Below, the flowing rivers of light that marked the freeways between the man-made living mountains continued their never-ending movement. The Venice arcolog to the west and the distant humps of Bel Air and Camelot glittered and shone, rising above the hills and the petite arks to the north and south. On the other side of Sunset, out of sight from the Faring terrace, were the others: Mariana, Great Western, California Tower, Casa Laguna, Heaven, Astro, Ciudad de Oro, Sun City, Maaravier, and Urbo Nova. Housing a half-or three-quarters of a million each, these self-contained city buildings were designed and built with factories within and beneath. Monorails and aircars linked tower to tower. Thousands of cable-television lines linked millions of terminals in a vast information and entertainment system.
Over the Santa Monica Mountains the tips of Koma, Prudential Towers, and the more distant Star could be seen. Beyond, to the north and west along the curve of shore, were Oaktree, Santa Rosa, Camarillo City, Oxnard Center, Ventura, Skycity, and others under construction along the coast to Santa Barbara. To the south, toward the desert, where the towers were faced with huge solar panels and the desert was roofed with them, were still more arcological towers.
Arcologs dotted the landscapes of the world in ever-increasing numbers. They were much more efficient to service, and took up less space, giving up much land that was vitally needed to grow crops. Even many of the planned park interspaces between the big arks had been filled with the overflow of people, buildings, and factories. The arcolog concept had begun with Paolo Soled in the late twentieth-century and his practical example, Arcosanti, the first arcolog, built near Phoenix, Arizona. "Architecture is in process of becoming the physical definition of a multilevel, human ecology," he had written. "It will be arc-ology." The nearest early example was the ocean liner, then the first true deep-space ships.
The pressure of a growing world population and the need to use more efficiently the Earth's resources had brought about the realization of the arcology concept. In urban areas, where the pressure was greatest and land the most precious, the huge structures rose to populations of seven and eight hundred thousand each. There were also many smaller ones, some with as few as ten or twenty thousand, built in outlying districts. Some "micro-arks," housing only a couple of thousand, were built on the same principles. Castillo del Aire, or "Air-castle," near Madrid, had, on the other hand, a million inhabitants. Chicago's Babeldiga had 1,200,000. Novanoah, a huge floating island under construction in the Indian Ocean, was designed for nearly 2,500,000 inhabitants, who would derive 80 percent of their food from the sea itself.
Arcologs were masterpieces of design, and an individual could live and die without ever actually having to leave any one of the huge buildings. Food, entertainment, and myriad services could be brought to the door by tube, multiplex cable, jets, and electric delivery vans. Many people conducted business by television, using computer and information terminals and rarely leaving their home offices.
Blake Mason hated the arks. He realized they were needed; and at times he admired them, much as one may admire an efficient riot tank or a piece of well designed machinery. But Blake could not love an arcolog. It was too cold, too impersonal for him, despite the agile machinations of the arks' social designers.
Blake watched the tiny darting lights of aircabs and the contrails of high-flying jets, a firmament in motion that blotted out the sight of the galaxy. He walked to the edge of the terrace and looked down. The city stretched away – square mile after square mile of building blocks, all at the legal height limit and broken only by the looming bulk of the Christmas-tree-like arks.
Too many, Blake thought. Millions. Too many, but maybe not too many if out there, somewhere, was that one...
The memory of that evening at Lady Faring's was still sharp.
Was Chariot right?
Blake stroked a plastiwax figurine of the thirty-foot Sensualus sculpture he was going to install in front of the elevator doors on Landau's floor.
Was Chariot right that night? Did he touch a vital point? Am I obsessed with sex, or rather with the thought of sex? Is this obsession the reflection of my business and my art, or is my art and business the reflection of that obsession? Or is there really an obsession?
Blake twisted the plastiwax figure he held in his hands, feeling the slightly oily surface, enjoying the sensuality of the dips and curves, letting his imagination flow freely. Thighs and breasts, with nipples hardening. Cool buttocks flexing under gripping hands.
