To THE LAND OF THE ELECTRIC ANGEL: Hugo and Nebula Award Finalist Author (The Frontiers Saga) (7 page)

"Please, Blake, you're spoiling it." She waved her hand around, smiling. "You're ruining the moonbath. Come, let's go back in." She tugged at his arm. "Tell me, do you think Cilento is the greatest of the sensatron artists?"

Blake let her pull him back into the big living room and into a conversation on contemporary artists. But even as he talked, joined by one or two others, he kept studying Rio's face. Her eyes were large, but shadowed by lashes; her mouth was a bit wide, but smiles came easily to it. Her hair was sleek, healthy, very long and very black. Her features were flexible, reflecting her inner thoughts easily and reacting to the words and thoughts of others. Blake watched how deftly she gathered others about her, engaged him in conversation with them, and withdrew, free to act as hostess and catalyst.

Blake looked to see if Voss had noticed their short absence on the terrace, but the financier appeared as urbane and imperturbable as before.

Blake managed to extract himself from a group that was debating the merits of Boynton's laser-cutting of icebergs as an art form. Getting a drink, he drifted to one side of the room, apparently to study a Coe oil but actually to think over his response to Rio. It had been total, positive. He had no explanation for his reaction, only an uncontrollable desire to possess her, to make her part of his life.
How little we know of ourselves,
he thought,
of the reasons we do and don't do things, of our likings and aversions, often for no discernible reason.

In Rio, Blake knew he had found the ultimate in his type of woman. Rio was beautiful, with his kind of beauty. He had never cared much what other people thought was beautiful. If
he
thought someone or something was beautiful, that was all that was necessary. But she belonged to someone else, someone important to him. Moreover, she seemed committed to Voss, and that was more deadly than being owned by him.

All he needed was Rio. And she was the one woman he couldn't have.

Voss raised his glass and saluted Blake. "To the future!"

Blake smiled, and toyed with his own glass as the others at the long table toasted him. He was sitting at Voss's left, with Kresadlova on his right, and Rio a light-year away at the other end of the table. He looked at her and found her smiling at him. She gave him a small, direct salute, and Blake felt himself unexpectedly blushing.

Blake tore his gaze away from her and looked at the others down the long baronial table. The count was smiling with icy politeness, annoyed at being replaced as the focus of attention. He saluted Blake stiffly and said "There hasn't been a really fine tomb maker since Michelangelo." Blake wasn't certain whether that was a compliment or not, but he smiled back. Lizette, the girl seated by the count, gave a wiggle, causing the strings of linked metal plates that flowed over her plush body to part and allow her breasts to poke through briefly. She raised her glass and said brightly, "To Blake Mason!"

The company director, Kimsey, dressed in a deep-maroon astrosuit of tropical cut, leaned forward and addressed Voss. "This tomb of yours, Jean-Michel, where is it to be built?"

Voss waved a finger at him. "That is my secret. The pharaohs made a big mistake advertising their whereabouts. No one will really know where it is, not even the workmen."

"Are you going to kill them as the Egyptian kings did?" Kimsey asked.

Voss smiled slightly. "No, just confuse them. Sealed aircars with computer pilots, misdirection, false reports, that sort of thing."

"It sounds like a midnight holodrama," said one of the one-name girls down the table.

"It is, Fionna, it is." Voss laughed, and glanced at Blake with amusement. "Don't be afraid, my friend. Holograms of the interior will be spread all over the world, to Luna, even perhaps to Mars. Everyone will know of the glory of my tomb and your part in it. They just won't know where it is."

"In what manner are you planning this wonder of the ages, Mr. Mason?" the count asked.

Several people looked at Blake expectantly.

"In no
manner,
Count Marco, just in a unity."

The count took his rebuff with bad humor and held up his glass imperiously for a servant to refill it.

From far down the table a man spoke and Blake leaned forward to see. It was Rex Crawley, a well-known landscape painter of Earth's few colonies on Luna and Mars and a favorite of the jet set. "Are you going to use Caruthers? His "Man" series of sensatrons is really superb."

"No," Voss said, answering quickly for Blake. "Nothing electronic. Everything ageless – so it can be seen exactly as it is now a thousand years id the future, perhaps two thousand."

