cobb's face glared out from his hospital bed.
"What's this bull-dingy about handing out seventy-five percent of the corporation's profits to build new space
communities?' '
David had thought he'd be immune to surprise, but the old man had fooled him again. ' 'How did you ... that was
supposed to be a private conference!"
Cobb chuckled at him. "Nothing's private fromme, son. Now, where do you get off telling them that it was my idea?"
"But it was," David said. "I just put the numbers to it."
"Seventy-five percent of our profits?"
"That's what it'll take to do the job in a reasonable time."
"Reasonable? That's backbreaking! Wait 'til Garrison and the rest of the Board hear about it."
"When are you going to tell them?"
"Me?You're going to tell them. It's your show now. I'm an invalid ... confined to my sickbed, wracked with disease,
suffering from a concussion. You talk to Garrison."
David sat up straighter in the couch. "All right, I will."
BEN BOVA " 490
"He'll chop you up into little pieces," Cobb warned. "Seventy-five percent of his profits."
Feeling anger warming inside him, David snapped, "I've been chopped at by experts. Let's call him right now. We'll see
who does what to whom!"
Cobb was grinning broadly. "I want to see this."
It took almost fifteen minutes to get Garrison to the phone. His mansion was being repaired; work crews were cleaning
up the damage done by the terrorists, teams of decorators were repainting the walls, toting in new furniture.Like the
ritual cleansing of a temple that's been defiled, David thought.
Arlene Lee tried to deflect the call, but both David and Cobb insisted that they had to speak with Garrison himself.
He was up on the roof of the mansion, lounging in a reclining chair, his frail old body draped in an ankle-length,
brightly patterned dashiki.
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 "You'd better have a damned good reason for bothering me, youngster," Garrison growled. "I've been through a meat
grinder, partly b'cause of you, and I deserve my rest. I've earned it!"
David squirmed slightly on the couch. Garrison glowered at him from the left-hand half of the big wall screen. Cobb
smirked in the other half.
"The political conference is ended," David started to say.
"Good riddance to those clowns. Send 'em back where they came from."
Taking a deep breath, David blurted out, "And I told them about our plan to use seventy-five percent of Island One's
profits to build new colonies in space."v David felt as if his heart had stopped beating. He stared at tfie viewscreen,
waiting for Garrison to explode.
Instead, his cold eyes flicked sideways to focus on Cobb. "This your idea of a joke? Using the kid to front for you?"
"For me?" For once, Cobb was surprised.
Garrison's thin lips curled a bare centimeter. "I know you've been stashin' away equipment and supplies. You want to
go scootin' out to the asteroids or whatever you call 'em and set up more colonies out there."
COLONY " 491
"That's true enough," Cobb admitted. "We'll have to do that, sooner or later."
"And it'll take seventy-five percent of my profits?" Garrison's voice rose.
"Only if we do it at a breakneck pace," Cobb said. "Our young friend here seems impatient."
"Wemust do it quickly," David insisted. "There's no other way."
Garrison's gaze was like the hypnotic stare of a cobra. "Convince me," he said.Or I'll swallow you whole, David could
almost hear him adding.
"I could give you all sorts of computer runs that show the situation very clearly," David said.
"You tell me," Garrison replied.
Taking his hand off the phone keyboard, David said, "Well, we've got to go balls-out. We don't have the time to wait.
If there were nothing and no one to consider except those of us living here in Island One, sure, we could afford to take
a leisurely pace. But we're not alone. We're not isolated. We never have been. What's happened here in the past week
proves that."
Garrison inhaled deeply and then let his breath out in something between a snort and a sigh.
David plowed ahead. "Don't you see? There are nearly eight billion people down there on Earth. And we're not apart
from them. We can't live up here in isolated splendor while they slide down into global collapse.They'll take us with
them! They'll destroy us as they destroy themselves."
"Then maybe we oughtta move ourselves out to Mars," Garrison said, "or wherever..." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]