To Live Again and The Second Trip (13 page)

A flamboyant sign declared: WELCOME TO THE HOUSE OF HALF-LIFE.

“What’s this?” she asked. “More radioactive games?”

“I have no idea. Shall we go in?”

They entered. A fee of a dollar fissionable was extracted from each of them. Swiftly they discovered that the House of Half-Life, despite its name, did not traffic in neutrons and alpha particles; the half-fife offered here was biological, hybrid creatures raised from fused cell nuclei. Behind an electrified barrier stunted beings shuffled around, while a preprogramed speaker recited their identities. “Here we have mouse and cat, folks, one of the most popular hybrids. And this is dog and tiger, believe it if you can! Next you see snake and frog.”

The hybrid animals bore little resemblance to any of their supposed ancestors. They tended to be neutral, unspecialized in form, evolutionary prototypes lacking in clear characteristics. Most were less than two feet in length, moving about on small uncertain legs. The dog-tiger had patches of gray fur. The snake-frog was squat and glistening, with pulsating pouches of flesh. “Man and mouse, ladies and gentlemen, man and mouse!” came the disembodied voice. “You think the Scheffing people work miracles? What of this? Infect them with the Sendai virus, blend the nuclei in a centrifuge, toss in a dash of nucleic acid, yes, yes, man and mouse!” A dozen distorted things, neither mouse nor man, moved into the arena. Their eyes were pink and beady, their hands were claws, they could not walk erect. Elena stared in rigid attention.

A shill sidled up to them, proffering a handful of explosive darts. He said silkily, “You look like expensive folk out for a night’s fun. Would you like to kill some of the hybrids? A hundred bucks fish a dart.”

“Sorry,” Noyes said. “No, thanks.”

“Try your aim. Some folk your class come back often. We’ve got a room in back, lots of hybrids to throw at. They aren’t rare, really.”

“Shall we?” Elena asked him.

Noyes looked at her in amazement. Her eyes were gleaming.

Kravchenko awakened and offered a warning:

—Don’t refuse her anything if you’re smart.

Sighing, Noyes gave in. They went to the back room. He lowered his credit balance by five hundred dollars fissionable and Elena took a cluster of darts in her delicate hand. On a platform before them, half a dozen pitiful bluish things, half squirrel, half otter, moved in ragged circles. They were slow, awkward animals with lengthy hairless tails and large flippered feet.

Elena aimed and threw. Her breasts quivered beneath the covering of green scales; her arm moved jerkily, a stiff throw from the elbow. To Noyes’ relief, she missed, and missed also on the second and third casts, the darts landing and igniting in quick incandescent puffs. But on the fourth she struck one of the hapless hybrids at the base of its twisted spine, and the odor of singed fur drifted toward them. When the smoke cleared Noyes saw the remnants of the creature. Elena looked exhilarated; a deep crimson flush appeared beneath her dark, tawny skin, making her appear disturbingly more sensual than before. She handed him the remaining dart. He thrust it back at her.

“Go on,” she cried. “Throw it! It’s fun!”

“To
kill?
”

“Those things come out of test tubes. They’re not really alive. They’re better off dead.” She joggled his arm. The nearness of her perspiring flesh maddened him. “Throw it!”

Desperately Noyes hurled the dart. It cleared the platform by ten feet and smashed harmlessly against the backdrop. Then he seized her by the hand and pulled her through a side exit. Up ahead, a cocktail lounge could be seen, and they entered it.

“Don’t you care for hunting?” Elena asked him.

“Not really. But hunting is sport. There’s nothing sporting about throwing darts at mutated monstrosities.”

She laughed. The tip of her tongue flicked out. “There was a grand hunt in Italy six years ago. We chased partridges across the campana south of Rome. You must have a memory of it.”

“I?”

“Jim Kravchenko was there. If he’s truly your persona, you have the memory.”

Kravchenko promptly thrust the memory up into view. A misty October morning; the shattered remains of a Roman aqueduct gaunt against the gray sky; handsomely dressed young men and women, riding power carts, pursuing the terrified birds across the rolling plain. Laughter, the occasional burst of needlefire, the squawk of the prey, the autumn fragrances. Elena beside him, looking a trifle slimmer, chastely garbed in hunting attire, wielding her needlegun to deadly effect and hissing with delight each time she registered a kill. Then, afterward, the tang of iced champagne, the pleasure of spicy foods imported from the outworlds, the easy flow of light conversation in a palazzo at the edge of the city. And Elena in his arms, still clad in her hunting clothes, the pleated skirt pulled up, the white thighs exposed, the hips thrusting, thrusting…

“Yes,” Noyes gasped. “I remember now.”

