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 t
ell 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."
Blake put out his hand to touch her, but she twisted away and stood sightlessly looking out to sea, her eyes wet. "I also worked in the 'ponies. I helped my mother give birth to Hernando under a tank, with fertilizer dripping on us. I saw nothing but poverty, disease, death – and hard work. I didn't even know about a world like this," she said, waving her hand around her. "We saw the rich ones come: the bosses, the owners, the tourists. They were like gods. So clean! So rich! So beautiful! They smelled so good that I wanted with all my heart just once to be clean and sleek and smell like that."
She paused and took a deep breath.
"One day Voss came. I was begging on the steps of the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan. Begging. A ragged, dirty ten-year-old girl. I lived on the twenty-seventh level of a slum without working elevators with my dying mother and my sick brother, Alvaro – and the bugs and rats. Gangs ruled the slums where no police would enter, and they took what they wanted. Someday, I knew, I would grow old enough, and perhaps attractive enough, to be taken and used by them. But Voss came, and he saw me and asked me to tell him about the place."
She smiled. "He looked so rich. His clothes were so clean and he smelled so good. His women were fantastic beauties. He smiled at me and took my hand. The pyramid's steps are very steep, but he helped me; and we stood on the top and looked at the Aztec city below. I told him what I knew of the Aztecs, but he knew more – my own people, yet he knew more. I was shamed, and when he offered me money I did not want to take it. I took it because my mother was dying, but it shamed me. But Jean-Michel knew. And he did something grand, something greater than building all the tombs of the world."
Rio looked exalted, remembering. "He took money from his wallet and gave it to me, then started to give me more – an impossible amount of money. The numbers were so high they meant nothing to me; I had not the learning. But that, too, he sensed. He called down to Seifor Cardona, his man in Mexico City, and he told him to take care of me. I thought he meant to give me coins instead of bills."
Rio sighed and smiled. "But when Voss left, Sefior Cardona came to me. I was still begging by the steps. He took me himself to our shameful room in the great building. He took my mother and my brother and put them in the hospital. Then, later, he moved us all to Vera Cruz, where it was clean, and I went to school."
Rio laughed a hard, bitter laugh. "They laughed at me. Even in my new dresses I was a primitive savage from the city jungles. Senor Cardona visited me once a month and talked to the sisters. He got me a tutor and soon – ah, soon! – I was the smartest! I knew what they knew, and I knew more! I watched and I did not forget. When Alvaro was old enough, Senor Cardona put him in school with the sisters. And when Mamacita died, he bought her a coffin and a piece of ground in the church lot. He said Sefior Voss would want it so ... Voss. Voss ... I found his pictures in old magazines and I cut them out. Voss was my saint. I studied hard for Voss and for Alvaro and Mama and for myself. When I was fifteen, Senor Cardona sent a picture of me to Jean-Michel and was told to send me to school in Europe."
Rio stopped talking, but Blake did not speak. The palms rustled and the surf hissed. "Alvaro works for him now, in Tampico. He is to be married. To a girl from a family that would spit on us if they knew. I handle some things for Jean-Michel – delicate things, certain negotiations. I am not his whore or his secretary, but ... perhaps both. I do not care. He saved me."
Blake was puzzled. "But you are so ... independent."
Rio smiled slightly. "Of course. I am of no use to him if I am but another of his yes-people, another of the more-than-willing women who spread themselves for him. He made me. He found a dirty, ragged peasant and made me into a creature that men desire, that men respect, that men fight for. I am his."
Blake felt the anger in him, a tight and frustrated anger. "No! You are a human being! You are free!"
Rio looked at him with a sad smile. "Oh, my poor Blake. You cannot understand. If I were Wendy or Caren or Doreen, I would go with you in an instant. If I were still that ragged child, all grown up, I would go with you with wondering eyes. But I cannot do that to Jean-Michel. He knows I am flesh, that I have lusts that do not include him. It doesn't bother him as long as it does not inconvenience him. But if I were to leave..." Rio left the sentence unfinished, pregnant with vague meaning.
"But, Rio,
I – I love you!"
Blake blurted it out, shamed by the awkward crudity of it, but relieved of the pressure.
She smiled at him, softly and warmly. "Thank you, Blake, it ... it is lovely ... But..."
"You don't love me?" Blake tried to call back the words, but they were gone into the air before he thought.
Rio touched his arm. "It's not that," she said. "I – I do love you ... I do, Blake! But I also love Jean-Michel. He needs me."
"Needs you? What the hell does he need another girl for? He may want, but he can't need!"
"He needs me," Rio said firmly. "He trusts few people. I am one of them."
Blake twisted away from the terrace railing. He felt cheated and frustrated and awkward. He turned again to her, his face in anguish. "I have no right ... I – we hardly know each other, but – but I love you."
Rio closed her eyes and her body swayed slightly. Then she looked at him levelly and Blake took a step closer.
"What can we do?" asked Blake. "I'm selfish. I don't want to share you with Voss – or with anyone!"
"I can't ... do it that way," she said. "We must be careful. Already Jean-Michel thinks you are different. Partly because you are building his tomb, partly because he respects you. Nothing must seriously detract you from this commission. It is very important. Secondly, because ... because he senses you are different for me."
"But, crumbs..."
"...are better than nothing," Rio smiled. She paused and her face grew sober. "Perhaps I should tell you ... No ... Yes..." She looked perplexed, then she shrugged. "You should know," she said.
She drew Blake close to her, though not too close, and spoke confidentially to him. "I know you have wondered at the reason for the tomb. A man so young and all. But Jean-Michel is a man. To the world he is powerful and sure, but inside ... he is afraid to die." She raised her hand to stop Blake's words. "We are all afraid. Some of us are more so, and others ... Well, in the slums life is cheap. To die is not to lose very much." She shrugged. "It is the way it is. But Jean-Michel has always had money. He was born rich and got richer. He is not a Rothschild or a Rockefeller, but he was born rich enough. He has seen poverty and filth, and he has a fear of it – and of dying, of losing so much..."
To THE LAND OF THE ELECTRIC ANGEL: Hugo and Nebula Award Finalist Author (The Frontiers Saga) Page 9