"You've done a good job, Louis," said Mario. "Go ahead with it."
Correaos took a deep breath, released it, shook his head. I'll be dyed-double-and-throttled!"
"What's the trouble?"
"I don't get you at all," said Correaos, staring at Mario as if he were a stranger. "If I didn't know you stem to stern, I'd say you were a different man. Three months ago, if I'd tried to put something cleanly designed in front of you, you'd have gone off like one of Arnold's electrons. You'd have called this job a flying bread-box. You'd have draped angel's-wings all over the outside, streamlined the dashboard fixtures, built in two or three Louis Fifteenth book cases. I don't know what-all. If you didn't look so healthy, I'd say you were sick."
Mario said with an air of sage deliberation, "Ebery Air-car has taken a lot of money out of the public. The old Ebery managed to keep itself in the air, but it cost a lot and looked like a pagoda on wings. Now we'll start giving "Em quality. Maybe they'll turn it down."
Correaos laughed exultantly. "If we can't sell ten million of these, I'll run one up as high as she'll go and jump."
"Better start selling, then."
"I hope you don't have a relapse," said Correaos, "and order a lot of fancy fittings."
"No," said Mario mildly. "She'll go out just as she is, so long as I have anything to say about it."
Correaos slapped the hull of the Airfarer approvingly, turned a quizzical face to Mario. "Your wife has been trying to get in touch with you. I told her I didn't know where you were. You'd better call her-if you want to stay married. She was talking about divorce."
Mario looked off into the distance, uncomfortably aware of Correaos's scrutiny. "I told her to go ahead with it. It's the best thing for everybody concerned. Fairest for her, at any rate."
Correaos shook his head. "You're a funny fellow, Ebery. A year ago you'd have fired me a dozen times over."
"Maybe I'm getting you fat for the slaughter," suggested Mario.
"Maybe," said Correaos. "Letya Arnold and I can go into business making electron elephant guns."
Two hundred thousand artisans swarmed over the Tower, painting, plastering, spraying, fitting in pipes, wires, pouring terazzo, concrete, plancheen, installing cabinets, a thousand kinds of equipment. Walls were finished with panels of waxed and polished woods, the myriad pools were tiled, the gardeners landscaped the hanging parks, the great green bowers in the clouds.
Every week Mervyn Alien conferred with Taussig and old man Kubal, approving, modifying, altering, canceling, expanding. From recorded copies of the interviews Mario worked, making the changes Alien desired, meshing them carefully into his own designs.
Months passed. Now Mervyn Alien might not have recognized this man as Ralston Ebery. At the Ebery Air-car office in the Aetherian Block, his employees were astounded, respectful. It was a new Ralston Ebery-though, to be sure, they noticed the old gestures, the tricks of speech, habits of walking, dressing, involuntary expressions. This new Ralston Ebery had sloughed away fifty pounds of oil and loose flesh. The sun had tinted the white skin to a baby pink. The eyes, once puffy, now shone out of meaty cheeks; the leg muscles were tough with much walking; the chest was deeper, the lungs stronger from the half-hour of swimming every afternoon at four o'clock.
And at last the two hundred thousand artisans packed their tools, collected their checks. Maintenance men came on the job. Laborers swept, scrubbed, polished. The Empyrean Tower was complete-a solidified dream, a wonder of the world. A building rising like a pine tree, supple and massive, overbounding the minuscule streets and squares below. An edifice not intended for grace, yet achieving grace through its secure footing, its incalculable tapers, set-backs, thousand terraces, thousand taxiplats, million windows.
The Empyrean Tower was completed. Mervyn Alien moved in on a quiet midnight, and the next day the Chateau d'lf at 5600 Exmoor Avenue, Meadowlands, was vacant, for sale or for lease.
The Chateau d'lf was now Level 900, Empyrean Tower. And Roland Mario ached with eagerness, anxiety, a hot gladness intense to the point of lust. He was slowly cleaning off his desk when Taussig poked his head into the office.
"Well, what are you planning to do now?"
Mario inspected Taussig's curious face. "Any more big jobs?"
"Nope. And not likely to be. At least not through old man Kubal."
