Exile-and Glory (5 page)

"Of course."

"Just what is it you want, Mr. Adams?"

"Nuclear General has an ice floe in the Humboldt Current," Adams said. He looked intently at the prince. "It's being towed up to Los Angeles, where we can sell it for quite a lot. But a couple of South American governments think they can charge us enormous fees for passage through what they call their waters. Now if we arm those ships and bring the kind of economic pressures that we can swing, we can talk them out of their designs. But our State Department won't let us do that, and the U.S. Navy won't act to protect our property. But if we register those ships under the Tongan flag . . ."

"I see." Toki was thoughtful for a long moment. "But this might mean war, Mr. Adams."

"Not over the ice floes. As to something else, how safe can you ever be? If Nuclear General was really in trouble, we'd have to pack up the reactors and go. Or lose them to someone else. That's not a threat, Your Highness. I know better than that. I'm trying to point out that Ta'avu Station is valuable and one of these days we may have to fight for it. The decision to try to take it from us will be harder to make if the fight won't be easy. But
we
can't arm the Station, we're not sovereign. You can't because you haven't the weapons. Together . . . ."

"How would you arm Ta'avu?"

"Coastal batteries. We've got some. Also we've got a couple of warships we bought from bankrupt governments. We can keep them around here under your flag if you'll commission our officers. But there's something else . . . . It's widely known that Nuclear General has the knowledge and fissionables to make atomic weapons. If we're acting for you, whether we have them or not I don't think small powers will want to find out—and the big ones won't bully Tonga, while they'd be happy to push a U.S. private company around."

"Why us?" Toki asked quietly.

"Because you're not ambitious. We've no worries that you'd try to use the Company as a lever to conquer your neighbors. And the whole world will believe that, there's strength in being thought small and nonaggressive in this day and age. Especially if you've suddenly joined the nuclear club . . ."

Toki pursed his lips carefully. "I'll have to speak to His Majesty, but—the idea is appealing. Tonga needs powerful friends, and I think your interests are close to ours. We'd thought of alliances with other countries but we . . . I suppose you have a detailed agreement with you?"

Adams nodded happily. "It's rather complete, actually. With some long-term taxation agreements which will infuriate the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, but ought to make you happy . . . now, we expect you'd rather collect most of those taxes in services, here's a schedule of what we can provide . . . ."

He was interrupted by Courtney and Samual bursting into the meeting. Adams frowned as the Tongan technician squatted respectfully before his prince. They chattered in Tongan while Adams looked on puzzled and Courtney tried to look casual, although she was obviously bursting.

Toki's grin was reassuring. "Dr. Martinez sends a message which won't wait, Mr. Adams. You are to congratulate Mr. Lewis and tell him he is the father of a three-ton baby girl . . . ."

Terrazo scratched in the sterile sand, muttering curses to the older gods before quickly thinking better of that and crossing himself. The Umfundis had warned him about that, and now that his body was lost to this awful place, he must be even more careful of his soul. He dug out furrows and planted seeds, muttering again. Nothing would grow here in the Namib Desert! Even Father George, who was a saint, could not pray up enough rain, and the land was barren, the white men must know that . . . .

It had been bad enough in Walvis Bay, where Father George had his last mission. But now to be sent here, hundreds of miles from any town, where there were no people, only a corrugated iron and fiberglass church and rows of prefabricated barracks with no one in them—it was more than he could bear. When he had first been given the job as sexton to Father George, he had been proud. It was a good position, there would always be enough to eat. But the Umfundis had been sane then. Now he was quite obviously mad, to bring Terrazo into this desert where there was no water and never would be . . . .

He finished the vegetable garden Father had told him to plant behind the church. "There will be water, Terrazo," Father had told him. Terrazo shook his head and went inside the church building. Dry baked heat tore at his lungs. Even Christ Himself must suffer in this! He genuflected to the altar, decided to let the dust stay in the pews until night although usually he polished everything at least once a day. The Lord would understand.

