The oxygen barons, p.1
The Oxygen Barons, page 1
ALLY OR ENEMY?
When a series of thumps below announced the contact's entry into the airlock, Galvanix swung his seat around and stood uneasily. Proximity to violence made him deeply uneasy, and the contact almost certainly had a violent past.
The airlock hatch puffed open. A heavily suited figure, wearing armor scalloped like a carapace, stepped through and stood regarding them. As it raised arms to remove the helmet, Galvanix and Danziger saw with shock that the figure appeared female.
A face black as oil appeared beneath the helmet, earplug wires trailing through cropped woolly hair. The woman looked back at them in impassive appraisal.
Danziger spoke first. “You're ‘City Boy'?” he asked incredulously.
The woman produced a metal disk and slapped it against the bulkhead, where it stuck. "This is armed, and will detonate if I don't send it frequent signals. I am here to complete a mission, and shall not be stopped by anything as small as a person. Turn and face your consoles, now."
THE
OXYGEN BARONS
GREGORY FEELEY
This book is an Ace original edition,
and has never been previously published.
THE OXYGEN BARONS
An Ace Book / published by arrangement with
the author
PRINTING HISTORY
Ace edition / July 1990
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1990 by Gregory Feeley.
Cover art by Dave Archer.
This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part,
by mimeograph or any other means, without permission.
For information address: The Berkley Publishing Group,
200 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016.
ISBN: 0-441-64571-2
Ace Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group, 200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016.
The name “ACE” and the “A” logo are trademarks belonging to Charter Communications, Inc.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
PART ONE
Gardens
on the
Moon
ONE
Galvanix came awake when the water clock, punctual as only an engine driven by celestial mechanics can be, released a clear stream of night-cold water over his head. He jack-knifed forward in a reflexive spasm which he immediately suppressed lest his quickened musculature, overdeveloped after a regimen under Earth-level weights, fling him against the far wall and break his neck. Galvanix groped overhead and yanked the pullcord, stifling the trickle. The joke was to have been on Rona, toward whose side of the bed Galvanix had somehow gravitated during the night in — he now noticed — her absence.
Shaking his head vigorously, Galvanix climbed from the bed and quickly pulled on clothing. He paused while stepping into sandals to consider the fruits of another pet device, a shaft in the ceiling leading to the greenhouse dome, into which he had fitted a prism. The disposition of spectra on the tiled floor could presumably tell him the position of the sun and the phase of the Earth, but he suspected that the temperature changes overhead were warping the glass.
The water clock, simple in principle, comprised two buried tanks on opposite sides of the house connected by a slender pipe. The water tended toward the tank closer to the Near Pole, but Galvanix corrected for that by adjusting their relative depths, so that the water level would register the solar tides. These tides were weak — a fifth the force the Moon exerted on Earth — but they did vary, unlike the enormous tidal bulges at the Poles, passing from high to low in a week and running water back and forth through his pipe with astronomical regularity. Stopcocks gauged to give beneath a certain pressure would open with clockwork predictability, initiating loud gurglings or the dousing Galvanix had arranged. Most impressively, as he had told Danziger, it required no energy at all, and the larger models Galvanix hoped to build upon the surface like the mythical Martian canali could actually generate power.
There was no time for such fancies now. Galvanix wondered who would call up the plans for his various projects when they probated his will, and whether any of them would be built.
The ‘phone chimed as he was finishing breakfast, and Galvanix caught himself glancing at the comm screen (dead, of course, like most of the house’s energy-drinking extravagances) before he remembered. Rigging the ferrophone with the same chime the comm system had used had been another display of Galvanian wit that Rona had not appreciated, and Galvanix reflected with a moment’s bitterness that the next citizen to occupy his house would doubtless disconnect it. He listened for a second tone, which would indicate an emergency warranting use of the comm line, but heard none. Galvanix rose with a glimmer of anticipation and set about kindling the steam telephone.
As he worked Galvanix wondered whom the call was from. The ferrophone summons could only have originated at Constitution House, where the slender steel rod encased in its oil-filled sheath found its terminus. But Burunde had a lovely set of semaphore flags set atop a fifty-meter tower, which was additionally fitted with a periscope that could spy the semaphores of every other house on the South Shore. Burunde could easily be alerting Galvanix that somebody else wanted a word.
Galvanix troweled the coals that had heated his coffee into the steam phone’s brazier, and craned his neck to read the tiny pressure gauge. The steam phone system was larger than any of Galvanix’s other projects, and he took perverse glee in the thought that it was mostly empty. It was a particular point of pride that the Moon’s low density, which had created the long crisis that would probably kill him before week’s end, had allowed him to drill lines connecting all the houses on the South Shore. He had even sunk one through the lunar crust that tapped enough heat to maintain a steady steam pressure. The citizens of the Lunar Republic might see their hard-won world taken away, but Galvanix would wrestle surprising concessions from even the circumstances that doomed them.
