The Sam Gunn Omnibus (121 page)

“This has got to be
stopped,” she muttered.

I finally came to my
senses. “Why? Who wants to stop this work? Who are you, anyway?”

“Oh!” She looked
suddenly embarrassed. “I never introduced myself, did I?”

I tried to smile at her.
“Other than the fact that you’re worried about blasphemy and you’re the most
incredibly beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, I know nothing at all about you.”

Which wasn’t entirely
true. I knew that she believed the act of procreation was doing God’s work.

“I am Bishop Ingrid
MacTavish,” she said, extending her hand across my desk, “of the New Lunar
Church.”

“You must be a newcomer
to Selene,” I said as I took her hand in mine. Her grip was firm, warm. “I’d
have noticed you before this.”

“I arrived yesterday,”
she said. Neither one of us had released our hands. “Actually, I’m an ethicist.”

“Ethicist?”

“Yes,” she said. “There
are certain ethical inconsistencies between accepted moral practice on Earth
and here in Selene.”

That puzzled me, but
only for a moment. “Oh, you mean nanotechnology.”

“Which is banned on
Earth.”

“And common practice
here on the Moon. We couldn’t survive without nanomachines.”

“That’s one of the
reasons why I decided to set up my ministry here on the Moon.”

Interesting, I thought. “And
the other reason?”

She hesitated, then
answered, “I’ve been hired temporarily by a consortium of law firms to find Sam
Gunn and serve him with papers for a large number of major lawsuits.”

At that moment, with
impeccable timing, Sam bounced into my office.

“Hey, Dan-o, I’ve been
thinking—”

Ingrid jumped to her
feet, stumbling clumsily because she was unaccustomed to the light lunar
gravity.

Sam rushed over to help
her and she lurched right into his arms. With her height, and Sam’s lack of
same, Sam’s face got buried in Ingrid’s commodious bosom momentarily while I stood
behind my desk, too stunned to do anything more than gape at the sight.

Sam jerked away from
her, his face flame-red. The little guy was actually embarrassed! Ingrid’s face
was red, too, with anger. She swung a haymaker at Sam. He ducked; she staggered
off-balance. I came around my desk like a shot and grabbed Ingrid by her
shoulders, steadying her.

Sam backed away from us,
stuttering, “I didn’t mean
to ...
that is, it was an accident…I
was only trying ...” Then he seemed to see Ingrid for the first time,
really
see her in all her statuesque beauty. His
eyes turned into saucers.

“Who ...
who are you?” Sam asked, his voice hollow with awe.

Ingrid pulled free of me,
but I noticed that she placed one hand lightly on my desktop. “I’m your worst
nightmare,” she hissed.

“No nightmare,” Sam
said. “A dream.”

She wormed a hand into
the hip pocket of her snug-fitting trousers and pulled out a wafer-thin data
chip. “Sam Gunn, I hereby serve you legal notification of—”

Sam immediately clasped
his hands behind his back. “You’re not serving me with anything, lady. You’ve
got no jurisdiction here in Selene. You have to go through the international
court and even then you can only serve me if I’m on Earth, in a nation that’s
got an extradition treaty with the North American Alliance. Which Selene hasn’t.”

Ingrid smiled thinly at
him. “Well, you know your law, I must admit.”

Sam made a little bow,
his hands still locked behind his back. “How’d you get in here, anyway? Selene
doesn’t allow Earthside lawyers to come here. Legal issues with Earth are
handled electronically.”

“Which is why you’re
hiding here in Selene,” Ingrid replied.

With a Huck Finn grin,
Sam acknowledged, “Until I can recoup my fortune and deal with all those malicious
lawsuits.”

“Malicious?” Ingrid
laughed. “You owe Masterson Aerospace seven hundred million for the spacecraft
you leased. Forty-three million—and counting—to Rockledge Industries for
expenses on the orbital hotel that you haven’t paid for in more than two years.
Nine million—”

“Okay, okay,” Sam conceded. “But how can I settle with them when they’ve
got all my assets frozen?”

“That’s your problem,” said Ingrid.

“Why don’t we discuss it over dinner?” Sam suggested, his grin turning
sly.

“Dinner? With you? Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Scared?”

She hesitated, then glanced at me. I caught her meaning. She didn’t want
to be alone with Sam
.

“Sam,” I said, “we have a lot to talk about. I’ve got a working model just
about finished, but to build a real machine I’m going to need some major
funding and—”

Sam’s no dummy. He caught on immediately. “Okay, okay. You come to dinner,
too.”

Turning back toward Ingrid, he asked, “Is that all right with you? Now you’ll
have a chaperone.”

Ingrid smiled brightly. “That’s perfectly fine with me, Mr. Gunn.”

THE EARTHVIEW IS
the oldest and, to my mind, still the best restaurant in
Selene. On Earth, the higher you are in a building the more prestigious and
expensive; that’s why penthouses cost more than basement apartments—on Earth.
On the Moon, though, the surface is dangerous: big temperature swings between
sunlight and shadow, ionizing radiation constantly sleeting in from the Sun and
stars, micrometeoroids peppering the ground and sandpapering everything exposed
to them.

So in Selene, prestige and cost increase as you go down, away from the
surface. The Earthview took in four full levels: its main entrance was on the
third level below the Grand Plaza, and an actual human maitre d’ guided you to
tables set along the winding descending rampway that led all the way down to
the seventh level.

The place got its name from the oversized screens that studded the walls,
showing camera views of the surface with the Earth hanging big and blue and majestic
in the dark lunar sky. I never got tired of gazing at Earth and its
ever-changing pattern of dazzling white clouds shifting across those glittering
blue oceans.

