To THE LAND OF THE ELECTRIC ANGEL: Hugo and Nebula Award Finalist Author (The Frontiers Saga) (10 page)

"No, no, we here at the Methuselah Institute are certainly working on lengthening the life span of man, but we are hardly creating immortals." He chuckled indulgently.

"But Doctor Carrington," the off-camera voice said, "what of the statements of those who oppose such research, such as Gil Lawrence of Zero Population Control, and Reverend Neville of the Sacred Angels of God the Glorious Church, to name but two? They say you tamper with natural laws and increase the pressure of population."

The doctor shook his head and Blake listened closely. "No, Mr. Weinstock, there is nothing man was not meant to know. It is how he
uses
his knowledge that is important. If we were so successful as to be able to grant extended lifelines – and I must point out that this is speculation – if we were able to do that and a benefactor were to use that extended lifetime to oppress a people, then I would say it was wrong. But if a man or a woman were to use a longer than normal lifespan to learn, to gather wisdom, to help mankind, then I would say that it was good."

"Doctor, what of the rumors that you have perfected such techniques and are ready to start using them?"

Get out of that one!
Blake "said" to the scientist.

"Rumors are not science, sir, they are rumors. It is true, we have been able to substantially increase the life span of fruit flies, worms, and some lower forms of vertebrates. But as to granting immortality..." He laughed heartily, but with restraint. "Don't be misled by our title, Mr. Weinstock, as so many have been. We are not creating nine-hundred-year-old Methuselahs here." He seemed genuinely amused.

That's all we need,
Blake thought,
more people who will live even longer.

The camera cut to Weinstock. "We have been talking to Dr. Emil Carrington, director of the Methuselah Institute in New Haven, Connecticut, where scientists seek to find the cause for aging and perhaps give us all eternal life."

Blake's fingers hit the black button and the screen went dark.

Sonya was waiting for Blake at the top of the seawall. She was wearing only sandals and an expensive necklace of lunar opals and Byzantium silver beads. She stood in a studied pose, smiling.

Blake shook his head with a smile.
Voss has done it again,
he thought.
Voss, the plucker of the best and ripest fruit!

"Darling Blake," Sonya said with an intense whisper, and hugged him carefully. "Jean-Michel has been waiting for you. Come, darling."

Blake noticed that she didn't seem to sweat in the Mexican heat. Even in the bright sunlight, sudden death for most blondes, she was pampered perfection. But her great physical beauty aroused no lust in him, only distant admiration.

"Jean-Michel likes his guests to arrive by sea, have you noticed that?" Sonya said. "Maybe the trip was too rough?"

"No, it was quite nice."

"Then you have no excuse not to compliment me," she said, tossing back her long hair.

She laughed to take the bite from her words, but Blake saw that she was waiting. He mumbled a polite phrase, saw her expression, and expanded his words deftly into a flowery compliment that had no real feeling. It made him feel bad.

He saw Caren's familiar figure on an upper terrace. She was waving through a break in the trees. Next to her was a portly man with gray hair.

Blake and Sonya walked out on the wide tiled terrace with Casa Emperador looming above them. Theta was at her usual sun-worshipping altar, looking no darker, and attended dutifully by Sundance. Nearby were two more young women, one a slender black girl, the other a small-breasted pixie. They only paid attention to Blake when Theta raised her head to view his arrival. Or possibly to watch Sonya walk.

"Jean-Michel is on the vid to New York or
Waipahu
or someplace," Sonya said. "Go on in, he's waiting for you."

Caren was standing just inside the big doors; when Blake entered, she smiled at him, very graceful and elegantly aloof in her floor-length metacloth robe. She was on the arm of the gray-haired man, who was wearing a brown playtux.

"Dear Blake," she said, "how are you? Malcolm, this is Blake Mason, the man designing Jean-Michel's tomb. Blake, this is Sir Malcolm Morrison, head of Jean-Michel's entire African operation.

They shook hands and exchanged pleasantries. Blake marked him at once as a man out of place in this infamous private temple of international hedonism.

Two girls now entered, and Caren introduced them as Nikki and Mariette. Their hair was still damp and plastered down, and they tried to get the two men interested in swimming in the warm but muddied waters of the bay. Only Sir Malcolm could be persuaded, as he tried to keep his eyes off their lithe, unclad bodies.

Caren let Sir Malcolm walk on ahead for a little distance, then she touched Blake's arm. "Be happy for me, baby. I'm going to be a knight's lady." Blake raised his eyebrows, and she quickly added, "Oh, just a registered mistress, but it's better than being a punch bowl everyone dips into!"

