Moon Flower by James P. Hogan Read Free Book Online Page B

themselves.
    “It appears that you, or conceivably Professor Wade, must have more influence in the right places than I would have thought credible. Your application has been accepted, and I am instructed to expedite matters by no less a person than the faculty dean himself. It appears that a further expedition to Cyrene is being organized, and is due to depart six days from now.”
    Six days! God Almighty! ...
    “You are required to be at Interworld Restructuring’s offices across the Bay for preliminary briefing and familiarization, commencing tomorrow morning. You’ll need to spend the rest of today tidying things up here. Can you come up to my office first thing after lunch to go over the details?”
    Shearer’s mind was still racing to catch up. “Er, well, yes.... Of course” was all he could manage.
    “Shall we say two o’ clock, then?”
    “That would be fine.”
    “I’ll see you then, Mr. Shearer.” The line went dead.
    Still in a daze, Shearer fumbled the phone back into his pocket and quickened his pace automatically. Slowly, like light growing and brightening the landscape as the sun comes out from behind cloud, the meaning became clear in his mind. “ Yeaaahh !” he yelled jubilantly, turned a full circle, and punched a fist toward the ceiling....
    Just as two girls in lab smocks came out of the doorway beside him.
    “Did you just win something?” one of them asked warily.
    “Even better than that. I’m going to the stars!”
    “Oh, really? That’s great. When?”
    “Six days from now.”
    The girls glanced at each other. “Oh boy,” the second one murmured.
     

CHAPTER FIVE
    Orange County and other parts of the Los Angeles area that had once provided homes and playgrounds for the rich and famous and the rich and notorious alike had for the most part been taken over by more common representatives of the species. When the influx from the south that had swelled to huge proportions in the early part of the century eventually led to civil violence and then armed conflict, the affluent and mobile transplanted themselves to new enclaves of exclusivity farther north. The area now bordered the Greater Mexican Union, and as the immigrant population consolidated in numbers, wealth, and confidence, strong signs were emerging that it might secede and change over to the other side.
    The other factor that played a large part in the secession of the Western Federacy, later reduced to Occidena, was the seismic shift in financial holdings and political power that followed the sudden breakthrough into Heim physics and its rapid development in things like starship drives. Enormous fortunes were made through timely stock transfers and takeovers, lofting names overnight into the Forbes 400 that longtime subscribers to the Robb Report had never heard of. The most consequential of these activities revolved around the corporate empires and research institutions associated with the space and military industries on the West Coast, which was where the bulk of the scientific expertise and infrastructure best suited to exploiting the new physics was concentrated. This also happened at a time when new heights of intrusiveness and excess on the part of the former federal government were increasing general unrest and adding to the internal forces already straining the nation toward fission. When the West-centered interests preempted impending confiscatory legislation from Washington by declaring themselves independent and made clear their readiness to defend their new sovereignty by force — of which it commanded an overwhelming superiority — the Eastern establishment found itself holding a pair of twos against four aces and had no choice but to back down. The resulting shock waves opened up fault lines that had been creaking and deepening for decades. In a rapid series of convulsions the Midwest, Plains, and Great Lakes regions followed suit to end years of growing resentments by breaking ties with Capitol Hill and