To Live Again and The Second Trip (8 page)

“And you. Let’s walk.”

They strolled through the slapping surf toward a cluster of jagged, metallic-looking rocks piled at the north end of the beach. Risa felt the noon warmth probing her skin for some vulnerable place to singe and blister; but the molecule-thick coating of cream protected her. She reveled in her nudity. She broke into a trot, her small breasts barely swaying. If Elena tried to run like this, Risa thought, she’d hit herself in the face with all that swinging meat.

They reached the rocks, neither of them short of breath. The white turrets of barnacles sprouted on the lower surfaces, licked by the waves. Rod said, “I hear you’ve had a transplant.”

“News travels fast if it’s reached Majorca already.”

“Gossip moves at the speed of light in this family. Is it true?”

“Partly. I’ve applied for one. Mark gave his consent a few days ago. I went to the soul bank and tried a few personae out, and on Tuesday I’ll have the transplant.”

“Who’ll it be?”

“I’m not sure yet. I’m deciding between some different types. Whichever it is, it’ll be a girl who died young and sexy. Maybe even someone you’ve slept with.”

Rod laughed. “Is that incest? If you pick up a persona with a memory of having been to bed with me, I mean?”

“I don’t know. I don’t care. Is there anything so special about going to bed with you?”

“Try me and see,” Rod said. “Without filtering it through a transplant.”

She eyed his loinstrap. “Right out here on the beach, or should we go to your cottage?”

“Why not right here?” he asked.

“All right,” said Risa. She stretched out on a flat palm of stone, flexed her knees, drew her legs apart. Anyone on the beach could see them from here. She propped her fist against her chin. “Go ahead,” she said. “I’m waiting.”

“I almost think you’re serious,” Rod said.

“I am. And you are too, aren’t you? That strap doesn’t hide much. You want me. You’ve been hinting about it long enough. So here’s your chance. Get on top of me.”

His eyes sparkled maliciously. “I wouldn’t take advantage of a child.”

“Monster! I’m past sixteen.”

“Chronologically. But only a child would want to put on a sick exhibition like that in front of everybody. It’s tasteless, Risa. If you really want to have sex with me, get up and we’ll go somewhere private and I’ll oblige you. But just to show everyone that you’re old enough to sin a little—”

“Would I be the first to make love at one of these parties?”

“Stop it,” he said. He swung himself down beside her and lightly slapped the outside of her left thigh. “Can I change the subject? What do you know about Uncle Paul’s transplant? Who’s going to get him?”

Disgruntled by his casual disregard of her wanton mood, Risa closed her thighs and said, “How should I know?”

“The story I hear is that he’s going to go to John Roditis.”

“Not if my father has anything to say about it.”

“That would be a blow, wouldn’t it?” Rod said. “Roditis is big enough as he is. With Uncle Paul, he’d be a titan. He’d have the business mind of the century.”

Risa yawned. She swiveled around, dipping her toes in the water. A gray ghostly crab scuttled along the sand and vanished, digging down with startling swiftness. Risa said, “My father doesn’t want Roditis to have Uncle Paul. My father’s a good friend of Santoliquido, and Santoliquido decides. See?”

Rod nodded. “You make it sound very open and shut.”

“It has to be. Why, if Roditis got Uncle Paul, he’d be able to come to our family gatherings, he’d have a wedge right into our whole group. Wouldn’t that be horrible? That nasty, aggressive little man sitting right there on the beach, sipping a drink, making us be polite to him for Uncle Paul’s sake? But it won’t happen.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not.”

“It won’t.”

“If it isn’t going to happen,” Rod said, “what’s Roditis’ private secretary doing here?”

“Where?”

“Look,” Rod said, pointing.

Risa peered back and saw a group of new arrivals descending to the beach from the cabanas. Leading the way came Elena Volterra, wearing next to nothing, her oiled body agleam, fusion nodes glistening in her skin, her heavy breasts artfully cantilevered into position by a wisp of sprayon support. Beside her, pink and fleshy, walked Francesco Santoliquido. A pace behind them came an attractive couple whom Risa recognized as David and Gloria Loeb, and on Gloria’s right was a very tall, very thin, extremely pale and fairhaired man who indeed closely resembled Charles Noyes, a well-known associate of John Roditis.

