To THE LAND OF THE ELECTRIC ANGEL: Hugo and Nebula Award Finalist Author (The Frontiers Saga) (2 page)

There had been a mild titter, and a few quick smirking looks were thrown his way.

"The
wrong
reasons?" Lady Faring asked, right on cue.

"Precisely, my dear woman." He patted his face with a wisp of lace pulled from his sleeve. "He's so afraid of sex, of letting himself go, that it preoccupies his entire mind." Chariot turned toward Blake, tucked his handkerchief back into his sleeve with a flamboyant gesture. "Isn't that correct, dear boy?"

Blake felt that his face must be flaming. "That's the kind of commission I seem to attract, all right."

Chariot's pale face brightened theatrically. "Exactly!  And why do you attract them? Because you do them so
well!
And why do you do them so well?" He turned to the group to answer his own question. "Because he thinks of
nothing else!
An artist with
true
dedication!"

There was laughter, and Daniele Giraux spoke over the last of it. "Not
always,
darling. He does not
always
think of sex."

Again, the group tittered, for Blake's affair with the coal-conversion heiress had been well publicized the previous season.

Chariot bowed, saying with a wry smile, "I bow to your superior knowledge,
cherie."

There was considerable laughter at Blake's expense when they noticed his obvious discomfort. Then Eve Bernstein spoke from deep within a Life-style chair-bed. "This is very interesting, Jacques. You mean that Blake's livelihood depends upon his sexual dissatisfaction?"

Chariot turned elegantly. He gestured delicately with his
marl. "Certainement, mon amie.
Sexual satisfaction clears the mind for other things."

"There
are
no other things!" Eve laughed.

"But, Jacques," Ellie Ripper protested. "Blake has had so many women!"

Chariot turned to her, the demonic smile one of triumph.
"Exactement, cherie. Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connait point.
He is unsatisfied with many women because he has not the
one
woman."

Chariot turned again toward Blake, smiling, and all eyes followed.

"I dislike being referred to in the third person," Blake said, unable to remain quiet, but without a good rejoinder. "Besides, you are wrong. You equate professionalism with obsession. Do you think an actor who plays a murderer is one? I have an
interest
in sex, Jacques, not an obsession. Or are you now above such things?"

Chariot looked stung, but before he could answer Lilly Holliman spoke. "That's right, Blake, dear, you tell 'em ... Jacques, you old phony, that wasn't what you said in French. You said a heart has its reasons, of which reason knows nothing."

The focus shifted to Lilly, who enjoyed being the center of attention as always. She thrust out her ample bosom and puffed up her education – only one of which was real. Blake sat motionless and silent as Lilly, in her blundering way, took the floor away from Chariot. She began to talk about her own affairs of the heart, particularly about her adventures with younger men.

Blake stood up and slipped out of the group, glad not to be on the grill. He felt Chariot's eyes on him as he went through the doors to the terrace. Blake kept his face calm – not blank, but calm.

The terrace was wide, and the greenery grew in lush profusion from large planters faced with genuine Roman carvings. Lady Faring's condominium home was high on the western flank of the great pyramid of
Sunset
arcolog. The bubbles, domes, and windows of surrounding condos glinted in the night, glowing balls and dots across the great face of the arcology structure, home of over a half-million people. Up here at the top and on the exterior flanks were the twenty-first-century condos of the rich. Inside and below were the boxes of the less-rich, and deep inside were the burrows of the poor.

Below, the flowing rivers of light that marked the freeways between the man-made living mountains continued their never-ending movement. The
Venice
arcolog to the west and the distant humps of
Bel Air
and
Camelot
glittered and shone, rising above the hills and the petite arks to the north and south. On the other side of
Sunset,
out of sight from the Faring terrace, were the others:
Mariana, Great Western, California Tower, Casa Laguna, Heaven, Astro, Ciudad de Oro, Sun City, Maaravier,
and
Urbo Nova.
Housing a half-or three-quarters of a million each, these self-contained city buildings were designed and built with factories within and beneath. Monorails and aircars linked tower to tower. Thousands of cable-television lines linked millions of terminals in a vast information and entertainment system.

Over the Santa Monica Mountains the tips of
Koma, Prudential Towers,
and the more distant
Star
could be seen. Beyond, to the north and west along the curve of shore, were
Oaktree, Santa Rosa, Camarillo City, Oxnard Center, Ventura, Skycity,
and others under construction along the coast to Santa Barbara. To the south, toward the desert, where the towers were faced with huge solar panels and the desert was roofed with them, were still more arcological towers.

Arcologs dotted the landscapes of the world in ever-increasing numbers. They were much more efficient to service, and took up less space, giving up much land that was vitally needed to grow crops. Even many of the planned park interspaces between the big arks had been filled with the overflow of people, buildings, and factories. The arcolog concept had begun with Paolo Soled in the late twentieth-century and his practical example,
Arcosanti,
the first arcolog, built near Phoenix, Arizona. "Architecture is in process of becoming the physical definition of a multilevel, human ecology," he had written. "It will be arc-ology." The nearest early example was the ocean liner, then the first true deep-space ships.

The pressure of a growing world population and the need to use more efficiently the Earth's resources had brought about the realization of the arcology concept. In urban areas, where the pressure was greatest and land the most precious, the huge structures rose to populations of seven and eight hundred thousand each. There were also many smaller ones, some with as few as ten or twenty thousand, built in outlying districts. Some "micro-arks," housing only a couple of thousand, were built on the same principles.
Castillo del Aire,
or "Air-castle," near Madrid, had, on the other hand, a million inhabitants. Chicago's
Babeldiga
had 1,200,000.
Novanoah,
a huge floating island under construction in the Indian Ocean, was designed for nearly 2,500,000 inhabitants, who would derive 80 percent of their food from the sea itself.

