To THE LAND OF THE ELECTRIC ANGEL: Hugo and Nebula Award Finalist Author (The Frontiers Saga) (4 page)

"I
want the best art. Murals by Don Kains, a portrait by Paula Powers, a Coe assemblage from the trivia of my life. Sculpture by Rosenthal, Gieen, perhaps Mallinoux or Cordova. But nothing that needs, power – no sensatrons, no electronics, nothing that can be detected. Everything must be built to last."

Blake smiled. "Are you planning to take it with you into the afterlife?"

Voss looked at him a moment before he smiled, "Perhaps, Mr. Mason, perhaps." He laughed softly. "If the pharaohs could do it, why can't I?" He nodded to himself, then looked at Blake. "This project will make you rich and famous."

Sensing a bargaining point not to be lost, Blake matched his smile and said, "I am already rich and famous."

"No, man,
rich
and
famous – not
just rich and famous." He laughed lightly, with a kind of disturbing secret amusement, then sipped at his Benedictine.

"It sounds like a major project."

"It is. I'd like you to drop everything else," Voss said.

"I have contracts I must fulfill," Blake said. The impact of the project was only now beginning to get to him.
A tomb as big as a pharaoh's, and to last how long?

"Then don't take on any new ones. When this is finished ... hell, long before ... you'll be able to command much higher fees."

Blake hesitated, then plunged ahead. "Just how much money are you prepared to spend, Mr. Voss?" He gestured as if to say it was crass to talk of such matters, but one must start somewhere.

"One hundred million. In Swiss francs, of course." Blake's chest was suddenly tight. "To start," Voss added casually. Now Blake's chest was much too tight for his heart. "I know these things take time and always cost more in the long run. I expect we'll change our minds about details as we go along. But I want it done
right.
The hundred million is only to get you thinking in the right area. I will go as high as 150,000,000 as long as the tomb is completed to my satisfaction."

"Mr. Voss..."

" 'Jean-Michel,' please. We will get to know one another, yes?" He laughed again, an odd, wry laugh, as if secretly amused. "We plan for my death, no?" At Blake's expression of shock he waved a genteel hand. "No, I'm not being morbid – only ego, my friend. A mark to make in the world, perhaps. I can afford it. You might say that after I am dead who will care...?"

"I..." For once Blake Mason was at a loss for words.

The Gardens of Babylon had been estimated at 300,000,000 European standard francs, but much of the labor had been done by the Shah's army, and the cost was borne by the treasury of a petroleum-rich nation. The pleasure dome projects were commercial ventures, with a return expected. But here was a private project, privately financed, an artistically oriented commission that was certain to bring him fame, if not glory.

"Uh ... Why did you choose me? There are other, bigger companies. Enzenbacher and Son. Quigley and Rausa..The Corwin Company. Environments, Unlimited–"

"No. You are the best. The best for what I want. This will be more than just a tomb, it will be a home. It must be built Mound a central chamber, and the specifications for that will be sent to you." Voss smiled. "You look puzzled. Yes, a home. In a mountain."

"A mountain?" Blake felt stupid.

"A mountain to hollow out. It's in the Rockies, and it is geologically stable; I've had it carefully tested. The only thing that might affect it is continental drift, but nothing can be done about that. We will hollow the rock out, make it into a home where, if I chose, I could live comfortably for many years. That is why I selected you. Should I ... um ... decide to live in it for an extended period, it would still be a pleasant place."

Blake nodded, though still not certain what was expected of him.

"You will begin to understand as our talks progress. This mountain, I own the sixty thousand acres surrounding it. Or rather, certain companies I control do, or foundations. We'll fly up there soon and look it over. When can you go? I'd like you to get an idea of the location soon."

Blake blinked but didn't answer.

Voss peered at him. "We do have a deal, do we not? The lawyers and the contracts can get here in good time. This is the important part: the agreement, the meeting of minds."

"Uh? Yes, of course."

Voss grinned. He stuck out his hand and Blake took it automatically. "When can you fly up?" he asked again.

"Uh, anytime next week. No, this weekend. This weekend all right?"

"Fine. Saturday morning. Which is more convenient for you, Palmdale International or the Catalina float?"

