Hot Sky at Midnight

restaurant last night. She’s from Earth, from California, traveling through the L-5 worlds. She saw you at the restaurant and asked me later if I could arrange it for her to meet you.”

“For what reason?”

“Your guess would be as good as mine, sir. But I think— you know—it might be something social.”

Interesting, Farkas thought. A woman.

He had indeed noticed a woman in the restaurant last night, a very impressive woman, substantial and conspicuous. She had walked past his table at one point, giving off a distinctive carnal emanation, a great ambient cloud of hot female force—bright waves of heat, violet shot through with deep azure streaks—that had immediately caught his attention, automatically drawing from him an instant though brief surge of hormonal flux. He had caught her attention, too—he had not failed to take in the little quiver of surprise in her aura, the tiny flinch of surprise, as the fact of his eyelessness had registered on her—and then she had moved along.

It would be a cheery coincidence if this one turned out to be the same one. Farkas had been feeling a little horny for several days, now. His sexual drive was a thing of distinct periodicity, long stretches of eunuchlike indifference punctuated by piercing episodes of wild lustfulness. One of those episodes might be coming upon him, he was beginning to suspect. If Juanito had still been around, the kid could probably have arranged something for him. Of course, Juanito wasn’t around. How providential for this Kluge to turn up, then.

“What’s her name?” Farkas asked.

“Bermudez. Jolanda Bermudez.”

The name meant nothing. And asking Kluge to describe her to him would serve no useful purpose.

“Well,” Farkas said. “I suppose I can spare a little time for her. Where can I find her?”

“She’s waiting in a cafe called the Santa Margarita, a short way up-spoke from here. I could tell her to come down here in half an hour, say, when you’re finished with your lunch.”

“I’m just about finished,” said Farkas. “Let me settle up and you can take me to her right now.”

“And about Juanito, sir—you know, we’re all pretty worried about him. So if you should happen to hear from him—”

“There’s no reason why I should,” Farkas said. “But I’m sure he’s fine. He’s very resourceful, your friend Juanito.” Farkas keyed in his lunch bill. “All right. Let’s go.”

The cafe where Jolanda Bermudez was waiting was no more than a five-minute walk from the place where Farkas had been eating lunch. He felt vaguely suspicious. It was all too neat, Kluge tracking him down like this, the woman stashing herself so close at hand. It had some of the earmarks of a setup. And yet this would not be the first time that some strange woman traveling in a remote place had become enamored of the smooth eyeless dome of his forehead. What Farkas thought of as his deformity had a distinct and potent appeal for a certain type of female personality. And he was indeed feeling horny.

This was worth checking out, whatever slight risk there would be. He was armed, after all. He was carrying the spike that he had taken from Juanito.

“There she is,” Kluge said. “The big woman at the front table.”

“I see her,” Farkas said.

She was the one he had seen last night, all right. Those waves of violet heat were still radiating from her. She looked to Farkas like three rippling curves of silvery metal emanating from a blocky central core that was of notable size but tender and vulnerable in texture, a custardy mass of taut cream-hued flesh marked down its center by a row of unblinking eye-like scarlet spots. It was an opulent body, an extravagant body. Hot, very hot.

Farkas went to her table. When she saw him she reacted as she had the night before, with that equivocal mixture of titillation and fright that he had observed so many women display at the sight of him: her whole color scheme shot up the spectrum a discernible number of angstroms and there was a quick wild fluctuation in the heat intensity of her emanation, up-down-up-down-up. And then up and up.

“Jolanda Bermudez?”

“Oh. Yes. Hello! Hello! What a pleasure this is!” A nervous giggle, almost a whinny. “Please. Won’t you join me, Mr.—?”

“Farkas. Victor Farkas,” he said, sitting down opposite her. The warmth that was coming from her was strong and insistent, now, almost dizzying, erotically aggressive. Farkas was rarely wrong about such things. That was one of Dr. Wu’s little gifts, his ability to read a woman’s erotic temperature. But nevertheless this seemed just a little too good to be true. Farkas watched her shifting position like a skittish girl, fluttering this way and that. “Your courier Kluge said you wanted to meet me.”

“Indeed I do. I hope you don’t think this is terribly presumptuous of me, Mr. Farkas—I’m a sculptor, you see—”

“Yes?”

“My work is usually done in abstract modes. Mainly I do bioresponsive pieces—you know what bioresponsive sculpture is, of course?”

“Yes. Yes, of course.” He had no idea at all.

“But sometimes I like to get back to basic technique, to classical representational sculpture. And—I hope you’ll forgive me if I’m putting this too crudely, Mr. Farkas—when I saw you last night, your face, your very unusual face, I said to myself that I absolutely had to sculpt that face, I had to render its underlying structure at least in clay and perhaps in marble. I don’t know if you have any artistic leanings yourself, Mr. Farkas, but perhaps you are capable of understanding the intensity of such a feeling—the almost compulsive nature of it—”

“Oh, quite. Quite, Ms. Bermudez.” Farkas beamed pleasantly, leaned forward, let his whole sensorium drink her in.

She went gushing on, a torrent of words coming from her. Would he consider posing for her? He would? Oh, wonderful, wonderful. She understood how unusual this must be for him. But his face was so distinctive. She would never be able to rest until she had transmuted it into a work of art. Of course she needed to obtain sculpting materials—she hadn’t brought any of her tools with her—but she was sure that that would be possible somewhere on Valparaiso Nuevo, it would probably take her no more than an hour or two, and then perhaps he could come to her hotel room, which would have to serve as an improvised studio—she would need to take measurements, to study the contours of his face with great care—

The level of the heat radiation that was coming from her went on steadily rising all the while she spoke. This talk about sculpting him seemed to be genuine—Farkas was willing to believe that she dabbled in the arts in some fashion—but the real transaction that was shaping up here was a sexual one. He had no doubt about that.

“Perhaps tomorrow morning—or any other time, whatever would be convenient for you, Mr. Farkas—this evening, maybe—” Hopeful, eager. Pushy, even.

Farkas imagined himself sculpting her. He was no kind of artist at all, had never given such things any thought. How would he go about it? It would be necessary for him to learn the curves of her body, first, with his hands. Discovering by touch the true shape of all that he was incapable of seeing directly: translating the distorted geometric abstractions that he perceived into the actual rounded forms of breasts, thighs, buttocks.

“The sooner the better,” Farkas said. “I’m free this afternoon, as it happens. Possibly the thing to do would be for you to make your preliminary measurements of my face today, even before you’ve purchased the materials you need, and then—”

“Oh, yes! Yes, that would be splendid, Mr. Farkas!”

She reached across the table, gathering his hands into hers and clasping them tightly. Farkas hadn’t expected her to abandon the pretense that this was solely an artistic venture quite so quickly; but despite all his innate caution he was caught up now in her fervid sensual impatience. He had his needs, too. And it had long ago ceased to bother him that for some women it was his very weirdness of appearance that was the chief focus of attraction.

But then came an interruption. A man’s voice, a ripe booming basso, crying, “There you are, Jolanda! I’ve been looking all over for you! But I see you’ve made a new friend!”

Farkas turned. From the left, a figure approaching, shorter than average, dark. To Farkas he had the form of a single rigid column of glistening black glass, tapering from a narrow base to a broad summit. An unmarred surface, slippery-looking, perfect. Farkas knew instantly that he had seen this man before, somewhere, long ago,