Universe 2 - [Anthology] Read online

  He turned his shaggy dark head and looked at me. “I thought you were some kind of big businessman, Brian. You sound like an artist to me.”

  “I am. Both. A businessman with a talent for money and an artist with no talent at all.”

  “There are a lot of artists without talent. They used persistence instead.”

  “I often wish they wouldn’t,” I grumbled. “Everyone thinks he’s an artist. If I have any talent at all, it’d be to realize I have none. However, I am a first class appreciator. That’s why I want you to do a cube of my friend.”

  “Persistence, see?” He laughed. “I’m going to do a very erotic nude while I’m on Sikinos. Afterwards, perhaps, I’ll want to do something more calmly. Perhaps then I’ll do your friend, if she interests me.”

  “She might not be so calming. She’s ... an original.”

  We left it at that and I told him to contact my office in Athens when he was ready to go to the island and that they would arrange everything.

  I did not see Mike again for four months, although I received a drawing from him of the view from the terrace at the villa, with a nude girl sunbathing. Then in late August I got a vidcall from him.

  “I finished the cube on Sophia. I’m in Athens. Where are you? Your office was very secretive and insisted on patching me through to you.”

  “That’s their job. Part of my job is not letting certain people know where I am or what I’m doing. But I’m in New York. I’m going to Bombay Tuesday, but I could stop off there. I’m anxious to see the new cube. Who’s Sophia?”

  “A girl. She’s gone now.”

  “Is that good or bad?”

  “Neither. I’m at Nikki’s, so come on over. I’d like your opinion on the new one.”

  I felt suddenly proud. “Tuesday at Nikki’s. Give her and Barry my love.”

  I hung up and punched for Madelon.

  Beautiful Madelon. Rich Madelon. Famous Madelon. Madelon of the superlatives. Madelon the Elusive. Madelon the Illusion.

  I saw her at nineteen, slim yet voluptuous, standing at the center of a semicircle of admiring men at a boring party in San Francisco. I wanted her, instantly, with that “shock of recognition” they talk about.

  She looked at me between the shoulders of a communications executive and a fossil fuels magnate. Her gaze was steady and her face quiet. I felt faintly foolish just staring and many of the automatic reflexes that rich men develop to save themselves money and heartbreak went into action. I started to turn away and she smiled.

  I stopped, still looking at her, and she excused herself from the man speaking to her and leaned forward. “Are you going now?” she asked.

  I nodded, slightly confused. With great charm she excused herself from the reluctant semicircle and came over to me. “I’m ready,” she said in that calm, certain way she had. I smiled, my protective circuits all activated and alert, but my ego was touched.

  We went into the glass elevator that dropped down the outside of the Fairmont Tower Complex and looked out at the fog coming over the hills near Twin Peaks and flowing down into the city.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “Where would you like to go?” I had met a thousand women that attached themselves to me with all the apparently natural lust, delight, and casualness possible between a poor girl and a rich man. Some had been bold, some subtle, some as subtle as it was possible for them to be. A few had frankly offered business arrangements. I had accepted some of each, in my time. But this one . . . this one was either different or subtler than most.

  “You expect me to say ‘Wherever you are going,’ don’t you?” she said with a smile.

  “Yes. One way or another.” We left the elevator and went into the guarded garage directly. Entering your car on a public street is sometimes dangerous for a rich man.

  “Well, where are we going?” She smiled at me as Bowie held the door open for us. The door clicked shut behind us like the safe door it nearly was.

  “I had been contemplating two choices. My hotel and work on some papers ... or Earth, Fire, Air and Water.”

  “Let’s do both. I’ve never been to either place.”

  I picked up the intercom. “Bowie, take us to Earth, Fire, Air and Water.”

  “Yessir; I’ll report it to Control.”

  The girl laughed and said, “Is someone watching you?”

  “Yes, my local Control. They must know where I am, even if I don’t want to be found. It’s the penalty for having businesses in different time zones. By the way, are we using names?”

  “Sure, why not?” she smiled. “You are Brian Thorne and I am Madelon Morgana. You’re rich and I’m poor.”

  I looked her over, from the casually tossed hair to the fragile sandals. “No ... I think you might be without money, but you are not poor.”

  “Thank you, sir,” she said. San Francisco rolled by and Bowie blanked out the windows as we approached a small street riot, then turned off towards the waterfront. When it was safe, he brought the cityscape back to us as we rolled down a hill and up another.

  When we arrived at Earth, Fire, Air and Water, Bowie called me back apologetically as I was going through the door. I told Madelon to wait and went back to get the report on the interphone. When I joined Madelon inside she smiled at me and asked, “How was my report?”

  When I looked innocent she laughed. “If Bowie didn’t have a dossier on me from your Control or whatever it is I’d be very much surprised. Tell me, am I a dangerous type, an anarchist or a blaster or something?”

  I smiled, for I like perceptive people. “It says you are the illegitimate daughter of Madame Chiang Kai-Shek and Johnny Potseed with convictions for mopery, drudgery and penury.”

