Greta was looking at him a little worriedly. She herself had taken far less than any of the others, by the looks of her.
Finally, she whispered to him, “It’s getting very late. Shall we have a last drink in… your suite, or mine?”
He looked at her blankly, woozily. “Your suite? But, well, your husband…”
She cast her eyes down, a characteristic gesture of hers and said in a small voice, “I am sure that my husband is discreet. He will not be there.”
He shook his head in continued amazement at this whole situation. He said, his voice slurring slightly, “Perhaps it had better be your place. There are so many media people, autograph hunters and so forth besieging my hotel that they’d surely spot us and your name would be linked to mine, especially if you and your husband are as well known as I suspect you are.”
“Very well,” she said, taking up her bag.
They said their goodbyes to the rest of the party, as quickly as they could get away. As usual, there was no bill.
Her hotel was the Des Bergues on the Quai des Bergues, opposite the Rousseau Islands. It was far smaller than the Intercontinental but had a distinguished atmosphere, and one that dripped expensiveness. The Graf and his Graffin were obviously not exactly poverty-stricken.
They hurried through the lobby and, for once, Don got the impression that he hadn’t been recognized. Greta took him to a terrace suite on one of the upper floors.
She looked at him quizzically and said, “Are you sure that you want another drink?”
He sank into a chair and grinned at her and shook his head. “No, not at all sure.”
She seemed relieved at that and said, “Just a moment and I’ll be with you… Don.”
The drive over in the open sports car had revived him considerably, but he was still far from being cold sober.
When she reentered, she was in a black negligee, and barefooted. The negligee looked as though it had cost a few months of Don’s pay—if not more.
Her eyes were down, demurely.
He couldn’t take his eyes from her, sweeping her from head to foot and back. The nightgown was translucent, if not actually transparent.
When he had surfeited himself, and was stretched out on his back, breathing deeply, she spoke for the first time, her voice low, as it usually was when she spoke to him. “Did I make you happy?”
“Yes,” he murmured. What else could he say?
She said, so softly he could hardly make it out, “Am I the first woman you have had since your return from destroying the monsters?”
“Yes.”
She sighed, before falling into sleep, “I shall have something to tell my grandchildren.”
IX
Colonel Donal Mathers returned to North America on a Space Service supersonic jet. He could have made it considerably quicker on one of the rocket shuttle craft, but he was in no hurry. He had gotten in with four or five fleet admirals and commodores and they continued the bust, which had started in Paris, all the way to Bost-Wash.
The past eight or ten days—Don had lost count—had been one long prolonged lost weekend. It had begun, of course, there in Geneva but then, one morning, he had awakened in the Nouveau Ritz in Paris. The new Ritz was situated in the same location as the old, on the Place Vendome, and Napoleon the First still graced the top of the pillar in the square’s center. Not that Don would have known; he had never been in Paris before.
When he awakened that day, it couldn’t be called morning, it was to shakily reach out for the bottle of Anti-Ale which he had taken to leaving on the bedside table. He shook out two of them—it took two these days, rather than the prescribed one—and looked for a carafe of water. There wasn’t any. Muttering profanity, he got up and staggered to the bathroom. There was drinking water there, of course, and he shakily poured a glass and washed down his two pills.
Still feeling like death, he wavered into the bathroom and to one of the windows. It overlooked the Place Vendome, which he didn’t recognize, not even recalling ever having seen pictures of it. He thought that possibly he was somewhere in Italy.
Anti-Ale is quick-acting. It had to be. It was customarily taken when the patient felt he was on the verge of hangover oblivion.
The furniture of the living room was Louis the Fourteenth. Not that Don knew, or cared. It looked ornately uncomfortable to him. Something like Lawrence Demming’s Swiss chalet penthouse, on top of the Interplanetary Lines Building in Center City. A damn museum setting.
He made his way over to the desk and was gratified to find a modern TV phone screen there.
He flicked it on and when the face of a very polite young man appeared, said, “Where in the hell am I?”
The other blinked and hesitated a moment before answering in complete detail. “You are in the Royal Suite of the Nouveau Ritz Hotel, in the City of Paris, in the area which was once known as France, in Europe, mon Colonel.”
Don Mathers closed his eyes, the hangover not quite completely killed. “Oh, I am, eh?”
“Oui, mon Colonel.”
“Speak English, damn it,” Don growled, though what the other had said was obviously quite clear.
“Yes, Colonel Mathers. Is there some manner in which I could serve you?”
“Yeah. Send up a lot of breakfast. Oh, just a minute. Is there an autobar in this damn suite?”
“Yes, Colonel Mathers. It is disguised in the, ah, buffet to your immediate right.”
Don flicked off the screen and went over to the buffet. Sure enough, part of the top lifted to reveal an elaborate autobar. He dialed a Bloody Mary, with a double shot of vodka, and stood there, still a bit shakily, until the bottom of the delivery area sank to return with the drink. He took it up and returned to the window to stare out.
So this was Paris. All his life he had wanted to see Paris.
But what had been his immediate idea of coming here? He couldn’t remember. The last thing he could recall, with any clarity at all, was a fantastic party. He couldn’t even remember who had thrown it. There had been a lot of media people there, but as fellow guests, rather than at work. There had been some fellow Space Service officers, of higher ranks, and, oh yes, there had been several celebrities from the entertainment world. One in particular, the reigning sex symbol of the Tri-Di musical comedies these days.
He closed his eyes and shook his head in an effort to achieve clearer memory. As he recalled, she wasn’t nearly as beautifully sexy in person as she was on lens. However, he couldn’t waste the opportunity. He had spent some time in bed with her. During the party, or after? He was damned if he could remember.
But why in the hell had he come to Paris, and, for that matter, how had he gotten here? The first part of the question finally came to him, but he never did find out the second.
When he had ordered a lot of breakfast, they had taken him at his word. None of this Continental breakfast nonsense, croissants and butter and marmalade and coffee. They brought him every type of breakfast known in the West—and some items from the Orient, for all he knew. Ham, bacon and sausage, all of various types. Eggs a half dozen ways. Cereals. Various types of toast and muffins. Kidneys, kippers and finnan haddie, British style. Caviar, smoked sturgeon and salmon and other Zukouski, Russian style. Cheeses and cold meats, Dutch style. Herring on ice with chives and sour cream sauce, smoked eel and smoked reindeer tongues, Scandinavian style. It had taken three waiters, accompanied by a captain, to wheel it all in.
What the hell did they think he was, a squadron?
The waiters hovered about, but he dismissed them, after giving the captain an autograph. He went on back to the autobar and, in view of the fact that he had finished the Bloody Mary, dialed an ice cold double aquavit. He put that down and returned to the food.