To Live Again and The Second Trip (17 page)

Santoliquido’s tongue appeared and made a slow circuit of his lips. After a moment’s silence he rose and beckoned to Roditis. “Let’s take a walk,” he suggested. “If you’ve recovered from those tremors by now.”

Roditis stood up with exaggerated agility. Santoliquido put the Kaufmann persona back in its casket and stuffed it in a hopper slot; it vanished from sight, to Roditis’ sharp regret. They left the sampling booth. Santoliquido led him out on the catwalk that rimmed the circumference of the storage vault.

“We’re going to take a tour of Hades,” he said. “I want to show you some possible alternate personae.”

“I don’t—”

“At least consider them,” said Santoliquido. He tapped out digits on a data terminal. One of the sealed storage banks opened and he pulled out an urn, examined it, frowned, replaced it, removed the adjoining one. He held it up. “Elliot Sakyamuni,” he said. “You know him? An outstanding guru, one of the architects of the new religion, a truly powerful man. He died in March. We’ve had him here, waiting for the right recipient. John, if you were to take him on, you’d have the added spiritual depth, the extra dimension of wisdom, that only a fully trained guru of the highest degree could offer. You’re the first person I’ve suggested giving him to. Consider it.”

“In addition to Kaufmann?”

“In place of Kaufmann,” said Santoliquido. “I think the guru would be better for you.”

“No,” said Roditis. “I can get along without extra spiritual depth. I’ve got Noyes to recite mantras for me. Put Sakyamuni back.”

Santoliquido sighed and put the urn away. They climbed to another catwalk. Indicating a frosted glass panel, Santoliquido said, “The world-famous mathematician Horst Schaffhausen. He has waited nearly two years now to return to carnate form. A mind like yours would be well-suited—”

“Stop it, Frank.”

“You oughtn’t turn away from Schaffhausen that lightly. His unique powers would be of great value to you in—”

“I’ll take him three years from now,” said Roditis. “Give me a chance to digest Kaufmann first.”

Beads of sweat burst out on Santoliquido’s forehead. Hoarsely he said, “Won’t you get off that obsession, John? Kaufmann’s a burden for anyone. He’ll weigh you down.”

“I want him.”

“You and he are too much alike. In the Scheffing process we should seek for complements, not supplements. There’ll be war between you and Kaufmann over every business decision. He’ll want to do it his way, you’ll want to do it yours—”

“And I’ll win,” said Roditis. “I’m alive, he’ll just be carnate. I’ll use his judgment, but I won’t let him call the tunes for me.”

“If he goes dybbuk—”

“Impossible.”

Santoliquido said, “I offer you your free choice of any persona we have here, but that one.”

“Are you trying to torture me?”

In a low voice Santoliquido said, “It might even be possible to arrange something slightly irregular. Would a transsexual transplant interest you? What if I made available to you the persona of Katerina Andrabovna, say. An extraordinary combination of sensuality and intellect, a truly blazing woman—”

“Is it that bad?” Roditis asked. “Are you in such a mess, Frank, that you have to consider breaking the law? What hold do they have on you, anyway?”

“Who?”

“The Kaufmanns!”

“No one has any hold on me whatever,” said Santoliquido with obvious strain. Roditis was amazed at the anguish visible on the plump face. “I make my own decisions.”

“Mark Kaufmann doesn’t want me to get his uncle’s persona. He’s fixed things so I won’t. You’re willing to offer me the whole vault, if I please, so long as I keep away from old Paul. You’ve even offered me an abomination. So you must be really trapped. You’d like to make me happy, but you’re afraid to offend Mark, and that leaves you ripping in half.” Roditis put his hand on Santoliquido’s shoulder. “I know what it must be like for you,” he said more gently. “But all I ask is that you do your duty. I’m the logical recipient of Paul Kaufmann. Mark would get reconciled to the idea after a while, once he finds out I’m not a monster.”

“We can’t talk about such things out here.”

“In your office, then.”

But even amid the Babylonian splendor of his office Santoliquido was ill at ease. He took several drinks in quick succession, paced the floor, stood for a long moment before the Kozak sonic sculpture. Finally he said, “I need more time, John.”

“You’re just stalling.”

“Maybe so. But I’m not ready to move. You know, I’ll have to live with my decision forever. Give me a few more weeks. By May 15 I’ll announce the disposal of the Kaufmann persona, all right?”

