Which group?’
‘We work through a number of dummies.’ He looked at her desk. ‘No doubt when you get back to your softscreen you’ll soon be able to determine which, and the extent of our holdings. Ultimately, I work for Eschatology, Inc.’
Oh, shit. Eschatology, as far as she knew, was one of those UFO-hunting nut groups which were attracted to Malenfant’s enterprises like flies.
He watched her, apparently knowing what she was thinking. ‘Why are you here, Dr Taine?’
‘Cornelius, please. Naturally we wish to check on how your husband is using our money.’
‘Ex-husband. You can do that through the company reports or the press.’
He leaned forward. ‘But I don’t recall any news releases about this waste-reduction enterprise in the Mojave.’
‘You’re talking about the rocket plant. It’s a new project,’ she said vaguely. ‘Speculative.’
He smiled. ‘Your loyalty is admirable. But you’ve no need to defend Malenfant, Ms Stoney. I’m not here to criticize or obstruct. Divert, perhaps.’
‘Divert what?’
‘The trajectory of Reid Malenfant’s covert activities. I’m talking about his true purpose, beneath all the misdirection.’
‘True purpose?’
‘Come now. You don’t think anyone believes an entrepreneur with Malenfant’s track record is reconditioning man-rated rocket engines just to burn industrial waste, do you?…’ He studied her. Or perhaps you truly don’t know the truth. How remarkable. In that case we both have much to learn.’ He smiled easily. ‘We believe Malenfant’s motives are sound – that’s why we invest in him – although his objectives are too narrow. I saw his speech in Delaware the other night. Impressive stuff: colonizing the Galaxy, immortality for mankind. Of course, he hasn’t thought it through.’
‘Would you believe me if I said I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about?’
‘Oh, yes.’ He eyed her. His eyes were a pale blue, the colour of the skies of her California childhood, long gone. ‘Yes, now that I’ve met you, I believe you. Perhaps we understand your ex-husband better than you do.’
‘And what is it you understand about him?’
‘That he’s the only man who can save the human race from the coming catastrophe.’ He said it without inflection.
She had absolutely no idea how to reply. The moment stretched.
Once more she wondered if this man was dangerous.
On impulse, she decided to cancel the rest of her day and drive out to Malenfant’s desert operation. Maybe, all things considered, it was time to see it for herself. And she invited Cornelius along for the ride.
She called ahead to let Malenfant know she was on the way. But, working on the principle that she should never miss a chance to make Malenfant’s life more difficult, she didn’t warn him about Cornelius Taine.
Out of Vegas she took the I-15, the main route to LA three hundred miles away. Out of town she was able to cut in the SmartDrive. The car’s limiter, controlled by the invisible web of satellites far above, switched out as the automatic control took over, and her speed rose smoothly through a hundred and fifty miles per hour.
As the sun climbed, the air grew hotter. She rolled up her window, felt the air conditioning cool and moisten the air.
Without warning Cornelius said, as if resuming an interrupted conversation, ‘Yes, the Delaware speech was interesting. But something of a throwback for Malenfant. He’s usually much more discreet about his true ambitions …’
When Malenfant had first started making money, as a small-scale aerospace consultant, he had spread himself over the media arguing for an expansion of American effort in space: a new generation of heavy launchers, new manned vehicles, a return to the Moon. He talked about the riches waiting in space, escape from Malthusian limits to growth, the ability to save the species from such calamities as an asteroid collision with the Earth, and so forth. The usual space-buff propaganda.
Cornelius said, ‘The image Malenfant built of himself was clear. Here was a man who was rich and was destined to get richer, and who was clearly prepared to throw some of his money at the old dreams of space. But then his businesses started to struggle. Isn’t that true? …’
It was true. Investors had grown wary of this talk-show visionary. Space was important for business, but business only cared about the constellations of utilitarian satellites in low Earth orbit, for communications and weather and surveillance. Thus far and no further.
And Malenfant attracted no support from serious agencies – particularly from NASA. NASA had long grown wary of frightening away its political backers by thinking too big, and was focused on doing sexy science with small, cheap unmanned probes, while sustaining the careers and empires associated with the giant bureaucracy which ran the manned space programme, with its ageing Shuttle fleet and a half-built and much-delayed Space Station.
In fact Malenfant himself started to attract unwelcome personal attention. There were bar-room psychoanalysts all over the media who found a common pattern in his failure to have kids, his frustrated ambition to fly in space, and his lofty ambitions for the future of man. And then there were the kooks – the conspiracy theorists, the UFO nuts, the post-New Age synthesists, the dreaming obsessives – none of whom had anything to offer Malenfant but bad PR.
Then along had come the yellow babies in Florida, and even NASA space launches were suspended, and that seemed to be that.
As Cornelius talked, she discreetly booted up the car’s softscreen and referenced Cornelius Taine.
Thirty-eight years old. Born in Texas, not that you’d know it from the accent. Once a professional mathematician, an academic. Brilliant was the word used in the brief biog she found.
A full professor at Princeton at twenty-seven. Washed out at thirty.
She couldn’t find out why, or what he’d been doing since then. She set off a couple of data miners to answer those questions for her.
After the yellow babies, Malenfant had regrouped.
He disappeared from the TV screens. He continued to fund educational efforts – books, TV shows, movies. Emma, working within the Bootstrap corporation, saw no harm in that, nothing but positive PR, and tax-efficient besides. But in public Malenfant largely withdrew from his propagandizing, and withheld any investment from what he started to call the ‘pie-in-the-sky stuff’.
And, quietly, he began to build a seriously large business empire. For instance, he had pioneered the mining of methane as a fuel source from the big high-pressure hydrate deposits on the sea bed off North Carolina. He had leased the technology to other fields, off Norway and Indonesia and Japan and New Zealand, and bought up shares judiciously. Soon methane production was supplying a significant percentage of global energy output.
The giant tents Malenfant’s companies had erected over the sea floor, to decompose the hydrates and trap the gases, had become a symbol of his flair and ambition.
And Malenfant was on his way to becoming remarkably rich.
Space, it seemed, was the place Reid Malenfant had started from, not where he was going.
… Until – Emma thought, if Taine is right – this.
‘Of course,’ Cornelius said, ‘Malenfant’s ambition is to be applauded. I mean his real ambition, beyond this – umm, diversionary froth. I hope you understand this is my basic position. What grander goal is there to work for than the destiny of the species?’ He spread thin fingers. ‘Man is an expansive, exploring animal. We conquered Earth with Stone Age technology. Now we need new resources, new skills to fund our further growth, space to express