"That explains the dress then," Blake said.
The famous British reserve says
his
lady, even
a
mistress, should be decent.

Caren laughed and made a kissing gesture in his direction as she hurried off. "Excuse, excuse, but I must watch my investment!"

Blake went on into the library and found Jean-Michel at the visionphone. "No, tell them 150 or forget it. I want Franklin to see Steghof tomorrow. No excuses. It's Condition Yellow on the Berlin tri-ark, but tell Perry he must be back from Ares Center by late October."

Voss listened again, then spoke a rapid-fire series of orders. "Have Shinoyama get those specs on the cargo subs to Schellerup as soon as possible. What? Yes, tell Steffan to proceed to Phase Two on the Neptune project." Voss hesitated, then continued in a slightly different tone. "The Ripvan Trust must be completed by the end of the month. This is
numero uno,
and don't forget it." He paused, and the machine murmured at him. "Yes, Dena is to be in charge. And send me the hardcopy on the new sailship-vane design as soon as possible. Run it through the Total Information Service computers to fill in any of the blanks."

Blake could not catch the voice on the screen, but Voss seemed satisfied and signed off. He turned to Blake at once. "You have the final designs?"

Blake nodded, and took out a packet of holograms. He started to put them into a projector, but Voss stopped him.

"Wait. Rio will want to see these, too."

Blake stopped short as Voss leaped energetically to his feet and left the room. Then he caught himself and hurried after the millionaire.

Rio! Here! Or coming here! Rio!

The hope that he had stuffed into a box in his heart exploded, spraying itself all over the inside of his body.
Rio!

Sonya joined them as they went down the hall. She was all brilliant smiles, swaying flesh – and confidence.

Voss pointed at a holographic projector, and Blake went over to it and dropped the squares into the hopper. Voss darkened the room and everyone settled down.

Where is Rio?
Blake felt his body tense and his heart pound; he was like a kid on his first date.

"Hello, Blake," someone said close to him, and Blake turned, knowing it was Rio.

Her clinging white dress almost glowed in the dimness, and the fanciful ruby-and-silver clip that held her hair back on one side sparkled in a chance light.

Blake felt his heart flap. He forced down what he wanted to say and do, and said casually, "Hello, Rio. It's very good to see you."

She moved closer to him, as graceful as ever, and took his hand, looking into his eyes. A shadow crossed her face and then it was gone. She turned to Voss and said, "Let's see the great tomb!"

Blake thumbed the controls, and the three-dimensional holographic projection appeared in the middle of the room. Voss walked slowly up one side and down the other, ignoring the
ohs
and
ahs
of the ripe-bodied Sonya. Rio paced behind Voss, equally silent.

Blake sat down in a russet chair set before one of the large authentic Martian sandstone panels, brought so many millions of kilometers to Earth at enormous technological effort. Beside the rocketry, shuttles, and special stasis cylinders, massive infusions of inert plastics under pressure had been needed to transport the museum-quality carvings from Mars to Earth without breakage. As stable as man had made them, these fragile-looking panels would probably outlast man himself.

No one knew what the panels meant. There was as yet no Martian Rosetta stone, no bilingual tablet, not even an atomic table that would give some basis for comparison. Every tablet found, every
in situ
wall sculpture or bas-relief was blurred and worn by the winds of the millennia until it was barely discernible as anything touched by the hand – or tentacle, or claw – of
Xeno races.
The magnificent ruin of the Grand Hall, the gloomy Tomb of Kings, the fantastic beauty of the organic crystal growth called the Star Palace – all were unreadable, every stone an X-factor despite decades of study.

Blake's thoughts were brought back as Voss straightened from his close examination of the last hologram.

"Fantastic," the financier said. "Better than I had thought it could be."

Blake looked at Rio when he realized that Voss was also awaiting her approval.

She looked at him with a warm smile. "It will be fantastic, Jean-Michel." She turned her head to look at Blake. "Are you going to use the ceiling that Lennard suggested?" Blake raised his eyebrows and she smiled. "I dropped in on him in Paris over the weekend, and saw the sketches. I thought the design was excellent. Visually, it would tie together the side panels very well."

Blake glanced at Voss. "Jean-Michel vetoed it. He didn't like the idea of anything that might come loose and drop on him."

Rio laughed. "Very well."

Jean-Michel's face flushed at Rio's quick agreement, which was almost a dismissal, and there was a look of sudden, hot hatred.

Blake felt fear – not for himself, but for Rio.
There is a savage beneath all the man's suave European charm,
he thought

"It had been decided," Voss confirmed.

