To THE LAND OF THE ELECTRIC ANGEL: Hugo and Nebula Award Finalist Author (The Frontiers Saga) (9 page)

The announcement brought life to several and they struggled up. The women hurried off to put on something more appropriate to Puerto Vallarta's biggest
quiver
club.

Rio turned to Voss, smiling like a mad leprechaun. "Okay, Boss Voss?"

I feel like a dummy stuffed with straw,
Blake thought.
I
just stand around and they push or pull. Push – I go! Pull – I stop!

• * * *
  

In the morning Blake hated himself. He hated his sulky performance at the Iguana, and he hated Rio just a little when he found she was gone. A general goodbye note was pinned to a tapestry by the archway to the terrace where everyone was breakfasting on fruit and eggs. She was off to Greece and Corsica on business for Voss.

Blake took a pill instead of breakfast and spent most of the day lying in his room, sliding through darkness and dawns, around stars and chasing comets. He was supposed to be starting his sketches, but all he drew were a few idle scratches that looked like malevolent pyramids.

At dinner, he wore a black Darkmoon suit and a crimson stock.
Looks like my throat is cut,
he thought.

Doreen had watched him dress, then disappeared. She returned wearing a silver collar and roses in her hair that were the exact shade of his shirt.

He was silent through most of dinner, letting his melancholy pass for deep thought and responding only perfunctorily to Kresadlova's questions regarding the Shah, and the semi-secret Inner Palace of the All Baba cave complex in Syria. Voss seemed to note Blake's reluctant involvement and steered the industrialist away adroitly.

After dinner, Blake engaged Voss in a technical talk on the tomb, burying himself in laser penetrations, stability ratios, air-conditioning, excavation volume, and manpower hours.

Voss sat through his questions and self-answers amiably, but then insisted upon talking about basic designs.

Blake tried to talk about artists he had considered, and how others might be schooled in some combination crafts that he had in mind, as well as about some Japanese laser stone-cutting techniques that could be used advantageously in precise sculpting of large areas from miniature models. But Voss kept returning the conversation to the basic design.

Rather than admit he had not developed a full plan, Blake seized upon the one fragile idea he had. "A pyramid. A negative space in pyramidal shape. It's good structurally and is evocative of tradition." Blake was beginning to employ the patois of the pseudo-artist – not his usual manner at all – but his mind was really elsewhere. "We still don't know everything about the preserving qualities alleged to be adherent in the pyramid shape. But if we are to pattern your, urn, tomb on the general Egyptian style, it might be noted that the Great Pyramid of Cheops is different from the ordinary burial pyramid. We still have no true idea of how old it really is, you know. Even in the earliest writings it was considered ancient. But also, strangely enough, there is hardly a mention of the tomb in any of the writings throughout the history of Egypt!"

Blake paused for breath. He was on automatic, filling up time.

Voss spoke into the pause. Suavely and without damaging Blake's ego, he led him away from the historical aspects of Cheops to his own tomb. Then he said, "I will shortly be supplying you with the specifications for the inner chamber. This should be at the heart of the complex. All the rest – the living quarters, the art, everything – will be outside it." When Blake looked surprised, Voss smiled. "Then there will be air locks." Voss paused, as if considering his next words. "The inner chamber will have more than one sarcophagus, if you wish to call it that. I'm not certain just yet how many. Seven, I think."

Your queen? Your slaves?
Blake only nodded.

The departure of the remainder of Voss's guests broke up their conversation and Blake took the opportunity to slip away. Doreen knocked on his door and called to him, but he did not answer.

He was back in Los Angeles on Wednesday. Elaine had taken care of all his appointments, eliminating and reshuffling expertly.

"I've started the publicity campaign on the Voss job, boss," she said. "Just
your
part in it. I'll leave the 'Big Picture' to Kramer and Reiss. They're handling all the personal Voss publicity. I just didn't want you to get lost in the shuffle. Say, are you listening to me?"

Blake pulled his eyes away from the moody abstraction that the color synthesizer had created on the big screen, and smiled wanly at his secretary. "Sorry, mind a million miles away. You were talking about the publicity. Well, don't worry, Voss's people are handling it."

