“Desperate, then. It’s no secret. Roditis feels he’s qualified to handle a potent persona like Paul Kaufmann, and he also believes that the two of them acting together can have much to offer society. The two greatest business minds of the century, blended into a dynamic team. Honestly. I think so, too. I profoundly wish Roditis would be granted the persona.”
“Do you know who else wants Paul?” Elena asked.
“Who?”
“His nephew Mark.”
“That’s impossible! A transplant within the family—”
“Illegal, I know. Mark knows it too. He has no hope of actually getting the transplant. But he has business ambitions too, and they’d be well served if he had the use of his uncle’s experiences. Besides, he’s eager to keep the old man out of Roditis’ possession.”
“Why does Mark hate Roditis so much?”
“He regards him as an upstart. It’s quite simple, Charles. The Kaufmanns are aristocrats by birth. They have ancestry. As do you. As do I. As does Santo. We have more than wealth; we have pedigrees back into the twentieth century, even to the earlier centuries. Roditis can tell you his father’s name, but that’s all. Now, with a Kaufmann persona, he’d have social access to our group, access that he can’t buy with all his billions. Mark is determined not to let Roditis force his way in. He regards it as blasphemy for a man like that to have his uncle’s persona.”
“We were all upstarts once,” Noyes pointed out. “Take the Kaufmann line back far enough and you find peasants. Go back farther and you find apes.”
Elena’s laughter tinkled across the lounge. “Of course, of course! But it’s the distance between the peasant and the banker that marks the social prestige. Your Roditis is too close. Perhaps his great-grandchildren will rule society, but Mark won’t tolerate it now.”
“Mark can’t have his uncle’s persona. He’d be wise to give in gracefully and let Roditis have it. Bury the hatchet, forge a mighty alliance of wealth.”
“That’s not how Mark operates,” said Elena.
“He could. Elena, I’d be grateful if you’d suggest that to him. Point out the advantages of combining with Roditis instead of battling him.”
“You want me to serve as a go-between, passing Roditis’ messages?”
He colored. “You put it very bluntly.”
“We are on the island of truth, Charles. This is what you want from me, is it not? To push Roditis’ case with Mark?”
“Yes.”
“And perhaps even to talk to Santo?”
“Yes.”
“Is there anything else you want from me, Charles?”
He could barely look at her. The carniphage flask throbbed against his breastbone. He felt bitterly ashamed that she would humiliate him before Kravchenko this way. But he had asked for it.
“There’s one more thing I want,” he said.
“Name it.”
He touched the warmth of her shoulder. “An hour with you in the bedchambers of the inner level.”
“Certainly,” she said, as though he had asked her to tell him the correct time.
They left the cocktail lounge and passed through a hall of gaudy nightmare fantasies, and crossed an arena in which the products of teratogenetic surgery performed a grotesque dance, and rose on a circular ladder leading beyond a pool of slippery cephalopods engaged in a stately ballet, and at length they came to one of the blocs of bedchambers that were scattered at frequent intervals through the galleries of Jubilisle. For fifty dollars he rented an hour’s use of a room.
Within, Elena activated a device that cast a kaleidoscopic pattern on the ceiling above the circular bed. Then she disrobed. Beneath the scaly gown she wore only an elastic strip around her hips, and another that bound her breasts, thrusting them upward and close to each other. His hundred-dollar bill was wedged in that deep cleft. She snapped the elastic strips; her massive breasts tumbled free, and the banknote fluttered to the floor. Ignoring it, she faced him, displaying her nudity for his inspection, and without a word arranged herself on the bed.
—Your big moment, Kravchenko told him.
Furiously Noyes dug into the darkest corners of the persona to learn the secrets of unlocking Elena’s passion. The information was all there: the proper zones, the proper words, the timing. Kravchenko had most diligently done the research for him years ago.
Noyes joined Elena on the bed. Their bodies met. Their flesh touched and exchanged warmth.
He made the rewarding discovery that she was easily aroused and that she was satisfying in her frenzy. At the climactic moment she dug her heels into the backs of his legs and shivered in authentic ecstasy, but then, amid the stream of wordless syllables of joy that issued from her lips, it seemed to Noyes that he heard her saying, “Jim, Jim, Jim, Jim, Jim!”
