she ever thought of him. Sailing with her vice-chairman, no doubt.
It was nearly sunset, and he was about to go back to his room and get ready for dinner, when Fort appeared on the central path. “Ah, there you are,” he said. “Let’s go down to the oak.”
They sat by the big tree’s trunk. The sun was cutting under the low clouds, and everything was turning the colour of the roses. “You live in a beautiful place,” Art said.
Fort didn’t appear to hear him. He was looking up at the underlit clouds billowing overhead.
After a few minutes of this contemplation he said, “We want you to acquire Mars.”
“Acquire Mars,” Art repeated.
“Yes. In the sense that I spoke about this morning. These national–transnational partnerships are the coming thing, there’s no doubt about it. The old flag-of-convenience relationships were suggestive, but they need to be taken further, so that we have more control over our investment. We did that with Sri Lanka, and we’ve had so much success in our deal there that the other big transnats are all imitating us, actively recruiting countries in trouble.”
“But Mars isn’t a country.”
“No. But it is in trouble. When the first elevator crashed, its economy was shattered. Now the new elevator is in place, and things are ready to happen. I want Praxis to be ahead of the curve. Of course the other big investors are all still there too, jockeying for position, and that will only intensify now that the new elevator is up.”
“Who runs the elevator?”
“A consortium led by Subarashii.”
“Isn’t that a problem?”
“Well, it gives them an edge. But they don’t understand Mars. They think it’s just a new source of metals. They don’t see the possibilities.”
“The possibilities for …”
“For development! Mars isn’t just an empty world, Randolph—in economic terms, it’s nearly a non-existent world. Its bio-infrastructure has to be constructed, you see. I mean one could just extract the metals and move on, which is what Subarashii and the others seem to have in mind. But that’s treating it like nothing more than a big asteroid. Which is stupid, because its value as a base of operations, as a planet so to speak, far surpasses the value of its metals. All its metals together total about twenty trillion dollars, but the value of a terraformed Mars is more in the neighbourhood of two hundred trillion dollars. That’s about one third of the current Gross World Value, and even that doesn’t make proper assessment of its scarcity value, if you ask me. No, Mars is bio-infrastructure investment, just like I was talking about. Exactly the kind of thing Praxis is looking for.”
“But acquisition …” Art said. “I mean, what are we talking about?”
“Not what. Who.”
“Who?”
“The underground.”
“The underground!”
Fort gave him time to think it over. Television, the tabloids and the nets were full of tales of the survivors of 2061, living in underground shelters in the wild southern hemisphere, led by John Boone and Hiroko Ai, tunnelling everywhere, in contact with aliens—dead celebrities—current world leaders … Art stared at Fort, a bona fide current world leader, shocked by the sudden notion that these Pellucidarian fantasies might have some truth to them. “Does it really exist?”
Fort nodded. “It does. I’m not in full contact with it, you understand, and I don’t know how extensive it is. But I’m sure that some of the First Hundred are still alive. You know the Taneev–Tokareva theories I talked about when you first arrived? Well, those two, and Ursula Kohl, and that whole biomedical team, they all lived in the Acheron Fin, north of Olympus Mons. During the war the facility was destroyed. But there were no bodies at the site. So about six years ago I had a Praxis team go in and rebuild the facility. When it was done we named it the Acheron Institute, and we left it empty. Everything is on-line and ready to go, but nothing is happening there, except for a small annual conference on their eco-economics. And last year, when the conference was over, one of the clean-up crew found a few pages in a fax tray. Comments on one of the papers presented. No signature, no source. But there was some work there that I’m positive was written by Taneev or Tokareva, or someone very familiar with their work. And I think it was a little hello.”
A very little hello, Art thought. But Fort seemed to read his mind: “I’ve just got an even bigger hello. I don’t know who it is. They’re being very cautious. But they’re out there.”
Art swallowed. It was big news, if true. “And so you want me to …”
“I want you to go to Mars. We have a project there that will be your cover story, salvaging a section of the fallen elevator cable. But while you’re doing that, I’ll be making arrangements to get you together with this person who has contacted me. You won’t have to initiate anything. They’ll make the move, and take you in. But look. In the beginning, I don’t want you to let them know exactly what you’re trying to do. I want you to go to work on them. Find out who they are, and how extensive their operation is, and what they want. And how we might deal with them.”
“So I’ll be a kind of—”
“A kind of diplomat.”
“A kind of spy, I was going to say.”
Fort shrugged. “It depends on who you’re with. This project has to remain a secret. I deal with a lot of the other transnat leaders, and they’re scared people. Perceived threats to the current order often get attacked quite brutally. And some of them already think Praxis is a threat. So for the time being there is a hidden arm to Praxis, and this Mars investigation has to be part of that. So if you join, you join the hidden Praxis. Think you can do it?”
“I don’t know.”
Fort laughed. “That’s why I chose you for this mission, Randolph. You seem simple.”
I am simple, Art almost said, and bit his tongue. Instead he said, “Why me?”
Fort regarded him. “When we acquire a new company, we review its personnel. I read your record. I thought you might have the makings of a diplomat.”
“Or a spy.”
“They are often different aspects of the same job.”
Art frowned. “Did you bug my apartment? My old apartment?”
“No.” Fort laughed again. “We don’t do that. People’s records are enough.”
Art recalled the late-night viewing of one of their sessions.
“That and a session down here,” Fort added. “To get to know you.”
Art considered it. None of the Eighteen wanted this job. Nor the scholars, perhaps. Of course it was off to Mars, and then into some invisible world no one knew anything about, maybe for good. Some people might not find it attractive. But for someone at loose ends, maybe looking for new employment, maybe with a potential for diplomacy …
So all