Elaine sighed. "Doesn't it seem strange that he would want to publicize a tomb?"

"Jean-Michel spoke to me about that. He figured he couldn't keep the project a secret, and if he tried to make it a Big Secret it would only attract more attention than it deserves. This way people will just write it off as a rich man's folly."

"Isn't he awfully young to be thinking of ... you know."

"It's
his
business. And ours! Is that mail to sign?"

Elaine handed over the portfolio of letters and tapes. She stood at his shoulder, pointing out things, then asked, "Hey, boss, are the parties at that place as wild as I've heard?"

"I've seen better."

"Oh, don't disillusion me, Mr. Mason. I want to think the rich and famous have bigger and better orgies than anyone else. I want to know that
someone
has bigger and better orgies,
someplace."

Blake looked up at her in surprise. "I just can't imagine you at an orgy, Elaine. I'm sorry." He smiled, but he meant it.

The silver-haired woman drew herself up. "I’ll have you know, sir, that I was once the talk of
Allegheny
ark, the queen of the Sunflower Nudist Park, and
one time
I had three hot affairs going at once. An upper-level ark senator, a soyafiber merchant, and a vice-president of Barbara Brown Security Services – the outfit that has half the police franchises in the Northeast. And not one of the three knew about the others! I, sir, am no stranger to free sexual expression!"

Oh, god, you, too?
Blake thought.

Elaine bent closer, grinned with delighted wickedness, and said, "Did you bed down with some of Voss's private stock of sluts?"

"Don't talk vulgarly," Blake admonished. "Yes, I bedded and linked and was bedded and linked, and all of Voss's private stock is the same in the dark – terrific!" The knife twisted
again: all but the ultra-private stock...

"Marvelous!" Elaine said, hearing what she wanted to hear.

"Now I suppose you'll tell your girlfriend at Fourzon Fabrics and she'll put it on the TIS and I'll have the
Inquirer
calling me up for a vidtab feature."

"Boss! Me?"

"You. That's what you did when I went to the opening of
Freudian Frolics
with that actress, whatshername, Shelley Graham."

"Publicity, boss, that's all."

"Huh. You just like having a boss who's in the news, so you can lord it over the other secretaries. You couldn't stand it when your friend Carmen's employer got that fighting robot manufacturer as a client."

"But she got to go backstage at the Circus all the time. Aw, come on, boss, you gotta have your fun in these jobs."

"Uh-huh. Here," he said, handing her the portfolio.

"When do you start the prelims on the Voss job?" she asked.

"Right away, today, yesterday. I've never seen a man more eager to upholster his grave."

Elaine laughed and went out.

Blake swung around in his chair to look out at the city, but almost at once Elaine buzzed. "Mrs. Shure on Two."

"Tell her I’m not here."

"She read about it in
Celebcon."

Blake groaned and turned back to the desk. He took a moment, inhaled, put on as sincere a smile as he could muster, and punched Line Two.

"Mrs. Shure, how nice to hear from you! Pm sorry about not getting out to your home, but I had to leave town."

"Oh, dear man, I know all about it! A Voss commission! It sounds just marvelous. You
must
come to dinner and tell us all about it."

Blake winced at the "us," but kept his face calm and smiling. "I'm afraid my assistant must take the preliminary work, Mrs. Shure. I'm certain you won't mind. Just basic details. He'll report to me, and then we can work up something for presentation. He's a charming man. His name is Sebastian. He designed quite a few of the homes in the dead Antilles volcanoes – Miller's, Frank Fuller-Wright's, the Count of something or other's, Frank Sterling's – all built into those volcano bubbles. Pm sure you've heard of them."

"Oh, yes, indeed, Blake darling, but he's not
you!"

Blake laughed, but deprecatingly. "Sebastian did a house for Brian Thorne on Madagascar, so you know he is first-rate. Thorne picked only the most talented people."

The woman's eyes narrowed as she said, "Then why is he working
for
you?"