“I have no way of holding you to that,” Roditis noted.

“I pledge my word.”

Roditis let his eyes linger on Santoliquido’s. He knew that such a pledge meant a great deal to a man like Santoliquido, who had centuries of ancestors peering down at him all the time. A Roditis, a
condottiere,
might break a solemnly given word when it suited his needs; but not a Santoliquido. Or so Roditis tried to persuade himself.

“Very well,” he said. “Weigh your decision carefully, Frank. Don’t let Mark pressure you into doing something shortsighted.”

Outside the building, Roditis gave way to an access of rage. He sat in his hopter a long while, burning with fury, while angry spasms of heat ripped through him. So much for Elena’s help! So much for all Noyes’ scheming! The situation was right where it had been since Paul Kaufmann’s death…a stalemate. Santoliquido still equivocated. The administrator was all façade; beneath, he quivered with fright at the possibility of offending someone mighty, and so took no action.

When ten minutes had passed, and Roditis felt somewhat calmer, he ordered the hopter to lift and head out over the ocean, due east. The machine throbbed into the air.

“Is there any specific destination?” the robopilot asked.

“Just keep going east till I tell you to go somewhere else.”

Roditis closed his eyes. Instantly there came flooding into his mind the renewed presence of Paul Kaufmann. Just that tiny tantalizing taste of Kaufmann’s persona had been enough to leave Roditis unalterably convinced that the old man must be his. It was more than mere desire now. It was destiny.

What if Santoliquido should rule against him?

That was hard to imagine. Roditis knew of no one else who could handle the high-voltage mind of Paul Kaufmann. Of course, Santoliquido could take the coward’s way out, and simply leave Kaufmann in the storage vault, as he had hinted he might do, as he seemed to be doing with that mathematician, Schaffhausen. But Santoliquido was a man of honor. He could not expose himself that way to shame. He would have to allot Paul Kaufmann to someone.

What if, at Mark’s prodding, Santoliquido found some innocuity and impressed the persona on him?

Roditis smiled. Instantly a dybbuk would be created. His investigators would demand the penalty of the law. Erasure would be imposed. Kaufmann would go back into the soul bank, and Roditis could reapply.

On the other hand, Roditis reflected, suppose Santoliquido discovered a person who was strong enough to cope with the Kaufmann persona?

That would be awkward, but it could be handled. Roditis saw that in that event it would be necessary to arrange a discorporation. There would be an accidental death; Paul Kaufmann and his late host would both revert to the soul bank; Roditis could begin the quest anew. One way or another, he would obtain that persona. Having tasted it, he could not now relinquish his need.

He opened his eyes. The small hopter was far out over the Atlantic now. Though spring had formally arrived, the water far below was gray and ominous. High waves surged like mobile mountains, rising and crashing. Through the audio Roditis picked up the sound of that baleful sea. He ordered the hopter to dip low, skimming no more than three hundred feet above the water. The vehicle was meant for short-haul transport, and it was unsafe to have come out here, alone, in such a fragile craft, but Roditis felt soothed by the dangers. The fusion pack below his seat could power the hopter all the way to Europe, if he chose.

On the face of the water the dull tubular bulk of a whale appeared suddenly. Roditis studied the fleshy mass, observing the gray-white spout of water that flumed abruptly from the broad forehead. There was strength! There was power! The tail came up; the flukes lashed the waves. The whale sounded and was gone. A Paul Kaufmann of the seas, Roditis thought. A watery titan.

“Return to New York,” he ordered the hopter.

Stormy winds sped the craft landward. As he neared shore, Roditis put through a call to Noyes and found him, tense and knotted, in his apartment.

“It was no good,” Roditis said. “Santoliquido still hesitates.”

“But Elena said—”

“Elena is a worthless slut. Santoliquido is terrified of Mark Kaufmann, and Mark still refuses to let me have the old man. We’re stuck. Santoliquido was willing to give me any persona in the place, except that one. Even a woman.”

“You’re joking, John!”

“I could have had Katerina Andrabovna. That’s how panicky he is.”

Noyes bowed his head. He muttered, “I was sure it was all fixed up. Elena was positive too.”

“Santoliquido promised to make a decision by May 15,” said Roditis. “He didn’t promise that the decision would be favorable to me. If it goes some other way—”

“It won’t, John.”

