Mike shrugged. “I thought a little fame would be helpful, and it has, but I know what you mean. After the interviews on Artworld and the Jimmy Brand show I can’t seem to go anywhere without someone recognizing me.”
“The bitter with the sweet,” I said.
“Brian uses a number of personas as well,” Madelon said. Mike raised his eyebrows. “The secret lives of Brian Thorne, complete with passports and unicards,” she laughed.
Mike looked at me and I explained. “It’s necessary when you are the center of a power structure. There are times you need to Get Away From It All, or to simply not be you for awhile. It’s much like an artist changing styles. The Malagasy house belongs to ‘Ben Ford’ of Publitex . . . I haven’t been there yet, so you be Ben.”
4
People have said that I asked for it. But you cannot stop the tide; it comes in when it wants and it goes when it wants. Madelon was unlike any individual that I had ever known. She owned herself. Few people do. So many are mere reflections of others, mirrors of fame or power or personality. Many let others do their thinking for them. Some are not really people, but statistics.
But Madelon was unlike the others. She took and gave without regard for very many things, demanding only truth. She was hard on her friends, for even friends sometimes require a touch of nontruth to help them out.
She conformed to my own definition of friendship: friends must interest, amuse, help and protect you. They can do nothing more. To what extent they fulfill these criteria defines the degree of friendship. Without interest there is no communication; without amusement there is no zest; without help and protection there is no trust, no truth, no security, no intimacy. Friendship is a two-way street and Madelon was my friend.
Michael Cilento was also unlike most other people. He was an Original, on his way to being a Legend. At the bottom level there are people who are “interesting” or “different.” Those below that should not be allowed to waste your time. On the next step above is Unique. Then the Originals, and finally those rare Legends.
I might flatter myself and say that I was certainly different, possibly even Unique on a good day. Madelon was an undisputed Original. But I sensed that Michael Cilento had that something extra, the art, the drive, the vision, the talent that could make him a Legend. Or destroy him.
So they went off together. To Malagasy, off the African coast. To Capri. To New York. Then I heard they were in Algiers. I had my Control keep an extra special eye on them, even more than the usual protective surveillance I kept on Madelon. But I didn’t check myself. It was their business.
A vidreport had them on Station One, dancing in the null gravity of the big ballroom balloon. Even without Control I was kept abreast of their actions and whereabouts by that host of people who found delight in telling me where my wife and her lover were. And what they were doing. How they looked. What they said. And so forth.
Somehow none of it surprised me. I knew Madelon and what she liked. I knew beautiful women. I knew that Mike’s sensatron cubes were passports to immortality for many women.
Mike was not the only artist working in the medium, of course, for Hayworth and Powers were both exhibiting and Coe had already done his great “Family.” But it was Mike the women wanted. Presidents and kings sought out Cinardo and Lisa Araminta. Vidstars thought Hampton fashionable. But Mike was the first choice for all the great beauties.
I was determined that Mike have the time and privacy to do a sensatron cube of Madelon and I made it mandatory at all my homes, offices, and branches that Mike and Madelon be isolated from the vidhacks and nuts and time wasters as much as possible. It was the purest ego on my part, that lusting toward a sensatron portrait of Madelon. I suppose I wanted the world to know that she was
“mine” as much as she could belong to anyone. I realized that all my commissioning of art was, at the bottom, ego.
Make no mistake—I enjoyed the art I helped make possible, with a few mistakes that kept me alert. But I am a businessman. A very rich one, a very talented one, a very famous one, but no one will remember me beyond the memory of my few good friends.
But the art I help create will make me live on. I am not unique in that. Some people endow colleges, or create scholarships or build stadiums. Some build great houses, or even cause laws to be passed. These are not always acts of pure egotism, but the ego often enters into it, I’m certain, and especially if it is tax deductible. Over the years I have commissioned Vardi to do the Fates for the Terrace Garden of the General Anomaly complex, my financial base and main corporation. I pressed for Darrin to do the Rocky Mountain sculptures for United Motors. I talked Willoughby into doing his golden beast series at my home in Arizona. Caruthers did his “Man” series of cubes because of a commission from my Manpower company. The panels that are now in the Metropolitan were done for my Tahiti estate by Elinor Ellington. I gave the University of Pennsylvania the money to impregnate those hundreds of sandstone slab carvings on Mars and get them safely to Earth. I subsidized Eldundy for five years before he wrote his Martian Symphony. I sponsored the first air music concert at Sydney.
My ego has had a good working out.
I received a tape from Madelon the same day I had a call from the Pope, who wanted me to help him convince Mike to do his tomb sculptures. The new Reformed Church was once again involved in art patronage, a 2,100-year-old tradition.
But getting a tape from Madelon, instead of a call, where I could reply, hurt me. I half-suspected I had lost Madelon.
My armored layers of sophistication told me glibly that I had asked for it, even had intrigued to achieve it. But my beast-gut told me that I had been a fool. This time I had outsmarted myself. I dropped the tape in the playback. She was recording from a garden of martian lichen in Trumpet Valley, and the granite boulders behind her were covered with the rust and olive green and glossy black of the alien transplants. I arranged for Ecolco to give Tashura the grant that made the transfer from Mars possible. The subtle, subdued colors seemed a suitable background for her beauty, and her message.
“Brian, he’s fantastic. I’ve never met anyone like him.”
I died a little and was sad. Others had amused her, or pleased her lush golden body, or were momentarily mysterious to her, but this time . . . this time I knew it was different.
“He’s going to start the cube next week, in Rome. I’m very excited. I’ll be in touch.” I saw her punch the remote and the tape ended. I put my man Huo on the trace and found her in the Eternal City, looking radiant.
“How much does he want to do it?” I asked. Sometimes my businessman’s brain likes to keep things orderly and out front, before confusion and misunderstanding sets in. But this time I was abrupt, crass, and rather brutal, though my words were delivered in a normal, light tone. But all I had to offer was the wherewithal that could pay for the sensatron cube.
“Nothing,” she said. “He’s doing it for nothing. Because he wants to, Brian.”
“Nonsense. I commissioned him. Cubes cost money to make. He’s not that rich.”