"Some people hate paper work. Sebastian likes challenges, but I’m afraid he needs the clercial backup, which I supply. I'm certain you will like him; he is most charming and has some fascinating tales of the Antilles people, of Thorne and Shawna Hilton, whom he knows very well, and ... well, you can see he is completely qualified. He and I will work together on this, and I'm sure you would like what we come up with."

"Well, all right. But remember, we want
you,
just as soon as you're free." She hesitated only a fraction of a second before adding, "And bring Jean-Michel with you, of course."

Blake ended the conversation pleasantly, clicked off, punched the privacy button savagely, and turned again to look out the window.

Los Angeles hadn't looked so fresh and clean in ages. The sun glinted off a million windows and ten thousand domes. Scores of flat-sided buildings reflected the setting sun, throwing the whole landscape into sharp relief. The shadows of the mountainous arks spread across the city, merging into valleys of darkness, where lights were already glowing. The soft green of the Metro dome was in contrast to the red tower of the Connecticut Life tower in the shade of the
Sunset
arcolog. Aircars followed invisible lanes overhead. The air was clear, but there were no birds. Lights were coming on all over the eastern face of the arcology structures, and the Disneylife level of
Great Western
was glowly brightly.

Where are you?
Blake Mason asked silently.
And why are you there instead of here?
Blake's chest hurt. He felt like a hand was clamping tightly around his throat.
I haven't cried since 1 was a child,
he thought, and felt a wetness on his cheek. One tear was a flood for a man who had not cried since he was a child.

Voss looked at the preliminary model critically. He squatted and peered through the various entrances into the scale model. Blake rotated the table and tilted it, removing the pyramidal top so they could see inside.

"It's only a rough," Blake said. "Just a way of visualizing the three-dimensionality of it for you." Then he grinned. "For me, too. It's very difficult to think in three dimensions, you know."

"It's fine," Voss said absently. "Will it really look this
good?"

"Better. Stabilized ferroconcrete with a life span longer than they have any way of testing. If it moves, the whole thing will move. It will be stronger than the rock around it. There will be a Stibbard mosaic on the floor here–"

"The Inner Chamber," Voss interrupted. "Is this the model here?"

Blake pulled off the plastic cover. "It's in a larger scale so you can see detail better. But just as your specs said. Stabilized lead sheathing, stabilized ferroconcrete stressed walls, and the whole thing floating independently within the outer chamber on a sealed moat of oil. A sphere within a sphere, like a ball bearing rolling in oil. I only have the specs on the top hemisphere, however." He looked significantly at Voss, who ignored him.

"You can leave that to the construction crews. Special installation," Voss muttered as he bent over the model.

There were seven sarcophagi indicated, a number which had at first bothered the designer, but he had assumed that Voss was making room for members of his family already dead or who might die before he did. He had shrugged it off as plans for a common family burial plot.

"Excellent," Voss breathed.

"I had the impression you did not wish any decoration in the inner chamber."

"Yes, purely functional. Inert materials. The outer chamber is just ... for amusement."

Blake nodded, not understanding at all. "It will be fully functional right up until you ... until you die." He had to force the words from his mouth: he found it uncomfortable talking to a man about his death, even if he was designing his tomb. But Voss had seemed to encourage that kind of conversation from the beginning of the discussions, months before. "There will be a portable fusion power plant on the outside, down the hill, to provide power for the construction – and for later, in case you want to live there."

Voss stared at the Inner Chamber model. Then he spoke. "Do you think about death, Blake?"

"No more than I must. It will get here in time. All too soon, I imagine, even with the geriatric drugs."

Voss nodded. "Even with the drugs we only live so long." He looked up at Blake and straightened with a sigh. "What would you do with yourself if you could live five hundred years? ... a thousand?"

Blake shrugged. "Learn. Experience. There are so many things I haven't done. I've had no time to pursue my studies in church architecture, and with so many of the churches impoverished, there are no commissions coming from that area. I'd travel, try different lifestyles."

"This business of the church architecture. Are you religious?"

Blake grinned. "No, I don't think so. Not in any formal way. Unless you count me as a devout hedonist."

Even as he said it, Blake felt a twinge of guilt. It was so common to project an image of a hedonist that it was automatic. Everyone did it.

"About a long life..." Voss asked, "what do you think about that?"

