To THE LAND OF THE ELECTRIC ANGEL: Hugo and Nebula Award Finalist Author (The Frontiers Saga) (11 page)

Blake put out his hand to touch her, but she twisted away and stood sightlessly looking out to sea, her eyes wet. "I also worked in the 'ponies. I helped my mother give birth to Hernando under a tank, with fertilizer dripping on us. I saw nothing but poverty, disease, death – and hard work. I didn't even know about a world like this," she said, waving her hand around her. "We saw the rich ones come: the bosses, the owners, the tourists. They were like gods. So clean! So rich! So beautiful! They smelled so good that I wanted with all my heart just once to be clean and sleek and smell like that."

She paused and took a deep breath.

"One day Voss came. I was begging on the steps of the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan. Begging. A ragged, dirty ten-year-old girl. I lived on the twenty-seventh level of a slum without working elevators with my dying mother and my sick brother, Alvaro – and the bugs and rats. Gangs ruled the slums where no police would enter, and they took what they wanted. Someday, I knew, I would grow old enough, and perhaps attractive enough, to be taken and used by them. But Voss came, and he saw me and asked me to tell him about the place."

She smiled. "He looked so rich. His clothes were so clean and he smelled so good. His women were fantastic beauties. He smiled at me and took my hand. The pyramid's steps are very steep, but he helped me; and we stood on the top and looked at the Aztec city below. I told him what I knew of the Aztecs, but he knew more – my own people, yet he knew more. I was shamed, and when he offered me money I did not want to take it. I took it because my mother was dying, but it shamed me. But Jean-Michel knew. And he did something grand, something greater than building all the tombs of the world."

Rio looked exalted, remembering. "He took money from his wallet and gave it to me, then started to give me more – an impossible amount of money. The numbers were so high they meant nothing to me; I had not the learning. But that, too, he sensed. He called down to
Seifor
Cardona, his man in Mexico City, and he told him to take care of me. I thought he meant to give me coins instead of bills."

Rio sighed and smiled. "But when Voss left,
Sefior
Cardona came to me. I was still begging by the steps. He took me himself to our shameful room in the great building. He took my mother and my brother and put them in the hospital. Then, later, he moved us all to Vera Cruz, where it was clean, and I went to school."

Rio laughed a hard, bitter laugh. "They laughed at me. Even in my new dresses I was a primitive savage from the city jungles.
Senor
Cardona visited me once a month and talked to the sisters. He got me a tutor and soon – ah, soon! – I was the smartest! I knew what they knew, and I knew more! I watched and I did not forget. When Alvaro was old enough,
Senor
Cardona put him in school with the sisters. And when
Mamacita
died, he bought her a coffin and a piece of ground in the church lot. He said
Sefior
Voss would want it so ... Voss. Voss ... I found his pictures in old magazines and I cut them out. Voss was my saint. I studied hard for Voss and for Alvaro and Mama and for myself. When I was fifteen,
Senor
Cardona sent a picture of me to Jean-Michel and was told to send me to school in Europe."

Rio stopped talking, but Blake did not speak. The palms rustled and the surf hissed. "Alvaro works for him now, in Tampico. He is to be married. To a girl from a family that would spit on us if they knew. I handle some things for Jean-Michel – delicate things, certain negotiations. I am not his whore
or
his secretary, but ... perhaps both. I do not care. He saved me."

Blake was puzzled. "But you are so ... independent."

Rio smiled slightly. "Of course. I am of no use to him if I am but another of his yes-people, another of the more-than-willing women who spread themselves for him. He made me. He found a dirty, ragged peasant and made me into a creature that men desire, that men respect, that men fight for. I am his."

Blake felt the anger in him, a tight and frustrated anger.
"No!
You are a human being! You are free!"