Arcologs were masterpieces of design, and an individual could live and die without ever actually having to leave any one of the huge buildings. Food, entertainment, and myriad services could be brought to the door by tube, multiplex cable, jets, and electric delivery vans. Many people conducted business by television, using computer and information terminals and rarely leaving their home offices.

Blake Mason hated the arks. He realized they were needed; and at times he admired them, much as one may admire an efficient riot tank or a piece of well designed machinery. But Blake could not love an arcolog. It was too cold, too impersonal for him, despite the agile machinations of the arks' social designers.

Blake watched the tiny darting lights of aircabs and the contrails of high-flying jets, a firmament in motion that blotted out the sight of the galaxy. He walked to the edge of the terrace and looked down. The city stretched away – square mile after square mile of building blocks, all at the legal height limit and broken only by the looming bulk of the Christmas-tree-like arks.

Too many,
Blake thought.
Millions. Too many, but maybe not too many if out there, somewhere, was that
one...

The memory of that evening at Lady Faring's was still sharp.

Was Chariot right?

Blake stroked a plastiwax figurine of the thirty-foot Sensualus sculpture he was going to install in front of the elevator doors on Landau's floor.

Was Chariot right that night? Did he touch a vital point? Am I obsessed with sex, or rather with the thought of sex? Is this obsession the reflection of my business and my art, or is my art and business the reflection of that obsession? Or is there really an obsession?

Blake twisted the plastiwax figure he held in his hands, feeling the slightly oily surface, enjoying the sensuality of the dips and curves, letting his imagination flow freely. Thighs and breasts, with nipples hardening. Cool buttocks flexing under gripping hands.

God, Chariot was right!
Blake put the figure down quickly. Why couldn't he just admit it, go with it, flow with it, use it, enjoy it. I
can't be a Victorian in the twenty-first century!
"I'm not that bad," Blake said aloud.
I'm not a prude. If I disapprove of the casualness of sex today, it's on the grounds of taste, not prudery.

Or is it?
a tiny thought spoke as it scampered through his mind.

Blake picked up the figurine and slammed it down, distorting one soft side. He abruptly turned away and stared for a long moment at the framed sketches for the pleasure dome the Hughes Corporation was building on Silver Mountain. The dome had been a well-received job, with much attendant publicity. The critics, the vidtab faces, and the chic trend setters had all remarked on the effect of the colorquick walls flowing with heat-sensitive crystals in liquid suspension that reacted to body heat and air currents, shifting their colors in rippling waves. There were no straight lines, only organically curved walls. The rooms were warm and soft, with scented air in constant flux, and hidden music helped along by concealed Alpha-wave projectors working directly on the emotions. A bath for the mind, a massage for the soul, a carnival for the body.

Experienced girls would cater to every wish, every need, real and fancied. They had been picked from the welfare levels of the arks, from orphanages and broken homes. Three months of hypnotraining, of probing psychs, of field training in disciplines known for
five
thousand years or in others unknown fifty years before – and
voila!
a pleasure dome girl! There was nothing anyone could teach her about sex.

But what about love?
Blake Mason mused. He ripped his eyes away from the sketches of one of his greatest achievements. In his office he had more offers, more pleasure dome contracts. Bigger domes, the finest yet:
Atlantis,
beneath the Mediterranean, and soon the new
Xanadu,
a jet hop away in North Africa. Hirahawa was doing Tokyo's
Tanoshimi,
and Bentcliffe was doing
Seraglio,
in Constantinople, but Blake himself was wanted for the two big ones.

Temples to sex, raised to a high art...

Sex, yes,
Blake thought grimly,
but what about love?

Does sex come before love? Should love come before sex? Do they have anything to do with each other? Millions of people think not. There is food, sleep, sex, work, and entertainment. Millions of people never think about entertaining themselves. That is for the professionals. Sex, too.

Where is that noble breed of man who is going to fly to the stars, conquer disease, stop death, end famine and poverty? Billions crowd the Earth in gasping swarms, kept alive by the miracle of fusion power and the benefits derived therefrom. But they are just barely alive. The quality of their lives is deplorable.
Blake knew he worked and lived among the top few percent of the population: the Shahs, kings, and energy czars. He knew he sucked at the front teat and existed precariously at the crest. "I pretty things up," be said aloud. He moved with those who had never seen the interior of a ghetto or who had never been hungry, except for the inevitable young beauties, male and female, who always surrounded wealth and power. These willing souls had been desperate to escape the dismal fate of growing old and weak and starving to death, unnoticed in the masses.

Blake knew the world did not consist solely of millionaires and haunted-eyed wretches starving in the arks' passages: there was a strong and healthy middle class. But the world only had so many resources, and even the recycling that the fusion torches and mass accelerators provided did not conserve those resources efficiently enough for the growing population. A little bit was lost on each recycling, one way or another; and only through technology had man kept his head above water for this long.

But what is the technology of love?

Blake shook his head angrily.
I'm perverted,
he thought.
I live only in the future, where there is love and peace. And that future might never come! I don't want a harem. Just one woman – the right woman.

Blake smiled ruefully at himself.
Self-pity is such a degrading emotion,
he thought. He slammed his fist down on the worktable, and a tiny round bed in the publisher's penthouse model flipped over. Blake lurched away and went into his office.