We became friends as well as lovers.
In time, of course, she had other lovers, just as I knew women who interested me, in their own way.
No one owned Madelon, not even I. Her other lovers were infrequent, but quite real. I never kept count, though I knew Control could retrieve the data from the surveillance section’s computers. It was not that I had her watched, but that she must be watched for her own protection. It is all part of being rich and how better to extract a few million from me than by the ancient and dishonorable means of kidnapping. Guarding against an assassin was almost impossible, if the man was intelligent and determined, but the watch teams gave me comfort when she was not close. Meanwhile. I studied mazeru with Shigeta, when I could, and target shooting with Wesley. Your own reflexes are your best protection.
In four years Madelon had only two lovers that I thought were beneath her. One was a rough miner who had struck it big in the Martian mines near Bradbury and was expending a certain animal vitality along with his new wealth. The second was a tape star, quite charming and beautiful, but essentially hollow. They were momentary liaisons and when she perceived that I was distressed she broke off immediately, something that neither man could understand.
But Madelon and I were friends, as well as man and wife, and one is not knowingly rude to friends. I frequently insult people, but I am never rude to them. Madelon’s taste was excellent, and these other relationships were usually fruitful in learning and joy, so that the two that were distasteful to me were very much in the minority.
Michael Cilento was different.
I talked to Madelon, who was in the Aegean with a new lover, and then flew to see Mike at Nikki’s. Our meeting was warm. “I can’t thank you enough for the villa,” he said, hugging me. “It was so beautiful and Nikos and Maria were so very nice to me. I did some drawings of their daughter. But the island—ah! Beautiful . . . very peaceful, yet . . . exciting, somehow.”
“Where’s the new cube?”
“At the Athena Gallery. They’re having a one-man, one-cube show.”
“Well, let’s go. I’m anxious to see it.” I turned to my man Stamos. “Madelon will be along soon. Please meet her and take her directly to the Athena.” To Mike I said, “Come—I’m excited.”
The cube was life-size, as were all of Mike’s works. Sophia was olive-skinned and full-breasted, lying on a couch covered with deep fur, curled like a cat, yet fully displayed. There was a richness in the work, an opulence reminiscent of Matisse’s odalisques. But the sheer animal eroticism of the girl overpowered everything.
She was the Earth Mother, Eve, and Lilith together. She was the pagan princess, the high priestess of Ba’al, the great whore of Babylon. She was nude, but a sun ornament gleamed dully between her breasts. Beyond her, through an arch of ancient, worn stone, was a dawn world, lush and green beyond a high wall. There was a feeling of time here, a setting far back beyond recorded history, when myths were men and monsters perhaps real.
She lounged on animal furs, with the faint suggestion of a wanton sprawl, with no part of her hidden, and a half-eaten apple in her hand. The direct suggestion of Eve would have been ludicrous, except for the sheer raw power of the piece. Suddenly the symbolism of the Biblical Eve and her apple of knowledge had a reality, a meaning. Here, somewhere in Man’s past, there was a turning. From simplicity toward complexity, from innocence to knowledge and beyond, perhaps to wisdom. And always the intimate personal secret lusts of the body.
All this in one cube, from one face. I walked to the side. The girl did not change, except that I was now looking at her side, but the view through the arch had changed. It was the sea, stretching under heavy clouds to the unchanging horizon. The waves rolled in, oily and almost silent.
The back view was past the voluptuous girl toward what she looked at: a dim room, a corridor leading to it, lit with flickering torches, going back into darkness . . . into time? Forward into time? The Earth Mother was waiting.
The fourth side was a solid stone wall beyond the waiting woman and on the wall was set a ring and from the ring hung a chain. Symbol?
Decoration? But Mike was too much an artist to have something without meaning in his work, for decoration was just design without content. I turned to Mike to speak, but he was looking at the door. Madelon stood in the entrance, looking at the cube. Slowly she walked toward it, her eyes intent, secret, searching. I said nothing, but stepped aside. I glanced at Mike and my heart twisted. He was staring at her as intently as she looked at the sensatron cube.
As Madelon walked closer, Mike stepped near me. “Is this your friend?” he asked. I nodded. “I’ll do that cube you wanted,” he said softly.
We waited silently as Madelon walked slowly around the cube. I could see she was excited. She was tanned and fit, wearing a Draco original, fresh from her submarine exploration of the Aegean with Markos. At last she turned away from the cube and came directly to me with a swirl of her skirt. We kissed and held each other a long time. We looked into each other’s eyes for a long time. “You’re well?”
I asked her.
“Yes.” She looked at me a long moment more, a soft smile on her face, searching my eyes for any hurt she might have caused. In that shorthand, intimate language of old friends and old lovers, she questioned me with her look.
“I’m fine,” I said, and meant it. I was always her friend but not so often her lover. But I still had more than most men, and I do not mean my millions. I had her love and respect, while others had usually just her interest.
She turned to Mike with a smile. “You are Michael Cilento. Would you do my portrait, or use me as a subject?” She was perceptive enough to know that there was a more than subtle difference.
“Brian has already spoken to me about it,” he said.
“And?” She was not surprised.
“I always need to spend some time with my subject before I can do a cube.” Except with the Buddha cube, I thought with a smile.
“Whatever you need,” Madelon said.
Mike looked past her at me and raised his eyebrows. I made a gesture of acquiescence. Whatever was needed. I flatter myself that I understand the creative process better than most nonartists. What was needed was needed; what was not needed was unimportant. With Mike, technology had ceased to be anything but a minimal hindrance between him and his art. Now he needed only intimacy and understanding of what he intended to do. And that meant time.
“Use the Transjet,” I said. “Blake Mason has finished the house on Malagasy. Use that. Or roam around awhile.”
Mike smiled at me. “How many homes do you have, anyway?”
“I like to change environments. It makes life more interesting. And as much as I try to keep my face out of the news it keeps creeping in and I can’t be myself in as many places as I’d like.”