Rio looked at him with a sad smile. "Oh, my poor Blake. You cannot understand. If I were Wendy or Caren or Doreen, I would go with you in an instant. If I were still that ragged child, all grown up, I would go with you with wondering eyes. But I cannot do that to Jean-Michel. He knows I am flesh, that I have lusts that do not include him. It doesn't bother him as long as it does not inconvenience him. But if I were to leave..." Rio left the sentence unfinished, pregnant with vague meaning.

"But, Rio, I – I love you!"

Blake blurted it out, shamed by the awkward crudity of it, but relieved of the pressure.

She smiled at him, softly and warmly. "Thank you, Blake, it ... it is lovely ... But..."

"You don't love me?" Blake tried to call back the words, but they were gone into the air before he thought.

Rio touched his arm. "It's not that," she said. "I – I do love you ... I do, Blake! But I also love Jean-Michel. He needs me."

"Needs you? What the hell does he need another girl for? He may
want,
but he can't
need!"

"He needs me," Rio said firmly. "He trusts few people. I am one of them."

Blake twisted away from the terrace railing. He felt cheated and frustrated and awkward. He turned again to her, his face in anguish. "I have no right ... I – we hardly know each other, but – but I love you."

Rio closed her eyes and her body swayed slightly. Then she looked at him levelly and Blake took a step closer.

"What can we do?" asked Blake. "I'm selfish. I don't want to share you with Voss – or with anyone!"

"I can't ... do it that way," she said. "We must be careful. Already Jean-Michel thinks you are different. Partly because you are building his tomb, partly because he respects you. Nothing must seriously detract you from this commission. It is very important. Secondly, because ... because he senses you are different for me."

"But, crumbs..."

"...are better than nothing," Rio smiled. She paused and her face grew sober. "Perhaps I should tell you ... No ... Yes..." She looked perplexed, then she shrugged. "You should know," she said.

She drew Blake close to her, though not too close, and spoke confidentially to him. "I know you have wondered at the reason for the tomb. A man so young and all. But Jean-Michel
is
a man. To the world he is powerful and sure, but inside ... he is afraid to die." She raised her hand to stop Blake's words. "We are all afraid. Some of us are more so, and others ... Well, in the slums life is cheap. To die is not to lose very much." She shrugged. "It is the way it is. But Jean-Michel has always had money. He was born rich and got richer. He
is
not a Rothschild or a Rockefeller, but he was born rich enough. He has seen poverty and filth, and he has a fear of it – and of dying, of losing so much..."

Rio shook her head. "So much fear, that he has put millions into the Methuselah Institute, into the Du Pont Foundation, into the Massachusetts Institute for Longevity Research, into UCLA and Plantagenet University, into anything that might come up with an alternative. He gave
millions,
much more than people know."

She paused, took a deep breath, and continued: "And some of it has paid off. Sabra Wood and George Engelson seem to have something." She shook her head quickly. "No, nothing easy. But that's the reason for the Inner Chamber. It's partly cryogenic rest, but mainly it's cell cleansing and transformation. It is supposed to take about thirteen and a half months per kilogram to convert the cells. Jean-Michel weighs eighty-six kilos right now. So that's about eighty-eight years in the crypt."

"Eighty-eight years!"

"But afterwards, the experts estimate he will live three, perhaps four hundred years. They just aren't certain. The laboratory mice have quadrupled their life span. The chimpanzees are still being tested."

"But today most people live about a hundred years anyway, not even counting organ transplants or any special treatments," Blake said.

"Most
healthy
people, but many of those spend a quarter of their lives in a state of near-senility. In those parts of the world where there are still famines and the people are undernourished, the life expectancy is much shorter. The bell curve on the Wood-Engelson method seems to give a proportionally longer maturity, with approximately the average senility curve of today on the end."

"But Voss is relatively young and–"

"And afraid. If he takes the treatment now he may remain at this age, in the prime of health and life, for three to five hundred years!"

"This treatment will change the world!" Blake said.

"Only if the world can afford it. The cost of the treatment equipment alone is over 20,000,000 francs."

