Every Man's Fantasy Ch. 25

"Do you know which companies approached Outworld Ventures?"

"No, but your brother might."

"What's Ezra been up to now?"

"He's been talking to mining companies."

"He has?"

"I have no idea what your brother told them concerning Samothea. He might simply have alerted them to an opportunity; but a consortium of Earth mining companies could afford to buy Samothea, even at the inflated price Outworld Ventures is asking, though I can't see how they would make a profit if they did so."

"Nor me," Danielle agreed. "What about the other bidder. Who are they?"

"Women."

"What do you mean, women?"

"The Women's Business Initiative. It's a group of companies owned or run by feminists. They're not heavyweights in business but they have a lot of political power. Governments often listen to them. They also have influence over a group of male-dominated companies who are committed to giving one-third of their senior management jobs to women but can't recruit enough good women, so they feel guilty and are easily manipulated. Outworld Ventures is one of them."

"I see. And I know exactly whom to ask about that particular body: my friend, Eva Welwyn."

"It's all at the level of rumours," Stephen cautioned, "and it's usually best not to listen to rumours; but maybe your brother and Miss Welwyn can tell you who's bidding up the price of the planet Samothea."

"Thanks, Stephen. I'll let you know what I learn."

Eva was due to land on Celetaris in a few days and Ezra was busy with Tatiana and Annela at the medical centre. Also, Freya asked to go to school. Ezra was arranging that: there was a small cost and some forms to fill in. Danielle could wait a few days to interrogate her friend and her brother together.

Before that happened, however, Danielle learned some more about Ezra's activities from an unlikely source.

******

Wildchild came back from her Prospecting trip with many questions for Danielle but neither woman had found the time for a proper chat, so it was only at a dinner in her apartment when, exceptionally, only Danielle, Hazel, Wildchild and Roger were there, that the girls told her all they had done on their prospecting trip.

Careful to avoid indicting Tatiana for putting their lives in danger, Wildchild asked obliquely what might have caused the pressure wave that knocked them out.

"Hitting an electromagnetic anomaly at the moment of entry to the hyperspace plume can cause pressure waves in the air on a spaceship if the air has been ionised by the air-scrubbers," Danielle said. "But it must be a huge electromagnetic force. ... Is there something you want to tell me, girls?"

"No, Danielle," Wildchild said innocently.

"Can we talk about minerals?" Hazel said, changing the subject.

"On Argus Space Station, we were shown one of the most expensive jewels in the galaxy. It was made from the mineral desstrolite. It looked like milky-white clouds with blue filaments threading through the clouds. The jewel was gently spinning under a bright white light. What was mesmerising was how the filaments seemed to take up different shapes depending on how you viewed them. Samothea said it was a fractal quality made by heat, pressure and x-rays."

"Yes, it's interesting," Danielle said. "It's a photomorphic crystal. That means it changes the shape of its lattice depending on the intensity and angle of the light striking it. My guess is that the white light flickered a bit, too fast for you to see but enough to distort the lattice, causing the filaments to change direction."

"Sam also had an idea that can help your Beltway problem."

"You mean that the seemingly random fractal qualities of the jewel are made by the iteration of deterministic rules, and the deterministic rules for band-allocation in the Beltway junctions are randomised by the plume? You think we can somehow reverse the process for the Beltway junctions? It's a good idea, Samothea. I need to think about it."

She was silent a minute, then:

"Go on with your story, girls. Tell us about the merchant you mentioned in that message you sent me."

Hazel described their visit to Argus Space Station and the day spent with Victor Bogdanov, the fat merchant who bought Tatiana's cargo and treated them so hospitably.

Viktor sent an invitation to Hazel and Wildchild to be his consultants on Celetaris. He would pay them for news about the Samothea Project, subject to Danielle's approval. Hazel asked Danielle's advice regarding Viktor's offer.

"I have no objection to your giving information to Viktor Bogdanov," Danielle said. "There are no commercial secrets to safeguard regarding the Project, except for the proprietary solution to the Beltway Junction problem, if we ever find one, which would be subject to patent anyway."

"Thank you, Danielle," Hazel said. "We're happy to tell Viktor anything he wants to know, but we think it's odd that he'll pay us to learn things he already knows. He knew as much as we do about the Samothea Project. He knew about osmium for x-ray shielding on Samothea and about the Beltway Junction problem. He even knew what Ezra was doing on Earth."