"Of course," Rio said.

Sonya looked suddenly arch. "That's the way Jean-Michel wants it, dear," she said to Rio.

Rio shrugged, and made a gesture to indicate the matter was unimportant.

Blake was puzzled, for he did not think it was unimportant. Then his heart leapt and he felt a quick, dirty exultation.
They've split! They've fought! Something's wrong between them!

Rio turned to Blake and told him his designs were superb and that, in her opinion, the final construction phase should go ahead. Voss agreed, and Rio excused herself.

Sonya spoke to Voss in a carefully modulated, intimate whisper. "She shouldn't act like that, darling. You've given her everything."

Voss crossed to the bar, his face still dark, but controlled. His reaction had been more violent and intense than the simple clash of tastes implied.

Sonya followed gracefully. She was a magnificent female construction, glossy and perfect, a spotless image of utter depravity. She put her arms around Voss and whispered something in his ear.

Voss gulped down a swallow of wine, glared once more at the door, and came back to Blake. "All right," he said, "let's get on with it. Waste no time. Did the Henry Moore arrive all right?"

"Yes, no problem. Finishing touches on the floors this week, then we start moving things in from storage. The Inner Chamber is all but finished, too, they tell me. I haven't had a chance to go up there for two weeks."

Voss's mood changed mercurially. He smiled and pulled Sonya to him. "Sonya, my love, my passion flower, my Mothering Russian beauty, you are in the presence of the greatest pair of tomb builders since King Tut."

"Try Cheops," Blake smiled. "Tutankhamen was fifteen hundred years later and a small-timer."

"Correction noted and logged," Voss said.

He tugged at Sonya and they left, going up the stairs. Sonya had a happy, triumphal look. She made her famous bosom bounce, the muscles under the skin moving smoothly.

Blake put the holograms back into their packet, then hesitated.
Should I hunt for her? I must, I can't let this opportunity slip by.

*   *   *

He found Rio on a small terrace, looking down into the foaming sea, a warm wind blowing her long hair and plastering her dress against her body. The palms were making irregular rustling noises in the wind from the Pacific and they could hear the surf far below.

She looked up at Blake as he approached, then for a long moment they both stared at several small pink-and-tan figures playing in the surf. Blake was trying to think what to say, when Rio spoke.

"He knows about us," she said.

Blake looked at her with a frown. "What is there to know?"

"He knows that I ... I responded. That's enough. One of the teleguards in the basement showed him the tape."

"Teleguards?"

"The whole peninsula here is guarded. Dogs, men, eletronics, television, irregular patrols. There's a strong room buried down below, and a control room. There's a camera on us even now."

Blake looked around involuntarily.

Rio smiled wanly and said, "Jean-Michel is very rich. People are always after treasure. He guards himself. In this spot only, there is no overlap from the mikes. I discovered it by accident. The wind covers up our voices unless we shout."

Blake became angry. "I feel like a conspirator! I don't like it! Listen, Rio – I want you. I want you enough to blow the whole tomb job, if I must!"

The dark-haired girl looked at him in pity. "You don't understand. Voss gives away women. He takes them, he uses them, he kicks them out – gently or roughly. But they don't leave unless he wants them to leave. Not me, not Caren, not Sonya, none of them. Probably not even Theta."

"But you go around the world–"

"He has a long leash on me."

"What in hell can it be? Money? Fear? What?"

Rio smiled sadly. "No. I am his greatest ally. My own greed, my own fear chain me to him. He knows it and relishes the thought."

"It's his
money,
then?" Blake asked harshly. "Rio, I'm not rich, certainly not like Voss. But I won't starve. Come with me, you don't need him. I know, in a way, we hardly know each other. But I felt ... I
know
you did respond to me. And in an important way."

"Yes. I did, Blake. But you don't understand." She turned and sat on the terrace wall, backed by the tops of green palms growing on the slope below. "I was born poor. Grimy, filthy, dirt poor.
Hopelessly
poor! Part of the
doomed
poor! I was born in Mexico City. They didn't even have arcologs there; everyone was so poor. Endless miles of trash heaps called homes. The rich had long since moved; only the factories were left. Eleven million people ... and most of them starving." Rio closed her eyes and raised her face into the sun. "My family had been poor since the beginning of time. My ancestors built the Mayan pyramids and the lost cities, working like slaves for the priests, and dying. My sister died from malnutrion. My father died without a sound, falling into a hydroponics tank, his body worked out. My little brother Hernando was eaten by rats. I was
poor,
Blake, with no hope. No hope at all."