"And your guests will arrive tomorrow?" Asiphar asked, unable to keep the anxiety from his voice.
And Nemeroff understood. "Our business guests," he said. "There are other house guests here now. One in particular whom you must meet. Come, I will introduce you. You must be tired after your journey, and I can think of no more certain way for you to relax."
Asiphar giggled.
They re-entered the elevator and Nemeroff pressed the button marked IV. The door closed, then reopened again before Asiphar had felt any sense of movement.
They stepped out into a long, wide hallway, carpeted with animal skins, its walls mirrored in a delicate gold-veined pattern. Along the walls stood marble statuary depicting naked bodies. The carvings showed the great skill and even genius of the craftsmen, and the stone blocks themselves showed the precise taste of Nemeroff. The marble blocks, from which the statues had been carved by his order, were pure white, re-crystallized limestone, with none of the pinkness that confessed to manganese oxide traces. The stones had come from a quarry Nemeroff owned, in the hills of northern Italy.
He ignored the statues, steering Asiphar down the hall to the right. "This way," he said.
He paused at an unnumbered door, not distinguished from the other doors all along the hallway. He knocked once, softly, then pushed open the door. It swung open noiselessly, and he stepped aside to let Asiphar peer in.
It was a bedroom, its walls and floor covered with red woollen carpet and its ceiling mirrored, in glass blocks with streaks of gold and black swirling through them.
The bed was a huge four-poster, with a red fringe around the posts, but there was no canopy over the top, permitting an unobstructed view of the mirrored ceiling.
On the bed lay a woman. She was tall-looking, even in repose, and her skin was so fair that it appeared never to have seen a day's sun. She wore a long white transparent negligee that hid her skin only when the sheer material was formed into a fold. The negligee was open. Her long almost-white hair, was pulled in front of a shoulder and casually covered one breast. The other breast was bare, and full and crowned with a delicate pink mound. She was blonde all over.
She stood up and walked slowly toward the door, not caring that her negligee was fully open and trailing behind her. Her eyes lighted with excitement and her mouth partially open, revealing perfectly even lines of teeth, she extended her arms toward Asiphar.
"As you see, she has been awaiting you," Nemeroff said.
Asiphar could not speak. Then, his throat dry and sandy, he crackled, "Thank you."
"She is lovely, is she not?" Nemeroff said. The girl stood in front of them now-lush, inviting-her arms still extended toward Asiphar.
"Look at those breasts," Nemeroff said. "Those legs. Do you agree she could make a man forget the cares of burdensome office?"
Again, dry-throated, Asiphar croaked, "Yes."
"She is yours. She waits only to serve you. To do for you anything you wish."
"Anything?"
"Anything," Nemeroff said coldly. "And if she does not please you, there are others who will." He looked at the woman now, meeting her eyes for the first time. More perceptive eyes than Asiphar's might have noticed the glimmer of fear which crossed her face, disappearing almost immediately, and the grimace of scorn and hatred on Nemeroff's face.
But Asiphar noted nothing, only the breasts, inviting him, and the hips and legs, inviting him, and the opened arms, calling for him. His breath came harder, and Nemeroff finally said, "I will leave you two to get acquainted. You must lunch with me, my friend. On the terrace at one."
Then he gently pushed Asiphar into the room and closed the door behind the two.
Quickly, Nemeroff walked back to the elevator and pushed the button marked III.
The elevator opened again into a hallway, identical with the one Nemeroff had just left, except that there was only one door in sight.
That door led to the suite of rooms which were Nemeroff's own living quarters, and he went through it now, through a living room, through a bedroom, and into a large, bare study in the corner of the building.
He locked the door behind him, went to a large wall cabinet, and pulled open its doors.
The cabinet held a 36-inch television screen, with a panel of buttons and controls on its right side. Nemeroff turned one dial to 4 and another one to A, then pressed a button.
He sat down in a contoured foam chair, which reclined under his weight. The television screen lightened, flashed into blue colour at the side, and then a picture came into view.
It was Asiphar lying naked in the bed, alongside the woman, his blue-black skin accenting the smooth whiteness of her body. His hand was around her shoulder. Her left hand went out to Asiphar's body. Her right hand reached down to pick up something off the floor. It came back into view carrying a small, battery-operated vibrator.
Nemeroff felt a tremor of excitement. He leaned forward and pressed a button marked "tape," then sank back softly in the chair to watch his favourite television show.
CHAPTER SIX
Remo sank back in the soft, cushioned seat of the big jetliner. When John F. Kennedy International Airport receded in the distance, back beyond the left whig, Remo kicked off his loafers, stretched his legs, took a magazine from the wall rack next to his seat, and, over the top of the magazine, eyed the stewardesses.
He had never understood why men went for stewardesses. They represented the ultimate triumph of plastic in a world of flesh and blood. There was only one step to go past the dehumanization they represented: the robot. And when one was invented and it looked real enough, the first buyer would be the airlines who would paste on a pair of 34-B's, a thirty-two-tooth smile, and turn them loose down the aisles of their planes.
"I'm XB-27, fly me. I'm XB-27, fly me. I'm XB-27, fly me."
Remo watched as one blonde stew lectured a passenger in an aisle seat three rows in front of Remo. The passenger had a cigarette burning; the no-smoking sign was still on.
Remo turned up his hearing to listen in.
"I'm sorry, sir, you'll have to put out that cigarette."
"I'm not going to set anything on fire," the man replied. He waved the cigarette at the girl. He held it with his thumb on one side, his index and middle fingers on the other, and he used its lit end as a pointer when he talked. The gesture struck Remo as familiar.
"I'm sorry, sir, but you must obey the rules, or I'll have to call the pilot." She was still smiling.
"I'll tell you what," the man answered. "You call the pilot. You call the whole goddam air force if you want. I'm smoking this cigarette." That voice. It raised a stirring somewhere in Remo's memory. He tried to place it.
He leaned forward in his seat for a better view of the man's profile.
No help there.
He was a medium-tall man, lean, with a baby face and horn-rimmed glasses; Remo had never seen the face before. Then the man turned slightly in his seat, gave Remo a little more than a quarter view, and Remo noticed something else: the slight puff of scar-tissue around the eyes, and as the man kept turning, Remo saw the same artificially-taut skin around the nose.
Remo recognized it. He had seen it often enough on his own face. The residue of the plastic surgeon's craft. Whoever he was, the man with the cigarette had had his face changed.
He was still jawing with the stewardess. Remo remembered what made his voice familiar. It was guttural New Jersey, the accent Remo had been brought up with until CURE had throat-washed him of it and retrained his speech in the bland middle-American pattern that admitted no antecedents.
The man jabbed the point of the cigarette toward the stewardess again. Where had Remo seen that gesture before?
The scene lost its potential for ugliness, all at once, when the no-smoking light flashed off.
"There," the man said, his voice harsh and wrong sounding, coming out of that gentle, delicate-featured face. "See. It's all right now."
The stewardess turned around, glanced at the sign, smiled wanly and walked away. The man in the seat followed every movement with his eyes. She disappeared into the cabin up front and the man relaxed, then looked around, over both shoulders, and Remo conscientiously looked out the window, watching the man's reflection in the glass.
Finally, the man stabbed out the cigarette with a thrust that left it half-burning in the seat-arm ashtray, stood up and walked toward the lounge in the rear of the plane. Remo wondered if the psychology of entertainment on an airliner was sound. Didn't people wonder if you were spending too much time booking acts and too little time overhauling jet engines? Remo did.