"What was Ezra doing on Earth?" Danielle asked.

"According to Viktor, Ezra is a paid agent of Outworld Ventures and was selling mining rights on the uninhabited continents of Samothea and land for industrial development in its polar regions."

"I'm going to bloody murder him!" Danielle said.

Hazel and Wildchild were shocked.

"Please don't murder him, Danielle," Hazel said. "We love Ezra and we're sure he didn't mean to do anything wrong."

Danielle was so often impressed with the brilliance of the girls from Samothea that she easily forgot how naive they could be.

"I'm not really going to murder him, Hazel," she said reassuringly. "I'll just tear off his arms and bash him over the head with them."

"Can we speak to Ezra first, please?" Wildchild said. "We didn't know you'd be angry with him. We have to apologise for causing a rift between you two."

"It's all right, girls. It's not your fault and there's no rift. Roger and I have been working on a plan. I'm sorry I can't tell you what it is yet, but Ezra may have inadvertently made it harder for us. I'll have words with him and with Eva when she's back."

The girls did not press Danielle to reveal her secret, though the cryptic suggestion gave them plenty to discuss in bed later that night.

******

Danielle gave Eva a day to settle in after her arrival from Earth, then she invited the two miscreants to her office for a private meeting. When they were seated at her desk, she confronted them with the enormity of their sins.

"Ezra, did you approach companies on Earth to sell them mining rights and cheap land on Samothea?"

"I did."

"And did you, Eva, get the Women's Business Initiative to put pressure on Outworld Ventures?"

"Yes."

"Oh, for heaven's sake, why?"

"Because I want to buy the planet Samothea."

"So do I," said Ezra.

"So do I," said Danielle.

They stared at each other. Danielle sighed. It was clear what had happened. When they all anonymously approached Outworld Ventures about buying Samothea, the price had naturally risen.

"How much were you told?" Danielle asked.

"Four million," Eva said.

"Six million," Ezra said.

"Ten million for me."

"Outworld Ventures knows there were three potential buyers," Ezra said, "but they don't know that the three parties have the same motivation. So if two of us drop out, then the price should fall back somewhat. The question is: who should drop out and who should make the bid?"

"We can decide that when we know the details of all our plans," Danielle said. "I assume we're all prepared to back whoever has the best plan?"

"Or who can get the best price," Eva said.

"Or the agreement of the women of Samothea," Ezra said.

Danielle nodded.

"Eva, why don't you explain your bid first?"

"I got the Women's Business Initiative interested in Samothea by proposing that, if we owned the planet, then we could make it a women-only society and prohibit permanent residency to men."

"Eva, how could you?" Danielle said.

"I think it's what's best for the women of Samothea."

"How will the Women's Business Initiative pay for the planet? Their companies are not the richest and none of them are mining companies; few of them are even industrial."

"We have two plans. One is to put pressure on Outworld Ventures to lower the price. They are committed to having one-third women executives but have never come close to that target, so we have some leverage. Our second plan is simply to get more companies onboard. We enquired the price of the planet so we could judge how many companies we needed to recruit."

"All right, you next, Ezra."

"Mine was an enquiry on behalf of Gloria and the Advisory Council. I proposed to assemble a consortium of mining companies and manufacturers. I engaged some of Edgar Fanshaw's business associates to approach Outworld Ventures to hint discretely that the consortium would buy Samothea if it were for sale."

"But the price they suggested is far beyond anything that would be profitable to the consortium. Besides, I'm not sure the settler company was entirely taken in. After all, most manufacturing occurs on the surface of highly populated planets or by factories in space. Samothea is a bad choice in both cases."

"So why did they give you a price at all?" Danielle asked.

"We hinted that there was a new manufacturing use for the x-rays, like making valuable crystals with piezo-cryonic or photomorphic properties."

"Hmm, like desstrolite," Danielle said, thinking of the jewel that Hazel and Wildchild described. She went quiet and really began to think about Wildchild's speculation on how the mineral formed, with its application to the Beltway junction problem. She shut her eyes for an instant to concentrate and when she opened them, Eva and Ezra were gone.