God, Chariot was right! Blake put the figure down quickly. Why couldn't he just admit it, go with it, flow with it, use it, enjoy it. I can't be a Victorian in the twenty-first century! "I'm not that bad," Blake said aloud. I'm not a prude. If I disapprove of the casualness of sex today, it's on the grounds of taste, not prudery.
Or is it? a tiny thought spoke as it scampered through his mind.
Blake picked up the figurine and slammed it down, distorting one soft side. He abruptly turned away and stared for a long moment at the framed sketches for the pleasure dome the Hughes Corporation was building on Silver Mountain. The dome had been a well-received job, with much attendant publicity. The critics, the vidtab faces, and the chic trend setters had all remarked on the effect of the colorquick walls flowing with heat-sensitive crystals in liquid suspension that reacted to body heat and air currents, shifting their colors in rippling waves. There were no straight lines, only organically curved walls. The rooms were warm and soft, with scented air in constant flux, and hidden music helped along by concealed Alpha-wave projectors working directly on the emotions. A bath for the mind, a massage for the soul, a carnival for the body.
Experienced girls would cater to every wish, every need, real and fancied. They had been picked from the welfare levels of the arks, from orphanages and broken homes. Three months of hypnotraining, of probing psychs, of field training in disciplines known for five thousand years or in others unknown fifty years before – and voila! a pleasure dome girl! There was nothing anyone could teach her about sex.
But what about love? Blake Mason mused. He ripped his eyes away from the sketches of one of his greatest achievements. In his office he had more offers, more pleasure dome contracts. Bigger domes, the finest yet: Atlantis, beneath the Mediterranean, and soon the new Xanadu, a jet hop away in North Africa. Hirahawa was doing Tokyo's Tanoshimi, and Bentcliffe was doing Seraglio, in Constantinople, but Blake himself was wanted for the two big ones.
Temples to sex, raised to a high art...
Sex, yes, Blake thought grimly, but what about love?
Does sex come before love? Should love come before sex? Do they have anything to do with each other? Millions of people think not. There is food, sleep, sex, work, and entertainment. Millions of people never think about entertaining themselves. That is for the professionals. Sex, too.
Where is that noble breed of man who is going to fly to the stars, conquer disease, stop death, end famine and poverty? Billions crowd the Earth in gasping swarms, kept alive by the miracle of fusion power and the benefits derived therefrom. But they are just barely alive. The quality of their lives is deplorable. Blake knew he worked and lived among the top few percent of the population: the Shahs, kings, and energy czars. He knew he sucked at the front teat and existed precariously at the crest. "I pretty things up," be said aloud. He moved with those who had never seen the interior of a ghetto or who had never been hungry, except for the inevitable young beauties, male and female, who always surrounded wealth and power. These willing souls had been desperate to escape the dismal fate of growing old and weak and starving to death, unnoticed in the masses.
Blake knew the world did not consist solely of millionaires and haunted-eyed wretches starving in the arks' passages: there was a strong and healthy middle class. But the world only had so many resources, and even the recycling that the fusion torches and mass accelerators provided did not conserve those resources efficiently enough for the growing population. A little bit was lost on each recycling, one way or anot
her; and only through technology had man kept his head above water for this long.
But what is the technology of love?
Blake shook his head angrily. I'm perverted, he thought. I live only in the future, where there is love and peace. And that future might never come! I don't want a harem. Just one woman – the right woman.
Blake smiled ruefully at himself. Self-pity is such a degrading emotion, he thought. He slammed his fist down on the worktable, and a tiny round bed in the publisher's penthouse model flipped over. Blake lurched away and went into his office.
His was an office to inspire confidence. The models and photos were near the entry door, where they would be seen first. Closer to his desk, on the walls and floor surrounding it, were more specific examples of his taste and signs of his prestige. The warm-toned walls were paneled in expensive real wood and were considerably more permanent than the walls of his outer lobby, which could be cosmetically changed for effect. On shelves were relics of the ancient world, as well as the modern and near-past. He prized a pair of Mesopotamian sculptures and a Babylonian tablet the Shah had given him. A Greek head and a magnificent Sioux headdress under glass. A Picasso plate, a Coe assemblage, an intricate breastplate for a ficticious Amazon mercenary by Caruthers. A brick from the Grand Hall ruin near Ares Center on Mars. A lunar opal floating in a cube of crystal ... The past, the present, and the future.