"Catalina."

"Fine. Be at the Voss hangars at, ur, nine?"

Blake felt just a bit dizzy and more than slightly confused. A hundred-million-franc tomb for a living man? Hollowing out a mountain. Top artists? Pharaohs, indeed!

"Mr. Voss, er, Jean-Michel, there must be other reasons why you picked me?"

Voss stopped as he strode toward the door. "You have the right sort of engineering degrees, the reputation of being discreet, and,, of course, because you were the most sensual."

"Sensual? You want a
sensual
tomb?"

"Yes, of course. No one has ever had a sensual tomb before, certainly not on this scale. Oh, a few nudes in sterile white marble – very virginal. A bed for the pharaoh's afterlife. That's all." His wry smile widened. "People don't think of death as being sensual, do they?"

"No. Neither do I, to be perfectly frank."

Voss threw back his head, and his laugh was a sharp bark. "But you see, after it is built, I will live in it, at least for a little while; and later on, too, perhaps. I may have companions. Then, perhaps, if I have an afterlife, the tomb will certainly be my home." He paused, came back, and clasped Blake's upper arm. "Who knows what the world of the future may be like?"

Blake left the studio that night in a state of total bemusement. The crowds that thronged the malls and corridors of the arcolog did not bother him. Usually their jostling and noise gave him a feeling of claustrophobia and loneliness. He had often contemplated moving closer to his studio, or even expanding and building a home as an extension of the studio, but the space he would need had never become available. Now he enclosed himself in the ark dweller's capsule of indifference and pushed his way mechanically through the crowds.

He stopped at a restaurant and ate a bowl of soysoup without really tasting it. His thoughts were on the project ahead.

Epic. That's what Voss wants,
Blake told himself.
Something fabulous, as well as eternal. Something with a unifying sense, something that has to be taken as a whole, not just as a collection of items. The Egyptians had it because their art was of one style, with only one way of doing things, one way of looking at art. From the top down,
Blake thought as he paid for the soup.

He took an escalator up two decks and walked along the commercial level until he came to the Swain Gallery. The pedestrian traffic was very light here, for the shops were closed. A new sensatron artist had an exhibit, and an example of his art was in each window of the dark gallery. The plastic window panels were especially fenestrated with microholes to allow the Alpha and Beta waves as well as the sonic waves to come through directly.

The first cube was a pastoral, a square of primitive forest in some long-gutted section of the world. Blake could see through the thick underbrush toward a clearing in the trees, almost as if he were in hiding, watching for prey. The cycle on the cube was not long. Insects crawled on the leaves nearby, a huge butterfly flopped through drunkenly, the wind sighed in the clean, green trees. Then Blake saw movement through the tree trunks, and the Alpha-wave projectors made the adrenaline surge in his bloodstream. He was suddenly tense. A deer walked slowly into the clearing, a doe with delicate markings. She stopped, looked around, dipped her head to chomp some grass, looked around again. Blake was startled when the brush before his face parted, as if his own hand had moved it. The deer's head went up, and a second later the animal was bounding away, to disappear in a few seconds. The brush stopped moving, the forest returned to its noisy silence, and the same butterfly flopped through again.

Not bad,
thought Blake. I
wonder where he found such a parkland to use for his basic photographic imagery. Places like that are hard to find.
He moved on to the next window and the second sensatron.

Here was a dawn world, with strange prehistoric ferns that seemed outsized. There was a murky pool of water in the foreground, dark and topped with scum. Suddenly the placid scene erupted. The head of a great gray-green brontosaurus rose, dripping and munching on slimy greens. The reptilian head loomed close, then turned ponderously and looked over his shoulder. With a crunching sound, a
Tyrannosaurus Rex
stalked out from behind some rocks, and the subsonic music quickened in Blake's ears. Another monster from the past roared challenge offsereen, and the herbivore in the foreground ducked away. There was the smell of sweat and decaying vegetation.

Suddenly Blake felt pressure against his kidney, and hands grabbed his arms.
Fool!
Blake was annoyed with himself.
After-hours on a darkened commercial level, what else can I expect but a mugging?