Blake quickly added up the cost of the tomb and added it to the cost of the longevity treatments.
At least 100,000,000 francs!
"Is he really
that
rich?"

Rio nodded. "Easily. And this is something he is willing to pay for: four hundred more years of healthy life. He's willing to face the fact that the world will be different even ninety years from now, that he will be a displaced person. But his money will isolate him. There are foundations, trusts, bond issues that will mature by then. He has planned carefully."

Blake felt a sudden surge of hope. "Then you will be free as soon as he ... as he goes."

Rio shook her head and touched the side of Blake's face. "No. I'm going with him in his cryogenic time machine."

It was as if Blake had been struck in the stomach. "You're...!"

Rio nodded. "I must. I owe it to him. He will be alone in a world of strangers. There is no way to know how the world might have changed. Could you imagine the world of today from ninety years ago? We were not yet on Mars, and the Moon was still not self-sufficient. They were only beginning to build the arcologs, and then only for the rich. There was so little hope then. They hadn't perfected the fusion torch or the mass accelerators. Organ banks were still so inefficient. Cosmetic surgery was little more than Band-Aids of flesh. Food production was so poor. Hydroponics was an infant industry. As bad as things are now, today we have
a
chance, a slim chance."

"But why the whole fancy tomb idea?" Blake asked. "Why not a cryogenic vault, Rio? There are others. Just deep-sleep ones, true, and not for rejuvenation."

Rio smiled. "Boss Voss has style. If he wakes up a hundred years from now and finds the world an atomic ruin, he can live out his days in relative comfort."

"But why go at all? He has
everything
here. Money, power, security ... He is a man of these times. He has everything to lose by taking such a risk. And are these methods proven?"

"He's going
because
he has everything to lose. He thinks the methods have proven out. There is research you don't know about. They have had volunteers. Only the first one showed any ill effects – a mild paranoia – and there was a suspicion of it before he took the sleep treatments." Rio leaned closer to Blake. "Jean-Michel is driven. He feels be
must
do this. He is quite certain he can survive financially as well. He has created trusts, made investments. He has something like 10,000,000 Swiss francs in the Union Bank of Switzerland; he has several million in Lebanese pounds in the ChemicalBank in Beirut; and I think he has money in Bankhaus Deak in Vienna and Bank of America in San Francisco. Millions, just waiting for him, drawing interest. Yes, Blake, he's that rich. And he'll be taking money with us in the tomb. Gold bars, gold coins, silver ingots. Guns, medicines, survival equipment, anything be thinks he might need in a possibly hostile environment."

Rio touched Blake's arm. "Blake, he's not a fool. He has calculated his chances
and
minimized the risks."

"But this whole process is untried!"

"Not really. As I said, there have been human volunteers, three of them. Two, six, and nine months in the cryogenic treatments. They were very well paid and will live a little longer to enjoy it. They have been pronounced in perfect health."

"But eighty-eight years!"

"He's willing to risk it." Rio put her hand up again to stop Blake's outburst. "So am I. It is settled."

Blake was silent a moment, then spoke. "Who else is going? There are seven sarcophagi."

"Jean-Michel, myself, two of his best toughs from Bodigard, two women he has yet to select, and Gran-Ale Franklin."

"He's a generalist for Astronetics, isn't he?"

"Yes. He knows a lot about more than a few things and a little about a lot, and can put things together. He's already fascinated by the idea. The two women are in case the whole thing fizzles at the other end. The two from Bodigard are rather like me. They were found in similar circumstances, and given a chance. They would never betray him."

"A loyal and self-sacrificing band of followers," Blake said, unable to keep the frustration out of his voice.

"Yes," Rio said sincerely. She grabbed Blake's arms tightly. "It
is
a great adventure. We're going into the future! Oh, not like Mr. Wells and his spinning machine, no trick tape effects, no silvery spiderwork, no pulsating lights. We will just go to sleep, and wake up in the future!"