8
John Roditis listened with flickering patience to all that Noyes had to tell him. They sat at the edge of a wide veranda overlooking Roditis’ Arizona ranch; before them stretched an infinite acreage of harsh brown turf, tufted here and there by grayish-purple islands of sage. Roditis had been in Arizona all week, supervising the preliminary negotiations for a power project encompassing the region south of Tucson and well over the Mexican border. He had had Noyes fly to him that morning, four days after Noyes’ interlude with Elena Volterra.
Noyes said, “Elena will speak to Santoliquido on your behalf. Probably she’s spoken to him already.”
“Is she his mistress?”
“She’s everybody’s mistress, sooner or later. Mainly she lives with Mark Kaufmann. But she spends time with Santoliquido too. She’s quite intimate with him.”
Roditis knotted his thick fingers together and peered past Noyes into the cloudless, harsh blue sky. “Is Kaufmann aware that Santoliquido is trifling with his woman?”
“I imagine so,” Noyes said. “Neither of them bothered to conceal it much. And Mark’s no fool.”
“Has it occurred to you, then, that Kaufmann has deliberately winked at that relationship—so that by lending Santoliquido Elena, he can influence the destination of his uncle’s persona?”
“You mean, making Elena the price for Santoliquido’s cooperation in keeping Paul Kaufmann out of your clutches, John?”
“Something like that.”
Noyes took a deep breath. “I’ve considered it, yes. But I don’t think it’s the case. What’s going on between Elena and Santoliquido isn’t happening at Mark’s instigation, any more than Mark had anything to do with what took place between Elena and me. And I believe that Elena will serve your interests in dealing with Santoliquido.”
“Why should she?”
“Because I asked her to.”
“How much money did she want?”
“Elena’s not interested in money,” said Noyes. “At least, not in any realistic sense. She’s got all she needs, and any time she wants more she can get it from Kaufmann just for the asking. What fascinates her is power. She likes to be close to strong men. She likes to be at the core of intrigue.”
“She’s not unique in that,” Roditis remarked.
“Elena wants to meet you, John. I suspect that she wants to become your mistress. And she knows that the best way to make an impression on you is to help you get the one thing in the universe you most want and can’t obtain by yourself, which is Paul Kaufmann’s persona. So she’ll use her influence with Santoliquido to get it for you, and then she’ll try to cash in by throwing herself into your bed.”
“It would infuriate Mark Kaufmann if I took away both his woman and his uncle, wouldn’t it?” Roditis said quietly.
“It would madden him.”
“I’m not sure I want to madden him that much,” Roditis said thoughtfully.
“You want the persona, don’t you?”
“Of course.”
“Elena will help you gain it. What happens after that between the two of you is entirely up to you.”
“Why are you so confident that Elena will cooperate?”
&
nbsp; “I’ve explained,” Noyes said. Rising, he stepped off the veranda and scuffed at the desert sand beyond its margin. “There’s another reason that I haven’t mentioned yet.”
“Go on.”
“Elena knew Jim Kravchenko very well. They were lovers in Italy five or six years ago.”
“Yes,” Roditis said. “So?”
“Elena was very fond of Kravchenko. She wants to please him, now that she’s found him again inside me. She believes that by helping me win status with you, she’ll be doing her old friend Kravchenko a good turn.”
“That’s an intricate line of reasoning, Charles. Kravchenko’s dead. If she’s reaching through you to him, she can’t have a very high opinion of you.”
“She doesn’t. She hates me. And this is how she shows it.”
Roditis spat. “There are times when I wonder why I work so hard to get involved with you society people. You’re nothing but beasts, really. You disembowel one another like ballet dancers with tusks, and you find the most complicated possible reasons for doing what you do.”
“Inbreeding, perhaps,” Noyes suggested.