His assailants twisted him around roughly. One was thin, with the erratic twitch of an Eroticene addict gone past the help of any antidote. The other, young and elegant in a cheap, trendy way, wore a sleek and shiny white suit with a fashionably padded crotch. Both were smiling, but the addict's grin had a mean twist to it.

"Your money or your life," the one in white said.

"Stand and deliver," the addict said in a gravely voice that dissolved into a high-pitched giggle.

They've been watching too many historical tapes,
Blake thought. "I only have credit tabs," he said.
No one uses cash anymore, at least no one legitimate – or not often. But surely they know that, too.

The slim one in white laughed abnormally loud, and right in Blake's ear. He waved a knife around and Blake stared at it. It shone in the light from the cubes. The
Tyrannosaurus Rex
was rolling around on the bottom of the cube with a spiny-backed reptile Blake had not seen enough of to identify.

"I guess you'll have to pay a forfeit," the one in white said. He brought the knife close, and brushed the point against Blake's throat.

It had been a long time since Blake's two years in the service and his two years of militia, when he had been called out to quell food riots and fight in little brushfire wars between ethnic arks. It had been even longer since the bravos in his ark section had challenged him on the way to school. Violence was just not part of Blake's world anymore. He had almost forgotten that special surge of fear and the thrill that such situations brought. There were accidents in his world, such as a fail-safe system failing on someone's aircar, or someone at a party falling a few levels
and
bloodying a neighbor's dome or being squished on his terrace. But that violence was not personal, it was just part of modern living, like elevator failure or a fouled computer readout.

His adrenaline surged and Blake started thinking fast. He knew these scrubs didn't want money. Indeed, they would have been very surprised to find any. If he were a woman, they might rape – not out of passion but out of boredom, or out of hatred. Since he was a man, they would want to play games: Run and well chase you ... Walk on the edge of this slidewalk, it's only a fifty-meter drop ... Challenge one of us to a duel. Or else...

The zongo gangs roamed every arcolog. If the police came they ran, knowing every chute and elevator – in this condo and out that delivery hatch, down that tube, up that access passage. They had lithe young bodies and good motivation for hiding. The police seldom gave chase for very long: they were older, and hadn't the motivation to run blindly down service halls with knocked-out light panels and deadfall traps.

Blake looked down the curve of the mall, but few citizens were in sight. The Monte Carlo section was popular at this time of night, as the gaudy, rowdy Sinstrip would be later on. Few people in
this
area now – mainly service technicians, and they were faraway, either unseeing or deliberately unseeing. They had to work nights in this section, and the gangs might return anytime. White Suit laughed. "No loyal members of the constabulary in view, citizen slave."

His knife grazed Blake's cheek. The designer tried to stay calm, to stall until a patrol craft floated by.

"Forget it," White Suit said. "There's a Zeropop riot over in the university or somewhere."

"It's a Living Standards protest, Lennie," the addict said.

"Shut up, Weed." Lennie turned back to Blake, who had not moved. "In any case, no blackshirts, citizen slave, none at all."

He pulled Blake toward the darkness of a support column covered with violent-colored posters, shoving him against a torn placard of George Clay's Law and Order Coalition. Lennie's chuckling laugh degenerated into a giggle, as if he could not help but laugh at the irony.

Suddenly Blake was afraid. Up until then he had been startled, and apprehensive, but had had no real fear.
They're kidding. They'll go away.
But they weren't going away and they weren't kidding. Now Blake was afraid. Even as Lennie patted his body, looking for weapons, Blake was composing a headline: NOTED ENVIRONMENTALIST KILLED, VICTIM OF VIOLENCE. "The sad death of Blake Mason spurs Ark Director Bloch to sweeping reforms..."

Death.

Nothingness.

Then, just as suddenly, the fear was gone, and anger replaced it.
How dare they!

"Duel or chase?"

"Huh?"

"Duel or chase, citizen slave?"

The addict giggled, holding the knifepoint against Blake's throat.

They don't rob for gain, only for thrills,
Blake thought.
Urban banditos!
The anger spoke. "I don't feel like running."

