Chapter 8

John 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.

Noyes said, “Elena will speak to Santoliquido on your behalf. Probably she’s spoken to him already.”

“Is she his mistress?”

“She’s everybody’s mistress, sooner or later. Mainly she lives with Mark Kaufmann. But she spends time with Santoliquido too. She’s quite intimate with him.”

Roditis knotted his thick fingers together and peered past Noyes into the cloudless, harsh blue sky. “Is Kaufmann aware that Santoliquido is trifling with his woman?”

“I imagine so,” Noyes said. “Neither of them bothered to conceal it much. And Mark’s no fool.”

“Has it occurred to you, then, that Kaufmann has deliberately winked at that relationship-so that by lending Santoliquido Elena, he can influence the destination of his uncle’s persona?”

“You mean, making Elena the price for Santoliquido’s cooperation in keeping Paul Kaufmann out of your clutches, John?”

“Something like that” Noyes took a deep breath. “I’ve considered it, yes. But I don’t think it’s the case. What’s going on between Elena and Santoliquido isn’t happening at Mark’s instigation, any more than Mark had anything to do with what took place between Elena and me. And I believe that Elena will serve your interests in dealing with Santoliquido.”

“Why should she?”

“Because I asked her to.”

“How much money did she want?”

“Elena’s not interested in money,” said Noyes. “At least, not in any realistic sense. She’s got all she needs, and any time she wants more she can get it from Kaufmann just for the asking. What fascinates her is power. She likes to be close to strong men. She likes to be at the core of intrigue.”

“She’s not unique in that,” Roditis remarked. “Elena wants to meet you, John. I suspect that she wants to become your mistress. And she knows that the best way to make an impression on you is to help you get the one thing in the universe you most want and can’t obtain by yourself, which is Paul Kaufmann’s persona. So she’ll use her influence with Santoliquido to get it for you, and then she’ll try to cash in by throwing herself into your bed.”

“It would infuriate Mark Kaufmann if I took away both his woman and his uncle, wouldn’t it?” Roditis said quietly.

“It would madden him.”

“I’m not sure I want to madden him that much,” Roditis said thoughtfully.

“You want the persona, don’t you?”

“Of course.”

“Elena will help you gain it. What happens after that between the two of you is entirely up to you.”

“Why are you so confident that Elena will cooperate?”

“I’ve explained,” Noyes said. Rising, he stepped off the veranda and scuffed at the desert sand beyond its margin. “There’s another reason that I haven’t mentioned yet.”

“Go on.”

“Elena knew Jim Kravchenko very well. They were lovers in Italy five or six years ago.”

“Yes,” Roditis said. “So?”

“Elena was very fond of Kravchenko. She wants to please him, now that she’s found him again inside me. She believes that by helping me win status with you, she’ll be doing her old friend Kravchenko a good turn.”

“That’s an intricate line of reasoning, Charles. Kravchenko’s dead. If she’s reaching through you to him, she can’t have a very high opinion of you.”

“She doesn’t. She hates me. And this is how she shows it.” Roditis spat. “There are times when I wonder why I work so hard to get involved with you society people. You’re nothing but beasts, really. You disembowel one another like ballet dancers with tusks, and you find the most complicated possible reasons for doing what you do.”

“Inbreeding, perhaps,” Noyes suggested. “Yes, that. And more. Mere money doesn’t interest you; your great-grandfathers have made enough for the whole tribe. Mere status is of no importance; you had that before you were old enough to be housebroken. You inherit power and rank. So you turn your lives into a kind of Byzantine intrigue to keep from going crazy with boredom. Rebirth makes it all the more interesting. You can switch back and forth across the generations, opening old wounds, keeping ancient feuds alive, scarring each other, using sex like a dagger.” Roditis’ eyes glittered. “Let me tell you something, Charles. I’m a real Byzantine. I don’t practice intrigue for intrigue’s own sake. I’m looking to put it to practical ends. And so while the whole bunch of you go on backstabbing and clawing, I’m going to move right in and take everything over. Just the way my ancestors moved in and took over Rome. By and by, the language of the Roman Empire was Greek, remember? That’s how a Byzantine works. Watch me.”

“I’ve never stopped watching you, John.”

“Good. We’ll see about Elena’s conference with Santoliquido in a little while. Come take exercise with me, now.”

“I’m a little tired, John. The flight from New York—”

“Come take exercise with me,” Roditis repeated. “If you kept in shape, you wouldn’t be worn out by a little thing like a flight from New York.”

They entered the house, passing through corridors lined with smooth white stucco walls, and descended to the cool basement where Roditis had installed a gymnasium. Quietly he adjusted the gravity control to a boost of ten percent. That was unfair to Noyes, but no matter; Roditis had little desire to waste his exercise session by imposing an insufficient challenge on himself. Usually he boosted the pull by twenty percent or more. When things went badly, he had sometimes worked under double grav, straining every fiber, pushing heart and lungs and muscles to their limits for the sake of extending those limits another notch.

Stripping, Roditis said, “Would you like to recite a mantra of exertion, Charles?”

“I’m not sure there is one. “Give us a pious phrase or two, at any rate. Then get out of your clothes.”

Noyes said, “When, by the power of evil karma, misery is being tasted, may the tutelary deities dissipate the misery. When the natural sound of Reality is reverberating like a thousand thunders, may they be transmuted into the sounds of the Six Syllables.”

Roditis belched. “Om mani padme hum. Excuse me.”

“It’s all nonsense to you, isn’t it, John?”

“Western Buddhism? Well, it has its place. I’ve studied the arts of right dying, you know. I mean to leave a well-prepared persona for my next carnate trip.”

“How will it feel, I wonder, being a passenger in someone else’s brain?”

Roditis stared levelly at Noyes. “I won’t be a passenger for long, Charles. You must realize that, of course. I play the game to win, all the time. If I can’t win trough to dybbuk, I don’t deserve rebirth.”

“I pity the man who picks your persona.”

“He’ll live comfortably enough. He just won’t be supreme in his own body, is all.” Roditis laughed boomingly. “All this is sixty, seventy years away, though. Right now we’re here for exercise, not speculation on my discorporate existence. Om mani padme hum. Wake up, Charles!”

Roditis activated the vertical trampolines. They were two flexible screens, mounted upright about fifteen feet apart and moving in a flagellatory oscillation on their mountings. He stepped between them and jumped diagonally against the left-hand screen, keeping his ankles pressed close together. The screen batted him away, and he pivoted neatly in midair, directing his feet at the other screen, striking it squarely, rebounding, pivoting again. For twenty cycles he let himself be shuttled back and forth between the screens, never once touching the floor despite the enhanced pull of gravity. Then he resisted the elasticity of the screens by tensing his body, and dropped lithely to his feet at his staffing point.