Kubo Flammarion was entering the room, trailing a reluctant Chan along with him. But as they arrived in camera range, Leah was suddenly gone from the screen.
“Here he is,” said Flammarion. He stared at the empty display. “Well, blast it. Now where did she go?”
Tatty swiveled to face him. “Leah had to run. Her pursuit team is meeting. Let’s forget it, Kubo, it won’t work today.” She turned to Chan. I spoke to Leah. She sends you all her love, and she says she can’t wait until she has a chance to see you.”
Chan blushed with pleasure, a flood of pink across fair cheeks. “She said that? I wish I could have said the same thing to her.”
“You will. But she couldn’t stay. The program out there is really strict.”
“And it’ll get stricter,” added Flammarion, “the closer they get to descent to Travancore and the hunt for the Construct. But you shouldn’t be looking at that now, Chan — you ought to be learning all you can about Barchan, because that’ll be your next stop.”
He winked at Tatty. He didn’t know quite what was happening, but he sensed that somehow she had carried them through an awkward situation. Now it was time to get Chan thinking about something else.
Flammarion keyed in the sequence to take them back to the first image.
“Barchan,” he said. “Take a good look at it.”
The scene changed, and he leaned back in confusion. Instead of the heated dust-ball that would be Chan’s training site, the screen displayed the face of Esro Mondrian.
He nodded casually at Flammarion. “Sorry, Captain. I came in on override. I need to talk with Princess Tatiana.” He smiled at Tatty with no trace of embarrassment. “Congratulations, Princess. You did it. I knew you would. And to you, Chan” — he inclined his head — “welcome to Ceres. From all that I hear you’re going to be an outstanding member of the next Pursuit Team.”
“Which means you win your bet,” said Tatty bitterly. “I guess that’s all you care about.”
Mondrian stared at her with a surprised expression. “That’s not true, Princess, and you know it. We can talk about all that later. I called to say that I’ve arranged for us to have dinner tonight, and you’ll have the chance to meet an old friend.”
“I have no friends on Ceres — unless it’s Chan and Kubo.”
“Wait and see.” Mondrian was smiling again. “I’ll come over there and pick you up at seven. Dinner will be just the four of us: you, me, Luther Brachis — and Godiva Lomberd.”
“Godiva!” But before she could do more than say the name, Mondrian vanished from the screen. In his place were the swirling dust-clouds and umber sky of Barchan. Tatty stared at them, her fists tight-clenched.
“Damn you, Esro Mondrian.” She swung to Flammarion. “Damn that man. He ignores me for months. Then he thinks he can call up and suggest dinner, just like that, as though nothing has happened. Well, no way. I’ll see him in hell before I’ll see him at dinner.”
Tatty paused in her outburst. She had been talking to Flammarion, and so she had only just noticed Chan’s face. It was white and staring. “Chan! Are you all right?”
“Who was that man?” His voice was a whisper. “Who?”
“Him?” Flammarion, concentrated on Tatty, had not noticed the change in Chan. “He’s my boss, that’s who. Commander Esro Mondrian, head of the whole Morgan Construct operation. You want to meet him? You will, soon as your training program gets going.”
Chan was nodding. “Yes,” he said softly. His hands were clasped as tightly as Tatty’s. “I would like to meet Commander Mondrian — very much.” He glanced over to Tatty. “He wants you to go to dinner.”
“I know. I’m not going. Damn the man.”
Chan’s stare at her was more probing, an alien expression overwriting his mouth and innocent eyes. “I think you will, Tatty, he said at last. He nodded. “Yes, I think that you will.”
Chapter 17
These are the Seven Wonders of the Solar System:
• The Vulcan Nexus
• The Oort Harvester
• The Sea-farms of Europa
• The Uranian Lift System
• The Mattin First Link
• The Venus Superdome
• The Tortugas’ Tetrahedra
• The Persephone Fusion Network
• The Vault of Hyperion
• Oberon Station
• The Jupiter Bubble
• Marslake
There are a dozen items on the Seven Wonders list. That is not an error. For although everyone agrees on the first four, all the rest are a source of argument. Is the Hyperion Vault more impressive than Oberon Station, merely because it is bigger? Is the Jupiter Bubble more deserving of inclusion than the Venus Superdome, because it is far more difficult to maintain? How does technical sophistication trade off against beauty or elegance — or, for that matter, against importance to the human race? Why are visiting aliens all so taken with the Harvester, and so bored by the Sea-farms? And is it at all fair to include the metal tetrahedra of the Dry
Tortugas on such a list, since they are not the result of human efforts?
For some reason no one ever puts the reconstruction of Ceres anywhere on a catalog of marvels. Yet a minor planet, less than one thousand kilometers across, has become the most populous and influential body in the solar system. Should not that be regarded as a major miracle?
Ah, but the work was done long ago, using the same simple and ages-old technology that built the Earth-warrens and tunneled out the Gallimaufries. No one is impressed by that. And whatever the technology, the results are too familiar. Ceres is on no one’s list.
