“He saw us?” Enron repeated, in complete stupefaction. “He was there? No, this is impossible. He is gone, back to Earth.”
“He’s here, Marty. He told me so. I talked with him half an hour ago. It was his face on the visor. It’s almost as distinctive a face as Farkas’s, in its way. I told him that you wanted to see him, and he said that would be fine, you could meet with him at a place on Spoke A, one of the farms. I wrote the coordinates down.”
“He is gone,” Enron said. “So Kluge swore to me. All those names, all those hotels, and then he and his three friends were on the shuttle back to Earth.”
“Kluge may have been telling you lies,” Jolanda said. “You ought to consider that possibility.”
Enron struck his forehead angrily with the flat of his hand. “Yes. Yes, I should. It is Kluge who has been searching for Davidov and failing to find him, and giving us this story and that one about his comings and goings. Why was it so hard to find him? Why was Davidov always one step ahead of this supposedly clever and trustworthy courier? Either Kluge has been lying to me or Davidov is a magician who can deceive all the scanning equipment this habitat has. Let me have his number, fast!”
Reaching Davidov was the easiest thing in the world. Enron put through the call and there he was an instant later, centered in the visor: the bull neck, the colorless hair, the Screen-blemished face, the glacial eyes.
“Nice to hear from you,” Davidov said to Enron. His voice was high and light and soft, a gentle Californian voice altogether out of keeping with his coarse, heavy-featured Slavic face. “Any friend of Jolanda is a friend of mine.”
“I would like to speak with you in person,” Enron said.
“Come right on over,” said Davidov pleasantly.
With Jolanda in tow, Enron made the journey down to the hub and back up Spoke A into one of the agricultural zones, where everything was green and sparkling, a land of milk and honey. They passed farms of wheat, of melons, of rice, of corn. Enron saw banana trees heavy with yellow fruit, and coconut-palm groves, and a citrus orchard. It reminded him very much of the bountiful, ever-fruitful groves of his own country, flourishing in the twelve-month growing season and abundant rain of the eastern Mediterranean region. But all of this was built on artificial foundations, Enron reflected. The trees here grew in styrofoam, vermiculite, sand, gravel. Remarkable. Absolutely remarkable.
The coordinates Davidov had provided were those of a rabbit ranch. Hordes of the furry little animals were skittering around in fields of alfalfa, gray rabbits and brown ones and white ones, and various combinations of colors. Davidov was standing in the midst of them, just outside the farmhouse, talking to a slender, bespectacled man in farm clothes.
Davidov was immense, a great mountain of a man who seemed as broad as he was tall. His eyes were cold and fierce but his manner, as Jolanda had indicated, was gentle, at least superficially. Enron understood, though, that with Davidov the gentleness had to be all on the surface.
He embraced Jolanda first, swallowing her impressive body into an encompassing bear hug, crushing her against him and even lifting her a little way from the ground.
Then his vast hand enfolded Enron’s. His grip seemed to be a test of virility. Enron knew how to cope with that sort of thing: he let his fingers go limp while Davidov mangled his bones, then returned the squeeze with equal ferocity. It wasn’t necessary to be a giant to manage a significant handshake.
Davidov introduced the bespectacled man: Avery Jones, he said. The manager of the farm. With an expansive gesture Davidov indicated the extent of the rabbit farm, swinging his beefy arm from horizon to horizon. Of course, on Valparaiso Nuevo that was no great distance. “Isn’t this a fabulous place! Up to your ass in rabbits, here. A thousand ways to cook the little buggers, they have.” The unyielding Bolshevik eyes focused sharply on Enron. They were as cold and hard as stone. “Come on inside and let’s talk. Israeli, are you? I knew an Israeli woman, once, from Beersheba. Aviva, her name was. A real ball-buster, but smart as hell. Aviva from Beersheba. Where are you from in Israel, Marty?”
“Haifa,” Enron said.
“Work for a magazine, do you?”
“Let us go inside,” Enron said.
The bespectacled rabbit farmer tactfully disappeared. When they were inside the farmhouse Enron waved aside the offer of a beer and said quickly, “May we dispense with the social preliminaries? I am an official representative of the state of Israel, at quite a high level. I am aware of the plan which you propose to put into effect.”
“So I gather.”
“It is a plan that my country finds of great interest.”
Davidov waited.
Enron said, “We are, in fact, prepared to make a financial investment in your activities. A considerable financial investment, I should add. Shall I continue, or is taking on another outside investor not of any importance to you?”
“Another outside investor?” Davidov said. “Who’s the first one?”
Enron glanced troubledly toward Jolanda. She seemed to be smiling.
“I am aware,” he said, speaking very slowly and clearly, “that the Kyocera-Merck corporation already has made a substantial contribution to your operation.”
“You are? I’m not.”
A little nonplussed, Enron said, “I have discussed the matter with a highly placed Kyocera representative, who assured me—”
“Yes. I saw you with him. If he assured you of anything involving his company and us, he’s lying.”
“Ah,” Enron said. “Indeed.” This was very confusing. Breathing deeply, he rocked lightly back and forth on the balls of his feet, trying to recover his poise. “So there is no Kyocera-Merck connection with—”
“None. Zero. Zilch. Kyocera isn’t in it. Never has been.”
“Ah,” Enron said again. Jolanda’s smile was unmistakable now, ear to ear.
But he was equal to the situation. In that first moment of bewilderment, recollected fragments of his conversation with Farkas earlier this morning went rushing through his mind, and though for an instant Enron felt as though he was being carried along on them like a swimmer being borne to a cataract, he very quickly succeeded in snatching order from chaos.
He saw now that he had jumped to the wrong conclusion. But so had Farkas.
They had been talking at cross purposes earlier, Enron realized. The Hungarian hadn’t been offering Israel a slice of the deal at all. Obviously Farkas believed for some reason that Israel already controlled the deal, and had been trying this morning to cut Kyocera-Merck in for a piece. Suddenly everything was standing on its head. There were opportunities to be seized in that, Enron thought.
Calmly he said, “Tell me this, then: Are you interested in outside financial backing for your plan at all?”
“Very much so.”
“Good. I am in the position of being able to provide it for you.”
“Israeli money?”
“Half from Israel, half from Kyocera-Merck.”
“You can bring Kyocera in?” Davidov asked.
It was like standing before a great abyss. Enron leaped blithely across it.
“Absolutely,” he said.
“Sit down,” said Davidov. “Let’s have a beer and talk about this a little more. And then maybe we all need to go back down to Earth and do some more talking there.”
22
the rain gave out before Carpenter was much more than fifty miles east of San Francisco. There was a sharp line of demarcation between the coastal deluge and the dry interior. Behind him lay a realm of black downpour and overflowing gutters; but when he looked ahead, facing into the swollen and bloodshot eye of the sun rising above the Sierra foothills, he could see that everything still remained in the grip of the endless drought.