Descent from Xanadu (25 page)

“But don’t any of you ever want more?” Sofia asked.

“No,” Amarinth answered in a small voice. “We are only happy when we serve the Master.”

Sofia was silent for a moment. “I would feel better if I could return to my own cottage,” she said at last.

Amarinth looked at her. “As you wish.” She opened a closet and took out a terry-cloth bathrobe and held it out for Sofia to put on. She slipped into another silk sheath, exactly like the one she had worn before. “Come with me,” Amarinth said. “I will show you to your car.”

***

She woke in her own bed. The bright sunlight was visible around the corners of the drapes. She pressed the button beside the bed. The drapes slid open and the sun flooded into the room. She glanced at the clock. It was two-thirty in the afternoon. She reached for the telephone.

“Yes, Doctor?” Max asked.

“May I have some orange juice and coffee, please?”

“Of course. Anything to eat?”

“Not just yet.”

“You have two messages,” he said. “Mr. Crane would like you to return his call when you awake, and Dr. Sawyer would like you to call his office at the Research Center at six o’clock.”

“Thank you, Max,” she said. “I’ll speak with Mr. Crane as soon as I have had some coffee.”

“Yes, Doctor,” Max said. “Mr. Crane’s call number is 1.”

The orange juice was sweet and refreshing and the coffee hot and strong. It was good to her taste, not weak like American coffee. She half-finished the cup and dialed Judd.

A woman’s voice answered. “Mr. Crane’s office.”

“Dr. Ivancich returning his call.”

“Just one moment, Doctor,” the secretary’s voice answered. “I will reach him for you.”

A moment later there was a click on the telephone and his voice came on. “Did you rest well, Sofia?”

“Very well,” she answered.

“Good,” he said. “I am arranging for you to read the Zabiski files. It is completely on tape. You have your choice of any language you want as well as the original copies in her own hand.”

“I’d prefer the original,” she said. “I would also like an English copy as well.”

“We’ll have it for you. It will be set up on a dual screen processor so that you can read from one to the other as you like. Then we also have the notes for you to review. I have had many specialists study and interpret them.”

“That would be very helpful.”

“When do you think you could begin?”

“Tomorrow morning if you like,” she said. “I would like to be fresh when I begin work.”

“That will be arranged. An office will be set up for you.”

“Thank you,” she said. “There’s something else I would like to ask of you.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s been three years since I have examined you. And I am a doctor, if you remember. I would like to give you a physical examination so that I can make a judgment about the progress you’ve made.”

“Would that tell you anything different from what you can make out of her notes?” he asked.

“I don’t know yet,” she said. “Maybe nothing. But then, on the other hand, something inside you might shed some light on what she was trying to tell me.”

“Dr. Sawyer already has all the information you might need about me on the computer.”

“That’s the computer. With all due respect to Dr. Sawyer, the information would be secondhand to me. I’d feel more comfortable if I could see and understand for myself.”

His voice was definite. “I don’t think it’s necessary.”

“Sorry, Judd, but I do.”

“No,” he said shortly. The telephone clicked off in her hand.

She waited a moment, then called him again. The secretary’s voice came on the wire. “Mr. Crane again,” she asked.

“I’m sorry, Doctor, but he cannot be reached.”

“Can you give him a message for me?”

“Of course, Doctor.”

“Tell him that I do not think I could be helpful to him and I would like to make arrangements to return to my own work.”

A moment later Judd called her. “You’re a bitch,” he said.

“Maybe,” she said evenly. “But I’m a doctor and I must have my own way.”

He was silent.

“You can think about it,” she said. “Meanwhile, I’m calling Doc Sawyer to come over and help me.”

“Do you think that’s all he has to do?”

“That’s not for me to judge,” she said. “He’s your friend. And your doctor. It’s up to you to decide.”

Judd paused for a moment. “He’ll be here tomorrow morning.”

“Good,” she said. “Then do you think I can see you for an hour sometime this afternoon?”

“What for?”

“It will be helpful if we do a blood workup and urinalysis before we begin the physical. It could save us some time.”

“Anything else?” he asked sarcastically.

“I can think of a few more items,” she said. “But I’ll settle for this.”

