“He told me to tell you he wants to do it without any money. He’s out now, getting new cilli nets.”
I felt cheated. I had caused the series of events that would end in the creation of a sensatron portrait of Madelon, but I was going to be cheated of my only contribution, my only connection. I had to salvage something.
“It . . . it should be an extraordinary cube. Would Mike object if I built a structure just for it?”
“I thought you wanted to put it in the new house on Battle Mountain.”
“I do, but I thought I might make a special small dome of spraystone. On the point, perhaps. Something extra nice for a Cilento masterpiece.”
“It sounds like a shrine.” Her face was quiet, her eyes looking into me.
“Yes,” I answered slowly, “perhaps it is.” Maybe people shouldn’t get to know you so well that they can read your mind when you cannot. I changed the subject and we talked for a few minutes of various friends. Steve on the Venus probe. A fashionable couturier who was showing a line based on the new Martian tablet finds. A new sculptor working in magnaplastics. Blake Mason’s designs for the Gardens of Babylon. A festival in Rio that Jules and Gina had invited us to. The Pope’s desire for Mike to do his tomb. In short, all the gossip, trivia, and things of importance between friends.
I talked of everything except what I wanted to talk about. When we parted Madelon told me with a sad, proud smile that she had never been so happy. I nodded and punched out, then stared sightlessly at the dark screen. For a long moment I hated Michael Cilento, and he was probably never so near death. But I loved Madelon and she loved Mike, so he must live and be protected. I knew that she loved me, too, but it was and had always been a different kind of love. I went to a science board meeting at Tycho Base and looked at the green-brown-blue white-streaked Earth “overhead” and only paid minimal attention to the speakers. I came down to a petroleum meeting at Hargesisa, in Somalia. I visited a mistress of mine in Samarkand, sold a company, bought an electrosnake for the Louvre, visited Armand in Nardonne, bought a company, commissioned a concerto from a new composer I liked in Ceylon, and donated an early Caruthers to the Prado.
I came, I went. I thought about Madelon. I thought about Mike. Then I went back to what I did best: making money, making work, getting things done, making time pass.
I had just come from a policy meeting of the North American Continent Ecology Council when Madelon called to say the cube was finished and would be installed in the Battle Mountain house by the end of the week.
“How is it?” I asked.
She smiled. “See for yourself.”
“Smug bitch,” I grinned.
“It’s his best one, Brian. The best sensatron in the world.”
“I’ll see you Saturday.” I punched out and took the rest of the day off and had an early dinner with two Swedish blondes and did a little fleshly purging. It did not really help very much.
On Saturday I could see the two tiny figures waving at me from the causeway bridging the house with the tip of the spire of rock where the copter pad was. They were holding hands.
Madelon was tanned, fit, glowing, dressed in white with a necklace of Cartier Tempoimplant tattoos across her shoulders and breasts in glowing facets of liquid fire. She waved at Bowie as she came to me, squinting against the dust the copter blades were still swirling about.
Mike was there, dressed in black, looking haunted.
Getting to you, boy? I thought. There was a vicious thrill in thinking it and I shamed myself.
Madelon hugged me and we walked together back over the high causeway and directly to the new spraystone dome in the garden, at the edge of a two-hundred-foot cliff.
The cube was magnificent. There hadn’t been anything like it, ever. Not ever.
It was the largest cube I’d seen. There have been bigger ones since, none has been better. Its impact was stunning.
Madelon sat like a queen on what has come to be known as the Jewel Throne, a great solid thronelike block that seemed to be part temple, part jewel, part dream. It was immensely complex, set with faceted electronic patterns that gave it the effect of a superbly cut jewel that was somehow also liquid. Michael Cilento would have made his place in art history with that throne alone.
But on it sat Madelon. Nude. Her waist-long hair fell in a simple cascade. She looked right out at you, sitting erect, almost primly, with an almost triumphant expression.
It drew me from the doorway. Everyone, everything was forgotten, including the original and the creator with me. There was only the cube. The vibrations were getting to me and my pulse increased. Even knowing that pulse generators were working on my alpha waves and broadcast projectors were doing this and sonics were doing that and my own alpha wave was being synchronized and reprojected did not affect me. Only the cube affected me. All else was forgotten. There was just the cube and me, with Madelon in it, more real than the reality.
I walked to stand before it. The cube was slightly raised so that she sat well above the floor, as a queen should. Behind her, beyond the dark violet eyes, beyond the incredible presence of the woman, there was a dark, misty background that may or may not have been moving and changing.
I stood there a long time, just looking, experiencing. “It’s incredible,” I whispered.
“Walk around it,” Madelon said. I felt the note of pride in her voice. I moved to the right and it was as if Madelon followed me with her eyes without moving them, following me by sensing me, alert, alive, ready for me. Already, the electronic image on the multilayered surfaces was real. Mike’s electronic brushes had transformed the straight basic video images in subtle ways, artful shifts and fragile shadings on many levels revealing and emphasizing delicately.
The figure of Madelon sat there, proudly naked, breathing normally with that fantastically lifelike movement possible to the skilled molecular constructors. The figure had none of the flamboyance that Caruthers or Stibbard brought to their figures, so delighted in their ability to bring “life” to their work that they saw nothing else. But Mike had restraint. He had power in his work, understatement, demanding that the viewer put something of himself into it.
I walked around to the back. Madelon was no longer sitting on the throne. It was empty, and beyond it, stretching to the horizon, was an ocean and above the toppling waves, stars. New constellations glowed. A meteor flashed. I stepped back to the side. The throne was unchanged but Madelon was back. She sat there, a queen, waiting.
I walked around the cube. She was on the other side, waiting, breathing, being. But in back she was gone.
But to where?
I looked long into the eyes of the figure in the cube. She stared back at me, into me. I seemed to feel her thoughts. Her face changed, seemed about to smile, grew sad, drew back into queenliness. I drew back into myself. I went to Mike to congratulate him.
“I’m stunned. There are no words.”
He seemed relieved at my approval. “It’s yours,” he said. I nodded. There was nothing to say. It was the greatest work of art I knew. It was more than Madelon or the sum of all the Madelons that I knew existed. It was Woman as well as a specific woman. I felt humble in the presence of such great art. It was “mine” only in that I could house it. I could not contain it. It had to belong to the world. I looked at the two of them. There was something else. I sensed what it was and I died some more. A flicker of hate for both of them flashed across my mind and was gone, leaving only emptiness.