Patron of the Arts

“Yes, we are, aren’t we?” She smiled at the politician and said,

“There will be time for almost everything, won’t there?” She turned back to me and asked softly, “And what interests you on Mars, Mr. Braddock?”

“Everything,” I said, looking into her dark eyes, trying to read them, and seeing only the tiny blurred reflections of myself.

“Won’t that make it difficult to point at any one thing?” asked Miss Blount.

“I’ll manage to find something to . . . point at, I’m sure,” I answered, but my eyes were still on the Martian-born beauty. Nova smiled and turned her gaze to the soyalgae soup, while Miss Blount buried me under wondrous stories of how they were bringing the dead Martian sands to life, and how well the Lycoperscion esculentum had adapted, giving superb tomatoes with their own built-in salty taste. After dinner I went to my usual spot, the observation blister, which was still on the “down” side, toward Earth. I slumped in the couch, opened my spacesuit, and wondered about a lot of things, from unfinished business to business to finish. Would Warfield be able to pull off the merger with Selenite, Ltd. over the Eratosthenes Crater deal?

Would the Mythos fun park hit the estimated attendance? Would Huo keep my marker moving across the map without premature detection? I wondered how Africaine would do in her new film, and if the Valencia project would really result in low-cost housing. I thought about the cost of the archotolog for retired people and if the Malayan hotel complex would open as scheduled.

And I thought about Nova Sunstrum.

Was she a plant by the Navahoe Organization to divert me somehow? Had the boys in Quebec found out about my trip? Had they put Clarke into the picture with his play-rough tactics? Was it something cooked up by Raeburn’s bunch in Toronto?

Angrily, I thrust all these thoughts aside. There was nothing much I could do about any of it. The wheels were rolling, the computers were humming, the people were moving from Square A to Square B. Everything was geared to run without me, at least for awhile. If I died, or was killed, would the General Anomaly board just keep alive the fabrication of Brian Thorne “resting” or “vacationing” or “tripping” while they sliced out chunks of my empire for themselves?

But what did it matter, really? If I were dead I couldn’t care. I had long ago arranged for trusts to be established for certain friends. Certain organizations and grants and foundations would be happy. Michele, Louise, Huo, Langley, and Caleb would have theirs. What did it matter now to the world if Brian Thorne never came back? A few artists would find patrons elsewhere. Some music might not be written, some sensatrons not constructed, some paintings not painted. But the world would go on.

It was not the best batch of thoughts I ever had.

So, instead, I thought full-time about Nova. If I were Brian Thorne I would already have received a coded dossier on her from Huo, with everything worth knowing in it, everything that could be put into words or graphs or on film. But as Diego Braddock I would have to use my gut instincts, the same ones that had brought me up from Brian Thorne, a diversified but minor investor in this and that, to Brian Thorne. I decided I wanted Nova Sunstrum.

I wanted to make love to her, to that voluptuous body, to make love with her, with that quicksilver mind I detected. I wanted to penetrate her flesh and to couple with her intimate thoughts. To mate only with flesh, however beautiful, is pleasant, but hardly meaningful. I had had enough of that. I wanted more.

Someone like Madelon.

The thought of her came unasked, trapping me in an awkward moment. Triggered by something perhaps hidden, the images and feelings flooded back. I had loved.

Would I love again? Nova and Madelon popped in and out of my awareness like spacewarping gypsies.

Nova, fresh and unique.

Madelon, lost and special.

It was too soon, and I did not yet know enough. But I knew myself well enough to recognize the tug. I forced the all-too-familar feelings away, back into the dark closet, where I hoped they would gather dust and melt away, silently, unseen, unfelt. I knew those feelings had been “decontaminated” many times and were but shadows of their former pain, but they had not gone entirely.

Nova was now; Madelon was then. I had no desire for Madelon now, only curiosity. What I did have was a battered ego, one of life’s greatest pains. But I had lived and I had met Nova. I was well aware that I was building a fantasy on a very tenuous foundation. I knew little about her, but I felt much.

Oh, how we trap ourselves!