"Sis?" Ezra said from the couch.

Eva was sitting next to him. They had cups of coffee in their hands and one for her on her desk.

"How long?" she asked, meaning how long did her trance last.

"About ten minutes. Did you think up anything useful?"

"Yes, possibly. Where were we?"

"It's your turn to explain your enquiry to Outworld Ventures."

"Mine was an anonymous approach through a friend of Stephen Oakshott. We plan to buy the planet outright with the money we will get from selling the new technology to whoever upgrades the Beltway Hyperspace System (if we solve the problem of actually doing the upgrade)."

"We offered to retain Outworld Ventures as our primary service-provider, to complete the terraforming process, provide security, vetting for future colonists, build the infrastructure, provide rejuvenation treatments and be most-favoured trading partner. With such sweeteners, we were really shocked that they asked for five times the original insurance estimate for Samothea. Now we know why the price was so high."

"So let's go over our options," Ezra said. "Eva, will you go first?"

"I have the support of the Women's Business Initiative. They don't have enough money on their own but they can put moral pressure on Outworld Ventures to reduce its price and on other male-dominated businesses to pledge money."

"I dislike your feminist shakedowns," Danielle said, "but in this case it will benefit the project. The cost is a women-only planet, however, which I don't want to impose on the women of Samothea."

"The women of Samothea won't want it," Ezra said.

"Good for them," Danielle said. "Eva, how can you want women to be their own bosses and also force them to accept a women-only planet?"

"We won't force them. The Women's Business Initiative have pledged their support because, as owners, they could have the power to prohibit immigration by male settlers, but while Samothea is in the Anglosphere, no one can legally prevent temporary residence on grounds of sex."

"I still don't like it," Danielle said. "I want the women of Samothea to have the final say over who lives on their planet. Ezra, what do you think?

"The autonomy of the women of Samothea is the ideal but it may not be feasible. This seems like a good temporary measure."

"All right. Ezra, your turn."

"I have the support of the ruling council on Samothea. My problem is that Outworld Ventures can earn as much as I can from selling mining and manufacturing rights, without the extra cost of paying for the planet. They can also sell stakes to colonists, which I won't do, so I don't know if my solution will even make enough profit to pay for rejuvenation therapies, building infrastructure, making the planet ecologically sustainable and the rest."

"The worst-case scenario would be that I amass a huge debt which I cannot service, am forced to default on my loans, leaving the planet to be snapped up by anyone with ready cash who might exploit it even worse than Outworld Ventures would have done."

"I have the support of Stephen Oakshott and Michio Nakatani," Danielle, said. "If we solve the Beltway problem, then we'll have a fortune in ready money (though not the ten million that Outworld Ventures want). My plan is to give the planet to the women of Samothea so they can decide their own future, which means my group will never get its money back."

"So," Ezra said, summing up, "Eva has the best plan. I think we should put our money and influence behind her bid."

Eva was surprised that Ezra supported her. She smiled her thanks, but Danielle was unconvinced.

"I'm still opposed to the women-only planet," she said, "especially if my group will provide most of the money."

"I assume that we will try to provide a third of the money each," Ezra said. "Also, my support for Eva depends on the agreement of Gloria and the Advisory Council. Danielle, will you support Eva's bid on that basis?"

"Let me think about it," she said.

2 Roger to the rescue

With a direct communications link established between Earth and Samothea, Michio Nakatani found at least a few minutes every day to talk to Yumi.

Since their first contact after Yumi disappeared, Michio had asked nothing from her and claimed nothing, not even to talk to his son. But it was an easy choice for Yumi always to make herself and Hayate available whenever Michio had the time to place a videocall to the Council Hall on Samothea.

The closeness of her contact with Michio was a strong pull on Yumi, who had fallen in love with him again. Another factor pulling her back to Earth was her brother, Itsuki, who had been consistently faithful, never giving up her secret to her parents. Itsuki was building a career as a computer analyst in the Nakatani Corporation. If she were on Earth, Yumi could spend time with him and support his career.

Yumi also wanted to see her parents and younger sister again. Her father no longer felt ashamed of her illicit love-affair with Michio, nor of the child it produced, whom the family wanted to get to know and to love.

