“It was nice,” Rachmael managed to say to Dosker, as the hatch once more swung open, this time admitting several employees of Lies Incorporated, “that your co-workers administered the atropine to Ferry as well as to me.” Generally, in this business, no one was spared.
Dosker, studying Ferry, said, “He was given no atropine.”
Reaching, he withdrew the empty tube with its injecting needle from his own neck, then the counterpart item from Rachmael’s. “How come, Ferry?” Dosker said.
There was, from Ferry, no answer.
“Impossible,” Dosker said. “Every living organism is—” Suddenly he grabbed Ferry’s arm; grunting, he swung brusquely the arm back, against its normal span—and yanked.
Theodoric Ferry’s arm, at the shoulder-joint, came off. Revealing trailing conduits and minned components, those of the shoulder still functioning, those of the arm, deprived of power, now inert.
“A sim,” Dosker said. Seeing that Rachmael did not comprehend he said, “A simulacrum of Ferry that of course has no neurological system. So Ferry was never here.” He tossed the arm away. “Naturally; why should a man of his stature risk himself? He’s probably sitting in his demesne satellite orbiting Mars, viewing this through the sense-extensors of the sim.” To the one-armed Ferry-construct he said harshly, “Are we in genuine contact with you, Ferry, through this? Or is it on homeo? I ‘m just curious.”
The mouth of the Ferry simulacrum opened and it said, “I hear you, Dosker. Would you, as an act of humanitarian kindness, administer atropine to my two THL employees?”
“It’s being done,” Dosker said. He walked over to Rachmael, then. “Well, our humble ship, on acute examination, seems never to have been graced by the presence of the chairman of the board of THL.” He grinned shakily. “I feel cheated.”
But the offer made by Ferry via the simulacrum, Rachmael realized. That had been genuine.
Dosker said, “Let’s go to Luna, now. As your advisor I’m telling you—” He put his hand, gripped harshly, on Rachmael’s wrist. “Wake up. Those two will be all right, once the atropine is administered; they won’t be killed and we’ll release them in their THL vehicle—minus its field, of course. You and I will go on to Luna, to the Omphalos, as if nothing happened. Or if you won’t I’ll use the map the sim gave me; I’m taking the Omphalos out into ‘tween space where THL can’t tail her, even if you don’t want me to.”
“But,” Rachmael said woodenly, “something did happen. An offer was made.”
“That offer,” Dosker said, “proves that THL is willing to sacrifice a great deal to keep you from your eighteen-year trip to Fomalhaut for a look at Whale’s Mouth. And—” He eyed Rachmael. “Yet that makes you less interested in getting the Omphalos out into unchartered space between planets where Ferry’s trackers can’t—”
I could save the Omphalos, Rachmael thought. But the man beside him was correct; this meant of course that he had to go on: Ferry had removed the block, had proved the need of the eighteen-year flight.
“But the deep-sleep components,” he said.
“Just get me to her,” Dosker said quietly, patiently. “Okay, Rachmael ben Applebaum? Will you do that?” The controlled and very professional voice penetrated; Rachmael nodded. “I want the locus from you, not from the chart that sim gave me; I’ve decided I’m not touching that. I’m waiting for you, Rachmael, for you to decide.”
“Yes,” Rachmael said, then, and walked stiffly to the ship’s 3-D Lunar map with its trailing arm; he seated himself and began to fix the locus for the hard-eyed, dark, Lies Incorporated ultra-experienced pilot.
4
At the Fox’s Lair, the minute French restaurant in downtown San Diego, the maitre d’ glanced at the name which Rachmael ben Applebaum had jotted down on the sheet with its fancy, undulating, pseudo-living letterhead and said, “Yes. Mr. Applebaum. It is—” He examined his wristwatch. “Now eight o’clock.” A line of well-cloaked people waited; it was always this way on crowded Terra: any restaurant, even the bad ones, were overfilled each night from five o’clock on, and this was hardly a mediocre restaurant, let alone an outright bad one. “Genet,” the maitre d’ called to a waitress wearing the lace stockings and partial jacket-vest combination now popular: it left one breast, the right, exposed, and its nipple was elegantly capped by a Swiss ornament with many minned parts; the ornament, shaped like a large gold pencil eraser, played semi-classical music and lit up in a series of attractive shifting light-patterns which focused on the floor ahead of her, lighting her way so that she could pass among the closely placed tiny tables of the restaurant.