Sam had reserved the best table in the place, down at the very lowest
level. While we waited for Ingrid to arrive, Sam and I had a drink: lunar “rocket
fuel” with carbonated water for me and plain South Pole water for Sam. He
pumped me for everything I knew about her.

“I didn
’
t realize she’s working for lawyers at
first,” I said. “She told me she’s an ethicist, and a Bishop in the New Lunar
Church.”

“A Bishop? That’s enough
to give a man religion, almost,” Sam mused.

“I never heard of the
New Lunar Church before. Must be something new.”

“Fundamentalist,” Sam
said knowingly. “Connected to the New Morality back Earthside.”

“She did say something
about blasphemy.”

“Blasphemy?”

“In connection with the
matter transmitter.”

“Blasphemy,” Sam muttered.

I took a sip of my
drink. “Sam, there’s something I’ve got to ask you.”

“Ask away,” he said
blithely.

“Why do you want a matter
transmitter? I mean, what in the world do you plan to do with it? You can’t use
it for people—”

“Why not?”

“It’s too dangerous. We
don’t know enough about entanglement to risk people. Not even volunteers.”

“Maybe there are some
pets in Selene we can test it with,” Sam muttered.

“Pets?” I shuddered at
the idea of sending a dog or cat into the device I was building. Even a
goldfish. Maybe the bio labs have some mice, I thought.

“Relax,” Sam said,
smiling easily. “I don’t want to send people through space. Or pets. Just certain
kinds of paperwork.”

“Paperwork?”

“Legal tender. Money.”
He screwed up his face in a thoughtful frown for a moment. Then, “Legal
documents too, I guess.”

“Why?”

“Tax haven.” Sam smiled
his happiest, sunniest smile. “I’m going to turn Selene into a tax haven for
all those poor souls down on Earth who’re trying to hide their assets from
their money-grabbing governments.”

“A tax shelter? Selene?”

“Sure. Earthside
governments won’t let you carry your money off-planet. They won’t even allow
you to bring letters of credit or any other papers that can be transformed into
money.”

“It’s all done
electronically,” I murmured, reaching for my drink again.

“Right. And taxed
electronically. Every goddamned financial transaction between Earth and the
Moon is monitored by those snake-eyed tax collectors and their computers.”

“That’s Earthside law,
Sam.” “Yeah, sure. But if a person could send money or its equivalent from
Earth to the Moon through a matter transmitter, privately, instantaneously,
with nobody else knowing about
it...”
He leaned back in his chair and
gave me that sly smile of his.

“Money would stream into
Selene,” I realized. “Money that people want to hide from their tax collectors.”

“Selene could get very
wealthy, very fast.”

“The governments on
Earth would be furious,” I said.

“Right again. But what
can they do about it? They tried to muscle Selene once with Peacekeeper troops
and got their backsides whipped.”

“But...”

“Besides, the richer
Selene gets, the more Earthside politicians we can buy.”

“Bribery?”

“Lubrication,” Sam
corrected. “Money is the oil that smoothes the machinery of government.”

“Bribery,” I said,
firmly.

Sam shrugged.

A tax haven. A shelter
for the fortunes that wealthy Earthsiders wanted to hide from their
governments. It was wrong. Insidious. Definitely evil. But it could work!

And it could even result
in more funding being available for Selene University. More funding for my
research.

If I could make a matter
transmitter.

“So how’s the zapper
coming along?” Sam asked, reaching for his South Pole water.

For the next fifteen minutes
or so I nattered on about entanglement and the bench model I was almost ready
to test. Sam appeared to listen closely; he asked questions that showed he
understood most of what I was telling him.

Then all of a sudden he
looked past my shoulder and his eyes went wide as pie plates. I turned in my
chair. Ingrid MacTavish was coming down the rampway toward our table.

Even in the modest pure
white floor-length outfit she was wearing she looked spectacular. Radiant.
Heads turned as she followed the maitre d’ past the other tables. And not just
men’s heads, either. Ingrid looked like a glowing golden-haired empress
proceeding regally toward her throne. She was even followed by a quartet of
acolytes, all of them women, all of them dressed in unadorned white suits.
Compared to Ingrid they looked like four dumpy troglodytes.

Sam bounded to his feet and held her chair for her, making the normally
impassive maitre d’ frown at him. The acolytes seated themselves at the next
table.

“Bishop MacTavish,” Sam murmured as she sat down.

“Mr. Gunn,” she replied. Then, with a nod toward me, “Dr. Townes.”

I swallowed hard and tried to say something but no words came out. All I could
do was smile and hope I didn’t look like a complete idiot.

Sam was at his charming best all through dinner. Not a word about his
legal troubles. Or about the matter transmitter. He regaled us both with
improbable tales of his past misadventures.

Despite myself, I felt intrigued. “Tell us about the black hole, Sam,” I begged.
“What really happened to you?”

Ingrid seemed equally curious. “Did you actually meet truly intelligent
alien creatures?”

“Very
intelligent aliens,” Sam said.

“What were they like? Did they have souls? Were they able to—”

“We didn’t talk religion,” Sam replied. “They were little guys. Smaller
than me. Smart, though. High level of technology. I want to go back and learn
how they operate that black hole.”

“Do you?” Ingrid asked. “Wouldn’t that be dangerous?”

Sam gave her his what-the-hell grin. “Lady, danger’s my middle name.”

“You’re not worried about the danger to your soul?”

Sam blinked at her. “My soul’s in decent shape. It’s my finances that I’m
worried about.”

Ingrid scoffed, “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole
world...”

“I don’t want the whole world,” Sam replied. “I just want my assets
unfrozen and all you lawyers off my back.”

“What would you give in return for that?”