“Who would do that?” she had said softly.
“Perhaps nobody. But it’s a possibility.”
“What if they should grab you and torture the codeword from you?”
“I’ve anticipated that.”
She did not ask him what the precautions were. Obviously, if she knew, she could be forced to give that information.
The circular area was empty of people, though a few robots were cleaning up the litter. Halting his chair before the entrance to Frigate’s world, Burton shouted Frigate’s name. In a few seconds, the American’s face appeared on a glowing screen. The door opened outward, and they went through in single file. The second door admitted them into a world where the sun was ten degrees past the zenith, the temperature was 85 °F and the air was wet. They shot over a very thick, lush jungle, a river and several joining streams, and some large clearings. The creatures in the streams and basking on the banks were crocodilian, vast and toothy. Now and then they glimpsed a huge reptilian head at the end of a long neck, and, once, an armor-plated saurian lumbered across the clearing. Winged reptiles swooped by them: pterodactyls. These were not from recordings, since the Ethicals had arrived on Earth seventy million years after the last of the dinosaurs had died. But Frigate had had the Computer fashion living replicas of the mighty beasts, and these reigned in the lush growths. In the center of the Brobdingnagian chamber was a rock monolith, two hundred feet high, with slick leaning-out sides impossible for anything to scale. On top was his stronghold, a flat ten acres with an antebellum Southern mansion in the center of an island surrounded by a wide moat in which swam ducks, geese, and swans. Burton and Star Spoon landed on the green lawn before it.
Peter Frigate was sitting on the verandah in a rocking chair listening to Handel’s Water Music, drinking a mint julep and surrounded by three dogs. He held a Siamese seal point cat on his lap. The dogs, real dogs, not therioids, leaped barking off the verandah and ran to Burton. They bounded about and wiggled their hindquarters and whined as he petted them. One was a huge Rottweiler; one, a German shepherd; one, a Shetland sheepdog. Frigate rose, the cat jumping off his disappearing lap, and greeted them. He wore a white linen vest with embroidered Egyptian hieroglyphics and a knee-length white linen kilt.
“Welcome to Frigateland!” he said, smiling. “Sit down.” He pointed to two rocking chairs. “What’ll you have to drink?” He clapped his hands once, and two androids appeared from the front doorway. They wore butler’s uniforms.
“You wouldn’t recognize them,” he said. “They look exactly like two U.S. presidents I had no love for. I call them Tricky Dicky and Ronnie. The sneaky-looking one is Dicky.” He paused. “The lady of the house will be down in a minute.”
Burton raised his eyebrows. “Ah, you finally decided on a housemate.”
“Yes. The dogs and cats are splendid companions, don’t talk back to or at you. But I got lonely for conversation and other things.”
The servants brought the drinks, Scotch for Burton and wine for Star Spoon. Burton took a fine Havana from his pocket, and Dicky leaped forward, produced a lighter, and held the flame steady for him. Ronnie did the same for Star Spoon’s cigarette.
“This is the life,” Frigate said. “I fly around and observe my i dinosaurs, really enjoy them. I keep the tyrannosaurs from eating all the brontosaurs by giving them meat at a feeding station at the bottom of my monolith. Even so, it’s hard maintaining the balance of prey and predator. I’ll get tired of this some day. When I do, I’ll erase the Jurassic period and replace it with the Cretaceous. I plan to go through all the evolutionary eras in their various stages to the Pleistocene Epoch. When I get there, I’ll stop. I’ve always been very fond of the mammoth and the sabertooth.”
25
Burton waved a fly away. “Did you have to be so authentic?”
“There are mosquitoes, too. I have to retreat into my stately mansion at dusk because of them. I don’t want life here to be an air-conditioned vermin-free paradise. There was a time when I cursed flies, mosquitoes and ants and wondered why God put them on Earth to bedevil us. Now I know. They are a source of pleasure. When they’ve been bugging the hell out of you—no pun intended—and you get away from them, get to some place where they can’t reach you, you find the zero of their presence to be a plus-one pleasure. I put up with them so I can enjoy their absence.”