“Your base is going to be more’n four thousand kilometers from here, way down at Aitken Basin.”
“Yes, of course,” he said, with that dazzling smile. “But our base at Shackleton will be only about a hundred klicks from the Astro power facility down in the Malapert Range, you see.”
“The Mountains of Eternal Light,” Pancho murmured, nodding. The Japanese called them the Shining Mountains. Down near the lunar south pole there were several peaks so tall that they were perpetually in sunlight. Astro had established a solar power center there, close to the deposits of frozen water.
“The facility that we are building will be more than a mere base,” the Nairobi representative added. “We intend to make a real city at Shackleton Crater, much like Selene.”
“Really?” Pancho said, keeping her expression noncommittal. She had just been informed, a few minutes earlier, that another Astro freighter had disappeared out in the Belt: the second one in as many weeks. Humphries is at it again, she thought, nibbling away. And if this guy isn’t a stalking horse for Humphries, I’ll be dipped in deep dung.
The other major thing that Pancho had learned was to maintain herself as physically youthful as possible. Rejuvenation therapies that were once regarded as expensive extravagances for the vain and video personalities were now commonplace, especially among the viciously competitive power brokers of the giant corporations. So Pancho looked, physically, much as she had when she’d been thirty: tall, leggy and slim. She had even had the tattoo on her buttocks removed, because board room politics sometimes evolved into bedroom antics, and she didn’t want a teenaged misjudgment to become a whispered rumor. She hadn’t done anything about her face, though, which she considered to be forgettably ordinary except for its unfortunate stubborn, square jaw. Her only concession to the years was that she’d allowed her closely cropped hair to go totally white. The beauticians told her it made a stunning contrast to her light mocha skin.
Pancho made a point of going counter to the fashionable styles of the moment. This season the emphasis was on bulky pullovers and heavy-looking sweaters with strategic cutouts to make them interesting to the eye. Instead, Pancho wore a tailored pantsuit of pale ivory, which accented her long, lean figure, with highlights of asteroidal jewelry at her wrists and earlobes. Her office wasn’t particularly large, as corporate suites went, but it was sumptuously decorated with modern furniture, paintings that Pancho had personally commissioned, and holowindows that could display scenery from half a dozen worlds.
“Pardon me for asking a foolish question, I’ve never been to the Moon before. Is that real wood paneling?” her visitor asked, wide-eyed.
Aw, come on, Pancho groused silently. You can’t be that much of a rube.
“And your desk, too? Did you have it flown all the way here to the Moon?”
“In a sense,” Pancho answered evenly, wondering how much of this guy’s naivete was an act. “Our biotech division sent up a shipload of gengineered bacteria that produce cellulose. Same things tree do, at the cellular level.”
“I see,” he said, his voice still somewhat awed. “The bacteria produce bioengineered wood for you.”
Pancho nodded. “All we bring up from Earth is a small sample of bugs, and they reproduce themselves for us.”
“Marvelous. Nairobi Industries doesn’t have a biotechnology division. We are only a small corporation, compared to Astro or Humphries Space Systems.”
“Well, we all had to start at the beginning,” Pancho said, thinking that it sounded fatuous.
Her visitor didn’t seem to notice. “However, in exchange for help in building our base here on the Moon we offer a unique entry into the growing markets of Africa and the Indian subcontinent.”
The Indian subcontinent, Pancho thought grimly; between their nukes and their biowar there isn’t much left for those poor bastards. And Africa’s still a mess, pretty much.
“We are also developing strong ties with Australia and New Zealand,” he went on. “They still hesitate to deal with Africans, but we are overcoming their prejudices with sound business opportunities for them.”
Pancho nodded. This guy’s a stalking horse, all right. Whoever he’s really working for thinks he’s damned smart sending a black man to make this offer. Thinks I’ll get all gooey and not see past the trap they’re setting up.