A wicked grin spread across Lennie's face. He stepped back, hands spread, the knife loose in his right.

The addict backed off into the mall, looking in both directions and grinning crookedly. "Uh, looks okay, Lennie."

"Come on, citizen slave," Lennie said, gesturing Blake out.

"Where's mine?" Blake said, indicating the knife. Lennie shook his head, his eyes glittering. "Table stakes, citizen. You should carry."

Blake didn't speak, but he edged forward. He saw Weed move toward him and realized the table stakes were high. Three to one, counting the knife.

It's time to reduce the odds.

He faked a lunge to the right, then broke left toward the mall space, then just as quickly threw himself to the right, toward the wall, hitting and bouncing, letting himself twist and roll along the ferroconcrete until he was almost behind Lennie.

Lennie turned and Blake brought up his leg, kicking straight out from the knee, aiming for the crotch. Lennie twisted, avoiding it. But he stumbled, and Blake shoved at him, breaking past and striking at Weed. The addict lurched, blood on his cheek, but did not fall. Blake kicked at his feet and the twitching Weed crashed to the mall deck.

With a strangled cry Lennie threw himself at Blake. His knife cut through Blake's jacket, caught on the tough creaseless fabric, and as Blake leaned backward the knife twisted from Lennie's grasp. He stumbled and fell to one knee. Blake grabbed at the knife, but it fell to the hard deck with a clatter.

Lennie lurched up and started running, not looking back. Blake took a few steps after him and stopped. Then he turned toward Weed, who was unconscious. He looked at him, then stooped to pick up the knife. Putting the point of the blade into a crack between the support column and the sidewall of a balancing salon, he snapped the knife in two and threw the pieces down the dark mall.

Goddamn stupid fight!
Blake told himself with great annoyance.
How stupid to get in that position. I know better. 1 grew up in these arks, I ran with gangs out of self-protection.
He knew that criminals and addicts roamed every ark in the world: mindless mini-rioters, vandals in permaplast, the true sons of Attila – each of them bored and frustrated.

The brontosaurus was still munching placidly. The tyrannosaurus lurched into the background once again, continuing the cycle that would go on as along as the sensatron had power or until something in its electronic guts burned out.

Blake headed for the nearest elevator cluster and went home.

The world had barely escaped strangling in its own waste, the planet was gutted, and only the fusion torches and mass accelerators had saved it. They mined the waste heaps, recycled the garbage in a way never before possible, shredding the very molecules with the tiny suns of the fusion torches, stripping the waste down to the atoms themselves, before separating them with the mass accelerators. This technique gave man back most of his precious elements in a form more purified than ever before. Recycling with fusion torches and mass accelerators had given man a second chance, and just in time. Given hope, the birthing masses of the world tried harder, so that although everything was still not perfect at least there was now no fear of using up the Earth's resources completely. Fusion torches didn't plant or harvest food, and mass accelerators didn't distribute it, but at least now there was material, chemicals, power – and hope.

Man had colonized Mars and had turned the
.
Moon into something not much more than an exotic, if somewhat distant, port. Satellites now sailed in silent swarms around the planet, gathering solar power, monitoring the weather, feeding down information about the sun and stars. Man was spreading outward at last, but in a painfully slow manner. Probes had gone to the other planets and there had been a few manned missions; and now there was even talk of mining operations starting on the moons of Jupiter as soon as an efficient shielding against the big planet's deadly radiation could be developed.

Nevertheless, still the population grew. Babies came relentlessly, even though the Pope had at last reversed himself and amended the Church's historical stand on contraception. But he was too late. The more practical-minded of his flock had long since deserted him for theologies that had more relevance. Belatedly, congresses and parliaments made laws, dictators and regents issued edicts, foundations said I-told-you-so, and economists held their heads. There were too many people for the available food and available space. Ecological structures only utilized existing space more efficiently, they did not solve the problem.

Angered and frustrated, youth had little to do. Most young people took the highroad: drugs and sex, "challenges" and quick thrills. The old cliche of "Live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse" was still operational for a large percentage of the young.

Blake shook his head sadly and punched out his secret code on the, door lock, thumbed the sonic identifier, stood on the hidden sensor mat.