But it should be. After centuries of steady work, modern Ceres possesses less than half the mass of the original. Instead of a body of solid rock with minor intrusions of organic material, Ceres is now a sculptured set of concentric spherical shells. One within another, varying in roof height from less than four meters to nearly a kilometer, the internal chambers extend from the center of the planetoid all the way to the surface.
The original body offered less than two million square kilometers of available surface area. The honeycomb of modern Ceres provides a thousand times as much — more than ten times the original land area of Earth. And if Ceres itself does not qualify as a major wonder, then what about its transportation system? It had to be designed to carry people and goods efficiently through the three-dimensional spherical labyrinth of tunnels and chambers. It is a topological nightmare, a complex interlocking set of high-speed railcars, walkways, drop-shafts, escalators, elevators, and pressure chutes. A trip from any point to any other can be made in less than one hour — if you have the help of a computer route guide. And few people would attempt any trip without such assistance. An unguided journey, if it could be done at all, would take days.
After a few sessions of coaching by Kubo Flammarion, Tatty had reached the point where she could handle the route instructions provided by the transit computer. She always went cautiously, checking each interchange that she had to make on the way.
Now it was time to introduce Chan to the system. On their first brief visit, before they went to Horus, she had been obliged to lead him everywhere. This time he took one look at the overall plan, listened impatiently to Flammarion’s lecture on route selection strategy, and disappeared as soon as he was free to leave.
He was gone for many hours. When he came back he seemed to have been all over the planetoid, and he knew the internal layout of Ceres in far more detail than either Tatty or Kubo Flammarion. The next morning, as soon as the training session was over, he was off again.
He seemed to be avoiding Tatty. It was a surprise to her when he came wandering into her living-quarters as she was dressing before going off for dinner with Esro Mondrian.
Chan flopped into a seat in the middle of the room. Tatty looked at him warily. On Horus, before the change in Chan, she had been quite casual. She had thought of him as a child, and allowed him to see her in a nightgown
and in random stages of partial undress. Now she closed her bedroom door firmly as she went in and locked it behind her.
She was gone for half an hour. Uncharacteristically, Chan stayed. She could hear him pottering about in the kitchen while she was bathing and dressing, and he was still there when she came out.
Tatty walked to the full-length mirror near the door. Chan came to stand behind her, examining her appearance closely. She was wearing a white dress, sleeveless and off the shoulder, with pale mauve accessories. The purple marks of old Paradox shots were slowly fading from her arms, a curiously apt match to the clothes that she wore.
Chan caught her eye in the mirror as she studied the sweep of her hair. “Very — elegant. Is that the right word to use?”
“It is. Thank you.”
“You look very beautiful. I thought you would rather go to hell than to dinner with Esro Mondrian.”
“All right, Chan.” She turned to look at him directly. “That does it. What do you want? I’ve got enough on my mind without you adding to my worries.”
He shook his head and said nothing. But shortly before Mondrian was due to arrive, Chan left the apartment.
Tatty continued her careful application of makeup. At one minute to seven she went to the apartment door and opened it. She smiled in satisfaction. As she had expected, Mondrian was in the corridor, walking toward the apartment. Whatever his faults, he was precisely punctual. As though they had planned it together, he was dressed in a formal uniform, a plain black that was trimmed with just the same pale mauve that she was wearing.
She studied his face. He looked better, full of suppressed energy. He bowed formally as he came closer, and kissed her hand.
“You look magnificent. The Godiva Bird will be envious.”
Tatty shook her head. “Godiva is never envious of anyone. She never needs to be.”
She stepped outside quickly and closed the door, to make it clear that she did not propose to invite Mondrian into her living-quarters. He stood for another moment looking at her, then took her arm and led her away along the corridor.
“You seem upset, Princess,” he said softly. “I hope this evening will relax you.”
Tatty did not reply at once. She thought she had caught sight of Chan, dodging away along the walkway in front of them.
“What do you think I am, Esro?” she said at last. “Some sort of Artefact, or an extra royal, that you can put into cold storage when you don’t need, and pull out when it can be useful to you?”
“I don’t like to hear you talk like that, Princess. You know I never think of you that way.”
“I don’t know it at all. Not when you leave me to rot on Horus, and never visit, and never call, and never even send a message. You say this evening will relax me — when I never know what to expect from you. You treat me worse than somebody put away in cold storage. At least they are unconscious. They don’t sit there watching their lives tick away, wasting months and months just waiting.”
She tried to shake her arm free. Mondrian would not release his hold.
“Wasted months.” He sighed. “Ah, I know. A week on Horus can seem like a year anywhere else. But do you really think the time was wasted? Chan Dalton is a full person now, instead of being a baby. That couldn’t have happened without you. Was it time wasted?”
He stopped walking. He was still holding her arm, so that she had to swing around to face him. She stared angrily into his calm eyes, and refused to answer. After a few seconds he shook his head.
“Princess, if you think that badly of me, you should never have agreed to come to dinner.”
“I thought I might get an explanation of why you deserted me out there — or at least an apology. You’ve no idea what I had to go through.”
“I know exactly what you were going through. It was terrible. But as I told you at the beginning, I couldn’t do it myself, and I needed somebody that I trusted completely — somebody I could rely on even if I couldn’t be there to keep an eye on things. Do you know why I didn’t come to see you on Horus? Because I couldn’t. I wasn’t off somewhere having fun. I was busy — busier than I’ve ever been in my whole life.”
