Jack Chalker - Melchior's Fire

An Li had already briefed them on the basics, but left out the Three Kings part for the moment. She had also warned each of them that, if they had anything at all in their wallets, they should grip them tightly in Sanders’s presence.

There was a buzz at the main door, and Jules answered it. It turned out to be a small army of men and women dressed in white pushing carts full of what had to be food into the room and towards them. They proceeded to set the table and then place the food on it in containers that preserved the proper temperatures. It looked and smelled wonderful.

An Li wondered how much it cost to tip this kind of mob to do what two machines could have done just as well, but she kept quiet. Any man who could waste this kind of money just feeding his ego by showing off human service was somebody who certainly should be listened to.

Suzy went over to the bronze doors, knocked on one, then opened it just a small bit and said something to whoever was on the other side. In a moment, Norman Sanders strode out and towards them, wearing a genuine crimson silk dressing gown. It was one of the most breathtaking of all the examples of opulence they’d seen, but, An Li thought with some satisfaction, he still looked like an unmade bed.

“Good day, everyone,” he said cheerfully, if a bit sleepily, taking a seat at the head of the table. He waved his hand at the steaming items on the table. “Go ahead! Be my guest! Dig in! I never eat much for breakfast. Never feel like I’m started. Some coffee, maybe some eggs Benedict, that’s about it for now.” He suddenly realized that most of these people hadn’t seen real food in their whole lives, and the one or two who had probably had forgotten the look of it.

“Omelettes there at the end, with lots to put on them if you like, and those over there are crepes, and those are breakfast meats. All real, I’m assured, with one or two minor exceptions. There’s apparently some farming done here, in very limited amounts, just for the hotels and the bosses. Those are teas and juices, and over there are various sandwiches if you’d rather lunch than breakfast, with, I think some onion soup in the tureen. Go ahead, dig in, eat, get joyously full, and then we’ll talk.”

He was as good as his word, and the food was as rich as he promised. In fact, some of the food didn’t taste all that good to them, with one notable exception. They’d been on the artificial and reconstituted stuff so long, some forever, that they had no appreciation for the taste of real things.

The exception was Randi Queson, whose only real regret was that she hadn’t much of an appetite. She hadn’t been sleeping well, even with some help from a medical computer. She kept having nightmares about cold, alien voices dismissing the human race as irrelevant.

Still, she managed some old favorites she’d neither eaten nor been able to afford in a very long time.

During the whole thing Norman Sanders said little except pleasantries and “Pass the coffee,” but they all sensed his mind going behind that dull, cherubic bearded face as he carefully watched each of them in turn.

And when they had regretfully watched the ample leftovers being cleared and taken away after none could manage any more, An Li couldn’t help but wonder where those leftovers went. Not anywhere she knew could use them, that was for sure.

Leaving only coffee and tea, the army of cooks and waiters had left with the remainder of the food, and it was again only them. Suzy took a seat on a divan across from the table and said nothing; Jules stood by the table to pour anyone’s coffee or tea but otherwise to stand impassive looking at them all. Clearly neither was going to be a central part of this forthcoming discussion.

Finally, the producer stuck a big cigar in his mouth, which Jules promptly lit. After puffing on it a bit and beginning to fill the air with thick and unpleasant smoke, Sanders began to speak. As he did, air filtration clicked on, drawing the smoke up and to his rear, out of their own nostrils. It was a nice touch.

“As Madame An has most certainly told you, I am Norman Sanders. I already know who you all are, and I’ve gone over what you accomplished and I’m impressed. I’m not much of a man of action, and I draw most of my courage from good whiskey, but that’s why I’m looking to hire people. That’s what a producer does, you know. He’s kind of an entrepreneur. He finds a project, gets control of it, then he puts it into action by hiring the best people for the job and giving them the best tools he can within a budget that will be adequate but realistic. For that, he gets a share of the payoff, sometimes the biggest share. It’s not fair, maybe, but if he does his job right he’s doing something others can’t do. I realize that this isn’t cyberspace, we’re not talking about jacking in customers in a safe and secure place to experience the thrills of whatever we dream up, but the basics are the same anyway. I didn’t come here looking for any of you, but synchronicity seems to have put me here looking for just such people at the time when those people show up here. I have a project. If it comes off, it’ll make me one of the richest people in creation and one of the most powerful. I won’t mince words on that. Your shares will be tiny for assuming the risk and doing the labor, but they’ll still be enough so that you’ll never have to work again and can do pretty much what you want forever. Interested?”

“We’re here, aren’t we?” Jerry Nagel responded.

“Let me start at the beginning. I’m a collector. Antiques, mostly, but historical stuff, and stuff that inspires or stimulates. I go to a lot of auctions, or send representatives there who know my tastes, and I wind up with a lot of stuff. Some of it is junk, some of it is truly wonderful, and some of it is blind speculation. I went to one where they were auctioning off the personal effects of Dr. Oscar McGraw. Anybody ever hear of him?”

Most had not, but Randi Queson knew the name. “He was a brilliant physicist. Said to be on a par with Einstein, Newton, that league. Is that the one you mean?”

“The very one.”

“I thought he held a research professorship on Marchellus.”

“He did, but he passed away about six months ago. It was a tragedy to science, maybe, but the guy was like almost two hundred and fifty years old and had every kind of rejuvenation process and youth serum you can name. They say he was sharp to the end. Looked like a prune, confined to a wheelchair, but he taught a class the day he died.

“Anyway,” Sanders continued, “the doctor was superfamous, had been since he was a kid. He’d lived a long time, knew or met everybody famous in our end of the universe, and had accumulated every honor and prize there was. I figured the historical stuff alone would be amazing, and it was. He’d been alone for years, after his sixth wife died, and there were no heirs this side of the Great Silence, so he willed his papers to his university and a bunch of stuff to various libraries, and the rest he said to put up on the block and use the proceeds to endow scholarships in physics and mathematics for bright kids who needed them. There was a ton of stuff to go up, and lots of interested, well-heeled bidders, but I managed to get a lot, including some trunks and such that turned up in his attic. Lots of personal stuff, so they let it go. I had people go through it and catalog it, and I began to notice some interesting names I would never have associated with him. The one that really got to me was Dr. Karl Woodward.”

“The evangelist who disappeared a ways back?” Lucky Cross asked.

He seemed surprised that the knowledge had come from this quarter. “Yes, indeed. How do you know about him?”

“Oh, my mom used to be a real regular with him. Sent him money and stuff almost all the way to the end of her days. He was her kind of preacher. Cussed like a sailor, smoked, hated most other preachers. We used to get videos from him now and then. He was a real stem-winder.”