His appearance on the beach was exciting comment from many quarters. Heads were turning; whispers buzzed. Noyes himself looked ill at ease. He was thickly lathered to protect his skin from the sun, but even so he continually wrinkled his back as if to make sure he was suffering no harm.

“What could
he
be doing here?” Risa muttered.

“Maybe Roditis is here too,” said Rod. “Having a little discussion with your father in the main house.”

“No. No.” Risa looked for Mark Kaufmann and failed to see him. This was impossible, she told herself. Then she recalled: “Noyes is Gloria’s brother. He must have just come along for the ride. This doesn’t have a thing to do with Roditis.”

“Let’s hope you’re right. But it seems odd, having a Roditis man right in our midst. Like Death at the feast.”

“I want to go over and find out more.”

“Go ahead,” Rod said. “I’m going swimming. I’ll get all the gossip from you later.”

He sprang from the rocks and hit the water in midstroke, heading outward toward the reef. Risa, disturbed, crossed diagonally to the new little group standing on the sandy crest of the beach at the midpoint of the crescent. She greeted Elena curtly and took Santoliquido’s hand. She smiled at David Loeb, a tall, courtly-looking man of about forty-five to whom she was related in some incomprehensible way, and embraced his lean, leggy blonde wife Gloria. Risa had never known either of them very well. Gloria looked tense and somehow irritated; but she turned smoothly and said, “Risa, I don’t think you know my brother. Charles Noyes. Risa Kaufmann. Mark’s daughter.”

“A pleasure,” Noyes said. It didn’t sound to Risa as though he meant it. His large blue eyes raced in all directions, as if trying to avoid any direct confrontation of her girlish nakedness; then, with an obvious effort, he smiled at her.

“I’ve heard so much about you from Gloria,” Risa lied sweetly. “It must be so exciting to work with Mr. Roditis. Tell me, is he coming to our party too?”

“No, he—ah—won’t be here,” Noyes said.

“Pity. I’d love to meet him. Will you excuse me?” Risa grinned icily and went jogging across the hot sand, up onto the lawn and into the main house, where the servants were programing the buffet lunch. She looked for her father and found him, as she expected, in the bamboo-paneled study, on the telephone. She could not see the face in the screen. He hung up after a moment and looked at her.

“Do you know who’s here?” she asked.

She could tell from his sour, hooded expression that he did. “Yes. Gloria’s little surprise package. She should have had better taste than that!”

“Why’d you let him in?”

“He’s her guest. I can’t refuse him, even if he
is
Roditis’ right hand. It’s permissible to bring one’s brother to a party like this.”

“But what does he want here? Spying for Roditis? Trying to soften us up?”

Kaufmann relaxed and allowed himself to laugh. “Why are you so worked up over it, Risa? It’s my problem. You go out in the sun and have a good time.”

“If I’m a Kaufmann, it’s my problem too. We have certain family standards to uphold!”

“They’ll be upheld, love. I’ll deal with Mr. Noyes.”

It was a dismissal. Mark still refused to accept her as an adult. He was patting her on the head and telling her to run off and play. Risa’s nostrils flared, but she kept her anger unvoiced and quickly left the building, narrowly avoiding tripping over a robot crawler that was polishing the patio floor.

Hands on hips, she stood at the edge of the patio, looking down at the guests. Rod had emerged from the water and was talking to Noyes and the Loebs. Santoliquido and Elena, oddly, were off by themselves near the rocks where Risa had tried to seduce her cousin with so little success. Overhead, three huge brown pelicans wheeled and folded their wings, plummeting into the water to snatch up fish; they had been treated with adrenergic drugs, Risa knew, so they’d stay hungry all afternoon and stage a good show for the guests. Suddenly furious, Risa whirled and ran toward the small cottage, one of thirty behind the main house, where she was staying on this visit. She flung herself down on the bed, sobbing sulkily.

Minutes later the doorscreen announced a visitor. She looked up and saw Rod’s image.

“Come in,” she called.

The door slid open. He stepped in, sticking his feet into the vibrator to rid them of sand. “I’ve got the word on Noyes,” he said. “He’s not here on account of Roditis. He happened to drop in on Gloria and Dave just as they were leaving for the party, and they couldn’t get rid of him, so Gloria had to say, sure, get in the hopter with us, and here he is. Your father must be burning.”

“I’m not concerned with my father’s feelings just now,” Risa said thinly. “Or with Noyes. Or with Roditis. They can all go to hell.”

