stimulants the household system pumped into the water.
She focused on the autoprompt chip in her contact lens, and moved onto the next question.
'And what about Clodagh, Gavin?'
Mantle made a great show of sighing with regret as he poured himself a tureen-sized cocktail of
'Clodagh doesn't understand the demands that wealth visits upon you, Lola-honey,' he winked. 'She's moved back in with her mother.'
One of Mantle's sexclones swam past in a lazy backstroke, her lithe body breaking the surface of the vitamin- enriched water, her unwieldy breasts floating like cherry-topped islands. The sexclones were vat-grown human bodies, perfect in every detail, but with artificially limited brains. The rumour was that they used hormone-dosed rabbit's cerebella for the most successful models. Lola, who had never wanted for willing sexual partners, found the whole notion of screwing a flesh-product nauseating, and she was especially disturbed whenever she encountered one of the creatures encoded with her own genetic structure. Mantle, of course, had ordered one of those. She wished now she hadn't licensed her likeness, but the corp had offered her an enormous commission.
The Lola sexclone was on the patio now, switched off. Lola wondered if her revulsion for the thing had anything to do with the fact that it was modelled on her as she had been five years ago. She dreaded the day they thought one could anchor the show better than her. At twenty-two, she was already one of the oldest newscastresses on the networks.
'So, I reckon it's my duty to all those millions out there to live out all their fantasies of enormous wealth…'
Lola knew that the camcrew were getting everything on tape. Behind Mantle they could see the newbuilt villa. It was rounded and pink, almost obscene, and used only the most expensive materials. A forest of satellite dishes rose from one roof, tuned to receive input from every broadcasting system in the world. Imported ocelots gambolled on the crazy-croquet lawn. The custom-built phallic Rolls Royce was ostentatiously parked in the driveway, its gold filigree gleaming as a muscle implant Adonis polished the glans-shaped hood with creamy white cleanser.
Mantle poured the potentially lethal dosage of intoxicants into his face. Fluid poured over his chest, soaking through his gold-thread T-shirt. It bore the legend in psychedelic silver, 'WORLD MUFF DIVING CHAMPIONSHIPS, HABANA, CUBA, 1997.' It was probably the most expensive dirty joke in the world. Mantle swallowed, and his eyes started to float. His system had been amended to take care of any side-effects. He could mainline napalm or snort ground glass without getting so much as a slight hangover. However, his body chemistry was being permanently changed; if he urinated on the grass, he would kill it.
'Lola, darlin',' he said, 'you know, a guy like me and a gal like you…maybe we ought to get together after the interview…'
His swimming trunks writhed as if he had a rattlesnake down there.
Ick!
The camcrew were getting all this down. The Evening News would be leading off on The Gavin Mantle Story all week. Everything else they had to cover was depressing, and so the producer wanted at least one 'up' item between the wars, assassinations, plagues, and famines. Lola was beginning to feel nostalgic about Dino the Skateboarding Duck.
Since he received his one hundred million, Gavin Mantle had been living in the fastest of the fast lanes. The camcrew had followed him through the orgiastic party at which he demonstrated his bio-amendments for the first time, and got enough footage for the X-rated news shows. From a man whose entire life was devoted to kitchenware, he had turned into the kind of sybarite whose party guest list is composed in equal parts of exotic hookers, high-price drug dealers, minor soap-opera stars, third world politicians, over-the-hill Sanctioned Ops pretending to be 'security consultants,' this week's 'in' criminals, religious fanatics, circus performers, lawyers, parasites, gossip columnists, obscure offshoots of forgotten Royal families, ex-Presidents and quack doctors of various specialisms.
There had been fifteen of these Blotto Lotto give-aways in the past five years. Three of the winners were still alive, and one of them was in a shock-trauma coma surrounded by the best medtech money could own.
Mantle was getting bored with the interview, Lola could tell. His implant glands were shooting a recipe of amphetamine, testosterone and adrenalin into his blood. He would have to get back to the party before, like the winner before last, his head and scrotum simply swelled until they burst. The small print of the winner's contract stated that if the Blotto Lotto superluck champion were to die within a year of receiving the prize, the unspent portion of the cash, plus all of the assets purchased with the windfall, would revert to the GenTech subsidiary that organized the contest. It was incredible, when you came to study the figures, how difficult it was for the unimaginative to fritter away a hundred million dollars.
The last question flashed in Lola's eye.
'And how did it feel to win the Blotto Lotto?'
'Well,' he grinned with his new Rod Rambone teeth, 'it was kinda a lot like sex, y'know. I was watchin' the teevee like usual, waitin' for
Lola sneaked a look at her wristwatch. This was boring crappo, and she'd ream the producer's ass when she got back to the studio.
'It was like a bolt from the sky, y'know, and then, WHAM-BAM-ZAPPO, like…'
As she nodded, Lola imagined a flash of light.
And there was a pile of smoking ashes on the air cushion, which was hissing as it sank into the pool.
II
'Elvis? Elvis
The 'gator man couldn't believe it.
''All Shook Up'? 'Hound Dog'? 'Heartbreak Hotel'?
The Op nodded. 'Uh huh, sir.'
''Baby, I Don't Care'? 'A Big Hunk o' Love'? 'The Girl of My Best Friend'?'
Hiroshi Shiba was an unnervingly strange creature. His extended snout was that of a swamp 'gator and his grey tail hung down from his black pants, but otherwise he was every inch the perfect Japcorp exec. He wore a sober suit, with a white shirt and a discreetly striped tie. His English was perfect as far as syntax and vocabulary went, but his accent was heavily Japanese and even more heavily alligator. Elvis couldn't help liking the mutant.
Elvis stood quietly, no longer even surprised at the latest off-the-wall twist this gig was taking.
Shiba paced his office, tail lashing, a hungry grin showing in his snout. The handkerchief in his top pocket was folded into a perfect triple point, and he wore emblems of his company and national decorations in a medal ribbon.
''King Creole'? 'Blue Christmas'? 'Teddy Bear'?'
Elvis always had been popular in Japan. He still got the odd royalty cheque, although most of the money seemed to trickle towards Colonel Parker. There were a few odd little clauses in the original contracts Elvis had not bothered to read back in the '50s, and he was still paying heavily for them.
'This is a great honour,' said Shiba, clapping. 'A great honour.'
Raimundo Rex, the hispanic dinosaur, was less impressed. He was picking his teeth with a breadknife, dislodging fragments of food. Elvis didn't want to know what they had been before they became a meal. The big mutant was practically wild.
