“Late?” Well, yes, it was. But Rhodes tried to shrug the fact away. “It isn’t all that late here. But it must be the middle of the night in Chicago. Are you still in Chicago, Paul?”
“For the time being.” Carpenter’s voice sounded thick and slurred. He was either drunk or very, very tired. “I’m going to leave here tomorrow, I think. Coming back to California.”
“That’s fine, Paul,” Rhodes said cautiously. “I’m glad to hear it.”
There was a little pause. “It’s been a good stay for me, in Chicago. I’ve got my head straightened out a bit, maybe. But the friend I’ve been visiting—well, she’s got her own life, I can’t just dump myself down on her for an indefinite time. And this is an awful place to live, really awful. So I thought— California—a new start—”
“Fine,” Rhodes said again, hating the empty blandness of his tone. “The land of new beginnings.” Rhodes wished he had something specific to offer, and felt hollow and futile because he did not.
He stared at the visor. Blurry weary eyes looked back at him. It seemed to be a struggle for Carpenter to keep them focused. Carpenter was definitely drunk: Rhodes was sure of that, now. He knew the symptoms as well as anyone.
“I called Jolanda just now,” Carpenter was saying. “Thinking maybe she could put me up for a couple of days, until I had my bearings, you know, figured out what next, so on and so forth—”
“She’s still up in L-5,” Rhodes said. “Supposed to be coming home tomorrow.”
“Ah. I thought she might be.”
“She’s still got that Israeli with her. He’ll be coming too. And someone else, someone that they met up there. It sounded like she had a whole goddamned entourage.”
“Ah,” Carpenter said. “I better not figure on staying with her, then.”
“No.”
Another spell of silence, a sticky one.
Carpenter said, “I wonder, then, Nick, if—well, if it would be all right—”
“Yes. Of course it would,” Rhodes said quickly. “With me, here? Of course, Paul. You know you’re always welcome.”
“I won’t be in your way?”
“Don’t be an asshole. Listen, call me when you get on the road, and then call me again when you’re a day or so from the Bay Area. Leave messages, or whatever. Let me know when I can expect you, so I’ll be sure to be here. —Are you all right, Paul?”
“Terrific. Really.”
“Money?”
“I can manage.”
“See you in—what, three days? Four?”
“Less,” Carpenter said. “Looking forward. Say hello to Isabelle for me. You still with Isabelle?”
“Of course,” said Rhodes. “Matter of fact, she’s right here. If you want to talk to her yourself, I’ll—”
But he was peering at a blank visor.
Isabelle, completely naked now, emerged from the bedroom, looking edgy and impatient. More like her old self: annoyed by the intrusion, by Rhodes’ willingness to have allowed it to occur.
“Who was that?”
“Paul,” Rhodes said. “From Chicago. He’s coming back. Wants to stay with me for a little time.”
Her annoyance vanished in an instant. She seemed genuinely concerned.
“How is he?” she asked.
“He looked terrible. He sounded drunk. The poor son of a bitch.” Rhodes snapped off the living-room lights. “Come on,” he told her. “Let’s go to bed. Before the phone rings again.”
24
Farkas had never seen San Francisco before. His usual base was in Europe: London, Paris, sometimes Frankfurt. When the Company had occasion to send him to the States, it was generally to New York. Once he had been in flat sprawling Los Angeles, which had struck him as a nightmarish place, hideously congested and monstrously hideous, strangling in its pestilent mephitic atmosphere and murderous heat: a city already unfit for human life even though the full unfolding fury of the greenhouse calamity was still said to be many years in the future.
But San Francisco was very different, Farkas thought. It was small and rather pretty, situated as it was between the ocean and the bay. His special way of sight translated its hilly terrain into a pleasurable pattern of square-topped wave forms, and from the two defining bodies of water on either side of the little city came a rich and harmonious burgundy-red emanation, velvety and soothing in its texture.
Of course, the air over San Francisco was stained by its heavy burden of greenhouse gases, yes, but that was true to some extent wherever you went on Earth; and at least in San Francisco the constant wind off the sea kept the more corrosive substances from sitting in one place for very long. And though the weather was disagreeably warm, the sea breezes did at any rate hold the degree of discomfort down a little. The climate was more like that of London or Paris than of any other American city he had visited. The rest were all like ovens; San Francisco’s heat was somewhat less unrelenting. But he missed the steady gentle rain of Western Europe. San Francisco baked under an unvarying blast of desert sunlight that Farkas perceived as a brilliant shower of golden daggers.
He and Jolanda and Enron had taken the high-speed underground transit capsule together from the space- shuttle terminal out in the broad, flat valley east of San Francisco. Jolanda and the Israeli had accompanied Farkas to his hotel in the central district of the city, and then had gone across the bay to Jolanda’s place in Berkeley, where they were planning to stay. A few days from now, when Jolanda had finished making certain arrangements for the care of her house and pets, the three of them would go on down to Southern California to meet with Davidov and conclude the terms of the Israeli-Kyocera partnership that was going to subsidize the conquest of Valparaiso Nuevo.
It might have been wisest, Farkas knew, for him to have proceeded straight on to Los Angeles with Davidov from the space habitat, and let the other two join them down there when Jolanda had taken care of her business here. That way he would perhaps have a chance to take a closer reading of Davidov and his associates and see how competent they really were. But Farkas was in no hurry to revisit the horrors of Los Angeles.
And, besides, he was eager to stay close to Jolanda Bermudez. His one assignation with her, in the hotel on Valparaiso Nuevo, had whetted his appetite for more. Farkas was a little abashed to admit even to himself that his decision to come to San Francisco rather than Los Angeles had been based mostly on the fact that Jolanda was going there first. After his long period of abstinence, Farkas found himself wholly captivated by the lavish generosity of her flesh, by the uncomplicated givingness of her temperament, by the easily aroused fevers of her passionate nature.
That was all very foolish, he knew, and very adolescent, and possibly risky, and probably futile as well: Enron seemed intent on keeping her out of his reach. But Farkas was sure that Enron’s possessiveness was nothing more than a power game that Enron was playing out of sheer masculine reflex. He sensed that the Israeli had no real use for Jolanda except as a commodity to be employed in the service of attaining his larger goals.
Jolanda seemed to see that also. Perhaps Farkas could detach her from him while they were here. Farkas suspected, with what he was certain was good reason, that she felt as strong an attraction for him as he did for her. When this unexpected Valparaiso Nuevo adventure was behind him, he thought, it might be pleasant to spend a few weeks’ holiday in and around San Francisco with Jolanda while she finished the sculpture of him that had been the pretext—a pretext, nothing more: he had no illusions about that—for their hotel-room rendezvous.
For the moment, though, he was in a different hotel room and he was alone. For the moment.
He unpacked, showered, drew a little brandy from the room’s minibar. Once again Farkas contemplated calling New Kyoto to let them know what he was up to; once again, he rejected the idea. Sooner or later, he was going to have to let the Company know that he was in the process of entangling it in an international conspiracy. But there was no binding commitment yet. That would come in Los Angeles, after the final meeting with Davidov and the other plotters. Then, then, only then, would he send the details up-level to the Executive Committee. If