“Hey—”

Tears ebbed from her eyes. “And you can go there with them!”

“What’s wrong? What did I do?”

“It’s what you didn’t do,” Risa said.

Rod stared at her strangely. His eyes traveled the length of her body as though he had never seen her before. Risa trembled expectantly. It was almost time for lunch. But first—

His eyes met hers. Her gaze was steady. He nodded.

He stepped toward the bed.

Noyes thought his brain would melt under that hellish sun. He recited mantras of self-possession and liberation, dug his toes into the scorching sand, watched the nude and near-nude Kaufmanns, their friends, and relatives, flit by, and wished fervently that he were almost anywhere else. It was bad enough that Roditis had pitchforked him into this gathering where he was so little wanted; he also had to tolerate tropical heat, and that was beyond the call of duty. Would the protective cream really protect him? Or would he be parboiled by nightfall?

He felt Kravchenko’s jeers.

—Take it like a man, friend.

“Very amusing. But
you
won’t feel the sunburn.”

—That’s part of the business of being dead. You don’t feel the pain, you don’t feel the pleasure either. Say, say, say, what’s Santoliquido up to?

Noyes looked down the beach. He hadn’t noticed it, but his persona had; Santoliquido was deep in conversation with Elena Volterra. And Elena was known to be Mark Kaufmann’s mistress. In the midst of his discomfort Noyes analyzed this situation in terms of Roditis’ needs. Was Elena at this moment doing a hatchet job on Roditis, filling the soul bank administrator’s receptive mind with reasons why the Paul Kaufmann persona should not go to him? Or, contrariwise, was Santoliquido attempting to bring Elena into his orbit while Mark was elsewhere? The first possibility held no promise of leverage, but the second did.

Trying to seem casual about it, Noyes edged toward the distant pair. That Elena was certainly a splendid woman, he thought: all that tawny flesh, so well tanned, so opulent, so nicely displayed. He suspected that Elena might easily look sloppy with her breasts unbound, and that if she gained another five pounds her ampleness would turn to grossness. But as she was, she was quite attractive. And Santoliquido’s sensual tastes, Noyes realized, inclined toward women of Elena’s sort, Latin and statuesque. It would be quite useful to Roditis’ cause if Santo worked himself into some kind of compromising position with Elena this weekend.

He got no closer that a hundred yards—still beyond lip-reading range. Then a robot carrying trays of refreshments rolled across his path, and, as he turned to help himself, Noyes was intercepted by a short, gushing woman with golden eyes and an aggressively jutting chin. “Charles,” she said. “I haven’t seen you in a thousand years. Come meet my new husband!”

He sorted through foggy family memories. She was an Adams, yes, that was clear, and she had attended his sister’s wedding to David Loeb, and he remembered dimly that she had been married for a while to one of the Schiffs. He smiled uncertainly.

“You don’t remember me?” she asked.

“It’s been a long time—Donna, Donna Adams, is it?”

“Donna’s my sister. I’m “Rowena. How could you forget a name like that? You should take your memory drugs more often, Charles. I don’t believe I’ll ever forget the way you carried on at Gloria’s wedding! You—”

“I didn’t catch your married name now,” Noyes cut in quickly.

“Owens. Yes, you were going to meet my husband. Nathaniel Owens. He’s right over here. A most extraordinary man. Can you imagine it, Charles, he carries seven personae!
Seven!
”

But he doesn’t carry them very well, Noyes decided a moment later, when he had been introduced to Nathaniel Owens. Owens was burly and barrel-chested, flaunting a thick mat of body hair as though perversely proud of its ugly coarseness, and his square, harsh-planed face looked as though it had been constructed from random components. He was about sixty, Noyes guessed. His eyes were black and not quite focused, and when he spoke his voice soared confusingly through an octave or more before settling on its pitch.

“My wife been telling you a lot of nonsense about us?” Owens demanded truculently.

“Not at all. She simply said you’re carrying seven personae.”

Owens blinked and twitched. “Damned right I am! You see anything wrong with that?”

“If you can handle the strain—”

“He can handle anything, chum,” Owens said in a strangely altered voice, a basso growl. “He’s the original
übermensch.
You just have to ask and he’ll tell you.”

Noyes was still attempting to understand why Owens had suddenly spoken of himself in the third person when Owens blurted in a much higher voice, “Shut your goddam mouth!”

“It’s your goddam mouth I’m talking through,” came the deeper voice.