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  He accepted the offer graciously and I talked of Sikinos and its history for awhile.

  “The very old civilizations interest me the most,” Mike said.

  “Babylon, Assyria, Sumer, Egypt, the valley of the Euphrates. Crete seems like a newcomer to me. Everything was new then. There was everything to invent, to see, to believe. The gods were not parted into Christianity and all the others then. There was a god, a belief for everyone, big and small. It was not God and the Anti-gods. Life was simpler then.”

  “Also more desperate,” I said. “Despotic kings. Disease. Ignorance. Superstition. There was everything to invent, all right, because nothing much had been invented.”

  “You’re confusing technology with progress. They had clean air, new lands, freshness. The world wasn’t used up then.”

  “You’re a pioneer, Mike,” I said. “You’re working in a totally new medium.”

  He laughed and took a gulp of wine. “Not really. All art began as science and all science began as art. The engineers were using the sensatrons before the artists. Before that there were a dozen lines of thought and invention that crossed at one point to become sensatrons. The sensatrons just happen to be a better medium to say certain things. To say other things a pen drawing or a poem or a motion picture might be best. Or even not to say it at all.”

  I laughed and said, “The artist doesn’t see things, he sees himself.”

  Mike smiled and stared for a long time at the columned structure on the hill. “Yes, he certainly does,” he said softly.

  “Is that why you do women so well?” I asked. “Do you see in them what you want to see, those facets of ‘you’ that interest you?”

  He turned his shaggy dark head and looked at me. “I thought you were some kind of big businessman, Brian. You sound like an artist to me.”

  “I am. Both. A businessman with a talent for money and an artist with no talent at all.”

  “There are a lot of artists without talent. They use persistence instead.”

  “I often wish they wouldn’t,” I grumbled. “Everyone thinks he’s an artist. If I have any talent at all, it’d be to realize I have none. However, I am a first class appreciator. That’s why I want you to do a cube of my friend.”

  “Persistence, see?” He laughed. “I’m going to do a very erotic nude while I’m on Sikinos. Afterwards, perhaps, I’ll want to do something more calmly. Perhaps then I’ll do your friend, if she interests me.”

  “She might not be so calming. She’s . . . an original.”

  We left it at that and I told him to contact my office in Athens when he was ready to go to the island and that they would arrange everything.

  I found out later, almost by accident, from a friend, that Mike had been “drafted” temporarily to work on something called the Guardian Project. I put in a vidcall and found a wall of red tape and security preventing me from talking to him on Station Three, the space medicine research satellite. Luckily, I knew a bluesky general who shared my passion for Eskimo sculpture and old Louis L’Amour westerns. He set it up and I caught Mike coming off duty.

  “What do they have you doing, a portrait of the commanding honcho?”

  He smiled wearily and slumped on the bunk, kicking the pickup around with his foot to put himself within range. “Nothing that easy. Guardian is Skyshield all over again, only on priority uno. They rotated everyone out of here for observation and brought in fresh blood. They seemed to think I could help.” He looked tired and distracted.

  “Anything I can do? Want me to see if I can get you out of there? I know a few people.”

  He shook his head. “No. Thank you, though. They gave me the choice of an out-and-out priority draft or a contract. I just want to get it over with and back to living my way.” He stared at the papers in his hand with unseeing eyes.

  “Is it the low energy particles that’s giving them the trouble?”

  He nodded. “Exposure over a long period of time is the problem. There’s a sudden metabolic shift that’s disastrous. Unless we can lick it it will limit the time man can be in space.” He held up a thumb-size node. “I think this might do it, but I’m not certain. It’s the prototype of a Full Scale Molecular System I designed.”

  “Can you get a patent?” I asked automatically.

  He shook his head and scratched his face with the node.

  “Anything I design is theirs. It’s in the contract. You see, the trouble isn’t in this FSMS unit, but in the damned sensing and control systems. First you gotta find the particles, then you gotta get their attention. Christ, if I could just shunt them into subspace and get rid of them, I’d . . .” His voice trailed off and he stared at the bulkhead.

