“You’ve just committed an act of rape,” Risa told him. “Your helpless victim was a girl of the highest social position, less than seventeen years old. You’ll get your mind blotted out for a crime like that.”
Leonards came to a sitting position, and the color drained from his face a moment, then returned in a crimson rush. “What are you saying?”
“I’m explaining to you the nature of the trouble you’re in. Forcibly entering my hopter while I was visiting the Scheffing Institute, compelling me to bring you here, disrobing me, inducing me through superior strength to submit to sexual violation — oh, it’s bad, Leonards, it’s very bad!”
“I feel like I’m in a dream,” he whispered. “It’s real enough. I’ll have the quaestors here any minute.”
“Why are you doing this?” She crouched before him, her face close to his. “Would you like to avoid going to trial? Would you like me to forgive you for your audacity in perpetrating this hideous rape?”
“What do you want from me?”
“A favor,” she said harshly. “A small favor, and I’ll forget all about what happened here today, and leave you with your memories of pleasure.”
“What kind of favor?”
“You’ll have to break the rules of the Scheffing Institute,” she said. “But that’s a much smaller crime than raping a girl my age, and if you’re smart and lucky you’ll get away with it. There’s a certain persona I want, Leonards. Get it for me from the files, just borrow it for a little while tomorrow. And transplant it to me. That’s all I ask. I’ll come to the tower, and you’ll handle the transplant, and we’ll call it quits. But we’ll have to move swiftly, because this particular persona recording is due to be destroyed very soon. All right, Leonards? Do we have a deal?”
“Everything’s settled, then,” Mark Kaufmann said. “My uncle’s persona remains in storage indefinitely.”
“Yes,” said Santoliquido. “Which is to say, at least another year or two.”
“Long enough for some of the voltage to bleed out of the dynamo, at any rate. He’ll be less formidable coming back then. If he comes back at all.”
Santoliquido shrugged. “I’ll hold him in storage until a qualified recipient appears, Mark. And with Roditis permanently disqualified, it might be a long, long time. You don’t need to worry about that.”
“Fine. See you at my party on Saturday?”
“Of course,” said Santoliquido. “I’ll reach Dominica about noon, I suppose. It’ll be a novelty, going south to the tropics to find cooler weather. My best to Elena, yes?”
“Of course.” Kaufmann broke the contact. He smiled, leaned back, touched the tips of his fingers together. All was well at last. Roditis was neutralized, entirely out of the scene. Santoliquido, who had come out of this affair very poorly indeed, was helpless before his wishes. There would be no extra Uncle Paul at liberty to interfere now. Elena, a chastened woman, had settled into something very much like fidelity. Risa, taking on new depth and maturity day by day, had ripened into a fitting Kaufmann heiress, ready to assume new responsibilities in the family empire. And he himself was home free with his uncle’s potent persona well integrated into his awareness, unknown to the rest of the world.
“How do you like that, you old fox? I’ve handled things pretty well, haven’t I, eh?”
—You’ve done well for yourself, Paul replied. But don’t get overconfident. Smugness was Roditis’ undoing. “Don’t worry about me,” Mark replied. “I try to calculate all the angles. And with you in there helping me, we shouldn’t miss very many of them.”
—There’s always the unpredictable. Be on guard for it. “Mark?” It was Risa’s voice, outside. “I’m here, Mark.”
“Come in,” he said. She entered his office. In her sketchy summer wrap she looked crisp and cool, and she carried herself with a no-nonsense selfpossession that he admired greatly. Here was the one person in the world who mattered most to him; and also the one person to whom he might be vulnerable. He had an idea that Risa suspected what he had done with Paul’s persona. She knew Paul’s mannerisms, and of course she knew his own, and she seemed conscious that a fusion had taken place. But after the first day she had ceased to betray any suspicions. Mark had no way of telling what was going on behind the smooth mask of his daughter’s face. Somehow, though, he felt certain that she knew the truth.
“I’m here for a business discussion,” Risa announced. “What kind of business?”
“Preliminary business, really. I’d like to get some idea of the family assets. What we have where, in whose name, what slice of equity in each.”
Kaufmann nodded. “It’s time we went over all that anyway, I suppose. I mean to bring you much more closely into our activities. To groom you for the time when you’re running the show. The world of business genuinely interests you, eh, Risa?”
“You know it does. And now that Roditis is through, we can begin to make a new move, Mark. I’d like to close in on that Latin American electrical empire of his. I’ve been thinking, we could undercut the Roditis trustees by a takeover of the company that makes the transmission pylons, and then—”
“Do you have a cold, Risa?”
“Why?”
“Your voice sounds odd. Deeper. Hoarser.” She shook her head. “That’s just Tandy’s influence, I guess. She must have had a very lush contralto, and she’s trying to pitch my voice down there too. You know how it is, the way a persona influences the host in little ways, certain mannerisms—”
“Yes,” Kaufmann said. “I know.”
“Very well, then. If we can get a grasp on the pylon company, we’ll have Roditis Securities caught between Scylla and Charybdis, and—”
“Between who and whom?”
“Scylla and Charybdis,” she repeated impatiently. “The monster and the whirlpool. Book Twelve of The Odyssey. By Homer.”
“Yes. I know. I didn’t realize you were a student of Homer, Risa.”
“Every civilized person should have a deep knowledge of Homer,” she said. “Has there ever been a greater poet? A man with a more vivid imagination? There are lessons we can learn from him even today.” Risa laughed self-consciously. “Back to the transmission pylons, though. Here’s what I have in mind—”
Mark Kaufmann watched his daughter construct an elaborate holding-company scheme with quick scrawled stokes of stylus against pad. But he paid little attention to her financial theories just now. A sudden implausible notion sent a chill of disbelief through him.
Homer? Holding companies? Transmission pylons? A deeper voice? No, he thought. No, it isn’t possible. She wouldn’t — she couldn’t—
From somewhere far away, Paul Kaufmann’s persona delivered a silent booming laugh. — There’s always the unpredictable, Mark.
Quietly Mark agreed. He peered closely at Risa, seeking for signs, for proof, for confirmation of this strange and frightening fantasy of his. If it were true, a new, invincible force had entered their family, and all plans must be reconsidered. But it could not be true. It could not be true. It could not be true. “There we are,” Risa finished. She shoved the pad toward her father. “What do you say, Mark? How does the plan look to you?”
“I’ll have to think about it,” he said warily. “But it’s worth considering. If we can use Roditis’ own way of thinking to cut chunks out of his holdings, why not?”
Risa grinned. She pointed to the somber, brooding portrait of Uncle Paul hanging behind her father’s desk. “I think he’d go for the idea. I think the old buccaneer would be very amused by it. Perhaps a little proud of me. Perhaps even a little jealous.”
“He is,” Mark Kaufmann said, and looked beyond his window to see the sky suddenly grow dark with the fury of a summer storm.