Blake leaned forward and addressed Crawley. "It doesn't matter what medium an artist uses. The art is what counts. It doesn't matter how long it took him, or how difficult the situation. Only the art counts. It doesn't even matter how long it lasts, except that more people can experience it. The art of Booth, Bernhardt, and much of Caruso is lost. But it once existed, and that is what counts. Mr. Voss wants the art of his tomb to be ageless, and so it shall be."

Voss smiled at Blake Mason. "Make certain they use the best materials. No cost cutting. Everything to last as long as possible. Have Permaplastics send samples of their inert protectives."

Blake nodded and said, "I've already thought of investigating a new spray sealant that
Plastics Age
reported on favorably."

At the end of the table, Rio rose. "Enough technical talk, please, Jean-Michel. The art is what is important, not the method."

As they rose Blake said, "The end justifies the means," and grinned.

Rio laughed silently and said,
"Touché, Monsieur
Mason."

There was the rustle of snowsilk and the whisper of colorquick panels as everyone pushed back his chair and moved away. Caren took her hand off Blake's thigh and stood up, ready for the evening's fun.

Lizette's metal-link dress tinkled as she spun on the count's arm, laughing gaily at something he said. Kresadlova drained his glass and let two of the girls lead him away. Rio and Blake exchanged looks down the length of the table and he read a hundred meanings into the glance.

"Where was your lovely sister tonight?" Kimsey asked Voss as they returned to the main hall.

"In her rooms. I'm afraid she finds some of my dinners too heavily burdened with business talk." Voss smiled perfunctorily, and Blake wondered about the brother-sister relationship.

In the main hall the tape of a current
quiver
group had been hooked into quadrapod color organs, filling the room with shifting masses of brilliant color shot through with the threads of muted shades and pockets of darkness. Everything shifted and changed with the rapid, humming,
quivering
quality of the music.

Two of the girls had already shed some of their panels and were standing atop a low table, quivering in the maelstrom of light and shapes. Two others were coaxing a vice-president to undress, overcoming his middle; aged modesty with laughs and caresses.

Voss came up to Blake, his arm around the darkly clad Rio, to tell him in confidence, "Everyone but the girls is leaving tomorrow, and none too soon. We'll have time to work then." Voss smiled easily. "I really want to start this project going. I'm eager to have it completed."

Blake stifled the words that would ask whether Voss thought he was going to die soon. Instead, he said, "Will your enthusiasm wear off as swiftly?"

Rio laughed softly, and Voss gave him a quick grin.

"I see your point. No, it won't," he said seriously. "This is very important to me."

"I do have some appointments."

"Put them off a few. days. I want to get the basic plan laid out, and then you can start to fill in the details."

"Please stay," Rio said, and put her hand on his arm. Caren joined them at that moment. "Yes, stay," she urged.

Blake didn't look at Caren and he didn't look at Rio. He nodded and shrugged. "A couple of days," he muttered.

Voss slapped him on the back as they parted.

Who am I?
Blake Mason thought.
What the hell am I looking for in this world? Is it the expensive house with the wall screens, the Life-style furniture, the fat bank account, the servants? Do I want to live like Voss? Is it the fame, the power that fame can give? After variety, fame is the greatest aphrodisiac there is, but is that what I want? Why am I not content just to plunge into this freely offered fleshpot and wallow about?

He closed his eyes, and the
quiver
music drove his mind into a room and shut the door.

Rio.

Rio.

The name, the face, the tiny postage-stamp glimpses of her mind were racing across his brain.
Rio. Where does she come from? Where is she going? Where does she want to go? What is she doing here?

Blake laughed at himself, and Caren stirred and cupped his crotch again, looking up at his face expectantly. "Honey, she said, "Honey ... ?

Blake shook his head, the colorquick patterns shifting jewel-like images across the inside of his lids.

Voss's girl.

The boss's woman. Boss Voss. The carrier-to-fame. Rio. A river. Flowing water. Freudian symbol. Life-giver.

Blake felt a body come down onto the couch next to him and hair brush across his face. He opened his eyes, but it was only Doreen.

She put a leg across his and grinned impudently.

"Hi!" she said.

"Good-bye," Caren said firmly.

Doreen ignored her as she bent to give Blake an expert kiss. Her tongue lanced into him like a snake striking.

Caren grunted something, sitting up to press herself against Blake's other side. Her tongue went wetly into his ear and her hands began to open his shirt.

Blake opened his eyes and saw all the nude or near-nude girls covering every male guest.
They are earning their living,
Blake thought.
Expert technicians in the Palace of Love. That kind of love.

