Дэймон Найт - Orbit 6

So bless the generosity of the sovereign Swiss Republic. Bless the openhanded city of Geneva. Bless the hotel. And bless the United Nations Conference on Human Value, which brought glory to the Swiss Republic et cetera and inspired the free mountaineers to grant free hotel suites in the height of the season even to non-voting Conference observers such as she. Sal had brought her in a gibson a few minutes ago, and she picked it up from the edge of the fountain to sip, a little surprised to see that it was already three-quarters gone; red and green.

A brawny, naked triton half-reclined, water streaming from his hair and beard, dripping from his mouth, dribbling from his ears. His eyes, expressionless and smooth as eggs, wept for her. Balancing her empty glass carefully on the rim again, she leaned forward and stroked his smooth, wet stone flesh. Smiling she told him — mentally — how handsome he was, and he blushed pink lemonade at the compliment. She thought of herself taking off her clothes and climbing in with him, the cool water soothing her face which now felt hot and flushed. Not, she told herself suddenly, that she would feel any real desire for the triton in the unlikely event of his being metamorphosed to flesh. If she wanted men in her bed she could find ten any evening, and afterward edit the whole adventure from Sal’s memory bank. She wanted a man, but she wanted only one, she wanted Brad (whose real name, as the terrible, bitter woman who lived in the back of her skull, the woman the gibson had not quite drowned, reminded her, had proved at his trial to be Aaron). The triton vanished and Brad was there instead, laughing and dripping Atlantic water on the sand as he threw up his arms to catch the towel she flung him. Brad running through the surf. .

Sal interrupted her revery, rolling in on silent casters. “A gentleman to see you, Miss Bushnan.” Sal had real metal drawer-pulls on her false drawers, and they jingled softly when she stopped to deliver her message, like costume jewelry.

“Who?” Miss Bushnan straightened up, pushing a stray wisp of brown hair away from her face.

Sal said blankly, “I don’t know.” The gibson had made Miss Bushnan feel pleasantly muzzy, but even so the blankness came through as slightly suspicious.

“He didn’t give you his name or a card?”

“He did, Miss Bushnan, but I can’t read it. Even though, as I’m sure you’re already aware, Miss Bushnan, there’s an Italian language software package for me for only two hundred dollars. It includes reading, writing, speaking, and an elementary knowledge of great Italian art.”

“The advertising package,” Miss Bushnan said with wasted sarcasm, “is free. And compulsory with your lease.”

“Yes,” Sal said. “Isn’t it wonderful?”

Miss Bushnan swung around in the green leather chair from which she had been watching the fountain. “He did give you a card. I see it in one of your pigeonholes. Take it out and look at it.”

As if the Louis XIV secretary had concealed a silver snake, one of Sal’s arms emerged. With steel fingers like nails it took the card and held it in front of a swirl of ornament hiding a scanner.

“Now,” Miss Bushnan said patiently, “pretend that what you’re reading isn’t Italian. Let’s say instead that it’s English that’s been garbled by a translator post-processor error. What’s your best guess at the original meaning?”

“ ‘His Holiness Pope Honorius V.’ “

“Ah.” Miss Bushnan sat up in her chair. “Please show the gentleman in.”

With a faint hum of servomotors Sal rolled away. There was just time for a last fragment of daydream. Brad with quiet eyes alone with her on the beach at Cape Cod. Talking about the past, talking about the divorce, Brad really, really sorry. .

The Pope wore a plain dark suit and a white satin tie embroidered in gold with the triple crown. He was an elderly man, never tall and now stooped. Miss Bushnan rose. She sat beside him every day at the council sessions, and had occasionally exchanged a few words with him during the refreshment breaks (he had a glass of red wine usually, she good English tea or the horrible Swiss coffee laced with brandy), but it had never so much as occurred to her that he might ever have anything to discuss with her in private.

“Your Holiness,” she said as smoothly as the gibson would let her manage the unfamiliar words, “this is an unexpected pleasure.”

Sal chimed in with, “May we offer you something?” and looking sidelong Miss Bushnan saw that she had put Scotch, a bottle of club soda, and two glasses of ice on her fold-out writing shelf.

The Pope waved her away, and when he had settled in his chair said pointedly, “I deeply appreciate your hospitality, but I wonder if it would be possible to speak with you privately.”

Miss Bushnan said, “Of course,” and waited until Sal had coasted off in the direction of the kitchen. “My secretary bothers you, Your Holiness?”

Taking a cigar from the recesses of his coat, the Pope nodded. “I’m afraid she does. I have never had much sympathy with furniture that talks — you don’t mind if I smoke?” He had only the barest trace of Italian accent.

“If it makes you more comfortable I should prefer it.”

He smiled in appreciation of the little speech, and struck an old-fashioned kitchen match on the imitation marble of the fountain. It left no mark, and when he tossed in the matchstick a moment later, it bobbed only twice in the crystal water before being whisked away. “I suppose I’m out of date,” the Pope continued. “But back in my youth when people speculated about the possibility of those things we always thought of them as being shaped more or less like us. Something like a suit of armor.”

“I can’t imagine why,” Miss Bushnan said. “You might as well shape a radio like a human mouth — or a TV screen like a keyhole.”

The Pope chuckled. “I didn’t say I was going to defend the idea. I only remarked that that was what we expected.”

“I’m sure they must have considered it, but—”

“But too much extra work would have had to go into just making it look human,” the Pope continued for her, “and besides, a furniture cabinet is much cheaper than articulated metal and doesn’t make the robot look dead when it’s turned off.”

She must have looked flustered because he continued, smiling, “You Americans are not the only manufacturers, you see. It happens that a friend of mine is president of Olivetti. A skeptic like all of them today, but…”

The sentence trailed away in a shrug and a puff of smoke from the black cigar. Miss Bushnan recalled the time she had asked the French delegate about him. The French delegate was handsome in that very clean and spare fashion some Frenchmen have, and she liked him better than the paunchy businessman who represented her own country.

“You do not know who the man who sits by you is, mademoiselle?” he asked quizzically. “But that is most interesting. You see, I know who he is, but I do not know who you are. Except that I see you each day and you are much more pretty than the lady from Russia or the lady from Nigeria, and perhaps in your way as chic as that bad girl who reports on us for Le Figaro— but I hope not quite so full of tricks. Now I will trade you information.”

So she had had to tell him, feeling more like a fool each second as the milling crush of secretaries of delegates, and secretaries of secretaries, and unidentifiable people from the Swiss embassies of all the participating nations, swirled around them. When she had finished he said, “Ah, it is kind of you to work for charity, and especially for one that does not pay you, but is it necessary? This is no longer the twentieth century after all, and the governments take care of most of us quite well.”