  “What’s mopery?”

  “I haven’t the faintest. My omniscient staff tells me you are nineteen, a hick lad from Montana and a half-orphan who worked for eleven months in Great Falls in an office of the Blackfoot National Enterprises.”

  Her eyes got big and she gasped. “Found out at last! My desperate secrets revealed!” She took my arm and tugged me into the elevator that would drop us down to the cavern below. She looked up at me with big innocent eyes as we stood in the packed elevator. “Gee, Mr. Thorne, when I agreed to baby-sit for you and Mrs. Thorne I never knew you’d be taking me out.”

  I turned my head slowly and looked at her with a granite face, ignoring the curious and the grinning. “The next time I catch you indulging in mopery with my Afghan I’m going to leave you home.”

  Her eyes got all wet and sad. “No, please, I promise to be good. You can whip me again when we get home.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “No, I think wearing the collar will be enough.” The door opened. “Come, my dear. Excuse me, please.”

  “Yes, master,” she said humbly.

  The Earth part of the club was the raw ground under one of the many San Francisco hills, sprayed with a structural plastic so that it looked just like a raw-dug cave, yet quite strong. We went down the curving passage toward the maelstrom of noise that was a famous quiver group and came out into the huge hemispherical cave. Overhead a latticework of concrete supported a transparent swimming pool filled with nude and semi-nude swimmers, some guests and some professional entertainers.

  There was a waterfall at one end and torches burned in holders in the wall, while a flickering firelight was projected over everything. The quiver group blasted forth from a rough cave hacked into the dirt walls halfway up to the overhead swimming pool.

  As I took her arm to guide her into the quivering mob on the dance floor I said, “You know there is no Mrs. Thorne.”

  She smiled at me with a serene confidence. “That’s right.”

  The night swirled around us. Winds blew in, scented and warm, then cool and brisk. People crashed into the water over us with galaxies of bubbles around them. One quiver group gave way to another, tawny animals in pseudo-lion skins and shaggy hair, the women bare-breasted and wild.

  Madelon wa
s a hundred women in a hundred minutes, but seemingly without effort. They were all her, from sullen siren to goshwowing teenie. I confess to a helpless infatuation and cared not if she was laying a trap for me or not.

  The elemental decor was a stimulant and I felt younger than I had in years. People joined us, laughed and drank and tripped, and left, and others came. Madelon was a magnet, attracting joy and delight, and I was very proud.

  We came to the surface at dawn and I triggered a tagalong for Bowie. We drove out to watch sunup over the Bay, then went to my apartment. In the elevator I said, “I’ll have to make that up to Bowie, I don’t often stay out like that.”

  “Oh?” Her face was impish, then softened and we kissed outside my door. The night was long and beautiful and satisfying and it changed my life.

  Some have said that Madelon Morgana was a bitch, a Circe, a witch, a fortune-hunter, a corrupter. Some have said that she was misunderstood, an angel, a saint, a creature much sinned against. I knew her very well and she was probably all those things, at various times and places. I was the first, last and only legal husband of Madelon Morgana.

  I wanted her and I got her. I wanted her because she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, and the least boring. I got her because she was beautiful inside as well. Or to be precise, I married her. I attracted her, our sex life was outstanding, and my wealth was exactly the convenience she needed. My money was her freedom.

  When we married, a few weeks after we met, she stopped being Madelon Morgana and became, not Madelon Thorne, but Madelon Morgana. At first I was a convenient and attractive aid, a refuge, a shoulder, a defender, an older and wiser head. She liked what I was, then later, who I was. We became friends. We fell in love. But I was not her only lover.

  No one owned Madelon, not even I. Her other lovers were infrequent, but real, but this distressed me only occasionally. When she loved beneath her, as it were, it hurt me. Once in awhile a lover’s ego outgrew his good sense and he bragged to me that he was sleeping with the wife of the rich and famous Brian Thorne. This always distressed Madelon and she invariably broke off the relationship immediately, something that the lover rarely understood.

  But Madelon and I were friends, as well as man and wife, and one is not knowingly rude to friends. I frequently insult people, but I am never rude to them. Madelon’s taste was excellent and these other relationships were usually fruitful in learning and joy, so that the two or three that were distasteful to me were very much in the minority.

  But Michael Cilento was different.

  I talked to Madelon and then flew to see Mike at Nikki’s. Our meeting was warm. “I can’t thank you enough for the villa,” he said, hugging me. “It was so beautiful and Nikos and Maria were so very nice to me. I did some drawings of their daughter. But the island— ah! Beautiful . . . very peaceful, yet . . . exciting, somehow.”

  “Where’s the new cube?”

  “At the Athena Gallery. They’re having a one-man, one-cube show.”

  “Well, let’s go. I’m anxious to see it.” I turned to my man Stamos. “Madelon will be along soon. Please meet her and take her directly to the Athena.” To Mike I said, “Come—I’m excited.”