Galvanix lifted a metal panel under the brazier, revealing a dozen thin pipes running beneath the floor. He touched them lightly in turn, finding the fourth one warmest. Burunde after all.
Replacing the panel, Galvanix shook the pan of the brazier and then worked vigorously at what resembled a bicycle pump. Pressure had to be high enough to force all air from the sleeve containing the resonating rod, and a steady heat source maintained to offset predictable dissipation. Galvanix expertly adjusted various valves with an eye on his gauges, working quickly and with deep satisfaction.
When his apparatus was hot enough, Galvanix opened it to the trunk line leading to Constitution House, which the caller had already heated. Cracking the valves always caused some slight drop in pressure, and Galvanix pumped it back up before trying to establish a link. He wondered who had sent the chime over the ferrophone, smiling as he imagined Burunde swinging the mallet that would send a shock wave across twenty kilometers of rigid rod.
Galvanix leaned toward the speaker, an orchid-like device he had fashioned to resemble an antique ear trumpet. “Moshi moshi,” he said clearly.
“Moshi moshi,” replied a voice after several seconds.
“Ogenki desu-ka, Burunde-sama?” Galvanix teased. As a member of the non-Japanese minority, Burunde had to bear up under her colleague’s ironical greetings.
“I am well, Galvanix-san,” said Burunde, recognizable more by character than by voice, which was coming through in the strained pitch of too much steam. “I wish you well in your journey, and also call to inform you of an advance in your departure time, which should be no later than 13:41.”
“Where did you hear this?” Galvanix demanded.
“On the telephone, of course. Do you wish to confirm details yourself?” Burunde had a low opinion of conducting crucial business on low-tech apparatus.
“Just speak clearly, my friend. Why are they moving my time up?”
“It is owing to an earlier than anticipated injection of your mission contact into circumlunar orbit. Danziger is launching within the hour, and shall rendezvous at 13:41.” Burunde was spelling everything out, intent that nothing be lost to weak communications. “I can imagine that a mission so clandestine as this must be unusually subject to vicissitudes.”
“Ho. Fortunately I have left plenty of time.”
As he spoke, Galvanix lifted his gaze to a painting on the far wall. Painted when he was thirteen with pigments ground by hand from lunar minerals, it portrayed a dark crescent moon rising behind a featureless blue-green world. The moon was Triton, where the crazies lived, a satellite scarcely larger than Luna yet possessing an atmosphere a third that of Earth’s. Galvanix kept it to remind him what the Moon would be like if the Consortium did not stifle its development.
“Have you anything further to tell me, Burunde?”
“One thing, Galvanix.” The faint pause could have been simply Burunde’s enunciation, but Galvanix was sure he detected hesitation. “I got a message from Rona an hour ago, which I am asked to relay to you should you wish it.”
An involuntary smile pulled slowly at Galvanix’s cheeks. “Did she use the steam phone?”
“She did, yes. I am not sure of her motivation, but doubtless she knew that it would please you.”
“You are conciliatory to the end, Burunde. I am sorry that war leaves so few opportunities for diplomats. You would otherwise be thriving now. No, I shall not hear her message. If I am not back later to play it at leisure, it is best left undelivered.”
“Your sister Hiroko …”
“Simply the observation that you shall have more time now to complete your mission before your orbit carries you to Farside.” The deteriorating vacuum was slowing the rod’s vibrations, making Burunde’s voice sound like a man’s. “Perhaps you will be less tempted to regard it as a suicide mission.”
“That is a thought, my friend. Let us then look confidently toward seeing each other next week,” said Galvanix, steering the conversation to a conclusion. He was disappointed with Burunde’s advice, the implications of which he had seen immediately.
“Do not be brash, Galvanix. Should you fail, we shall have to resort to the most extreme measures, and I at least would have to live with their consequences.”
“I do not plan to fail, Burunde-san. Go to your telescope and watch: Danziger and I shall keep the ice off your head.”
It was not perhaps the most gracious way to end the conversation, but Galvanix found himself disconcerted saying good-bye to a friend who clearly expected never to see him again. Galvanix shut down the phone, imagining next week’s eulogies and wondering why one could not cash in early on some of the benefits of hero-worship.
He took leave of the house quickly, glancing once more about his workroom before ascending the corkscrew staircase to the greenhouse. It was a good house, and Galvanix held a .18 equity in it, granted in recognition of his contributions to the Tycho Basin projects. Nobody, he believed, owned a larger share in a residence, and the 3 percent royalties he had won for his last four patents were probably also a record, although the confidentiality programs in the Grand Files prevented him from confirming this.
