The old man knew that as well as Manuel did. Inwardly he scorned his son’s hollowness, and sometimes the scorn showed through. Yet he never ceased pretending that he prized his son’s judgment, shrewdness, and potential administrative skills. In front of Thor Watchman, in front of Leon Spaulding, in front of anyone who would listen, Krug went on and on about the virtues of the heir apparent. Self-deluding hypocrisy, Manuel thought. He’s trying to hoax himself into believing what he knows damned well won’t ever be true. And it won’t work. It can’t work. He’ll always have more real faith in his android friend Thor than he will in his own son. For good reason, too. Why not prefer a gifted android to a worthless child? He made us both, didn’t he?
Let him give the companies to Thor Watchman, Manuel thought.
The other members of the party were arriving. Krug shepherded everyone toward the transmat banks.
“To the tower,” he cried. “To the tower!”
1110, the tower. He had regained the better part of an hour out of his lost morning, anyway, through this jump of one time-zone westward from New York. But he could have done without the trip. Bad enough to caper in the chill Arctic autumn, forcing himself to admire his father’s absurd tower — the Pyramid of Krug, Manuel liked to call it privately — but then there had been the business of the falling block, the crushing of the androids. A nasty incident.
Clissa had gone to the edge of hysteria. “Don’t look,” Manuel told her, folding his arms about her as the wallscreen in the control center showed the scene of the lifting of the block from the corpses. To Spaulding he said, “Sedative. Fast.”
The ectogene found him a tube of something. Manuel jammed the snout against Clissa’s arm and activated it. The drug leaped through her skin in a soft ultrasonic spurt.
“Were they killed?” she asked, head still averted.
“It looks that way. Possibly one survived. The others never knew what hit them.”
“The poor people.”
“Not people,” Leon Spaulding said. “Androids. Only androids.”
Clissa lifted her head. “Androids are people!” she blazed. “I don’t ever want to hear something like that again! Don’t they have names, dreams, personalities—”
“Clissa,” Manuel said gently.
“—ambitions,” she said. “Of course they’re people. A bunch ofpeople just died under that block. How could you, you in particular, make such a remark about—”
“Clissa!” Manuel said, anguished.
Spaulding was rigid, eyes glassy with rage. The ectogene seemed to tremble on the verge of an angry retort, but his fierce discipline saw him past the moment.
“I’m sorry,” Clissa murmured, looking at the floor. “I didn’t mean to get personal, Leon. I — I — oh, God, Manuel, why did any of this have to happen?” She began to sob again. Manuel signaled for another sedative tube, but his father shook his head and came forward, taking her from him.
Krug cradled the girl in his immense arms, half crushing her against his huge chest. “Easy,” he said, hugging her. “Easy, easy, easy. It was a terrible thing, yes. But they didn’t suffer. They died clean. Thor will look after the hurt ones. He’ll shut off their pain centers and make them feel better. Poor Clissa, poor, poor, poor, poor Clissa — you’ve never seen anyone die before, have you? It’s awful when it’s so sudden, I know. I know.” He comforted her tenderly, stroking her long silken hair, patting her, kissing her moist cheeks. Manuel watched in astonishment. He had never seen his father so gentle before in his life.
But of course Clissa was something special to the old man: the instrument of dynastic succession. She was supposed to be the steadying influence that would guide Manuel to an acceptance of his responsibilities, and she also was charged with the task of perpetuating the name of Krug. A paradox, there: Krug treated his daughter-in-law as though she were as fragile as an ancient porcelain doll, but yet he expected a stream of sons shortly to begin to flowing from her loins.
To his guests Krug now said, “Too bad we end the tour this way. But at least we saw everything before it happened. Senator, gentlemen, I’m grateful that you came to see my tower. I trust you come again when it’s a little more finished. Now we go, eh?”
Clissa seemed calmer. It troubled Manuel that not he but his father had been the one to soothe her.
Reaching out to take her, he said, “I think Clissa and I will head back to California. A couple of hours together on the beach and she’ll be steadier. We—”
“You are expected this afternoon in Duluth,” said Krug stonily.
“I—”
“Send for household androids to fetch her,” he said. “You go to the plant.” Turning away from Manuel, Krug nodded to his departing guests and said to Leon Spaulding, “New York. The upper office.”
1138, the tower. Nearly everyone was gone, now: Krug, Spaulding, Quenelle, and Vargas back to New York, Fearon and Buckleman to Geneva, Maledetto to Los Angeles, Thor Watchman down to see about the injured androids. Two of Manuel’s household betas had arrived to take Clissa back to Mendocino. Just before she stepped into the transmat with them, Manuel embraced her lightly, kissing her cheek.
“When will you come?” she asked.
“Early this evening, I guess. We have a date in Hong Kong, I think. I’ll get back in time to dress for dinner.”
“Not sooner?”
“I have Duluth to do. The android plant.”
“Get out of it.”
“I can’t. You heard him tell me to go. Anyway, the old man’s right: it’s about time I saw it.”
“What a bore. An afternoon in a factory!”
“I have to. Sleep well, Clissa. Wake up with this ugly thing that happened here left far behind. Shall I program an erasure wire for you?”
“You know I hate having my memory tampered with, Manuel.”
“Yes. I’m sorry. You’d better go, now.”
“I love you,” she said.
“I love you,” he told her. He nodded to the androids. They took her arms and led her into the transmat.
He was alone, except for a couple of unknown betas who had arrived to take charge of the control center in Watchman’s absence. He walked coolly past them into Watchman’s private office at the rear of the dome, pushed the door shut, and nudged the input of the telephone. The screen lit up. Manuel tapped out the call numbers of a scrambler code, and the screen responded with the abstract pattern that told him his privacy was guaranteed. Then he punched the number of Lilith Meson, alpha, in the android quarter of Stockholm.
Lilith’s image glowed on the screen: an elegantly constructed woman with lustrous blue-black hair, a high-bridged nose, platinum eyes. Her smile dazzled. “Manuel? Where are you calling from?” she asked.
“The tower. I’m going to be late.”
“Very late?”
“Two or three hours.”
“I’ll shrivel. I’ll fade.”
“I can’t help it, Lilith. His majesty commands me to visit the Duluth android plant. I must go.”
“Even though I’ve rearranged a week’s shifts to be with you tonight?”
“I can’t tell him that,” Manuel said. “Look, it’s only a few hours. Will you forgive me?”
“What else can I do? But how dull to have to go sniffing in vats when you could be—”
“It’s known as noblesse oblige. Anyway, I’ve become a little curious about the android facts of life since you and I — since we — Do you know, I’ve never been inside one of the plants?”
“Never?”
“Never. Wasn’t ever interested. Still not interested, except in one special angle of it: here’s my chance to find out what sort of things are under that lovely scarlet skin of yours. Here’s my chance to see how Krug Synthetics makes Liliths by the batch.”