A painting by Otis Flu, an original photoprint by Coogan, a small Cilento sensatron repro cube, and an authentic Van Gogh paintbrush used in a collage by Powers all hung on the walls. Each had been carefully selected to impress and awe, either directly or subconsciously.
A polished cube of Tycho marble on his desk held a lighter, and a chip of stone stolen from the tomb of Cheops was fashioned into a tiny pyramid near it.
Confidence, awe, and admiration were the tools of the modem environmentalist's trade. "Trust me, I know best": the patois of the expert everywhere and every-when.
Blake Mason snorted, thumbed a stud on his desk, and turned toward the wall as a rosewood panel slid silently upward. An enormous screen lit up, on which a dusky brunette with skin the color of burnished copper was slithering through the ruins of Angkor Wat, hissing the message of her sponsor: "Buy the aphrodisiac of the ancient east, the jewel of great price in the handy purse size or in a generous boudoir flacon...”
Blake quickly punched another button.
A serious-faced newsreader was saying, "–esident DeVore was visibly delighted with the visit today at the Southern White House of the delegation from the International Association of Nudists." The scene changed to the pool area of the White House grounds, where a hundred nude men and women clustered respectfully around the small, smiling figure of the President. The newsreader's voice continued over the various cuts to the scene. "Although President DeVore did not disrobe, he did enjoy watching the delegation swim in the presidential pool." A pair of young girls came forward, moving awkwardly and obviously embarrassed by all the attention, to put a flower lei around the President's neck and to kiss him on each cheek. The President smiled and laughed, but Blake noticed that he did not ever touch the girls. "The Nudist Queen of the Americas and the Queen of European Nudism joined together to present President DeVore with a token of appreciation for signing the Free Beaches Act earlier today ... In Great Britain the bisexual scandal is still rocking London and today the Minister of Finance said–"
Blake snapped the set off and the panel slid back to cover the gray screen.
Can't people think of anything else? Can't they do something else?
We voted sex into legitimacy, and rightfully so; but somewhere we lost love, Blake thought. Or is it just me? Are all those couples and triples and foursomes in love? Are they even in like?
Blake dialed the window to transparent and looked out. The City of the Queen of the Angels. The tops of fifty-story office buildings were only the floor for the tall arcologs that dominated the skyline. But below, and between, the buildings were the bars and porno houses, the pawnshops and stim fronts. Live sex shows and obscene sensatrons, with highly realistic women mating with patent impossibilities: urban pagans and beasts from the jungle, their matted hair showing through the rips in their thin layer of civilization.
I could go there and find a woman, Blake thought. Or a boy. Or a man. Or something that would go either way, be anything my money desired, whatever the situation demanded. Momentarily, temptation tugged at his loins, a mindless search for something unknown, something different, but it quickly went away.
I've never done that. I've never bought a woman.
Sure you have, a voice in his head told him. Not in cash, not with a credit card perhaps, but with a present, a service, a favor. That Degas sketch to Daniele had started off their relationship. The visit to the hanging gardens and the introduction to the Shah and his court had so impressed the countess. You've bought it before, his mind-voice reminded.
But buying sex is not my problem, Blake argued with himself. Getting laid is not the problem, it's who I'm laying.
Is it?
Yes, it has always been the who, not the what. Not whether she was rich or famous or black or yellow or talented or anything. It's the who, the woman inside, the person.
Blake Mason pressed his forehead against the cool glass and stared out at the Southern California cityscape.
"I want to fall in love," he said in a whisper. With someone who is not an animal, with someone who is a person first and a sex machine second. With his fingertip, he drew a heart in the condensation on the window and slumped back into his chair.
If wishes were pennies, I'd be rich!
Chapter 2
"Anything else, Elaine?" Blake asked his secretary, handing over a folio of signed mail and a Null-Edit tape to his accountant.