“You found time to go galloping off to Earth. What were you doing there?”
Tatty expected any reply but the one she got. Mondrian merely shook his head.
“I can’t tell you. You’ll have to take my word for it, Princess, it was business, not pleasure. And I didn’t enjoy it one bit.”
She was starting to feel the guilt that only Esro Mondrian could create within her. Was she the unreasonable one, the cruel one, the woman who carped and whined at a desperately busy man when he could not find time to call her? She knew how hard he worked. How many times had she awakened in the early morning, to find Mondrian gone from her side? Too many to count. But he was not being unfaithful to her. He had tiptoed away in the dark into the next room. He was pacing up and down there, writing, dictating, making calls, worrying. Her rival was his work. And she had known that for years.
Mondrian reached out to touch her cheek. “Don’t be sad, Princess. I thought tonight could be a really happy occasion — the chance to see Godiva again, just like old times. Can’t we try to enjoy ourselves — just for a few hours?”
Tatty put her hand on his. They turned and began to walk again, side by side. “I’ll try. But Essy, everything is so strange here. It’s not like Earth, and I’m never relaxed. I couldn’t believe it when I heard that Godiva had left Earth to live out here with Brachis.”
Mondrian slipped his arm through hers. “You’re forgetting something — how many times you asked me to take you away from Earth with me. Maybe she did the same. It’s odd, you know, but we put Godiva onto Luther Brachis in the first place. Remember, she was supposed to bring me information?” He laughed. “Not a great idea. After the first few weeks she said she couldn’t tell me any more, and the next thing I knew she was up here with him.” He glanced sideways to Tatty. “Did I misjudge Godiva? I thought it was all money that made her tick. Now, I’m not so sure.”
“She’s a hard person to know.” For the first time, Tatty focused on her own feelings about Godiva. “I met her four years ago, at Winter Solstice. We both attended the Gilravage, the big party down on the lower levels. She gave a performance, and danced as Aphrodite. It was a sensation. After that we ran into each other all the time.”
“Where did she come from?”
“Nowhere special. Somewhere down in the Gallimaufries. I suppose she must be a commoner — at least, I never heard her say a word about her family.”
“You like her, Princess, even if she is a commoner.”
“I didn’t. The first few times we met I hated her. I think most women do, instinctively. We feel as though she can take whatever she wants, or whoever she wants, and we have no defenses. But after a while I did start to like her. She’s really a nice person.”
“The whore with the heart of gold?”
“Close to it. You see, I don’t think Godiva is bright, like me or you.” Tatty spoke quite unselfconsciously. “So she just does what she can with what she has. She happened to be born with unusual assets, and she uses them. Sex for money, I can’t see that as a big sin. Anyone who ever went with Godiva seemed to have a wonderful time. She never had a man under false pretenses, and so far as I can tell she never hurt anyone.”
“Not even when she was spying on them?” They were approaching the restaurant, and Mondrian had deliberately slowed his steps. “Her actions might have hurt Luther Brachis.”
“She stopped them before they did. Anyway, that was your action, not hers. Even when she was watching him for you, I feel sure she didn’t mean to harm him. She doesn’t think that way.”
“What happened when a man fell in love with her?”
“That’s a funny thing. No one ever did. She handled everything on a commercial basis, and she parted friends with all her men. They recommended her to others. She must have made a fortune, but she never seemed to fal
l into any permanent relationship. Until she met Luther Brachis.” Tatty turned to look at Mondrian. They had halted, and were standing outside the restaurant door. Over his shoulder she caught another glimpse of a tall figure, ducking back into the shadow at the side of the corridor. Was it Chan, still following?
She took another swift glance in mat direction. “Look, if you want to interrogate me about Godiva, do it after dinner. I’m hungry, and all you’ve done is plague me with questions. Why are you so interested in her?”
“Sorry.” Mondrian moved forward, and the frosted glass doors opened before them. “I’m just being nosy. You say you’ve never seen Godiva Lomberd like this before? Well, I’ve never seen Luther Brachis like it either. There’s two mysteries at once. But I promise you: not another question about Godiva.”
“There’s no need for any.” Tatty inclined her head to the left as they entered the foyer. “There she is. You can ask the real thing.”
They were exactly on time, but Luther Brachis and Godiva Lomberd must have arrived a few minutes early. Stepping out of a communication booth and heading back to the table area was a full-figured blond woman. She was in half-profile to Tatty and Esro Mondrian, and they could see that she had a dreamy and absent-minded smile on her face.
“The cat that ate the cream,” said Tatty. “Look at that walk. It shouldn’t be allowed. It’s totally natural, and Godiva never thinks twice about it — but ten billion women would kill to have it.”
Godiva Lomberd was dressed in a gown of palest yellow. It was high-necked, full-length, and full-sleeved. Not an inch of arm, legs, or shoulders was visible, but as she walked the material of the dress undulated with its own rhythm. It was impossible to ignore the exotic body within, the warm and pliant flesh that rippled beneath the decorous clothing.
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