“If it does, there’ll be work for you to do. We can’t let that persona slip away. Do you know, Charles, he let me sample the old man! I saw into that mind. I would do anything to have it now.
Anything.
”

“Perhaps I should talk to Elena again,” Noyes ventured.

“It can do no harm. But probably little good, either.”

“I’ll try. I’m in this as deep as you are, John. I’ve got a lot staked on success. I’ll speak to her and get her to put the screws on Santo all over again.”

Roditis nodded. He made a dismissing gesture. The screen went blank.

Behind him an ocean storm was rising. He felt the winds buffet his hopter, and ordered the craft upward to safer altitudes. It was late in the afternoon when he landed. He went at once to his nearest office, mind churning with half-conceived ideas. The storm broke in full impact, and, as he looked from his tower window, it seemed to him that he saw the gigantic and powerful figure of Paul Kaufmann raging in the dark sky.

“W
HERE IS RISA TODAY?”
Elena asked.

“Chasing about Europe,” said Mark Kaufmann. “Doing some detective work on behalf of her persona. Last I heard of her, she was in Stockholm, but that was a few days ago.”

“You don’t worry about her?”

“She can look after herself. Besides, I have her under surveillance.”

Elena laughed. “How typical of you! In one breath you tell me that she’s self-reliant, and that you’re having her watched anyway. You never leave anything to chance.”

“I have only one daughter,” Kaufmann said quietly. “My dynastic urge won’t allow me to leave Risa’s welfare to chance.”

“Would you have wanted a son?”

He shrugged. “The name won’t die. Only my line of it. And I’ll be right there, watching the future unfold.” Kaufmann got easily to his feet. They were lying on the resilient tile beside his private swimming pool, a hundred feet beneath the Manhattan streets. Warm pinkish light filtered down. “Shall we swim?”

“I’ll watch you from here,” said Elena languidly.

Leaping into the pool, he swam three lengths in some sudden furious haste, then, more calmly, let himself drift back and forth across the width. The pool had been designed for Elena’s tastes. The water contained a fluorescing compound, so that his body left vivid streaks of gold and green as he sliced through it. Below, sparkling globes of captive living light glowed on the pool’s floor. The sides of the pool were studded along the waterline with silicaceous thermotectonic gems. The entire installation had run him into many thousands of dollars fissionable. Elena rarely used the pool her whims had created; she was content to be naked beside it, soaking up warmth from the battery of overhead lamps. Kaufmann disliked the decorative effects, but he humored her.

He surfaced. His hand came up over the margin of the pool and seized her thigh, inches from her groin. He began to draw her to the water. Elena shrieked. Her buttocks bounced and skidded over the tile, and her free leg poked futilely at him.

“Mark!”

He tugged her in. She landed with a radiant fluorescing splash and came up sputtering and blinking, her ebony hair in disarray, her tanned skin shining.
“Birbone,”
she muttered.
“Scelerato!”

“Sticks and stones will break my bones.” He pulled her to him and kissed her, standing upright in the shallows of the pool. Her body resisted him stiffly for a moment, but only for a moment, and then she flowed against him, and her rigid nipples drew a tickling line across his chest. When he released her, she was pouting with what he knew to be mock rage. He watched the sparkling water stream from her skin as Elena hauled herself out of the pool and flounced to a vibrator to dry. She stood with her back to him, combing out her hair. His eyes followed the supple line of her spinal column downward from her long neck through the widening hips, the delightful dimples, the fleshy blossoming of her rump.

“I’ll get even with you for that,” she told him. “I’ll make Santo give your uncle’s persona to an Arab.”

“Better that than to Roditis,” Kaufmann said.

Elena stared at him over her shoulder. “I almost believe you mean that. You’d have Paul saying prayers to Mecca before you’d let him into Roditis.”

“Yes. Yes, I’m sure of that.”

She finished at the vibrator and sprawled on the tile again, well out of reach of his grasping hand. He remained at the edge of the pool.

She said, “Shall I do a three-dollar frood job on you, Mark? I’ll tell you why you hate Roditis so much.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s so much like you.”

“What do you know about Roditis? Have you ever met the man?”

“Not yet.”

“I have,” Kaufmann said. “He’s a little thick coarse fellow with big muscles and no grace of soul. He’s a walking bank account. He dreams money day and night, and if he’s got any other interests they don’t show.”