he north and south walls were pale blue, of painted plaster over stone. A wide door in the north wall, of dark wood and old, dark, discolored brasswork, gave into the hotel corridor, floored (like the big room itself) in dull red tile. Flanking this door were elaborate wrought-iron candelabra; their candles would be lit later that night by Clio Morris, on signal from Lowell Lewis, when Force Cougar was pinned down near the 75–94 interchange in Dearborn and he felt things needed cheering up. Clio (that stenographic muse of history) was good for lighting such things: she was tall, and wore high heels and short skirts, and the soft coiffures she favored lent her face a brown and gold aureole when the flames were behind it.
To the right of the candelabrum on the right side of the doorway stood a heavy “library” table with a blue vase full of fresh cinerarias, the blue vase and blue flowers against the blue wall producing a ghostly effect—the shadows of vase and blossoms more visible and distinct than the things themselves. Above this blue ghost was a very large and brightly colored photograph in a massive frame. It depicted a barren hill crowned with the ruins of a large stone building, of which only (what once had been) the foundation of a tower retained any semblance of its original form. At the bottom of the frame a small brass plaque had been let into the wood, and this was engraved with the words
Next to the candelabrum on the left of the door stood one of the twenty-three large leather-covered chairs which dotted the floor of the room—empty despite the invitation of a small table positioned near its right arm at a height convenient to hold a drink—above this chair was a second photograph of exactly the same size and shape as the first, framed in the same way. It depicted a barren hill topped with the tumbled ashlars of another (but equally demolished) stone building. The atmosphere of this photograph was so similar to that of the first that it was only after a careful process of ratiocination that the viewer (if he troubled) convinced himself that it was not a picture of the same ruin from a different angle, though in fact the two held no detail in common but the bright Portuguese sky. The plaque at the base of this second frame read:
The south wall held three doors, each of them smaller than the large door in the north wall that gave access to the remainder of the hotel, and each leading to a bedroom–sitting room with a bath. The leftmost (east) bedroom looked down into the patio garden of the hotel, and the central bedroom out (south) toward a wing of this patio, with a wall and a street beyond. All the bedrooms were comfortably furnished with carpets and chairs and (in each case) a large double bed, but this central bedroom had, in addition, a vidlink terminal which Lewis’s executive assistant, Peters, would use several times that night. It was a wardrobe-sized gray machine with a screen, a printer, a speaker, keys for coding the addresses of others, and various switches; it had been built by United Services Corporation, the company which employed Peters, as well as Lowell Lewis and Miss Morris and Donovan. (Five foot eight, 230 pounds, thinning blond hair, European sales manager for United Services, a good salesman and a hard worker, he felt he didn’t really have to worry if U.S. went down—hell, he’d lived in Europe for the past eight years, his wife was Belgian, and he spoke Flemish, German, and Swedish like he owned them, and he had connections all over, and half a dozen European firms would be tickled pink to lay their hands on him. He was right too.)
The west wall was entirely of glass and showed the Atlantic Ocean. Because the sun was low now, Peters (a middle-sized young man with a camouflaged face—Peters was one of those people who look a little Jewish but probably aren’t, and he played a good game of lacrosse) had drawn gray velvet drapes across this ocean, but later Clio Morris would open these drapes in order to see the stars.
The east wall was also entirely of glass. It was, in fact, one immense vidlink screen fifteen feet high and thirty- five feet wide, originally installed in this permanently leased suite to demonstrate the fact that vidlink, unlike conventional television, employed what United Services referred to as “Infinite Scanning,” by which the United Services copywriters meant that a vidlink picture was not divided into a number of scan lines and hence could be magnified—like reality itself—to any extent. When this screen was turned off it was a dark and brooding presence upon which the room instinctively focused, but no drapes were provided that might be used to cover it. (When turned on it was sometimes camera as well as screen, the viewer beheld in his beholding.)
The red tile floor was, except at the edges of the room, covered with a dark Moorish carpet on which were scattered, as smaller and less regularly shaped carpets, the hides of Angora goats. The twenty-two armchairs that did not orient themselves to the north wall were arranged on this floor facing (generally) east in a way suggestive of a loose theater. A portable bar stood close to the west window, and at this bar Peters sat eating scrambled (
The large door in the north wall opened and Donovan came in. He was wearing a light-colored suit and a panama hat. He saw Peters and asked, “Everything set for tonight?”
Peters shrugged.
“It better be. It better be good. I’ve got people coming from all over.” He named an important German industrialist. “——is coming.” He leaned closer to Peters, who was afraid for a moment that the end of his (Donovan’s) tie might fall into his (Peters’s) eggs, which were covered with a sauce that, without being ketchup, was nonetheless the color of blood. “Do you know what he told me? This’ll be the first time he’s been outside Germany since 1944. Think of it. Damn near fifty years. The old man himself.”
Peters nodded, his mouth full of eggs, and said, “Wow!”
Donovan named a prominent Italian industrialist. “——is coming too. From Turin. Of course he goes all over, buying art and all that crap. Hell, he spends more time in the States than I do.”
“Not now he doesn’t,” Peters said.
“Well, hell no,” Donovan said, offended. “What do you expect?”
The door to the central bedroom opened and Lewis’s secretary came in wearing a yellow dress and carrying a tear sheet from the vidlink. She said, “Call for you, Mr. Peters,” and Peters took the sheet from her and went into the bedroom.
The call was from a modeling agency in another quarter of the city, and he found himself talking to a sharp- featured, crew-cut young Englishman who wore jade earrings and a (phallic) jade pendant. The Englishman said, “Tredgold here,” and Peters nodded and asked, “What can I do for you, Mr. Tredgold?” and then, unconsciously imitating Donovan, “Everything set?”
“Just what I was going to ask you,” Tredgold said, and smiled. “You’re going to do it still?”
“Have our little party?” Peters said. “Oh, yes.”
“Marvelous. You know, you people have come back wonderfully just in the past few weeks.”
“Oh, we’re not dead yet,” Peters said.
“Spirit.”
“The girls will be here?”
