“You’re joking, John!”
“I could have had Katerina Andrabovna. That’s how panicky he is.”
Noyes bowed his head. He muttered, “I was sure it was all fixed up. Elena was positive too.”
“Santoliquido promised to make a decision by May 15,” said Roditis. “He didn’t promise that the decision would be favorable to me. If it goes some other way—”
“It won’t, John.”
“If it does, there’ll be work for you to do. We can’t let that persona slip away. Do you know, Charles, he let me sample the old man! I saw into that mind. I would do anything to have it now.
Anything.”
“Perhaps I should talk to Elena again,” Noyes ventured. “It can do no harm. But probably little good, either.”
“I’ll try. I’m in this as deep as you are, John. I’ve got a lot staked on success. I’ll speak to her and get her to put the screws on Santo all over again.”
Roditis nodded. He made a dismissing gesture. The screen went blank.
Behind him an ocean storm was rising. He felt the winds buffet his hopter, and ordered the craft upward to safer altitudes. It was late in the afternoon when he landed. He went at once to his nearest office, mind churning with half-conceived ideas. The storm broke in full impact and, as he looked from his tower window, it seemed to him that he saw the gigantic and powerful figure of Paul Kaufmann raging in the dark sky.
Chapter 10
“Where is Risa today?” Elena asked. “Chasing about Europe,” said Mark Kaufmann. “Doing some detective work on behalf of her persona. Last I heard of her, she was in Stockholm, but that was a few days ago.”
“You don’t worry about her?”
“She can look after herself. Besides, I have her under surveillance.”
Elena laughed. “How typical of you! In one breath you tell me that she’s self-reliant, and that you’re having her watched anyway. You never leave anything to chance.”
“I have only one daughter,” Kaufmann said quietly. “My dynastic urge won’t allow me to leave Risa’s welfare to chance.”
“Would you have wanted a son?” He shrugged. “The name won’t die. Only my line of it. And I’ll be right there, watching the future unfold.” Kaufmann got easily to his feet. They were lying on the resilient tile beside his private swimming pool, a hundred feet beneath the Manhattan streets. Warm pinkish light filtered down. “Shall we swim?”
“I’ll watch you from here,” said Elena languidly. Leaping into the pool, he swam three lengths in some sudden furious haste, then, more calmly, let himself drift back and forth across the width. The pool had been designed for Elena’s tastes. The water contained a fluorescing compound, so that his body left vivid streaks of gold and green as he sliced through it. Below, sparkling globes of captive living light glowed on the pool’s floor. The sides of the pool were studded along the waterline with silicaceous thermotectonic gems. The entire installation had run him into many thousands of dollars fissionable. Elena rarely used the pool her whims had created; she was content to lie naked beside it, soaking up warmth from the battery of overhead lamps. Kaufmann disliked the decorative effects, but he humored her.
He surfaced. His hand came up over the margin of the pool and seized her thigh, inches from her groin. He began to draw her to the water. Elena shrieked. Her buttocks bounced and skidded over the tile, and her free leg poked futilely at him.
“Mark!” He tugged her in. She landed with a radiant fluorescing splash and came up sputtering and blinking, her ebony hair in disarray, her tanned skin shining. “Birbone,” she muttered. “Scelerato!”
“Sticks and stones will break my bones.” He pulled her to him and kissed her, standing upright in the shallows of the pool. Her body resisted him stiffly for a moment, but only for a moment, and then she flowed against him, and her rigid nipples drew a tickling line across his chest When he released her, she was pouting with what he knew to be mock rage. He watched the sparkling water stream from her skin as Elena hauled herself out of the pool and flounced to a vibrator to dry. She stood with her back to him, combing out her hair. His eyes followed the supple line of her spinal column downward from her long neck through the widening hips, the delightful dimples, the fleshy blossoming of her rump.
“I’ll get even with you for that.” she told him. “I’ll make Santo give your uncle’s persona to an Arab.”
“Better that than to Roditis,” Kaufmann said. Elena stared at him over her shoulder. “I almost believe you mean that. You’d have Paul saying prayers to Mecca before you’d let him into Roditis.”
“Yes. Yes, I’m sure of that.” She finished at the vibrator and sprawled on the tile again, well out of reach of his grasping hand. He remained at the edge of the pool.
She said, “Shall I do a three-dollar frood job on you, Mark? I’ll tell you why you hate Roditis so much.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s so much like you.”
“What do you know about Roditis? Have you ever met the man?”
“Not yet.”
“I have,” Kaufmann said. “He’s a little thick coarse fellow with big muscles and no grace of soul. He’s a walking bank account. He dreams money day and night, and if he’s got any other interests they don’t show.”
“He gave more than a million dollars to a lamasery in San Francisco a few weeks ago,” Elena pointed out. “The same one your uncle used to give so much to.”
“And for the same reasons, too. You think Paul was a Buddhist? You think Roditis gives a damn about karma? He’s looking for publicity, and maybe he’d like the guru to lobby for him with Santoliquido. I’m surprised you’re taken in.”
“And I’m surprised that you underestimate him so much,” said Elena. “He’s not quite the ugly dollar-chaser you say he is. One of his personae is the sonic sculptor Kozak. Roditis is a connoisseur of the arts. He collects rare books. Do you know, he’s got an entire building full of editions of Homer?”
“How do you know all this?”
“I’ve been reading about him. I mean, he’ll be practically a member of the family soon, and so I thought I’d better—”
Kaufmann was out of the water instantly. He rushed toward her, knowing that he must look absurd in his angry dripping nakedness. He dropped don beside Elena and shouted, “What’s that? A member of the family?”
“After he gets your uncle’s persona.”
“There’s no chance of that!” Elena smiled sweetly She appeared to be enjoying his discomfiture. She placed one hand flat on the tile at either side of her, leaned back, inflated her lungs to give her breasts maximum display. Coolly she said, “I talked to Santo about it. Santo expects to award the persona to Roditis any day now.”
“No,” Kaufmann said. “Impossible! I’ve talked to Santo also about this. He promised—”
“What did he promise?” Kaufmann hesitated. “Well, perhaps not exactly a promise. But he indicated he didn’t want to see Paul go to Roditis, any more than I did.”
“That was some time ago. Santo is discovering that there’s no other qualified recipient. Roditis is clamoring for the persona, and without a valid reason for denying it, Santo is going to have to give it to him. He’s holding back only because he’s searching for some way to break the news to you.”
“No, no, no, no!”
“Yes, Mark!” Elena’s face was strangely animated. “You’re jealous, aren’t you? Roditis is going to get him, and you want him yourself! You can’t bear to see anyone else have Paul Kaufmann’s persona.”
“Stop it,” he said. “I offered you the three-dollar frooding. Take the ten-dollar job instead. It’s as I said: you and Roditis are practically alike. The same drives, the same hungers. You have ancestry and he doesn’t; that’s the only difference. He came out of the dirt and you were born to the Kaufmann billions. Now he’s going to grab himself a Kaufmann, and everything will be even. You can’t bear that thought.”