The weather outside was mild, something rarely seen since the Farsiders had shot the Dragon Kite Mirrors to tatters. Such calm would be remarkable even during midday, when the storms that accompanied daybreak and twilight were safely at the far ends of the world. The tessellated panes overhead shone a deep limpid blue and the usual drumming of rain could not be heard. Galvanix stepped off the stone pathway to sink his feet into the spongy soil, and inhaled the fragrance of vegetable decay.
A bee hovered close to his ear, one from the tiny hive Hayakawa had shipped him, and Galvanix stepped away from the magnolia he had brushed. It occurred to him that the flora might suffer during Rona’s absence, but no, she would of course return within the day. Galvanix impulsively took something from his pocket, a set of small screwdrivers that folded to the size of a thumbnail, and dropped it in the damp soil. Rona would find it when working the earth and make of it what she might.
Airlocks had not been needed on the surface of the Moon since Galvanix’s childhood, though the dome exit was a revolving door with pliant edges to minimize loss of humidity. His ears popped as he stepped outside, and the soil underfoot crunched dryly. A breeze from the shore blew briefly past, smelling of water but carrying almost none, and Galvanix turned to face the shore. Tycho, the raised rim of the drowned crater running across the landscape like a levee, breathed a low cloud into the thin air above its surface, which the sun in turn dissipated and fed to the storms.
Pausing a moment to acclimate himself to outside pressure, Galvanix raised his eyes to the stars. Both Earth and the sun were well above the horizon, and as always Galvanix was struck by how apposite and balanced the lunar sky was, the Earth never moving but waxing and waning through the month-long day, the sun unchanging but always moving. Galvanix often imagined how monotonous the Earth sky must be, and nursed the secret conviction that Earth’s children must be duller than the Moon’s.
Galvanix raised his hand to block the sun, looking just past its limb for a glimpse of one of the suncatchers rising or falling on the solar winds. At their farthest reach, the umbrella-shaped engines could sometimes be seen glowing as they fell toward the sun like enormous parachutes before slowing and then sailing back outward, their vanes filled with hydrogen ions needed to create water for the Inflooding. When the collecting tanks were full, the hydrogen was spewed toward lunar orbit in a soliton stream that sent the suncatcher jetting back toward the sun, where the cycle resumed.
No reddish lights shone through the outer reaches of the corona, itself blurred by disturbances in the upper air. Galvanix thought bitterly that the suncatchers’ harvest was now being sent elsewhere, probably into High Venus Orbit, where the Consortium was caching its resources while its members fought over his world.
One of the bicycles was missing from its stand, and as Galvanix approached he saw that Rona had left him the power model. He was not sure how he felt about that, but conceded as he wheeled the bike out that it was better he not tire himself pedaling to Tycho Tower. The gears on the power model were small and inefficient, Galvanix recalled as he pushed unsteadily off, but need only take him to cruising speed. He cycled down the walkway, picking up speed, then turned onto the road and headed east.
Irrigated rows of multicolored scrub flashed past him as he accelerated down the straightaway, varieties of the inedible groundcover the Earthies called green cheese. Tailored years ago by the botanical project Rona now worked for, the plant’s virtue was that it produced a lot of oxygen.
Galvanix’s cycling cap had a visor wide enough to protect his face, but as the curve of Tycho’s shore brought the sun round he was compelled to pull the goggles down. The harshness of the midday sun was a galling reminder that Luna still lacked much of an atmosphere, and as Galvanix increased speed his lungs began to work like bellows. Even on what was quaintly called ‘sea level’ good cycling was impossible without training.
Galvanix knew when the bike’s engine was likely to cut in, and as he approached fifty kilometers per hour he listened for the sound of the starter. With a soft burr the single-geared engine engaged, and Galvanix lifted his feet from the pedals. The electric battery would get him to the Tower, where a solar recharger with fresh units waited.
Of course, Galvanix wasn’t counting on a return trip.
Tycho Tower, as enormous and slender as a reed might appear to a water bug, began to rise over the Moon’s constricted horizon. Even Galvanix, accustomed as he was to low-gravity architecture, was invariably impressed to see the tower rise slowly over him. When the air has all arrived, he had boasted as a child, I’m going to live in a house like that! Perhaps someday such a house would be named after him.
To his left, the lights of an industrial complex glowed on the water, one of the off-shore rigs seining the lake for deuterium. Heavier impurities had long since settled on the crater floor, where scuttler robots gradually collected them, though Callisto’s mantle, where most of the early water to irrigate the Moon had come from, contained few soluble elements. Galvanix wondered whether the surface of a deep-crater sea would be safer than land should his mission fail and the ice fall.
The Tower was manned at all times, although with the Embargo the stream of arrivals and departures had been choked to nearly nothing, and most of the personnel dispersed. It was not until Galvanix was within a few hundred meters of the structure and coasting without power that he was able to see Mondavi waiting on the driveway.
