Free The Dark Side by Anthony O'Neill Page B

Earth—into the middle of the Amazon basin, no less—leaving thousands of acres of virgin rainforest irradiated, rare species poisoned and mutated, and two thousand natives dead.
    The authorized versions end with Fletcher Brass as a triumphant exile, presiding over a unique and vibrant fiefdom; the biopic fades out with him sitting imperiously in a brass throne, wordlessly admiring the great lunar metropolis he’s built from the ground up. The unauthorized versions are content to spend their final chapters covering Purgatory’s lawlessness and corruption, the gang wars, the summary executions, the internecine conflicts, and the sordid rumors of underhanded deals with various terrestrial governments.
    Nevertheless, it’s the film’s fade-out—the empire builder, good or bad—that’s the last image of Brass that anyone remembers. It’s certainly the image Brass himself designed to linger. There was a spectacularly unsuccessful attempt to kidnap him shortly after the movie’s release—as fabricated as any of his world-record attempts, if the cynics are right—which seemed to justify his withdrawal from the limelight while consolidating his new reputation as a recluse. It isn’t that he’s completely unseen—he still appears at press conferences and public spectacles every now and then, waving Mao-like to the multitudes—but the secrecy proved enough to magnify the myth, to make him even more larger-than-life, and to generate a few more wild conspiracy theories along the way.
    Dynamic, heroic, visionary, inspiring, indefatigable, tragically misunderstood, and maliciously envied? Or narcissistic, deluded, irresponsible, grandiose, psychotically greedy, and strangely tragic?
    Justus doesn’t know. He read as much about Brass as he could before coming to Purgatory but he doesn’t necessarily believe any of it. So he doesn’t know if Brass is a charming rogue or a borderline psychopath. Nor does he discount the possibility that, in over twenty years of living on the Moon, the man has completely changed—for better or worse.
    Justus tries not to be influenced by vested interests. He always makes up his own mind. And that’s what he’s intending to do, right now, as he prepares to meet Fletcher Brass for the first time.

11
    J USTUS HAS CERTAINLY BEEN in the presence of famous people before: singers, movie stars, talk-show hosts, billionaires, mega-chefs, celebrity gangsters. Born performers, most of them. People who can charm and manipulate effortlessly, without even seeming to try. Because they know instinctively how to sell a package, to project an aura, to seem like creatures from some distant planet where people don’t perspire or get pimples.
    Fletcher Brass is like that. Presently he’s holding a press conference on the progress of his imminent voyage to Mars. Behind him is a shimmering photomural showing images of the Red Planet, his Purgatorial rocket base, and his huge space vehicle, Prospector II . Owing to the microgravity and lack of atmosphere it’s much cheaper and more efficient to launch spacecraft from the Moon than it is from Earth, and this is a point that he keepshammering home, either to address queries about the excessive costs or just to rub it in the faces of his terrestrial enemies.
    â€œPeople ask why private enterprise is doing this, and not some government space agency,” he says smoothly. “And I just remind them of the year 1903. It was in that year that Dr. Samuel Langley, head of the Smithsonian Institution, was awarded fifty thousand taxpayer dollars—a huge sum at the time—to develop and construct a steam-powered aircraft called the aerodrome. Perhaps you’ve never heard of it. Perhaps you’ve never heard of Dr. Langley either. But that’s no reason to be ashamed. You haven’t heard of him for a very good reason—because the aerodrome crashed into the Potomac