A sudden revulsion seized Blake, and he heaved himself up. But the two women dragged him back, kissing and caressing more enthusiastically. He tried again, and tore away from Caren almost cruelly. She made mewling sounds at him, but he struggled to his feet, wrenching at Doreen's hands. Both girls looked at him in shock.

"What's the matter?" Caren said. "You wanna do something else?"

"Want to go somewhere else?" Doreen said with a wicked grin, coming to her feet, weaving her glistening body seductively.

Blake put out his hands in protest. "No. No, you don't understand."

"Did we do something wrong, honey?" Caren asked anxiously, licking at the corner of her mouth. "You want us to–"

"No, no, thank you, I–"

Blake couldn't finish, and abruptly he turned away, threading his way through writhing triplets toward an exit.

Caren and Doreen exchanged glances, then separated to join different groups.

Blake found himself in a corridor, and he fled from the sounds of revelry. He passed through a couple of rooms, then walked down some steps into a room lit by bluish-green light. One wall was a huge window that looked underwater into a large swimming pool. There was no one in the room and Blake sank into a big chair close to the glass and just stared into the blue-green water, trying to organize his thoughts.

He heard a faint splash, and saw a lancing explosion of bubbles as someone dove into the water. As the figure coasted free of the mass of air it had brought into the pool, Blake saw it was Rio.

Her long black hair trailed smoothly behind her, a sleek dark tail that pulsed forward as she slackened her stroke. She was wearing a modest black bathing suit that seemed almost prudish in light of the almost total female nudity at Casa Emperador. The proper underwater lights and the filter screen in the glass wall kept her skin a perfect color instead of giving it a greenish tinge. Blake was lost in admiration of her gracefulness and the rich, ripe perfection of her body.

Buoyed by the water, her full breasts bobbed and shook in the confines of the black bra with each stroke. She somersaulted slowly in the water, then bent her back and aimed for the surface – her stomach flat and muscular as she reached up, her legs scissoring, her glistening suit a bold graphic against her golden skin.

Blake rose and stepped close to the glass, looking up to see the rippled, crumpled undersurface of the water. Then he saw the heave and twist of her body as she flipped herself down – her lungs once again full, her buttocks flexing, her legs giving two powerful kicks, her arms out, her hair streaming behind her in a wind of water.

Rio curved up, braking herself and stopped, her arms moving to hold herself steady, a trickle of bubbles coming from her mouth. She was looking right at Blake, the glass magnifying her to heroic proportions. Her hair continued to move, a feathery Medusa spreading out into a great dark crest, a black fairy crown behind her head. She stared at him, her eyes slightly startled. More bubbles escaped from her nose as they stared at each other for a long moment. Then Rio turned, kicked, and was swimming away.

Blake wheeled and sprinted for the door, running down the corridor to the stairs, and up onto the patio above.

A half-dozen torches flickered in the greenery surrounding the patio and pool. At the far end, a manmade waterfall splashed in realistic mimicry.

Rio was starting to pull herself out of the water as Blake came swiftly across the patio, his feet slapping the tiles loudly. He stopped and they stared at each other. She slipped back into the pool, but did not move away.

Blake walked toward her slowly, breathing hard but trying to slow it. He stood over her, barefoot on the wet tile rim. They looked at each other as if trying to read the mystery in each other's face.

"Would you like a swim?" Rio said at last.

Blake nodded, and Rio gestured toward the bathhouse.

"There are suits there if you want one." He turned and walked to the bathhouse entrance, stopping to look back, but she had not moved. He undressed quickly and found a suitable pair of trunks among many on a shelf.

Blake walked quickly out, not really looking at her, and jumped feet-first into the pool near her. He turned to her, seeing her wipe away the splash of his entry. Then he reached for her, pulling her to him.

She resisted for only a moment, then clung to him, her mouth opening to his, her hands clutching at his hair. They pressed their bodies together, and Blake put one hand on the pool rim to steady them. Their arms and legs were a tangle impossible in full gravity, their mouths shouting volumes into one another's mind as they kissed.

Rio broke away first, breathless, her face glistening, a shy on-again, off-again smile flickering on her face. She made a small sound of pleasure and surprise as she clung to the pool edge. Blake pulled her hips back to him, pressing her against him so that they reunited their legs, staying close and staring into each other's eyes.

He wanted to speak but didn't know where to start.