Straightening her spine, Jade replied, “We’ll have to talk to the big brass, then.”
Gradowsky looked surprised for an instant. Then he ran both his hands over his ample belly and said, “Yeah. I guess maybe we will.”
Several weeks later, one of the corporation’s big brass came to Selene City for the annual “fear of god” meeting that every branch office of Solar News Network received from management.
His full name was Arak al Kashan, although he smilingly insisted on being called Raki. “Raki,” he would say, almost self-deprecatingly, “not Rocky.” Yet Jade overheard Gradowsky mumble to one of the technicians, “Count your fingers after you shake hands with him.”
Raki was tall and tan and trim, dark of hair and eye, old enough to be a network vice president yet young enough to set women’s hearts fluttering. The grapevine had it that he was descended from very ancient blood; his aristocratic lineage went all the way back to the earliest Persian emperors. He had the haughtiness to match the claim. Jade heard him with her own ears saying disdainfully, “The unlamented Pahlavi Shahs were nothing more than upstart peasants.”
Jade thought he was the handsomest man she had ever seen. Raki dressed in hand-tailored suits of the latest fashion, darkly iridescent lapel-less jackets in shades of blue or charcoal that fit him like a second skin over pale pastel turtlenecks. Tight slacks that emphasized his long legs and bulging groin.
If Raki noticed Jade among the half-dozen employees at the Solar office he gave no outward sign of it. His task, as vice president in charge of human resources, was to have a brief personal chat with each man and woman at the Selene City office, review their job performances, and assure them that headquarters, back in Orlando, had their best interests at heart—even though there were to be no salary increases this year.
“Be careful of him,” Monica warned Jade when she saw the look in her young friend’s eyes. “He’s a lady-killer.”
Jade smiled at Monica’s antique vocabulary. With the Sam Gunn project stalled, Jade had been assigned to covering financial news. Her current project was a report on the growth in tourism at Selene. Next she would tackle the consortium that was trying to raise capital for building a new mass driver that would double Selene’s export capacity. Hardly as thrilling as tracking down Sam Gunn’s old lovers and adversaries.
“Jumbo Jim says that Raki could get headquarters to okay my Sam Gunn project,” Jade told Monica.
“Honey, I’m warning you. All he’ll want to do is get into your bed.”
They were sitting in Monica’s cubbyhole office, sipping synthetic coffee before starting the day’s tasks. Through the window that took up one whole wall they could see the dimly lit editing room where two technicians were bent over their computers, using the graphics program to “recreate” the construction of the new mass driver, from the first ceremonial shovel of excavation to the ultimate finished machine hurling hundreds of tons of cargo into space per hour.
Monica’s office was too small for a desk. There were only the two chairs and a computer console built into the back wall. Its keyboard rested on the floor until Monica needed it.
Jade appreciated Monica’s warning. “Mother Monica,” she called her older friend. But she had other ideas in mind.
Trying not to smile too broadly, she told Monica, “You know, Sam Gunn used to say that he wanted to get laid without getting screwed. Maybe that’s what I’ve got to do.”
Monica gave her a long, troubled look.
“I mean,” Jade said, “I wouldn’t mind having sex with him. It might even be fun. The question is: how do I make sure that he’ll okay the project afterward?”
Shaking her head like the weary mother superior of a rowdy convent, Monica said, “My god, you kids have it easy nowadays. When I was your age we had to worry about herpes, and chlamydia—and AIDS. Sex was punishable by death in those days!”
Somewhat surprised, Jade said, “But you managed …”
With a huff, Monica replied, “Sure, we managed. But you had to get a guy’s blood report first. There were even doctors making fortunes faking medical records!”
“That must have been tough,” Jade said.
“Why do you think people got married back then? And then divorced?”
“But Monica, he’ll only be here for another three days. I’ve got to get him to okay the Sam Gunn biography by then!”
Monica’s disapproving expression softened. “I know, honey. I understand. It’s just that I hate to see you using yourself like this. Meaningless sex might seem like fun at first….”
“Sam always said that there’s no such thing as meaningless sex.”
“Sam’s dead, child. And he left a trail of hurt people behind him. Women, mostly.”
Jade had to admit that she was right. “There was one woman I interviewed. She works at Dante’s Inferno, over in Hell Crater. She was Sam’s fiancée. She claims he left her at the altar and went off to the Asteroid Belt.”
“I’ll bet. And what kind of work does she do at Dante’s?” Monica asked, her eyes narrowing.
Ishtar’s was acknowledged to be the finest restaurant not merely in Selene, but the finest in all the Moon. Carved out of the lunar rock at the end of a long corridor, Ishtar’s interior was shaped like a dome, with video screens showing views of the heavens so cunningly devised that it actually looked as though the dome were up on the surface.
The restaurant was small, intimate. Each table was niched into its own semicircular banquette of high, plush lunar pseudo-leather, creating a semicircle of virtually complete privacy. Lovers could snuggle close, although at the prices Ishtar’s charged the restaurant’s clientele was mostly executives who had access to golden expense accounts. All the waiters were human; there were no robots at all, not even as busboys.
“I’ve never had champagne before,” Jade said, with a slight giggle.
Arak al Kashan leaned back in the plush banquette and steepled his long manicured fingers in front of his chin, admiring her from across their damask-covered table.
“You should have it every evening,” Raki said, smiling. “A creature as lovely as you should have oceans of champagne. You should bathe in champagne.”
Jade lifted an eyebrow slightly. “I don’t think there’s that much champagne in Selene.”
“Then you can come to France with me. We’ll rent a chateau and bathe in champagne every night.”
“Oh, I can’t come to Earth,” Jade said lightly.
“I could see to it that you get a much better position with the network. In France. Or in Florida. We could see each other every day if you came to Florida.”
She had already drunk enough champagne to dull the pain of what she had to tell him. “I can never come to Earth, Raki. My bones are too brittle for it.”
His mouth dropped open for an instant, but he immediately recovered his composure.
“Then I must come to Selene more often,” he said gallantly.
Jade accepted the compliment with a smile and a totally unpremeditated batting of her eyelashes. In the center of the restaurant the head waiter supervised the creation of a spectacularly flaming dish that brought murmurs of approval from the watching diners.
He’s a doll! Jade thought to herself. Raki is a handsome, elegant, charming, living doll.
He was also an accomplished lover, as she found later that night, in the suite that the network maintained for visiting executives. Jade felt herself swept away like a cork in a tidal wave under Raki’s experienced hands and tongue. She felt as if she would suffocate; she felt as if her heart would burst in her chest. Electric thrills tingled every square centimeter of her skin.