“Yes, that. And more. Mere money doesn’t interest you; your great-grandfathers have made enough for the whole tribe. Mere status is of no importance; you had that before you were old enough to be housebroken. You inherit power and rank. So you turn your lives into a kind of Byzantine intrigue to keep from going crazy with boredom. Rebirth makes it all the more interesting. You can switch back and forth across the generations, opening old wounds, keeping ancient feuds alive, scarring each other, using sex like a dagger.” Roditis’ eyes glittered. “Let me tell you something, Charles. I’m a real Byzantine. I don’t practice intrigue for intrigue’s own sake. I’m looking to put it to practical ends. And so while the whole bunch of you go on backstabbing and clawing, I’m going to move right in and take everything over. Just the way my ancestors moved in and took over Rome. By and by, the language of the Roman Empire was Greek, remember? That’s how a Byzantine works. Watch me.”
“I’ve never stopped watching you, John.”
“Good. We’ll see about Elena’s conference with Santoliquido in a little while. Come take exercise with me, now.”
“I’m a little tired, John. The flight from New York—”
“Come take exercise with me,” Roditis repeated. “If you kept in shape, you wouldn’t be worn out by a little thing like a flight from New York.”
They entered the house, passing through corridors lined with smooth white stucco walls, and descended to the cool basement where Roditis had installed a gymnasium. Quietly he adjusted the gravity control to a boost of ten percent. That was unfair to Noyes, but no matter; Roditis had little desire to waste his exercise session by imposing an insufficient challenge on himself. Usually he boosted the pull by twenty percent or more. When things went badly, he had sometimes worked under double grav, straining every fiber, pushing heart and lungs and muscles to their limits for the sake of extending those limits another notch.
Stripping, Roditis said, “Would you like to recite a mantra of exertion, Charles?”
“I’m not sure there is one.”
“Give us a pious phrase or two, at any rate. Then get out of your clothes.”
Noyes said, “When, by the power of evil karma, misery is being tasted, may the tutelary deities dissipate the misery. When the natural sound of Reality is reverberating like a thousand thunders, may they be transmuted into the sounds of the Six Syllables.”
Roditis belched. “Om mani padme hum. Excuse me.”
“It’s all nonsense to you, isn’t it, John?”
“Western Buddhism? Well, it has its place. I’ve studied the arts of right dying, you know. I mean to leave a well-prepared persona for my next carnate trip.”
“How will it feel, I wonder, being a passenger in someone else’s brain?”
Roditis stared levelly at Noyes. “I won’t be a passenger for long, Charles. You must realize that, of course. I play the game to win, all the time. If I can’t win through to dybbuk, I don’t deserve rebirth.”
“I pity the man who picks your persona.”
“He’ll live comfortably enough. He just won’t be supreme in his own body, is all.” Roditis laughed boomingly. “All this is sixty, seventy years away, though. Right now we’re here for exercise, not speculation on my discorporate existence. Om mani padme hum. Wake up, Charles!”
Roditis activated the vertical trampolines. They were two flexible screens, mounted upright about fifteen feet apart and moving in a flagellatory oscillation on their mountings. He stepped between them and jumped diagonally against the lefthand screen, keeping his ankles pressed close together. The screen batted him away, and he pivoted neatly in midair, directing his feet at the other screen, striking it squarely, rebounding, pivoting again. For twenty cycles he let himself be shuttled back and forth between the screens, never once touching the floor despite the enhanced pull of gravity. Then he resisted the elasticity of the screens by tensing his body, and dropped lithely to his feet at his starting point.
“Your turn,” he said to Noyes.
“John, I—”
“Come on!”
Noyes looked dubious. He stepped between the pulsating screens and leaped. His feet touched the center of the webwork to his left, and the screen hurled him away, slamming him shoulder-first to the floor. He stood up, rubbing himself.
“Again,” said Roditis. “You’re growing fat, Charles. Sleek-headed, and you sleep o’nights. Let me have men about me with a lean and hungry look.”
Noyes leaped again, angrily. As he struck the screen, he flexed his knees, trying hard to achieve the correct propulsive effect that would send him arcing toward the opposite screen. But his feet came in contact with the screen a fraction of a second apart from one another, and he gathered no momentum. Instead he trickled to the floor, striking his cheekbone and the side of his lower lip. He was bruised and bleeding when he arose.