  After a moment or two he shook himself and grinned at me.

  “Sorry. Listen, let me give you a call later on. I just had an idea.”

  “Artistic inspiration?” I grinned.

  “Huh? Yeah, I suppose so. Excuse me, huh?”

  “Sure.” He slapped the control and I was staring at static. I didn’t see him again for five months, then I took his call patched through from the Sahara base to my Peking hotel. He said he couldn’t talk about the Guardian Project but he was free to take me up on the Sikinos offer, if it was still open. I sent him straight up to the island and two more months went by before anything more was heard. I received a pen drawing from him of the view from the terrace at the villa, with a nude girl sunbathing. Then in late August I took a call from him at my General Anomaly office.

  “I finished the cube on Sophia. I’m in Athens. Where are you?

  Your office was very secretive and insisted on patching me through to you.”

  “That’s their job. Part of my job is not letting certain people know where I am or what I’m doing. But I’m in New York. I’m going to Bombay Tuesday, but I could stop off there. I’m anxious to see the new cube. Who’s Sophia?”

  “A girl. She’s gone now.”

  “Is that good or bad?”

  “Neither. I’m at Nikki’s, so come on over. I’d like your opinion on the new one.”

  I felt suddenly proud. “Tuesday at Nikki’s. Give her and Barry my love.”

  I hung up and punched for Madelon.

  2

  Beautiful Madelon. Rich Madelon. Famous Madelon. Madelon of the superlatives. Madelon the Elusive. Madelon the Illusion. I saw her at nineteen, slim yet voluptuous, standing at the center of a semicircle of admiring men at a boring party in San Francisco. I wanted her, instantly, with that “shock of recognition” they talk about. She looked at me between the shoulders of a communications executive and a fossil fuels magnate. Her gaze was steady and her face quiet. I felt faintly foolish just staring and many of the automatic reflexes that rich men develop to save themselves money and heartbreak went into action. I started to turn away and she smiled.

  I stopped, still looking at her, and she excused herself from the man speaking to her and leaned forward. “Are you going now?” she asked.

  I nodded, slightly confused. With great charm she excused herself from the reluctant semicircle and came over to me. “I’m ready,”

  she said in that calm, certain way she had. I smiled, my protective circuits all activated and alert, but my ego was touched.

  We went into the glass elevator that dropped down the outside of the Fairmont Tower Complex and looked out at the fog coming over the hills near Twin Peaks and flowing down into the city.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “Where would you like to go?” I had met a thousand women who attached themselves to me with all the apparently natural lust, delight, and casualness possible between a poor girl and a rich man. Some had been bold, some subtle, some as subtle as it was possible for them to be. A few had frankly offered business arrangements. I had accepted some of each, in my time. But this one . . . this one was either different or more subtle than most.

  “You expect me to say ‘Wherever you are going,’ don’t you?”

  she said with a sm
ile.

  “Yes. One way or another.” We left the elevator and went into the guarded garage directly. Entering your car on a public street is sometimes dangerous for a rich man.

  “Well, where are we going?” She smiled at me as Bowie held the door open for us. The door clicked shut behind us like the safe door it nearly was.

  “I had been contemplating two choices. My hotel and work on some papers . . . or Earth, Fire, Air and Water.”

  “Let’s do both. I’ve never been to either place.”

  I picked up the intercom. “Bowie, take us to Earth, Fire, Air and Water.”

  “Yessir; I’ll report it to Control.”

  The girl laughed and said, “Is someone watching you?”

  “Yes, my local Control. They must know where I am, even if I don’t want to be found. It’s the penalty for having businesses in different time zones. By the way, are we using names?”

  “Sure, why not?” she smiled. “You are Brian Thorne and I am Madelon Morgana. You’re rich and I’m poor.”

  I looked her over, from the casually tossed hair to the fragile sandals. “No . . . I think you might be without money, but you are not poor.”

  “Thank you, sir,” she said.