"Just your afternoon appointments, Mr. Mason. You want them now?" The trim, middle-aged woman flipped open her stenochart and looked at Mason, who nodded wearily.
"Two o'clock, Mrs. Barrows from the Landau wants to show you some holos of a gallery in Naples that used sensatronics."
"Call her back and tell her I've seen Santino's and that it is marvelous but will date very, very quickly. The impact of the sensatron is too strong for the use to which they have put it. If she still wants to come in, shift her to Aaron."
"Three o'clock, someone from Hughes wants to come check the progress on your first-draft sketches for Xanadu."
"Head him off. We're not ready yet. Never show a customer anything that isn't at least 75 percent finished."
"Three-thirty – and I'm saving the best for last – none other than Jean-Michel Voss."
"The Jean-Michel Voss?"
"Mr. Money himself. In person, no less. Shawna Hilton called, herself, to make the appointment."
Blake was a little amazed. "He's coming here?"
"Three-thirty. I guess he wants to see you in your natural habitat. Want me to deliver a dossier? He's Voss Oil, Voss Electronics, Voss Investments, Carbocon, Lunaport III, Martian Land Development – and God only knows what else."
"All right, thanks. And, Elaine, cancel all my other appointments."
"Yes, sir," Elaine said as she turned and left the room.
Blake settled back in his chair. Jean-Michel Voss. What could he want with me? I did that Lunarport job for him years ago, but we never met. Blake looked at the rosewood panels of his office, his eyes following a pattern in the grain. Voss Investments are rumored to be behind the Poseidon project in the Bahamas, the biggest undersea dome cluster yet considered. Could he want me for that? What sort of environment would those submariners like? What would be right?
Blake's mind went wandering along the path of visual and sensory associations that typified his approach to preliminary environmental concepts.
Poseidon. Sea god. Water. Domes. Fish. Fish tank, air tank. What would people like to see undersea? Too much water. Maybe land, hot tropical land instead of cold sea? He made a mental note to have Libby check on mean temperature i
n Bahama waters. Desert environment. Contrast. Maybe cubist theme; flat, hot, textured surfaces opposing cool, fluid water.
Voss was lnterport Transfers, too, wasn't he? And didn't he own a piece of Station Three? Or was that Brian Thorne?
A space-station environment? Vast, black space. Stars. Airless. Cold. Faraway. High. Something lush and thick, rich and soft. Contrast again. A touch of luxury. All six walls padded, but with decorator fabrics. Maybe Astro Membranes could develop something more attractive than their standard gray, blue, and oyster.
Damn!
Blake leaned forward and thumbed the stud to Elaine's commline. "What is it'?" he snapped.
"It's Mrs. Shure on One. Sorry, boss."
"Yeah, I know how she is. Okay, I'll take it," Blake said wearily.
He swung to face the visionphone lens and tried to get a smile on his face. He failed. He tried again for a neutral expression tending toward somber, then picked up a sketchpad to be a busy-busy prop and a subtle indicator of his business. Then he punched her in.
"Ah, Mrs. Shure..."
"Mr. Mason, how nice to see you. Are you feeling well? The last time I saw you, you had a bit of a cold. The Andes, didn't you get it in the Andes?"
"No, in. Canada, and that was a year ago, Mrs. Shure." He looked at the woman as she giggled in her prissy way, and wondered if she had ever received an obscene phone call. Ever since visionphones had become standard, the number of obscene phone calls had skyrocketed. "How may I help you?" Blake asked pleasantly.
"Ah ... well ... you know that lovely, lovely decor you did for my daughter Andrea's wedding reception? The psychedelic Aztec temple?"
It took Blake a moment to remember that he had never seen it. Aaron handled that one, the crazy cackler. A psychedelic Aztec temple? Did something like that really come out of my office? I will really have to watch that sort of thing in the future. After the famous financier and patron of the arts, Brian Thorne, had been married at the Temple of Magicians in Yucatan, a brief fad in Aztec and Mayan decor had followed. "I'm glad you enjoyed it," he said. What the hell is her first name?
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