Patron of the Arts

Madelon and she loved Mike, so he must live and be protected. I knew that she loved me, too, but it was and had always been a different kind of love. I went to a science board meeting at Tycho Base and looked at the green-brown-blue white-streaked Earth “overhead” and only paid minimal attention to the speakers. I came down to a petroleum meeting at Hargesisa, in Somalia. I visited a mistress of mine in Samarkand, sold a company, bought an electrosnake for the Louvre, visited Armand in Nardonne, bought a company, commissioned a concerto from a new composer I liked in Ceylon, and donated an early Caruthers to the Prado.

I came, I went. I thought about Madelon. I thought about Mike. Then I went back to what I did best: making money, making work, getting things done, making time pass.

I had just come from a policy meeting of the North American Continent Ecology Council when Madelon called to say the cube was finished and would be installed in the Battle Mountain house by the end of the week.

“How is it?” I asked.

She smiled. “See for yourself.”

“Smug bitch,” I grinned.

“It’s his best one, Brian. The best sensatron in the world.”

“I’ll see you Saturday.” I punched out and took the rest of the day off and had an early dinner with two Swedish blondes and did a little fleshly purging. It did not really help very much.

On Saturday I could see the two tiny figures waving at me from the causeway bridging the house with the tip of the spire of rock where the copter pad was. They were holding hands.

Madelon was tanned, fit, glowing, dressed in white with a necklace of Cartier Tempoimplant tattoos across her shoulders and breasts in glowing facets of liquid fire. She waved at Bowie as she came to me, squinting against the dust the copter blades were still swirling about.

Mike was there, dressed in black, looking haunted.

Getting to you, boy? I thought. There was a vicious thrill in thinking it and I shamed myself.

Madelon hugged me and we walked together back over the high causeway and directly to the new spraystone dome in the garden, at the edge of a two-hundred-foot cliff.

The cube was magnificent. There hadn’t been anything like it, ever. Not ever.

It was the largest cube I’d seen. There have been bigger ones since, none has been better. Its impact was stunning.

Madelon sat like a queen on what has come to be known as the Jewel Throne, a great solid thronelike block that seemed to be part temple, part jewel, part dream. It was immensely complex, set with faceted electronic patterns that gave it the effect of a superbly cut jewel that was somehow also liquid. Michael Cilento would have made his place in art history with that throne alone.

But on it sat Madelon. Nude. Her waist-long hair fell in a simple cascade. She looked right out at you, sitting erect, almost primly, with an almost triumphant expression.

It drew me from the doorway. Everyone, everything was forgotten, including the original and the creator with me. There was only the cube. The vibrations were getting to me and my pulse increased. Even knowing that pulse generators were working on my alpha waves and broadcast projectors were doing this and sonics were doing that and my own alpha wave was being synchronized and reprojected did not affect me. Only the cube affected me. All else was forgotten. There was just the cube and me, with Madelon in it, more real than the reality.

I walked to stand before it. The cube was slightly raised so that she sat well above the floor, as a queen should. Behind her, beyond the dark violet eyes, beyond the incredible presence of the woman, there was a dark, misty background that may or may not have been moving and changing.

I stood there a long time, just looking, experiencing. “It’s incredible,” I whispered.

“Walk around it,” Madelon said. I felt the note of pride in her voice. I moved to the right and it was as if Madelon followed me with her eyes without moving them, following me by sensing me, alert, alive, ready for me. Already, the electronic image on the multilayered surfaces was real. Mike’s electronic brushes had transformed the straight basic video images in subtle ways, artful shifts and fragile shadings on many levels revealing and emphasizing delicately.

The figure of Madelon sat there, proudly naked, breathing normally with that fantastically lifelike movement possible to the skilled molecular constructors. The figure had none of the flamboyance that Caruthers or Stibbard brought to their figures, so delighted in their ability to bring “life” to their work that they saw nothing else. But Mike had restraint. He had power in his work, understatement, demanding