“Yes, Gaspar,” the girl said, with a toss of her blonde, high-piled hair.
“Escort Mr. Applebaum to table twenty-two,” the maitre d’ told her, and ignored, with stoic, glacial indifference, the outrage among those customers lined up wearily ahead of Rachmael.
“I don’t want to—” Rachmael began, but the maitre d’ cut him off.
“All arranged. She is waiting at twenty-two,” and, in the maitre d’s voice, everything was conveyed: full knowledge of an intricate erotic relationship which—alas—did not, at least as yet, exist.
Rachmael followed Genet, with her light-emanating useful Swiss-made nipple-assist, through the darkness, the noise of people eating in jammed proximity, bolting their meals with the weight of guilt hunching them, getting done and aside so that those waiting could be served before the Fox’s Lair, at two a.m., closed its kitchens . . . we are really pressed tight to one another, he thought, and then, all at once, Genet halted, turned; the nipple cap now radiated a soft, delightful and warm pale red aura which revealed, seated at table twenty-two, Freya Holm.
Seating himself opposite her, Rachmael said, “You don’t light up.”
“I could. And play the Blue Danube simultaneously.” She smiled; in the darkness—the waitress had gone on, now—the dark-haired girl’s eyes glowed. Before her rested a split of Buena Vista chablis, vintage 2002, one of the great, rare treats of the restaurant, and exceeding expensive; Rachmael wondered who would pick up the tab for this twelve-year-old California wine; lord knew he would have liked to, but—he reflexively touched his wallet. Freya noticed.
“Don’t worry. Matson Glazer-Holliday owns this restaurant. There will be a tab for a mere six poscreds. For one peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich.” She laughed, her dark eyes dancing in the reflected light from barely illuminated overhead Japanese lanterns. “Does this place intimidate you?” she asked him, then.
“No. I’m just generally tense.” For six days now the Omphalos had been lost—and even to him. Perhaps even to Matson. It could well be—necessary for security purposes—that only Al Dosker, at the multi-stage console of the ship’s controls, knew where she had gone. For Rachmael, however, it had been psychologically devastating to watch the Omphalos blast out into the limitless darkness: Ferry had been right—the Omphalos had been the sine qua non of Applebaum Enterprise; without her nothing remained.
But at least this way she might return; or more accurately, he eventually might be taken, by Lies Incorporated, by high-velocity flapple to her, allowed to see, board her, again, to begin his eighteen-year trip. And, the other way—
“Don’t dwell on Ferry’s offer,” Freya said softly. She nodded to the waitress, who placed a solidstem but chilled wine glass before Rachmael; he automatically, obediently, poured himself a trace of the 2002 Buena Vista white, tasted it; kept himself from taking more; he merely nodded in compliment to the wine, tried to make it appear that he was accustomed to such an outrageously, almost divinely penetrating bouquet and flavor. It made absurd everything he had drunk his life long.
“I’m not thinking of it,” he said to Freya. Not, he thought, in view of what you have—or are supposed to have—in your purse.
Her large black leather mailpouch-style purse rested on the table beside her, within reach of his fingers.
“The components,” Freya said softly, “are in the purse in a simulated gold round container marked Eternity of Sexual Potency Fragrance #54, a routine continental scent; anyone going through my purse would expect to find it. There are twelve components, all super-min, of course. Beneath the inner lid. On India paper, on the reverse of the label, is a wiring diagram. I will rise to my feet in a moment and go to the powder room; after a few seconds—you must sit quietly, Rachmael, because it is about a seventy-thirty possibility that THL agents are monitoring us, either directly as patrons or by instrument—you must sit; then, when I don’t return immediately, you fidget, you try to attract Genet’s attention, to order some dinner for yourself or at least—and this is vital—obtain the menu.”
He nodded, listening intently.
“She will notice you and give you a menu; it is quite stiff and large, since it contains the wine list. You will place it on the table so that it covers my purse.”