“Thank you,” he said. “Six o’clock all right for you?”

“Perfect,” she said.

“Okay. At the same time I’ll show you the setup of your office.”

“Good. Just one thing more,” she said. “That I do not have to wear another one of those white dresses.”

“If you promise not to wear a sari.”

“I promise,” she laughed.

“You’re still a bitch,” he said.

“I love you anyway,” she said and put down the phone.

7

Sofia turned to Sawyer. “You were right,” she said. “Physically he is perfect. Just one small thing bothers me—the electric energies reading by the EEG seems lower than the reading last year.”

Sawyer looked at her. “But it’s infinitesimal. It could be the time of day it’s recorded.”

“I had them run it three times at four-hour intervals. It’s not the time of the day. The energy output from his brain is consistently lower. Could we possibly persuade him to undergo a scan?”

“I don’t think so,” Sawyer answered. “He would have to leave the island and return to Boca Raton. He told me he would not leave the island before his first year is over. That’s three months from now.”

Sofia was silent as she pressed keys on the computer. She matched the EEG reading of last year and superimposed the new readings. She pressed another key and one part of the readings zoomed larger on the screen. “It’s the alpha readings. See, they waver over the mean line. I don’t understand it.”

“We’ll transfer it to the computer at Med-Research and see what the neurologists think about it.”

“Might help,” she said. “But I’d feel more secure with a scan.”

“What are you looking for?” Sawyer asked.

“It’s more intuition than knowledge,” she said. “Remember, you told me that he mentioned his boredom and his sense of growing isolation—I’ve seen that in his lack of personal interaction with people around him, even under the most physical circumstances.”

“Sex?” Sawyer asked.

“Yes. Physically he works at it. But inside, he feels nothing. Even with drugs to get him into it.”

“Sometimes drugs have the opposite effect, you know, Doctor.”

“It’s not the drugs,” she said. “That’s why I said intuition. I’m a woman. I know when a man is fucking and when he’s fucking. It’s the same act, but it’s different.”

“It could be the sterility factor,” Sawyer said. “It varies with him. One of his experiments was to control his sterility by his mind and to show that he can separate impotence from sterility—that he can even withhold sperm from orgasmic ejaculation. You know he’s trying to touch all the bases: medical, physical, technological and metaphysical, yoga, as well as tantric mind control.”

“That’s good,” she said. “The pleasure is in a man’s head, not his penis. I want to know what is happening to his brain and I think the scan might give us some clues.”

“There’s nothing we can do right now,” Sawyer said. “We have to wait for him.”

She turned off the computer screen. “Anyway, if it’s any consolation, physically he hasn’t aged one day since the last time I met with him. So something is working, though we don’t know what.”

Judd came into the room. He glanced briefly at them. “Satisfied?” he asked.

“I guess so,” she answered. “There’s nothing physically wrong that we can find.”

“I could have told you that,” he said, without expression.

“Still I’d like to know more about your head,” she said. “Both physically and psychologically.”

He stared at her. “I don’t understand.”

“The EEG shows a minuscule drop of brain wave electricity,” she answered.

“Shouldn’t that be normal?” he asked. “After all, I’ve slowed up all my physical functions.”

“I don’t know,” she said. She looked up at his eyes. “How do you feel? Do you feel as sharp and keen as you did before? To my mind you don’t seem as interested in certain things as you used to be.”

“I’m really not interested in those things anymore,” he said flatly. “Before. I used to play games. Business, money, people. Now I’m bored with them. I think what I’m doing is more important and more interesting. Anybody can make money if he wants to. I’ve done it, and I have more of it than anyone, so I don’t need to prove myself again. Girls, sex, the same thing. I’ve done it all. Now it’s only necessary for keeping the physical machinery working.”

She looked at Sawyer, then back at Judd. “Love?”

“Emotionally?” he asked.

She nodded. “Yes. I think that’s important to you, physically as well as mentally.”

“Do you think I’m cuckoo?” he asked calmly. “That I don’t feel things?”

She met his eyes. “I don’t know.”

He turned to Sawyer. “What do you think?”

Sawyer held up his hands. “I can’t answer. Both of you are over my head.”

