“Gold,” Humphries said, brightening. “Silver and platinum. Do you have any idea of what this is going to do to the precious metals market?”
Dan blinked at him. I’m trying to move the Earth’s industrial base into space and he’s playing games with the prices for gold. We just don’t think the same way; we don’t have the same goals or the same values, even.
Grinning slyly, Humphries said, “We could get a lot of capital from people who’d be willing to pay us not to bring those metals to Earth.”
“Maybe,” Dan admitted.
“I know at least three heads of governments who would personally buy into Starpower just to keep us from dumping precious metals onto the market.”
“And I’ll bet,” Dan growled, “that those governments rule nations where the people are poor, starving, and sinking lower every year.”
Humphries shrugged. “We’re not going to solve all the world’s problems, Dan.”
“We ought to at least try.”
“That’s the difference between us,” Humphries said, jabbing a finger in Dan’s direction. “You want to be a savior. All I want is to make a little money.”
Dan looked at him for a long, silent moment. He’s right, Dan thought. Once upon a time all I was interested in was making money. And now I don’t give a damn. Not anymore. None of it makes any sense to me. Since Jane died—god, I’ve turned into a do-gooder!
Leaning forward again, toward Dan, his expression suddenly intense, earnest, Humphries said, “Listen to me, Dan. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to make money. You can’t save the world. Nobody can. The best thing we can do is to feather our own nests and—”
“I’ve got to try,” Dan interrupted. “I can’t sit here and just let them drown or starve or sink into another dark age.”
“Okay, okay.” Humphries raised both hands placatingly. “You go right ahead and beat your head against that wall, if you want to. Maybe the asteroids are the answer. Maybe you’ll save the world, one way or the other. In the meantime, we can clean up a tidy little profit doing it.”
“Yep.”
“If we don’t make a profit, Dan, we can’t do anybody any good. We’ve got to make money out of this or go out of business. You know that. We can’t do this mission at cost. We’ve got to show a profit.”
“Or at least,” Dan countered, “a profit potential.”
Humphries considered the idea for a moment, then agreed, “A profit potential. Okay, I’ll settle for that. We need to show the financial community—”
“What’s left of it.”
Humphries actually laughed. “Oh, don’t worry about the financial community. Men like my father will always be all right, no matter what happens. Even if the whole world drowns, they’ll sit on a mountaintop somewhere, fat and happy, and wait for the waters to go down.”
Dan could barely hide his disgust. “Come on, let’s get back to work. We’ve had enough philosophy for one morning.”
Humphries agreed with a smile and a nod.
Hours later, after Dan had left the conference room, Humphries went back to his own office and sank into his high-backed swivel chair. As he leaned back and gazed up at the paneled ceiling, the chair adjusted its contours to accommodate his body. Humphries relaxed, smiling broadly. He missed it, he said to himself. The numbers are right there in the budget and Randolph went past them as if they were written in invisible ink.
It was so easy to distract Randolph’s attention. Just get him started on his idiotic crusade. He blanks out to everything else. He wants to go to the Belt to save the world. Sounds like Columbus wanting to reach China by sailing in the wrong direction.
Humphries laughed out loud. It’s right there in the budget and he paid no attention to it at all. Or maybe he thinks it’s just a backup, a redundancy measure. After all, it’s not a terribly large sum. Once the nanos have built one fusion system, it only costs peanuts to have them build another one. The real expense is in the design and programming, and that’s all amortized on the first model. All the backup costs is the raw materials and the time of a few people to monitor the process. The nanos work for nothing.