“I’m sorry, John. I’m simply not in shape for this kind of thing, and by the time I get in shape it’ll probably kill me,” he said thinly.
“I’ll make it easier for you.”
Roditis seized the gravity control and cranked it to half level. Beneath the floorboards there was a rumbling sound as the straining magnetodynamic field made the adjustment, and shortly Roditis felt the pressure lift.
“Try again,” he said.
Noyes moved into position and jumped. In the suddenly lighter gravity, he hit the screen too high, but it made no difference; he was hurled across to the facing screen, landing belly first, bounced back, made another cycle, all the time floundering, kicking his long legs about, waving his arms desperately, like a giant Sancho Panza tossing on his blanket. Roditis watched for more than a minute as Noyes slammed back and forth through the air. Then, feeling irritated and amused all at once, he restored the gravity to normal plus ten, and Noyes dropped heavily to the floor. He was slow to get up this time. His face was reddened and his chest heaved.
“Enough of that,” said Roditis mercifully. “Should I call an ambulance, or will you try other exercise?”
Noyes shrugged. Roditis picked up a medicine ball and gently tossed it to him, underarm. Noyes caught it and flipped it back, and for a few minutes they played catch, Roditis surreptitiously stepping up the force of his throws until the heavy ball traveled with considerable velocity. At last Noyes’ trembling fingers failed to hold it, and the ball rocketed into the pit of his stomach, rolling away while he gagged and retched. Roditis did not smile.
They played power-shuffleboard, which Noyes found more to his liking. They swam. They climbed ropes. Roditis took another turn on the trampolines. Then he relented, and they went upstairs to dress. Lunch followed.
Roditis was in a restless, surging mood. His business enterprises were going well; but the one thing that was of highest importance, the Paul Kaufmann project, seemed stalemated and stagnant. He wished he did not need to act through intermediaries in ga
ining Santoliquido’s favor. Especially intermediaries he did not even know, such as this woman Elena Volterra, famous for her beauty and for her promiscuity as well, an unlikely ambassador indeed. He had sent Noyes off to Dominica to make contact with Santoliquido; instead, Noyes had reached this Elena. Perhaps she would serve him well, after all, if Noyes’ tortuous reasoning had any merit to it. But Roditis itched to be handling the deal himself. The groundwork had been laid; now was the moment to fly to New York, corner Santoliquido in his den, and make full, formal, and final request for the transplant of the Kaufmann persona. Time was passing. It was unreasonable of Santoliquido to withhold his decision any longer, and Roditis did not know of any other qualified applicant. Possibly Mark Kaufmann had the capacity to handle the persona of his uncle, but Mark was barred by law and the old man’s direct wish from taking it. Which leaves only me, thought Roditis.
That afternoon he closed the power transaction with the Mexicans. His computer produced the final specifications for the transmission pylons; the Mexican computer produced the final estimates of allowable cost. There was brief negotiation between the computers, and by three o’clock the contract was ready for signing. Roditis affixed his thumbprint, the chairman of the Mexican Power Authority delivered an eloquent speech in confused English, and substantial quantities of tequila were served.
An hour later, Roditis was eighty thousand feet in the air, bound for New York.
The world had become a strange and infinitely complex place for Risa Kaufmann in the eight days since she had acquired the persona of Tandy Cushing. At a single stroke, her stock of life experiences had been more than doubled; her perceptions of human relationships had become more intense; her attitude toward herself, her father, and the world in general had grown more tolerant. The presence of the persona had provided her with a sense of parallax. She had two viewpoints from which to observe events, and that made a vast difference.
She felt a trifle guilty about her former self’s wanton bitchiness. Risa plus Tandy looked upon Risa alone as an insufferable little minx, obsessively self-indulgent, petty, exhibitionistic, with a wide streak of sadism in her makeup. Together, they understood what had created that constellation of undesirable character traits in her: her impatience to erupt into the adult world, which had seemed in no hurry to accept her. Now that she had made that passage safely, it ceased to be important for her to externalize her frustration by tormenting those about her.
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