"How come? Has he retired?"
"Retired? Shucks, no. He's gone crazy. Schizo."
Mario drummed his fingers on his desk. "When did all this happen?"
"Just yesterday. Seems like finishing the Empyrean was too much for him. A cop found him in Tanagra Square talking to himself, took him home. Doesn't know his nephew, doesn't know his housekeeper. Keeps saying his name is Bray, something like that."
"Bray?" Mario rose to his feet, his forehead knotting. Breaugh. "Sounds like senile decay," he said abstractedly.
"That's right," Taussig responded, still fixing Mario with bright curious eyes. "So what are you going to do now?"
"I quit," said Mario, with an exaggerated sweep of the arm. "I'm done, I'm like old man Kubal. The Empyrean Tower's too much for me. I've got senile decay. Take a good look, Taussig, you'll never see me again." He closed the door in Taussig's slack face. He stepped into the elevator, dropped to the second level, hopped the high-speed strip to his small apartment at Melbourne House. He thumbed the lock, the scanner recognized his prints, the door slid back. Mario entered, closed the door. He undressed Ebery's gross body, wrapped it in a robe, sank with a grunt into a chair beside a big low table.
The table held a complex model built of wood, metal, plastic, vari-colored threads. It represented Level 900, Empyrean Tower-the Chateau d'lf.
Mario knew it by heart. Every detail of an area a sixth of a mile square was pressed into his brain.
Presently Mario dressed again, in coveralls of hard gray twill. He loaded his pockets with various tools and equipment, picked up his handbag. He looked at himself in the mirror, at the face that was Ebery and yet not quite Ebery. The torpid glaze had left the eyes. The lips were no longer puffy, the jowls had pulled up, his face was a meaty slab. Thoughtfully Mario pulled a cap over his forehead, surveyed the effect. The man was unrecognizable. He attached a natty wisp of mustache. Ralston Ebery no longer existed.
Mario left the apartment. He hailed a cab, flew out to Meadowlands. The Empyrean Tower reared over the city like a fence post standing over a field of cabbages. An aircraft beacon scattered red rays from a neck-twisting height. A million lights from nine hundred levels glowed, blended into a rich milky shimmer. A city in itself, where two million, three million men and women might live their lives out if they so wished. It was a monument to the boredom of one man, a man sated with life. The most magnificent edifice ever built, and built for the least consequential of motives that ever caused one rock to be set on another. The Empyrean Tower, built from the conglomerate resources of the planet's richest wealth, was a gigantic toy, a titillation, a fancy.
But who would know this? The 221st Level housed the finest hospital in the world. The staff read like the Medical Associations list of Yearly Honors. Level 460 held an Early Cretaceous swamp-forest. Full-scale dinosaurs cropped at archaic vegetation, pterodactyls slipped by on invisible guides, the air held the savage stench of swamp, black ooze, rotting mussels, carrion.
Level 461 enclosed the first human city, Eridu of Sumer, complete with its thirty-foot brick walls, the ziggurat temple to Enlil the Earth god, the palace of the king, the mud huts of the peasants. Level 462 was a Mycenaean Island, lapped by blue salt water. A Minoan temple in an olive grove crowned the height, and a high-beaked galley floated on the water, with sunlight sparkling from bronze shields, glowing from the purple sail.
Level 463 was a landscape from an imaginary fantastic world created by mystic-artist Dyer Lothaire. And Level 509 was a private fairyland, closed to the public, a magic garden inhabited by furtive nymphs.
There were levels for business offices, for dwellings, for laboratories. The fourth level enclosed the world's largest stadium. Levels 320 through 323 housed the University of the World, and the initial enrollment was forty-two thousand; 255 was the world's vastest library; 328 a vast art gallery.
There were showrooms, retail stores, restaurants, quiet taverns, theaters, telecast studios-a complex of the world society caught, pillared up into the air at the whim of Mervyn Alien. Humanity's lust for lost youth had paid for it. Mervyn Alien sold a commodity beside which every ounce of gold ever mined, every prized possession, every ambition and goal, were like nothing. Eternal life, replenished youth-love, loyalty, decency, honor found them unfair overstrong antagonists.