Another draw was that she had once had a career as a hyperspace engineer. Yumi could do that job again. She missed her work, her friends, the neighbourhood she was born in. It was easy to miss home, she knew, from 2,000 light years away, imagining it to have been better than it really was.

Strong incentives also pulled at Yumi to stay on Samothea, where she was away from everything that made her unhappy on Earth. She and Hayate had the love of the women of Samothea. She had never lived among people so friendly and supportive. Nor had Yumi ever met women so nosey. God! the women of Samothea were inquisitive. No one with any news or a secret could escape a prying investigation if (which was unlikely anyway) she had not already told the story herself.

The society of Samothea ran on gossip; but it was never malicious gossip, at least in the Cloner City under the stern gaze of Madam Lawspeaker, who would quash a woman's bad tongue with a severe reprimand.

Another incentive for Yumi to stay on Samothea was the stone-age technology of the planet. Yumi felt the tug of ambition to make something of Samothea, now that there was contact with the outside world again.

******

Michio played a part in recruiting Cho Lim, the young Nakatani Corporation engineer, to the Samothea Project Team. She worked with the space-rigging team setting up a power array for the Celetaris hyperspace beacon. On her first week off after an eight-week shift, Cho and Geraint, the Welsh giant, went to dinner with Danielle and Roger.

Cho confessed how much she enjoyed being the only woman on a space-rig with a dozen roughnecks, once she had tamed them.

"Aye, Princess-bach," Geraint said. "Princess-Cho had to put her foot down a few times, look you, until them boyos got in line. She told them off, right enough."

Danielle thought to herself that Geraint doubtless gave some of them a clip around the ear to drive home Cho's lesson.

They shared a smile, which set the old colleagues off, reminiscing about Danielle's own adventures and Geraint's near-disasters. Like Planetary Prospectors, a space-rigger's way of boasting was to say how close he came to disaster and death.

Afterward, the astrophysicists talked about the Beltway problem, while Roger took Geraint to the pub to sample the nearest Celetaris could produce to British ale. Roger left America to study in England, and even before he found an Englishwoman to love, he went native due to the sweet nut-brown ale. Drunk flat and at room-temperature, ale had an infinite variety of complex flavours, from slightly sweet to slightly bitter, with hints of nuts, butter, chocolate, citrus fruits, herbs, grass and Christmas cake. Roger promised himself that, one day, he would make a videobook to discuss the vital question: Why do the Anglosphere colonies prefer cold, low-alcohol gassy beer to the warm rich and heavier real ale of the Mother Country?

At the end of the evening, Danielle invited Cho to join the Samothea Project to work on the Beltway problem.

"I would love to be seconded to you," Cho said, "but this was my first job out of the laboratory, where I'm the most junior team-member. I don't know if my boss will release me."

"That's no problem," Danielle said. "I'll just tell Michio I want you on my team."

Cho's eyes boggled.

"Do you know Michio Nakatani?"

"Yes, and he owes me a favour."

When Cho and Geraint were back on the space-rig to finish their assignment, Danielle sent a message to Michio telling him how impressed she was with Cho. A few weeks later, Cho landed on Celetaris and formally joined the Samothea Project, turning up every day at Danielle's office to work on the problem of the Beltway hyperspace junctions, the problem she was the first to identify.

******

Even with Rosa, Herman and Cho on the case, the problem remained intractable. After weeks of effort, Danielle officially declared herself stumped.

"It's time to ask Roger."

Danielle had an unshakable faith in her husband's ability to solve her most serious problems. Roger laughed at Danielle's conviction, knowing that his mistaken suggestions merely inspired Danielle to find the right answer herself. None the less, he always obliged her whenever she asked.

It was a cool October morning. Mist from the ocean lay in a wispy blanket over the Science Park, making the black and red mulberries in the avenue to the pleasure gardens drip and shine with fullness. Roger liked to walk the back way through the park to the Institute's library to smell the fruity ripeness in the air.

His long legs took him the extra quarter-mile quickly and he was at a desk in the library making good progress on his new videobook when he saw Danielle's message, saying:

-- Husband, I need you --

Roger patiently saved his work, put his books back on their shelves, whispered thanks to the ancient lady librarian (of whom he was a favourite customer) and strolled in a thoughtful way to Danielle's office in The Vortex to see what the problem was.