“You must have many interesting memories. Jim and I were quite fond of one another.”

“I haven’t done much checking,” said Noyes. “Somehow it seems unfair. It overbalances our relationship, Elena. I mean, I carry intimate recollections of you, so you have few secrets from me, but you have no such insight into me.”

She looked startled. “Why do we take on personae if not to gain advantage? I don’t understand you, Charles. If in your mind you hold Jim’s memories of me, why not enjoy them?”

—Because you’re a damned masochist, Kravchenko suggested.

Noyes winced. To Elena he said, “You’re right. I’m being foolish.”

He searched the archive Kravchenko had brought with him into his mind. He was lying, in a way, for he had already done a good deal of peering at Elena’s relationship with Kravchenko. He knew that they had been lovers for about two years, on and off, nothing serious on either side. Kravchenko had many women, and, Noyes gathered, Elena rarely confined her attentions to one man at a time. Within his mind was Elena’s entire repertory of passion; he had merely to sort it out and study it.

Elena said, “I find it hard to believe that Jim’s really dead. He was such an exciting man. Do you and he get along well?”

“No.”

“So I’ve understood. Why is that? Why did you select him, if there were incompatibilities?”

Noyes ordered drinks for them. “We came from the same general background,” he explained. “I was playing it cautious when I picked a persona. I could have had a financier, a university professor, a starman. Instead I chose a rich playboy, because I was just a rich playboy myself, and I wanted more of the same. Well, I got it. He gives me no peace.”

“You don’t have to keep a persona you don’t like,” she said.

“I know. Perhaps one day I’ll ask for erasure and start all over.”

—That’ll be the day, Charlie-boy.

“It might be best for both of you,” said Elena. “It would give Jim a second chance too. Is he your only persona?”

“Yes. I didn’t think I ought to risk another.”

“Possibly a second one would have calmed him a little.”

“Possibly. What about you, Elena? You’re such a mystery woman. How many personae are you carrying?”

“Four,” she said coolly.

He was dumbstruck. He had calculated her for one, or perhaps two personae, no more. Few women undertook four. But Noyes realized he had made the mistake of assuming that because she was beautiful, she must also be of limited intellect. Evidently Elena could handle four personae, since she spoke clearly, with no signs of internal conflict.

“One secondary, three primaries,” she amplified. “It’s an amusing group. We get along well. I took on the first ten years ago, the last only in November. I may add others. I’ve talked to Santoliquido about a possible new transplant.”

“Someone in particular?”

“No,” Elena said. “Not yet. That is, if I can’t have Paul Kaufmann—”

Noyes sputtered. “You want him too?”

“I’m merely joking. They haven’t legalized transsexual imprinting, have they? But I imagine it would be fun to have him. I know Mark would be astounded. Mark worshiped that terrible old man. Strong as he is, Mark never could withstand his uncle’s wishes in anything. And if I walked into the house one day and opened my mouth and spoke to him with the words of Paul Kaufmann—” Elena giggled. “A delightful picture. It calls for another drink.”

Noyes found it difficult to see the humor in it. He summoned the drinks; then, slowly, he said, “Do you have any idea who’s really going to get the Paul Kaufmann persona?”

“How should I know?”

“You spent time with Santoliquido at Mark’s party.”

“I don’t discuss Santoliquido’s administrative decisions at parties,” Elena said. “Why do you ask? Are you thinking of applying?”

“For Paul Kaufmann? He’d burn me out in ten minutes. But John Roditis is interested.”

“
Interested
isn’t the right word, from what I hear.
Desperate
is more appropriate.”

“Desperate, then. It’s no secret. Roditis feels he’s qualified to handle a potent persona like Paul Kaufmann, and he also believes that the two of them acting together can have much to offer society. The two greatest business minds of the century, blended into a dynamic team. Honestly. I think so, too. I profoundly wish Roditis would be granted the persona.”

“Do you know who else wants Paul?” Elena asked.

“Who?”

“His nephew Mark.”