Outside again he looked across at the sea, waves pounding ceaselessly against the sandy beach. A cooler breeze sprang up and Terrazo stood gratefully in the shade of the church. A glint from the sea caught his eye and he looked out toward the horizon . . . . Something seemed to be out there, something bright and much too big. He shook his head. The heat could do that to a man. Deliberately he looked away, squinted across barren sands toward the mountains fifty miles inland. There was iron there, and lead, Father George had said, and men would mine it and send it here to the shore to be smelted and worked. And there would be farms here, and houses, a whole city. Terrazo shook his head again, the whites were mad, no one could ever live in the Namib, and who would want to if they could? But he was sexton to Father George, and he would show he was worthy of his post. Perhaps someday he could persuade Father to go back to Walvis Bay, where there were people to come to his church.

The glitter caught his eye again. It was closer now. Terrazo stared unbelievingly, crossed himself, and ran to the tiny parsonage fifty yards from the church, ran in terror, screaming, "Father, Father, come quickly, Father, there is a mountain coming across the sea!"

Captain Rollo Anderson was paying careful attention to his charts.
Hrelsvelgor IV
was nearing her final anchorage and had to be placed just right. He glanced at the speed indicators, nodded, and turned to the mate. "Signal 'Finished with Engines'," he commanded. "And tell the reactor boys they better secure for earthquake. She'll come to ground in an hour."

"Aye aye, skipper. I'll signal the tug, shall I?"

"Right, although I expect they know. But I want them standing by just in case the current's different from what I thought. We'll want to place the old girl just right."

Anderson stood in a heated bridge compartment at the forward edge of an iceberg moving at nearly three knots. It had taken six months to bring the berg from the Antarctic to the African coast, and most of the crew was sick of it; now the voyage was over. She'd gouge out a hell of a hole when she went aground, big enough to form a harbor for ships coming to the Namib, or at least that's what the Company engineers had calculated. Nobody had ever tried making a harbor this way before, although Antarctic icebergs were standard sources of fresh water. Anderson had commanded three previous
Hrelsvelgors,
two to Los Angeles and one to Florida.

"Beacon bearing 20°," a cadet called from his post on top of the berg.

Anderson nodded. "Standby anchors," he ordered. He turned to his charts. Looked like good holding bottom here, and the depth sounder showed they were entering the hundred fathom line. Tricky business, the anchors would be needed to hold the melting berg offshore after she grounded. He could drop them now, or let the tugs take them out later . . . . "Drop stern one and two," he said softly.

The iceberg moved onward. Anderson decided she was drifting off course and had the tug push against her port side to hold her against the current. With the reactor shut down and secured against the coming jolt, he had no power.

The depth finder pinged alarm. It was shoaling rapidly now. "Let go numbers four, five, and seven anchors! Tug clear away!" Anderson ordered. There was a long wait, one minute, two, then the first shudder, another, grinding fury as the iceberg slid inexorably across the bottom toward the shore. Steam boiled up from the ocean, steam and bubbles and mud as the four-mile-long mass ground to a halt.

"Not so bad," the mate said. "No worse shock than I thought."

"Reactor secure. All's safe," the bridge speaker announced.

"Anchors secure and holding fast."

"All motion stopped."

Anderson nodded in satisfaction. Just about where the Company wanted her, anyway. He began to unscrew the brass nameplate above the wheel. "Hoist the black ball, Mister," he told the mate. "And decommission the ship. She's not ours anymore."

The executive jet whistled over the South Atlantic, dropping from its cruising altitude to a few hundred feet. It was almost to the African coast when Bill Adams looked up to see Courtney Graves's heart-shaped face and long blond hair. She smiled, then blushed slightly. Adams had chosen her as his executive assistant a year before, and so far that's all she'd been, but she could hope . . . only the man was married to his job! She wished he had time for something else, not that it had been all work these past months. Bill Adams knew about entertainment, and in their travels he took her to the most exotic shows in places no one had ever heard of. Sometimes he bought her presents . . . but that's all he did, and yet she knew he didn't have another girl, and his wife and daughter had left him ten years ago. His wife said she wanted a husband, not a visiting father.

Adams stretched and ran long fingers through sandy hair that kept falling over his pale blue eyes. Time for a haircut. "Got me some coffee, Courtney?"

