Robert Silverberg - The Masks of Time

Kolff and Kralick turned to him at once. “Franz, keep your temper,” Kolff roared, and Kralick said simultaneously, “Dr. Heyman. I beg of you—”

“Suppose he had asked me to take a bath with him?” Heyman demanded. “Are we to grant him every whim? I refuse to be a party to this idiocy!”

Kralick said, “No one’s asking you to yield to obviously excessive requests, Dr. Heyman. Miss Mikkelsen was under no pressure to agree. She did it for the sake of harmony, for — well, for scientific reasons. I’m proud of her. Nevertheless, she didn’t have to say yes, and I don’t want you to feel that you—”

Helen McIlwain cut in serenely, “I’m sorry you chose to resign this quickly, Franz, love. Wouldn’t you have wanted to discuss the shape of the next thousand years with him? You’ll never get a chance, now. I doubt that Mr. Kralick can let you interview him as you wish if you don’t cooperate, and of course there are so many other historians who’d be happy to take your place, aren’t there?”

Her ploy was devilishly effective. The thought of letting some despised rival get first crack at Vornan left Heyman devastated: and soon he was muttering that he hadn’t really resigned, he had only threatened to resign. Kralick let him wiggle on that hook for a while before agreeing to forget the whole unhappy incident, and in the end Heyman promised none too gracefully to take a more temperate attitude toward the assignment.

Fields, during all this, kept looking toward the door through which Aster and Vornan had vanished. At length he said edgily, “Don’t you think you ought to find out what they’re doing?”

“Taking a bath, I imagine,” said Kralick.

“You’re very calm about it!” Fields said. “But what if you’ve sent her off with a homicidal maniac? I detect certain signs in that man’s posture and facial expression that lead me to believe he’s not to be trusted.”

Kralick lifted a thick eyebrow. “Really, Dr. Fields? Would you care to dictate a report on that?”

“Not just yet,” he said sullenly. “But I think Miss Mikkelsen ought to be protected. It’s too early for us to begin assuming that this future-man is motivated in any way by the mores and taboos of our society. and—”

“That’s right,” said Helen. “It may be his custom to sacrifice a dark-haired virgin every Thursday morning. The important thing for us to remember is that he doesn’t think like us, not in any of the big ways nor in the small ones.”

It was impossible to tell from her deadpan tone whether she meant it, although I suspected she didn’t. As for Fields’ distress, that was simple enough to explain: having been frustrated in his own designs on Aster, he was upset to find Vornan spiriting her away so readily. He was so upset, in fact, that he triggered an exasperated Kralick into revealing something that he had plainly not intended to tell us.

“My staff is monitoring Vornan at all times,” Kralick snapped at the psychologist. “We’ve got a complete audio, video, and tactile pickup on him, and I don’t believe he knows it, and I’ll thank you not to let him know it. Miss Mikkelsen is in no danger whatever.”

Fields was taken aback. I think we all were.

“Do you mean your men are watching them — right now?”

“Look,” said Kralick in obvious annoyance. He snatched up the house phone and dialed a transfer number. Instantly the room’s wallscreen lit up with a relay of what his pickup devices were seeing. We were given a view in full color and three dimensions of Aster Mikkelsen and Vornan-19.

They were stark naked. Vornan’s back was to the camera; Aster’s was not. She had a lean, supple, narrow-hipped body and the breasts of a twelve-year-old.

They were under a molecular shower together. She was scrubbing his back.

They appeared to be having a fine time.

That evening Kralick had arranged to have Vornan-19 attend a party in his honor at the Hudson River mansion of Wesley Bruton, the utilities tycoon. Bruton’s place had been completed only two or three years back; it was the work of Albert Ngumbwe, the brilliant young architect who is now designing the Pan-African capital city in the Ituri Forest. It was so much of a showplace that even I had heard of it in my California isolation: the outstanding representative of contemporary design, it was said. My curiosity was piqued. I spent most of the afternoon going over a practically opaque book by one of the architectural critics, setting the Bruton house in its context — my homework, so to say. The helicopter fleet would depart at 6:30 from the heliport atop our hotel, and we’d travel under the tightest of security arrangements. The problem of logistics was going to be a severe one in this tour, I could see, and we would have to be infiltrated from place to place like contraband. Several hundred reporters and other media pests attempted to follow Vornan everywhere, even though it was agreed that coverage would be restricted to the daily pool of six journalists. A cloud of angry Apocalyptists trailed Vornan’s movements, shouting their disbelief in him. And now there was the additional headache of a gathering force of disciples, a countermob of the sleek and respectable not-quite-middle-class burghers who saw in him the apostle of law and order, and who trampled on law and order in their hectic desire to worship him. With all these to contend with, we had to move swiftly.

Toward six we began to collect in our main suite. I found Kolff and Helen there when I arrived. Kolff was dressed in high style, and he was awesome to behold: a shimmering tunic enfolded his monumental bulk, sparkling in a whole spectrum of colors, while a gigantic cummerbund in midnight blue called attention to his jutting middle. He had slicked his straggly white hair across his dome of a skull. On his vast breast were mounted a row of academic medals conferred by many governments. I recognized only one, which I also have been awarded: France’s Legion des Curies. Kolff flourished a full dozen of the silly things.

Helen seemed almost restrained by comparison. She wore a sleek flowing gown made of some coy polymer that was now transparent, now opaque; viewed at the proper angle, she seemed nude, but the view lasted only an instant before the long chains of slippery molecules changed their orientation and concealed her flesh. It was cunning, attractive, and even tasteful in its way. Around her throat she wore a curious amulet, blatantly phallic, so much so that it negated itself and ultimately seemed innocent. Her makeup consisted of a green lipglow and dark halos around her eyes.

Fields entered shortly, wearing an ordinary business suit, and then came Heyman, dressed in a tight evening outfit at least twenty years out of style. Both of them looked uneasy. Not long afterward Aster stepped into the room, clad in a simple thigh-length robe, and adorned by a row of small tourmalines across her forehead. Her arrival stirred tension in the room.

I jerked about guiltily, hardly able to meet her eyes. Like all the rest, I had spied on her; even though it had not been my idea to switch on that espionage pickup and peer at her in the shower, I had looked with all the others, I had put my eye to the knothole and stolen a peek. Her tiny breasts and flat, boyish buttocks were no secret to me now. Fields went rigid once again, clenching his fists; Heyman flushed and scuffed at the sponge-glass floor. But Helen, who did not believe in such concepts as guilt or shame or modesty, gave Aster a warm, untroubled greeting, and Kolff, who had transgressed so often in a long life that he had no room left for a minor bit of remorse over some unintentional voyeurism, boomed happily, “Did you enjoy your clean-getting?”