Patron of the Arts

tomorrow to be pounded out, Mr. Thorne.”

“Thank you, Bowie,” I said.

“Does this sort of thing happen to you often?” Madelon asked. I shrugged. “Frustrated men need targets,” I answered. “A chauffered car, a beautiful woman . . .” I shrugged again. I couldn’t always blame them. “You don’t want to hurt anyone, but you don’t want to be hurt, either.”

“What was that mob all about, anyway?” Madelon asked Bowie.

“I don’t know, miss. Not many food riots here. It may have been a Work Week bunch, or some of the Zeropop people protesting that new rule. It’s hard to say. Sometimes folks just go zongo over nothing definite, just a sort of sum of everything.”

Madelon sighed and struck her belt to move closer to me.

“Help,” she said as we reached for each other’s hand.

When we arrived at Earth, Fire, Air and Water, Bowie called me back apologetically as I was going through the door. I told Madelon to wait and went back to get the report on the interphone. When I joined Madelon inside she smiled at me and asked, “How was my report?”

When I looked innocent she laughed. “If Bowie didn’t have a dossier on me from your Control or whatever it is I’d be very much surprised. Tell me, am I a dangerous type, an anarchist or a blaster or something?”

I smiled, for I like perceptive people. “It says you are the illegitimate daughter of Madame Chiang Kai-Shek and Johnny Potseed with convictions for mopery, drudgery, and penury.”

“What’s mopery?”

“I haven’t the faintest. My omniscient staff tells me you are nineteen, a hick kid from Montana and a half-orphan who worked for eleven months in Great Falls in an office of the Blackfoot National Enterprises.”

Her eyes got big and she gasped. “Found out at last! My desperate secrets revealed!” She took my arm and tugged me into the elevator that would drop us down to the cavern below. She looked up at me with big innocent eyes as we stood in the packed elevator. “Gee, Mr. Thorne, when I agreed to baby-sit for you and Mrs. Thorne I never knew you’d be taking me out.”

I turned my head slowly and looked at her with a granite face, ignoring the curious and the grinning. “The next time I catch you indulging in mopery with my Afghan I’m going to leave you home.”

Her eyes got all wet and sad. “No, please, I promise to be good. You can whip me again when we get home.”

I raised my eyebrows. “No, I think wearing the collar will be enough.” The door opened. “Come, my dear. Excuse me, please.”

“Yes, master,” she said humbly.

The Earth part of the club was the raw ground under one of the many San Francisco hills, sprayed with a structural plastic so that it looked just like a raw-dug cave, yet quite strong. We went down the curving passage toward the maelstrom of noise that was a famous quiver

group and came out into the huge hemispherical cave. Overhead, a latticework of concrete supported a transparent swimming pool filled with nude and semi-nude swimmers. Some were guests and some were professional entertainers.

There was a waterfall at one end and torches burned in holders in the wall, while a flickering firelight was projected over everything. The quiver group blasted forth from a rough cave hacked into the dirt walls halfway up to the overhead swimming pool.

As I took her arm to guide her into the quivering mob on the dance floor I said, “You know there is no Mrs. Thorne.”

She smiled at me with a serene confidence. “That’s right.”

The night swirled around us. Winds blew in, scented and warm, then cool and brisk. People crashed into the water over us with galaxies of bubbles around them. One quiver group gave way to another, tawny animals in pseudo-lion skins and shaggy hair, the women bare breasted and wanton.

Madelon was a hundred women in a hundred minutes, but seemingly without effort. They were all her, from sullen siren to goshwowing teenie. I confess to a helpless infatuation and cared not if she was laying a trap for me.