"It's more important, I think, to do something
with
your life, than to live a long time," Blake answered honestly. He smiled. "Better an hour as a lion than
a
lifetime as a lamb."

Voss's thin lips flickered in a smile. "Better yet a lifetime as a lion."

Blake started to reply, but Elaine's call stopped him. "A friend of Mr. Voss's is here, Mr. Mason."

"Ah, that's Sonya," Voss said. "Send her in."

What came in was a magnificent blonde, all tanned smooth skin and carefully designed sexy walk. She was encased in a sheer Starmist dress, carrying drinking glasses, and smiling. Elaine followed behind, a huge jeroboam of Château Astre from Voss's private vineyard in her arms.

"Sonya, this is Blake Mason. Sonya Vahlberg."

She smiled in a warm and extraordinarily friendly fashion, and Blake let the personality-plus wash over him without much of it sinking in.
A new one for Voss

. . Well, what else would I expect a girl with all that beauty to do: sell soyaburgers or work in a balancing salon? Why shouldn't she go for a life of comfort and ease at the top of the heap?

Blake felt a certain sadness within himself.
Am I getting just too damn cynical?

"How do you do?" Blake said pleasantly as Jean-Michel thumbed open the chilled bottle.

Sonya jumped when the cork exploded, and they all laughed. The wine was tasty and at just the right temperature. Elaine took one glassful at Voss's insistence, then tactfully disappeared. Sonya poured herself another
as
the men talked.

"The base camp has been set up," Voss said. "The men will arrive on Sunday. They are all well-trained employees from various of my companies. With the procedures we've set up – the blind jets, the deliberate confusion and so on – they won't know where they are within forty kilometers, if at all. They'll go in and come out at night."

Blake nodded as he poured them both more wine. Then he casually asked, "What's Rio doing these days? It's been several months since I've seen her." The question had been festering in his mind for weeks.

"Running around Yugoslavia, I think."

"Bulgaria," Sonya said, moving closer to Voss in an instinctive gesture that said,
Competition is competition even if it isn't in sight.

"Oh?" Blake said, and dropped the subject as if it didn't matter.

They talked for a moment about Sonya's last film,
Lord Frankenstein,
which Voss had financed; then about how she had lost out to an Italian import on the remake of
Captain Blood,
a part she had badly wanted.

Blake brought up Rio again. "She's well, is she? Rio, I mean."

"Oh, Rio is never sick," Voss answered.

"Uh ... give her my love when you see her," Blake said, keeping his tone light, almost polite.

"Certainly. Come, my pigeon," Voss said. He clasped Blake's hand and smiled into his eyes. "Keep it up. Don't worry about the other.jobs. Your staff can handle them, I'm sure. You stay on this one." Blake nodded. "We'll have dinner on CasteIli's yacht Friday and then we'll go to Casa Emperador, yes?"

Blake agreed, and they parted. He went back into the silent workroom and looked at the inner chamber model.

It was well designed and he thought it would be well made, well shielded against all sorts of radiation – almost a perfect tomb. The exterior of the site would be disguised and all traces of construction obliterated: the Mystery Tomb that everyone knows about but no one can find. Oh, someone would eventually find it, hacking their way into the tomb with a brute laser. Nothing was sacred, especially not the rich tomb of a multimillionaire.

But there was something about it that still bothered Blake. The tomb was almost
too
well made. The intricate shielding that had been included in the Inner Chamber specifications still troubled
him. Why does a corpse worry about cosmic rays or stray radioactivity?
Blake shrugged.
People are often oddly concerned about their bodies after death, as if preserving them extended their power, their memory, or their existence in some afterworld.

But the heavy shielding still disturbed him. And the mystery. Moreover, certain things seemed not to have been told to him. For example, he had found out about the installation of a fusion plant in the lower hemisphere of the Inner Chamber completely by accident.
Why a fusion plant?
Voss had stipulated no powered art or devices in the outer chamber, and construction power was being supplied by an exterior plant. There was just enough of an aura of mystery about the fusion plant that Blake hesitated to bring it up to Voss. He was afraid Voss would tell him it was none of his business, and then a wall would be erected between them, a wall that Blake felt he could not afford. He needed good social relations with Jean-Michel Voss as a path to Rio.