  San Francisco rolled by, an old but dignified city reluctantly keeping up with the modern world, and often besting it. We turned a corner and saw a small riot ahead, near one of the governmental offices. Bowie blanked out the windows, and turned toward the waterfront. He hit the brakes as he started into the turn and I heard the rattle of rocks on the hood and windshield.

  “Hold on,” Bowie said over the comm, and the car thundered into reverse. There was the crunch of something under the tires, then we slammed forward through a hail of rocks and other thumps. I glanced at Madelon, who was holding onto a strap and looking alertly in every direction, even though the opaqued windows were featureless. “Bowie will handle it,” I said, but my hand was against one of the secret panels behind which was a Smith & Wesson Rioteer, with four big shot cartridges, and the exterior tear gas controls. The car stopped suddenly, then reversed, throwing us forward against the safety belts, and with a squeal of tires we drove forward up over something, probably a curb. I heard a loud thump, a cry, and we were going fast and straight.

  In a few moments Bowie brought back the cityscape and we rolled down one hill and up another. “Anyone hurt?” I asked.

  “One zongo with an iron bar bounced off a fender, but I saw him get up and try to chase us. I’ll have to take it in tomorrow to be pounded out, Mr. Thorne.”

  “Thank you, Bowie,” I said.

  “Does this sort of thing happen to you often?” Madelon asked. I shrugged. “Frustrated men need targets,” I answered. “A chauffered car, a beautiful woman . . .” I shrugged again. I couldn’t always blame them. “You don’t want to hurt anyone, but you don’t want to be hurt, either.”

  “What was that mob all about, anyway?” Madelon asked Bowie.

  “I don’t know, miss. Not many food riots here. It may have been a Work Week bunch, or some of the Zeropop people protesting that new rule. It’s hard to say. Sometimes folks just go zongo over nothing definite, just a sort of sum of everything.”

  Madelon sighed and struck her belt to move closer to me.

  “Help,” she said as we reached for each other’s hand.

  When we arrived at Earth, Fire, Air and Water, Bowie called me back apologetically as I was going through the door. I told Madelon to wait and went back to get the report on the interphone. When I joined Madelon inside she smiled at me and asked, “How was my report?”

  When I looked innocent she laughed. “If Bowie didn’t have a dossier on me from your Control or whatever it is I’d be very much surprised. Tell me, am I a dangerous type, an anarchist or a blaster or something?”

  I smiled, for I like perceptive people. “It says you are the illegitimate daughter of Madame Chiang Kai-Shek and Johnny Potseed with convictions for mopery, drudgery, and penury.”

  “What’s mopery?”

  “I haven’t the faintest. My omniscient staff tells me you are nineteen, a hick kid from Montana and a half-orphan who worked for eleven months in Great Falls in an office of the Blackfoot National Enterprises.”

  Her eyes got big and she gasped. “Found out at last! My desperate secrets revealed!” She took my arm and tugged me into the elevator that would drop us down to the cavern below. She looked up at me with big innocent eyes as we stood in the packed elevator. “Gee, Mr. Thorne, when I agreed to baby-sit for you and Mrs. Thorne I never knew you’d be taking me out.”

  I turned my head slowly and looked at her with a granite face, ignoring the curious and the grinning. “The next time I catch you indulging in mopery with my Afghan I’m going to leave you home.”

  Her eyes got all wet and sad. “No, please, I promise to be good. You can whip me again when we get home.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “No, I think wearing the collar will be enough.” The door opened. “Come, my dear. Excuse me, please.”

  “Yes, master,” she said humbly.

  The Earth part of the club was the raw ground under one of the many San Francisco hills, sprayed with a structural plastic so that it looked just like a raw-dug cave, yet quite strong. We went down the curving passage toward the maelstrom of noise that was a famous quiver

  group and came out into the huge hemispherical cave. Overhead, a latticework of concrete supported a transparent swimming pool filled with nude and semi-nude swimmers. Some were guests and some were professional entertainers.

  There was a waterfall at one end and torches burned in holders in the wall, while a flickering firelight was projected over everything. The quiver group blasted forth from a rough cave hacked into the dirt walls halfway up to the overhead swimming pool.

