"Pah!" sneered Mario.
"Every man amuses himself as best he knows how. My current interest is building the Empyrean Tower." His voice took on a deep, exalted ring. "It shall rise three miles into the air! There is a banquet hall with a floor of alternate silver and copper strips, a quarter mile wide, a quarter mile high, ringed with eight glass balconies. There will be garden terraces like nothing else on earth, with fountains, waterfalls, running brooks. One floor will be a fairyland out of the ancient days, peopled with beautiful nymphs.
"Others will display Earth at stages in its history. There will be museums, conservatories of various musical styles, studios, workshops, laboratories for every known type of research, sections given to retail shops. There will be beautiful chambers and balconies designed for nothing except to be wandered through, sections devoted to the-let us say, worship of Astarte. There will be halls full of toys, a hundred restaurants staffed by gourmets, a thousand taverns serving liquid dreams; halls for seeing, hearing, resting."
Said Mario, "And after you tire of the Empyrean Tower?"
Mervyn Alien flung himself back in the seat "Ah, Mario, you touch me on a sore point. Doubtless something will suggest itself. If only we could break away from Earth, could fly past the barren rocks of the planets, to other stars, other life. There would be no need for any Chateau d'lf."
Mario rubbed his fat jowl, eyed Alien quizzically. "Did you invent this process yourself?"
"I and four others who comprised a research team. They are all dead. I alone know the technique."
"And your secretary? Is she one of your changelings?" "No," said Mervyn Alien. "Thane is what she is. She lives by hate. You think I am her lover? No," and he smiled faintly. "Not in any way. Her will is for destruction, death. A bright thing only on the surface. Inwardly she is as dark and violent, as a drop of hot oil."
Mario had absorbed too many facts, too much information. He was past speculating. "Well, I won't take any more of your time. I wanted to find out where I stand."
"Now you know. I need money. This is the easiest way to get it in large quantities that I know of. But I also have my big premium offer-bank night, bingo, whatever you wish to call it."
"What's that?"
"I need customers. The more customers, the more money. Naturally my publicity cannot be too exact. So I offer a free shift, a free body if you bring in six new customers."
Mario narrowed his eyes. "So-Sutlow gets credit for Zaer and me?"
Alien looked blank. "Who's Sutlow?"
"You don't know Sutlow?"
"Never heard of him."
"How about Ditmar?"
"Ah, he's successful, is Ditmar. Ten thousand bought him a body with advanced cirrhosis. Two more customers and he escapes. But perhaps I talk too much. I can give you no more time, Mario. Good night"
On his way out, Mario stopped in the reception room, looked down into the face of Thane. She stared back, & face like stone, eyes like star sapphires. Mario suddenly felt exalted, mystic, as if he walked on live thought, knew the power of insight
"You're beautiful but you're cold as the sea-bed."
"This door will take you out, sir."
"Your beauty is so new and so fragile a thing-a surface only a millimeter thick. Two strokes of a knife would make you a horrible sight, one from which people would look aside as you pass."
She opened bar mouth, closed it, rose to her feet, said, "This way out, sir."
Mario reached, caught sight of Ralston Ebery's fat flaccid fingers, grimaced, pulled back his hands. "I could not touch you-with these hands."
"Nor with any others," she said from the cool distance of her existence.
He passed her to the door. "If you see the most beautiful creature that could possibly exist, if she has a soul like rock crystal, if she challenges you to take her, break her, and you are lost in a fat hideous porridge of a body-"
Her expression shifted a trifle, in which direction he could not tell. "This is the Chateau d'lf," she said. "And you are a fat hideous porridge."
He wordlessly departed. She slid the door shut. Mario shrugged, but Ralston Ebery's face burnt in a hot glow of humiliation. There was no love, no thought of love. Nothing more than the challenge, much like the dare of a mountain to the climbers who scale its height, plunder the secrets of its slopes, master the crest. Thane, cold as the far side of the moon!
Get away, said Mario's brain sharply, break clear of the obsession. Fluff, female bodies, forget them. Is not the tangle of enough complexity?
CHAPTER VI
Leverage
From the door of the Chateau d'lf Mario took an aircab to 19 Seafoam Place-a monster house of pink marble, effulgent, voluted, elaborate as the rest of Ralston Ebery's possessions. He thumbed the lock-hole. The prints meshed with identification patterns, the door snapped back. Mario entered.
The photograph had prepared him for his family. Florence Ebery greeted him with furtive suspicion; the sons were blank, passively hostile. The daughter seemed to have no emotions whatever, other than a constant air of puzzled surprise.
At dinner, Mario outraged Ebery's body by eating nothing but a salad of lettuce, carrots and vinegar. His family was puzzled.
"Are you feeling well, Ralston?" inquired his wife.
"Very well."
"You're not eating."
"I'm dieting. I'm going to take the lard off this hideous body."
Eight eyes bulged, four sets of knives and forks froze.
Mario went on placidly, "We're going to have some changes around here. Too much easy living is bad for a person." He addressed himself to the two young men, both alike with white faces, doughy cheeks, full lips. "You lads now-I don't want to be hard on you. After all, it's not your fault you were born Ralston Ebery's sons. But do you know what it means to earn a living by sweating for it?"
Luther, the eldest, spoke with dignity. "We work with the sweat of our brains."
"Tell me more about it," said Mario.
Luther's eyes showed anger. "I put out more work in one week than you do all year."
"Where?"
"Where? Why, in the glass yard. Where else?" There was fire here, more than Mario had expected.
Ralston Jr. said in a gruff surly voice, "We're paying you our board and room, we don't owe you a red cent. If you don't like the arrangements the way they are, we'll leave."
Mario winced. He had misjudged Ebery's sons. White faces, doughy cheeks, did not necessarily mean white doughy spirits. Better keep his opinions to himself, base his conversation on known fact. He said mildly, "Sorry, I didn't mean to offend you. Forget the board and room. Spend it on something useful."
He glanced skeptically toward Clydia, Ebery's daughter. She half-simpered. Better keep his mouth shut. She might turn out to be a twelve-hour-a-day social service worker.
Nevertheless, Mario found himself oppressed in Ebery's house. Though living in Ebery's body, the feel of his clothes, his intimate equipment was profoundly disturbing. He could not bring himself to use Ebery's razor or toothbrush. Attending to the needs of Ebery's body was most exquisitely distasteful. He discovered to his relief that his bedroom was separate from that of Florence Ebery.
He arose the next morning very early, scarcely after dawn, hurriedly left the house, breakfasted on orange juice and dry toast at a small restaurant. Ebery's stomach protested the meager rations with angry rumbling. Ebery's legs complained when Mario decided to walk the pedestrip instead of calling down an aircab.
He let himself into the deserted offices of Ebery Air-car, wandered absently back and forth the length of the suite, thinking. Still thinking, he let himself into his private office. The clutter, the rococo junk, annoyed him. He called up a janitor, waved his hand around the room. "Clear out all this fancy stuff. Take it home, keep it. If you don't want it, throw it away. Leave me the desk, a couple of chairs. The rest - out!"