“How do you know?” Wanamaker had demanded. “You’re at war, Pancho, and anybody who isn’t an ally is potentially an enemy.”
Pancho didn’t believe it.
“At least take a security team with you,” Wanamaker insisted.
“I can take care of myself.”
As Tsavo guided her along the tunnels of the Nairobi base, though, Pancho began to wonder about her bravado. The place was larger than she had expected, much larger. Construction crews in dark blue coveralls seemed to be everywhere, drilling, digging, hauling equipment on electrically powered minitractors, yelling to each other, lifting, banging. The noise was incredible and incessant. Tsavo had to shout to make himself heard. And everything smelled brand new: fresh paint, concrete dust, sprays of lubricants and sealants in the air.
Pancho smiled and nodded as Tsavo shouted himself hoarse explaining what they were walking through. Living quarters would be there, offices on the other side of that corridor, laboratories, storerooms, a big conference room that could be converted into a theater, the base control center: all still unfinished, raw concrete and lunar rock and plans for the future.
Many of the workers were Asians, Pancho saw.
“Contract labor,” Tsavo explained, his voice getting rougher with each word. “They have the experience and skills, and they are cheaper than training our own people.”
Deeper and deeper into the base they walked, down inclined ramps marked TEMPORARY ACCESS and through tunnels whose walls were still bare rock.
Jeeps, Pancho thought, this place is huge. They’re really building a city here, sure enough.
She hoped that the minibeacon her communications people had planted under the skin of her left hip would be able to send its coded signal through the rock. Jake’s put up a set of six of polar orbiting satellites to keep track of me, she reminded herself; there’d be one close enough to pick up my signal all the time. I’ll be okay. They’ll know exactly where I am.
Yet for the first time in years she found herself thinking about Elly. Pancho had always felt safe with Elly tucked around her ankle. The gengineered krait had been her faithful bodyguard. Nobody messed with her once they realized she had a lethally poisonous snake to protect her. No matter that Elly’s venom had been replaced with a strong sedative. Very few people had enough nerve to push things to the point where the snake would strike. Little Elly had been dead for more than ten years now, and Pancho had never worked up the resolve to get another such companion. Blubbery fool, she chided herself. Sentimental over a slithering snake, for cripes sake.
She tugged at the asteroidal sapphire clipped to her left earlobe. Like the rest of her jewelry, Pancho’s earrings held surprises, weapons to defend her, if need be. But damn, she thought, there’s a miniature army down here. I’d never be able to fight my way through all these bozos.
Sitting in the little wheeled chair in her office, just off the master bedroom of her home in Selene, Edith Elgin Stavenger used the three-second lag between Earth and Moon to catch up on the dossier of the woman she spoke with. For more than a week she had been chasing down executives in the news media on Earth, trying to stir their interest and support for her upcoming flight to Ceres.
Edith’s cozy office seemed to be split in two, and the head of the North American News Syndicate appeared to be sitting behind her massive, gleaming cherrywood desk, talking with Edith as if they were actually in the same room—except for that three-second lag. Edith had the woman’s dossier up on the wallscreen to one side of her own petite, curved desk.
“It’s not a story, Edie,” the media executive was saying. “There’s no news interest in it.”
The executive’s name was Hollie Underwood, known in the industry as Holy Underhand or, more often, Queen Hollie. Thanks to rejuvenation therapies, she looked no more than thirty: smooth skin, clear green eyes, perfectly coiffed auburn hair. Edith thought of The Picture of Dorian Gray and wondered how withered and scarred with evil her portrait might be. Her reaction to Edith’s idea was typical of the news media’s attitude.