  As I took her arm to guide her into the quivering mob on the dance floor I said, “You know there is no Mrs. Thorne.”

  She smiled at me with a serene confidence. “That’s right.”

  The night swirled around us. Winds blew in, scented and warm, then cool and brisk. People crashed into the water over us with galaxies of bubbles around them. One quiver group gave way to another, tawny animals in pseudo-lion skins and shaggy hair, the women bare breasted and wanton.

  Madelon was a hundred women in a hundred minutes, but seemingly without effort. They were all her, from sullen siren to goshwowing teenie. I confess to a helpless infatuation and cared not if she was laying a trap for me.

  The elemental decor was a stimulant and people joined us, laughed and drank and tripped, and left, and others came. Madelon was a magnet, attracting joy and delight, and I was very proud. We came to the surface at dawn and I triggered a tag-along for Bowie. We drove out to watch sunup over the Bay, then went to my hotel. In the elevator I said, “I’ll have to make that up to Bowie, I don’t often stay out like that.”

  “Oh?” Her face was impish, then softened and we kissed outside my door. She began undressing as we entered, with great naturalness, and laughingly pulled me into the shower even as I was learning the beauty of her lithe young figure. We soaped and slid our bodies over one another and I felt younger and more alive than I had in godknows. We made love and music played. Outside, the city awakened and began its business. What can you say about two people making love for the first time? Sometimes it is a disaster, for neither of you knows the other, and that disaster colors the subsequent events. But sometimes it is exciting and new and wonderful and satisfying, making you want to do it again and again.

  It changed my life.

  I took her to Triton, the bubble city beneath the Mediterranean near Malta, where we marveled at the organic gill research and watched the plankton sweeper-subs docking. We donned artificial membrane gills and dived among the rocks and fish to great depths. Her hair streamed behind her like a mermaid, and we dipped and rose with a school of swift lantern fish. We “discovered” the crusted remains of a Phoenician war galley and made love at twenty fathoms.

&n
bsp; At Kos, the birthplace of Hippocrates, Hilary gave a great party at her villa, and we “premiered” a tape by Thea Simon, and ate fruit on the terrace and watched the ships go into space from Sahara Base.

  “That’s so beautiful,” she said, looking at the firetrails of the shuttles, left behind by the arcing ships. The trails were twisted and spread by the jet winds, becoming neon abstracts in the early evening light.

  I nodded in the faint light. Behind us I heard Respighi’s Fountains of Rome replace the dreamy Bird of Visions. Madelon and I sat in the companionable night silence.

  The calligraphic neon scrawls had almost faded away when someone turned on a computerized kinetic sculpture in the garden below. It was a wildly whirling dazzle of lights and reflections by Constantine 7, a currently popular kineticist. Its many dipping, zipping, flashing parts were controlled by a random numbers tape, so that it was never repetitive.

  Madelon looked at it awhile, then said, “My life used to be like that. Oh, yes. Running around, rushing about, getting nowhere, very bright and au courant. I suppose I was trying to find out who I was. I was . . . am . . . very ambitious, but I felt guilty being so.”

  “Don’t be,” I said. “Without ambition nothing ever gets done.”

  “I’m still not certain . . . that I know who I am. Or even what I want.” She reached out a hand and touched me. “I know I love you and I want to be with you—”

  “But—” I said.

  “You are not the world, but you give me the biggest world I know about.” Her voice was serious and low as the kinetic sculpture was dialed into darkness, probably by someone putting it out of its misery.

  “You have always been different,” she said. “Because you are always the same. You’re . . . a rock.”

  I grinned at her in the night. “I sprang full-grown from Jupiter’s forehead.”

  She smiled back at me, and patted my arm. “You know, trying to find out who you are is the loneliest thing there is. If you are not you, who are you?” She sighed, and was quiet a moment. “I have been many people,” she said. “But each of those roles was me, a facet of me. But you are always you. I’ve watched you talk to the famous and the infamous, the nobodies and the somebodies. You’re just the same. I’ve only seen you impatient with the fools and the time wasters. You share your joy and you hide the hurt, but you are always you.”