Profiteer

Dom might have sensed her unvoiced inquiry, or he might have just been in an unusually loquacious mood. In any case, he volunteered, “I’ve been to Cydonia.”

 

“You have?” Against her better judgment she felt her curiosity piqued.

 

Dom nodded. “Long time ago. When I was still in the Executive Command. Since the atmosphere became breathable, a lot of old bunkers, terraforming bases, academic retreats were mothballed. The TEC uses them occasionally for secure meetings, safe houses, private retreats. The largest concentration of them is around Cydonia.”

 

Tetsami couldn’t help but smile. It was rather amusing picturing the archaeological find of the millennium swarming with spies and secret police. Certainly, it was out of the way.

 

“Anyway,” Dom continued, “when I expressed my belief to a superior on Mars, he took me out on the plains to show me the Face. Said he wanted to teach me a little about humility.”

 

The van drove on in silence for a while before Tetsami said, “Did it?”

 

“Hmm?”

 

“Did it teach you humility?”

 

For the first time since she’d met him, she heard Dominic Magnus laugh.

 

* * * *

 

The ill-fated commuter tube never quite made it to the Proudhon Spaceport, its intended destination. The tunnel ended a few klicks away from the city limits in a tangle of scaffolding and abandoned equipment. Financial disaster had killed the project in mid-stroke.

 

Dom parked the contragrav behind a massive digging machine that no one seemed to have thought worthy of salvage. He departed to find some access to the surface, and Tetsami was left by the scaffolding. It looked like the two of them might be the first people down this way since the project collapsed. Certainly no one had come down here from the Godwin end. Down by Godwin, the tunnels were a warren of garbage, graffiti, and the occasional squatter.

 

Here, under the frosted glare of the truck’s headlights, the tunnel was almost pristine. Up to the start of the scaffolding, the rock tunnel was sheathed in white tile, and the magnets were still firmly fixed behind their white plastic housing. Chrome trim was only slightly dimmed by an old layer of dust. The digging machine filled the dead end of the tunnel, behind ten meters of scaffolding. It resembled a giant insect frozen in the midst of a kill, arms stopped halfway to the rough rock wall. A burrowing monster that a mountain range couldn’t stop.

 

Tetsami opened the door in the head of the beast and looked over the thing, pulling herself inside. It was obvious why it had been abandoned. The magnets in the walls reduced the effective diameter of the tunnel by a meter. The machine would’ve had to be disassembled to get it out.

 

Tetsami smiled as she settled into the control seat and ran her hands over the inactive control panels. Nice little beast, this. A cylindrical body resting on all-terrain treads, a dozen arms in the front bearing drills, lasers, digging gear, built like a tank. Definitely an unsubtle vehicle. Tetsami liked it.

 

Too bad there was no way to get it out of its hole.

 

After a while, Dom returned. He’d found an access port that made it all the way to the surface. Tetsami left the digging machine, noting that it had a port for a bio-interface.

 

The maintenance shaft opened on a gentle slope that was relatively free of trees. The vantage gave a panoramic view of the city of Proudhon, and especially of the sprawl of the spaceport.

 

It was the first time Tetsami had seen a city other than Godwin. At least it was the first time she’d seen one when she wasn’t on the business end of a wire.

 

As they walked down the gravel slope, more and more of the port became visible. Barely ten seconds would pass without something lifting off or landing. It was impossible, for a while, to separate the port from the city. It might have been because, for the most part, the port was the city. Proudhon Spaceport was like a mutant chrome-neon plant that sent branches sprawling across the land, sprouting landing facilities like giant concrete leaves. Parts of it weaved into the city, surrounded it, to the point where old landing strips became avenues for ground traffic, grounded luxury liners became hotels, and high-rises became control towers.

 

The sprawl was lorded over by a knot of white marble towers in the center of the city, the only sign of order in the midst of the chaos. Those white towers were the home of the Proudhon Spaceport Development Corporation, probably the wealthiest enterprise on the planet.

 

Thinking how hard it must be to direct traffic in that chaos gave Tetsami a headache. Then, again, the Proudhon Spaceport Development Corporation was pretty firm in its enforcement of their traffic patterns. They had a lot of antiaircraft batteries.

 

“Do you know where we’re going?” Tetsami asked as she realized just how big the spaceport was.

 

Dom nodded. “Mosasa’s Surplus place is over there.”