“That’s impossible! A transplant within the family—”

“Illegal, I know. Mark knows it too. He has no hope of actually getting the transplant. But he has business ambitions too, and they’d be well served if he had the use of his uncle’s experiences. Besides, he’s eager to keep the old man out of Roditis’ possession.”

“Why does Mark hate Roditis so much?”

“He regards him as an upstart. It’s quite simple, Charles. The Kaufmanns are aristocrats by birth. They have ancestry. As do you. As do I. As does Santo. We have more than wealth; we have pedigrees back into the twentieth century, even to the earlier centuries. Roditis can tell you his father’s name, but that’s all. Now, with a Kaufmann persona, he’d have social access to our group, access that he can’t buy with all his billions. Mark is determined not to let Roditis force his way in. He regards it as blasphemy for a man like that to have his uncle’s persona.”

“We were all upstarts once,” Noyes pointed out. “Take the Kaufmann line back far enough and you find peasants. Go back farther and you find apes.”

Elena’s laughter tinkled across the lounge. “Of course, of course! But it’s the distance between the peasant and the banker that marks the social prestige. Your Roditis is too close. Perhaps his great-grandchildren will rule society, but Mark won’t tolerate it now.”

“Mark can’t have his uncle’s persona. He’d be wise to give in gracefully and let Roditis have it. Bury the hatchet, forge a mighty alliance of wealth.”

“That’s not how Mark operates,” said Elena.

“He could. Elena, I’d be grateful if you’d suggest that to him. Point out the advantages of combining with Roditis instead of battling him.”

“You want me to serve as a go-between, passing Roditis’ messages?”

He colored. “You put it very bluntly.”

“We are on the island of truth, Charles. This is what you want from me, is it not? To push Roditis’ case with Mark?”

“Yes.”

“And perhaps even to talk to Santo?”

“Yes.”

“Is there anything else you want from me, Charles?”

He could barely look at her. The carniphage flask throbbed against his breastbone. He felt bitterly ashamed that she would humiliate him before Kravchenko this way. But he had asked for it.

“There’s one more thing I want,” he said.

“Name it.”

He touched the warmth of her shoulder. “An hour with you in the bedchambers of the inner level.”

“Certainly,” she said, as though he had asked her to tell him the correct time.

They left the cocktail lounge and passed through a hall of gaudy nightmare fantasies, and crossed an arena in which the products of teratogenetic surgery performed a grotesque dance, and rose on a circular ladder leading beyond a pool of slippery cephalopods engaged in a stately ballet, and at length they came to one of the blocs of bedchambers that were scattered at frequent intervals through the galleries of Jubilisle. For fifty dollars he rented an hour’s use of a room.

Within, Elena activated a device that cast a kaleidoscopic pattern on the ceiling above the circular bed. Then she disrobed. Beneath the scaly gown she wore only an elastic strip around her hips, and another that bound her breasts, thrusting them upward and close to each other. His hundred-dollar bill was wedged in that deep cleft. She snapped the elastic strips; her massive breasts tumbled free, and the banknote fluttered to the floor. Ignoring it, she faced him, displaying her nudity for his inspection, and without a word arranged herself on the bed.

—Your big moment, Kravchenko told him.

Furiously Noyes dug into the darkest corners of the persona to learn the secrets of unlocking Elena’s passion. The information was all there: the proper zones, the proper words, the timing. Kravchenko had most diligently done the research for him years ago.

Noyes joined Elena on the bed. Their bodies met. Their flesh touched and exchanged warmth.

He made the rewarding discovery that she was easily aroused and that she was satisfying in her frenzy. At the climactic moment she dug her heels into the backs of his legs and shivered in authentic ecstasy, but then, amid the stream of wordless syllables of joy that issued from her lips, it seemed to Noyes that he heard her saying, “Jim, Jim, Jim, Jim,
Jim!
”

J
OHN RODITIS LISTENED WITH
flickering patience to all that Noyes had to tell him. They sat at the edge of a wide veranda overlooking Roditis’ Arizona ranch; before them stretched an infinite acreage of harsh brown turf, tufted here and there by grayish-purple islands of sage. Roditis had been in Arizona all week, supervising the preliminary negotiations for a power project encompassing the region south of Tucson and well over the Mexican border. He had had Noyes fly to him that morning, four days after Noyes’ interlude with Elena Volterra.