Judd smiled at her. “I feel different,” he said. “I don’t think I feel as deeply as you do. But I do feel in my own way. Try to understand as I do. I am going to live forever, and if that’s true, I have to think all of you are temporary. I mustn’t become too attached to any of you, because in twenty years, or one hundred years, or more, you will be gone, and I’ll be living with other people, in another time.”

“So you suppress your feelings because you are afraid to lose those whom you love? You’re afraid of hurting yourself?” She felt the tightness in her throat.

“Maybe,” he answered thoughtfully. He took a deep breath. “Perhaps loving is also part of mortality. You die a little bit with everyone you love and lose.”

She held back her tears. “If you had children,” she said, “you would live on in them.”

“But I would not live,” he said. “Just as my father does not live. I want to be alive, not a memory.”

She turned back to the computer and pressed several keys. Numbers flashed across the screen. She punched two other keys, and the picture turned into a demographic curve. Without turning to him, she spoke over her shoulder. “According to the computer, you have a life expectancy right now of one hundred and thirty years. That means your present physical age of forty-nine is equal to an average man of thirty-one.” She turned to him. “Present actuarial tables are L.E. 74. You now have an L.E. of almost twice that.”

He looked from the screen to her. “What are you telling me?” he asked.

“At one point, Dr. Zabiski had you up to an approximate L.E. 150. While trying to push it, she almost killed you. Wouldn’t you be willing to settle for what you’ve got now while you’re ahead, rather than continue experimenting and possibly destroying yourself?”

“If I’m going to die,” he said simply, “it doesn’t matter much how long, or when it happens. This moment or another. What I’m searching for is infinity.”

“There is no infinity,” she said flatly. “Even beyond the stars.”

He was thoughtful for a moment, turning from Sawyer to her. “I’ve had the physical as you requested. Are you ready to begin studying Zabiski’s notes tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow morning,” she replied.

“Good,” he said. “Dinner at nine o’clock tonight?”

“Yes, thank you,” she answered.

He turned to Sawyer. “How about you, Lee?”

Sawyer shook his head. “No, thanks. I have to get back. But I’ll take a rain check.”

“You’ve got it,” Judd said. “But meanwhile, let’s all go upstairs and have a drink.”

***

Judd was drinking orange juice, Doc Sawyer, Scotch on the rocks, and Sofia, a tiny glass of Starka vodka almost congealed from the freezer. The chime of a telephone sounded next to Judd’s chair. He picked it up, listened for a moment, then handed it to Sawyer. “It’s your office.”

Sawyer held the telephone. “Yes?”

His secretary’s voice sounded apologetic. “I’m sorry to disturb you, Doctor, but I felt this was important. We have just received a call from someone in the State Department in Washington asking if Dr. Ivancich was staying with us. I told him she was not.”

“Good,” Sawyer said. “Besides that’s the truth.”

“They also asked if I could get in touch with her. I said I couldn’t, because I didn’t know where she might be. Then they asked for you, and I told them that you’re en route and ought to be in the office tomorrow morning.”

“Very good,” Sawyer said. He put down the telephone. He looked at Judd. “The State Department is looking for Sofia.”

“Strange,” Judd said. He turned to Sofia. “Do you have any idea why State would be interested in you?”

Sofia shrugged her shoulders. “It’s your government, not mine. I know nothing about how it works. Most of the time I don’t even know how my own government works.”

“Did you pick up your U.S. visa in Bangladesh?” he asked.

“No. I used the unlimited entry visa you obtained for me years ago.” She was silent for a moment. “But when I came through immigration at JFK, I listed my visiting address in the States as Crane Medical Center, Boca Raton, Florida.”

“That was correct,” Judd said. He thought for a moment. “Usually it’s immigration that checks up on visitors.”

“That’s what she said.”

“Call her back and find out if she has the name of the person who called. Once we have a name I can have Security run a check. If it is State, there’s something going on and I want to know about it.”

8

Dinner was set on a small round table in a windowed alcove of the library. Judd turned as she entered the room. “You wore the white dress,” he said.

She smiled. “I had it altered.”

“You didn’t have to,” he said. “I would have sent another one.”