Just for a second he imagined Voss, green-lit and clad in crumbling linen wrappings, carrying Rio in his arms, unconscious and with the night wind moving her sheer gown. For a moment, in his imagination, the light rippled over her flesh the way it had in the pool. Blake whipped his head to one side.
"No!”
he exclaimed aloud, then immediately felt foolish.

He heard someone enter behind him, and asked, "Elaine?"

"Was there anything you wanted before I go?"

"No, have a good night. See you in the morning. Oh, take whatever is left of the wine."

"Thanks, boss. That bottle is big enough to build a floating ark in. Good night."

Blake nodded, staring at the model of the Inner Chamber.

Why the hell would anyone go to so much trouble? When you are gone, you're gone. Even someone with 'loses ego should know that! No matter what all those religions say. They have proved nothing. Death is extinction. Give a body a decent burial to keep it from polluting the area. Or section it up for the organ banks and recycle the remains. But a tomb of
this
size?
Elaine had reported that there was already some adverse publicity, people wondering why so much money was being spent on one man's tomb when there were people starving in India, in Central America, in Africa. People grumbled that the money could have been better spent fighting crime that was rampant in the arcos of Texas and Louisiana.

When the announcement of the tomb-building project had been made, the Voss empire took a nine-point drop in stocks and continued down for days. Voss had been prepared, and bought stock heavily before the market stabilized and the price went back up. He had made a profit of over 30,000,000, a substantial part of the tomb cost. Blake had wondered if the whole effort had been arranged for just that effect. Jean-Michel had smiled blandly at the suggestion, said others would probably try the same trick, and had then continued his intense discussion on the zero-defect aspects of the Inner Chamber's construction.

Blake had shrugged then and he shrugged again, now. He left the workroom and slumped into his chair behind the desk. The day was nearly gone, and the sunset brought Blake the melancholy that had so afflicted him of late. Not even the high adventure of this special commission had broken it.

He gazed out at the city, thinking of the high price he paid for his office to be on one of the exterior facets of the arcolog. He had considered it a necessary expense and had refused an inner office.

Money. It is always money. Money to live well, money to live at all. But that will change soon,
Blake told himself. With the money from this one commission he would be able to retire, if he wished, roam the world, buy a condo at the top of an arcolog overlooking the Aegean, have a summer home with a modest helipad to receive guests, have a good wine cellar, clothes, art.

And, of course, a woman.

Rio.

Blake ripped his mind away, dialed opaque his expensive view, and sought distraction in his wallscreen. He poured himself a drink and let his eyes munch on the television.

A plainclothes detective was chasing a sweating man across the slippery top of an arcolog. Cornered, the sweating man turned and fired a laser, narrowly missing the detective, who returned his fire. The criminal screamed and the screen changed viewpoints to see a dummy fall from the crest of the ark.

Blake punched the control studs.

A crowd roared over the clang of steel. The screen cut from a wide view of Nero's Colosseum to tight close-ups of the desperate trio that faced the big French
soldat
robot, a curved sword in either waldo. One of the human fighters was a woman, bare to the waist, and bleeding from a bad shoulder cut.

Shaking his head, Blake changed channels. The Circus was getting too bloody for his tastes.

"–will bring you the latest news. Sheppard Maier, in Houston, on John Grennell's return from the Jupiter Mission and the tapes of Terry Ballard's tragic death on Callisto. Hans Siden on the phenomenon of a rise in church attendance. Jay Kinney with the latest in sports and arena highlights. And more, after these words from Steele Security Service, the ultimate in modem protection."

Stab.

Reverend Sam's
Star of Bethlehem
satellite was seen in a long shot against the curve of Earth and the blackness of space. A slow dissolve brought into view his famous "Firmament of God" clear-plastic dome space cathedral. A man in a white spacesuit floated with arms extended in the center.

"Sinners! The pendulum of excess is swinging against you! The–"

Click.

A newstape was in progress. A middle-aged man in a conservative suit sat in a room lined with tape shelves, speaking to an off-camera newsman.