"Yes, sir." She went forward to get it while Bill looked at the desolate African coast. The Namib Desert, said to be one of the bleakest places on earth. Sure is, he thought. He looked ahead for the Station.

The iceberg was the first thing he could see. Partly melted now, it was still huge, three miles of ice angling out from the shore. One end of the berg was aground, the other held offshore by anchors, creating a quiet, protected deep water harbor gouged out by the berg's fury when it crashed ashore. Quite a concept, Adams thought. Too bad we can't patent it.

Courtney brought him the coffee and sat opposite to face him. Nice kid, he thought. Too nice for casual affairs. Besides, she reminded him of his daughter and was the best assistant he'd ever had on the technical stuff, didn't pay enough attention to important matters like finance, but she was learning. Give her a couple of years, she'd be ready to take on a job as an independent troubleshooter for Nuclear General. Then, when she wasn't working directly for him, maybe . . . only then he'd probably never see her.

"Looks like they're coming along nicely," she said. "Of course, we saw it all from the satellite pictures, but . . ."

"Yeah. The real thing's always a little realer, if you know what I mean. Tell me what I'm seeing."

"Yes, sir." She shook her head slightly, rippling long blonde curls. Bill Adams was undoubtedly the most brilliant man she'd ever met, but he acted as if he didn't know much. Sometimes he didn't, either. You could never tell when he was fishing for information and when he had made a thorough study . . . . "The big square color patches are the solar salt works. Brines from the desalinization plants go in one of them, sea water in the others. It took a lot of plastic film to line the bottoms . . . the large buildings along one row of solar ponds are purification plants. Potassium, magnesium, phosphorus, Portland cement, the things we can get from sea water. I. G. Farbenwerke runs that part of the Station."

"Hmm." Adams sipped his coffee. "Heard from von Alten yet?"

"Yes, sir. He's already at the Station. So are most of the others."

"Good. Give 'em time to look things over. OK, what's the rest of this gubbage?"

Courtney eyed him carefully. Just how much was he putting her on? As far as she knew he had never been a professor, he hardly had time for it since he wasn't yet forty, but sometimes he reminded her of one, asking questions to see if his staff had done their homework . . . but then he really might not know. He mostly studied financial reports; his favorite saying was "Leave engineering to the engineers."

"The things that look like railroad roundhouses are our reactors and sea-water flash evaporators, the round ponds next to them are treatment pools where they precipitate out solids with the KOH-HCL process."

"What's that big complex near the runway?" Adams asked.

She nodded. "That's the Allis-Chalmers electrolysis cells. Ammonia synthesis next to it. And just beyond that, the pink concrete building, is the GE experimental steam-hydrogen process fertilizer plant. It's supposed to be a lot more efficient than Allis-Chalmers, but there're bugs."

The plane circled low over the desert as the pilots got landing instructions. Adams pointed as they banked steeply. "I see the railroad's working." With the electric ore train to bring the scale into focus he examined the rest of the Station. He knew from the reports that the industrial complex stretched along nearly four kilometers of seacoast and three inland, and beyond the industrial buildings were three-hundred-thousand acres of land either under cultivation or being made ready for it. The irrigation grid was plainly visible, and bright red tractors moved between the pipelines. There were another fifty-thousand acres of solar salt lakes and bitterns ponds . . . . Otjiwar was
big,
but for a billion dollars it
ought
to be big. "What's the crop now?" he asked, pointing to the tractors.

She took a sheaf of papers from her briefcase. "The crop phasing's pretty delicate," she told him. "Right now they're in the high export value pattern. Harvesting dry beans and cotton, planting winter wheat and potatoes behind the harvesters. This pattern uses the least water, but the government wants them to switch to a high-calorie system for exports to Rondidi."

"Yeah, I know," Adams said. His voice was harsh. "They call it foreign aid. I call it Danegeld. That's why we're here."

Adams climbed down from the executive jet and mopped his brow immediately. Heat shimmers rose from the cement runway. "My God, it's hot here!" he said to the man waiting below the ramp. "Excuse me, Father . . . ."