Patron of the Arts

to share your life takes up a great deal of one’s time and attention. Usually we settle for bits and pieces from a lot of different people.

Bernstein, in a profile in Fortune, said that I tend to judge things aesthetically first, including women, and noted that I seemed to exclude men from this aesthetic judgement. She was correct in that, but in a world that openly admits and even encourages bi-sexuality, I was simply not interested in the physical aspects of men, not as long as there were women around, at least.

I have seldom cared what other people thought was beautiful. If their tastes agreed with mine, fine. If not, so what? If I thought a woman was beautiful in any way, then she was beautiful, and it didn’t matter what others thought. I had learned early that I had the courage of my convictions, at least about beauty, and that others often simply followed the trends, followed the mass, accepting the standards of others. But physical beauty, or lack of it, is usually the first thing we do notice about anyone, whether we call it by that name or another. If we have advance notice, whether by reputation or pictures or a body of work, or some other thing, we form opinions, then try to adjust those prior opinions to the individual we actually meet. Unfortunately, having clay feet is a very human condition.

I have noticed that reputations are often undeserved, incomplete, or an image, as seen and “known” by others, to have little bearing on reality, so I try to keep that in mind when encountering the reputations of others.

Forming an opinion from the work of someone you do not know can also be a dangerous pastime. I know writers of virile, popular, fast-action stories who are physical cowards and dull plods. I know noble appearing politicians who are all front, the mouthpieces of the interests who own them. I know writers of sensitive prose and monumental insight who have petty, cruel, insensitive streaks. I know drunken slob sculptors, atheist ministers, homosexual he-men, frigid glamour queens, and horny priests. I know actors whose Don Juan reputation covers their impotence. I know quiet, shy, schoolteachers who are hell in bed. I know startlingly beautiful women, envied by all, who do not think they are at all pretty, and believe people are lying to them. But as I talked to Nova, first in that observation blister, then everywhere, I was very aware of her womanliness, of her early explorations with the power of that beauty. But she seemed to be finding her way through the mysterious accident of her beauty, discovering the parameters so that she might stabilize herself. She did not seem to be using it for any dictatorial power over others. Her self-confidence in her ability to handle a shipload of men was based on inexperience, not egotism.

As I came to know her mind as well as her voluptuous body, I found her constantly inquiring, eternally interested, and rarely bored. I saw her turn the near-rape by a torch tech into an hour-long lecture by him on the delicate balances that must be maintained in the magnetic bottle so that it works and so that they can open one end of the bottle and let out bits of the sun contained within. She left him glowing, proud of himself, very flattered that she was interested, and a little surprised at himself that his erection had gone away.

The more I knew of Nova the more there was to know.

What greater praise is there?

6

Despite difficulties we all survived, except the crewman who lost the duel, which was played up beyond belief in the vidpress on Earth. The rather plain nurse was dubbed The Temptress in White and given other lurid titles and became infamous and sought after. The Balboa went into docking orbit and the shuttle came over from Phobos and took us down to Ares Center, the “capital” of Mars. The disk of Mars was a great tawny-red, brown, and slate globe and the only sign of life was Elizabeth II in parking orbit nearby. As we came down we could see the rectangular green fields around Polecanal, then the smudge of Grabrock and Northaxe. Over the pole, down the Rille, Grandcanal City was a dot on the night horizon as we settled down toward Ares Center.

Dawn on Mars.

Thin cold air, thin enough still to require airmasks and bottles despite the years of terraforming, cold enough, even in this “summer,” to necessitate warmsuits. Great long rolling sandy stretches, with the soft ellipses of ancient craters and the abrasive grit of the sand getting into everything.

Dawn on Mars.

The rosy light was soft on the side of the shuttle. The last of the passengers disembarked and went beyond the pink cement wall until the ship had lifted off to go back for the cargo. “Come on,” Nova said, “this way.”

We huddled against the blowing sand caused by the ship’s takeoff and angled across to the fusion-powered carrier that awaited us. A big-chested man in a patched blue warmsuit took one look and jumped off to embrace Nova warmly.

“Nova! Damned if you haven’t grown up to be the most beautiful thing I ever—!” He saw me, obviously with her and just as obviously annoyed. He looked from me to her and back again, his face friendly but ready to go either way.

“Johann, this is Diego Braddock. Johann Tarielovich. He’s a sort of . . . uncle.”

The big man hugged her to him and grinned at me. “Any man a girl calls an uncle will never be anything but a friend, I’m sorry to say.”

He stuck out a hand, then drew it back and pulled off a glove. I took it, my fingers chilly, and found him carved