  The cube was life-size, as were all of Mike’s works. Sophia was olive-skinned and full-breasted, lying on a couch covered with deep fur, curled like a cat, yet fully displayed. There was a richness in the work, an opulence reminiscent of Matisse’s odalisques. But the sheer animal eroticism of the girl overpowered everything.

  She was the Earth Mother, Eve and Lilith together. She was the pagan princess, the high priestess of Ba’al, the great whore of Babylon. She was nude, but a sun ornament gleamed dully between her breasts. Beyond her, through an arch of ancient, worn stone, was a dawn world, lush and green beyond a high wall. There was a feeling of time here, a setting far back beyond recorded history, when myths were men and monsters perhaps real.

  She lounged on animal furs, with the faint suggestion of a wanton sprawl, with no part of her hidden, and a half-eaten apple in her hand. The direct suggestion of Eve would have been ludicrous, except for the sheer raw power of the piece. Suddenly the symbolism of the Biblical Eve and her apple of knowledge had a reality, a meaning.

  Here, somewhere in Man’s past, Michael Cilento seemed to be saying, there was a turning. From simplicity toward complexity, from innocence to knowledge and beyond, perhaps to wisdom. And always the intimate personal secret lusts of the body.

  All this in one cube, from one face. I walked to the side. The girl did not change, except that I was now looking at her side, but the view through the arch had changed. It was the sea, stretching under heavy clouds to the unchanging horizon. The waves rolled in, oily and almost silent.

  The back view was past the voluptuous girl toward what she looked at: a dim room, a corridor leading to it, lit with flickering torches, going back into darkness . . . into time? Forward into time? The Earth Mother was waiting.

  The fourth side was a solid stone wall beyond the waiting woman and on the wall was set a ring and from the ring hung a chain. Symbol? Decoration? But Mike was too much an artist to have something without meaning in his work, for decoration was just design without content

  I turned to Mike to speak, but he was looking at the door.

  Madelon stood in the entrance, looking at the cube. Slowly she walked toward it, her eyes intent, secret, searching. I said nothing, but stepped aside. I glanced at Mike and my heart twisted. He was staring at her as intently as she looked at the sensatron cube.

  As Madelon walked closer Mike stepped near me. ‘Is this your friend?” he asked. I nodded. “I’ll do that cube you wanted,” he said softly.

  We waited silently as Madelon walked slowly around the cube. I could see she was excited. She was tanned and fit, fresh from a submarine exploration of the Aegean with Markos. At last she turned away from the cube and came directly to me with a swirl of her skirt. We kissed and held each other a long time.

  We looked into each other’s eyes for a long time.. “You’re well?” I asked her.

  “Yes.” She looked at me a long moment more, a soft smile on her face, searching my eyes for any hurt she might have caused. In that shorthand, intimate language of old friends and old lovers she questioned me with her look.

  “I’m fine,” I said, and meant it. I was always her friend but not so often her lover. But I still had more than most men, and I do not mean my millions. I had her love and respect, while others had usually just her interest.

  She turned to Mike with a smile. “You are Michael Cilento. Would you do my portrait, or use me as a subject?” She was perceptive enough to know that there was a more than subtle difference.

  “Brian has already spoken to me about it,” he said.

  “And?” She was not surprised.

  “I always need to spend some time with my subject before I can do a cube.” Except with the Christ cube, I thought with a smile.

  “Whatever you need,” Madelon said.

  Mike looked past her at me and raised his eyebrows. I made a gesture of acquiescence. Whatever was needed. I flatter myself that I understand the creative process better than most non-artists. What was needed was needed; what was not needed was unimportant. With Mike technology had ceased to be anything but a minimal hindrance between him and his art. Now he needed only intimacy and understanding of what he intended to do. And that meant time.

  “Use the Transjet,” I said. “Blake Mason has finished the house on Malagasy. Use that. Or roam around a-while.”

  People have said that I asked for it. But you cannot stop the tide; it comes in when it wants and it goes when it wants. Madelon was unlike any individual that I had ever known. She owned herself. Few people do. So many are mere reflections of others, mirrors of fame or power or personality. Many let others do their thinking for them. Some are not really people, but statistics.

  But Madelon was unlike the others. She took and gave without regard for very many things, demanding only tr
uth. She was hard on her friends, for even friends sometimes require a touch of non-truth to help them out.

  She conformed to my own definition of friendship: a friend must interest, amuse and protect you. He can do nothing more. Without interest there is no communication; without amusement there is no zest; without protection there is no intimacy, no truth, no security. Madelon was my friend.

  It struck me that Michael Cilento was also unlike the others. He was an Original, on his way to being a Legend. At the bottom level there are people who are “interesting” or “different.” Those below that should not be allowed to waste your time. On the next step above is Unique. Then the Originals, and finally those rare Legends.

  I might flatter myself and say that I was certainly different, possibly even Unique on a good day. Madelon was an undisputed Original. But I sensed that Michael Cilento had that something extra, the art, the drive, the vision, the talent that could make him a Legend. (Or destroy him.)