Hot Sky at Midnight

11

enron said, “It is a beautiful place, where you live. Is it very old?”

“Mid-twentieth century,” Jolanda Bermudez told him. “Old, but not exactly ancient. Not like the old world, where everything’s five thousand years old. You like it?”

“So beautiful, yes. A quaint little cottage.”

So it was, in a way, Enron thought. A small ramshackle building on a narrow winding street high up on the hillside not far north of the university campus. It was definitely charming, with its little decks and odd outcurving windows and its mitre-saw filigree decorations along the roofline. Charming, yes: even though the paint was pocked and peeling from the constant onslaught of the chemical-laden air and the windows were so degraded for the same reason that they were starting to look like stained glass and the decks were swaybacked and lopsided and the shingles were coming loose and the garden in front was a shameless withered tangle of dry knotty weeds.

This was the third evening Enron had seen Jolanda in the past week, but he hadn’t come to her house before; she had preferred to go with him to his hotel in the city. His little fling with her had greatly enlivened his week in the United States. Of course she would undoubtedly begin to bore him, over any considerable span of time. But he wasn’t expecting to marry her, and he would be going back to Israel very soon now anyway. In the short run she had been just what he needed here, an undemanding companion and a complaisant, eager playmate in bed; and there was always still the possibility that he might actually learn something useful from her, on this otherwise largely wasted trip. A slender possibility, but it was there.

“Well? Shall we go in? I’m dying to have you experience my work.”

She was like a big prancing dog, Enron thought. Not very bright, in fact not intelligent at all, but extremely friendly and lively, and good company for a romp. A warmhearted, easy-natured person. Very different from most of the shrewd, hard-edged, keen-eyed Israeli women he knew, who prided themselves on being utterly clear-minded, who always had everything in its absolutely proper perspective, not caring that their souls had turned to ice.

He followed her through a dimly lit vestibule. The interior of the place was dark and cluttered and confusing, a murky maze of little rooms filled with wall hangings, sculptures, statuettes, weavings, brassbound chests, intricate veils dangling from pegs, tribal masks, posters, books, African spears, pieces from a suit of medieval Japanese armor, coiled loops of fiber-optic cable, stacks of data-cubes, carved screens, bells, old wine bottles festooned with colored wax, iridescent strips of hologram tape that stretched from wall to wall, odd ceramic things of uncertain function, items of antique clothing giddily scattered all about, bird cages with actual birds in them, visors flashing abstract patterns: a stupefying, overwhelming plenitude of bric-a-brac. All of it, so far as Enron could see, tasteless and absurd. He could smell the stale odor of burned incense in the air. Cats were meandering around everywhere, five, six, a dozen cats, a couple of Siamese and a couple of Persian and some that were of kinds he could not identify at all. Like their owner, they seemed afraid of nothing: they pushed up against him, sniffed him, nuzzled him, sharpened their claws on his leg.

“Well? What do you think?” Jolanda asked.

What could he say? He beamed at her.

“Fascinating. Delightful. Such a wonderful collection of unusual things.”

“I knew you’d love it. I don’t bring everybody here, you know. A lot of men, they simply don’t understand. They’d be turned off. But you—a man who’s traveled so widely, a cultured man, who appreciates the arts—” She flung her arms wide in her joy. Enron was afraid she would knock one of her artifacts flying across the room. She was a big woman: he might almost say intimidatingly big, if he were capable of being intimidated by anything, especially a woman. Ten centimeters taller than he was, at least, and probably twenty kilos heavier. Enron suspected that she was a hyperdex user: she had that overwrought look about the eyes. Drug use of any kind disgusted Enron. But what this woman did was no business of his, he told himself. He wasn’t her father.

“Come,” Jolanda said, taking him by the wrist and pulling him along. “My studio is next.”

It was a long low-ceilinged room in back, windowless, jutting into the hillside, no doubt something that had been added to the original structure. The clutter of her living area was not replicated here. The studio was empty except for three mysterious objects, large and of indeterminate shape, standing in a triangular array in the middle of the floor.

“My latest sculptures,” she said. “This one on the left is Agamemnon. On this side, The Tower of the Heart. And the one in back I call Ad Astra PerAspera.”

“I have never seen such work as this,” said Enron truthfully.

“No. I don’t think anything like it is being done anywhere else yet. It’s a new art form, strictly American so far.”

“And it is called—what did you say?—bioresponsive art? How does it work?”

“I’ll show you,” she said. “Here. You have to put the receptors on, first.” From a cupboard he had not noticed she produced an ominous handful of electrodes and bioamplifiers. “Let me do it,” she said, quickly taping things to him, putting some small device on his left temple, another right on the top of his head, reaching down into his shirt to stick one on his breastbone.

Go on, Enron thought. Put one between my balls, now.

But she didn’t. She affixed the fourth and last one at the midpoint of his shoulder blades. Then she was busy for a tune with some sort of electronic rig in the cupboard. He studied her thoughtfully, watching the movements of her unfettered breasts and meaty buttocks within the thin wrap that was all she was wearing, and wondered how long this demonstration of her art was likely to take. There were other things to do tonight and he was ready to get on to them. He could be patient indeed in the pursuit of a goal, but he didn’t want to consume the whole evening in these absurdities.

In a very minor way, too, Enron was uneasy about the electrodes and bioamplifiers. Unless he had completely lost his capacity for judging human beings, this woman was harmless, a mere silly innocent with ridiculous taste and a slipshod mind and the morals of a she-camel But what if he was wrong? If she was in fact a functionary of Samurai counterintelligence, and had cunningly set him up with the uninhibited use of her lusty energetic hips and dark musky loins for the sake of administering a brainburning here this evening?

Paranoia, he told himself. Idiocy.

“All right, now. We’re ready to go. Which one first?”

“Which what?” Enron asked.

“Sculpture.”

“The one in back,” he said at random. “Ad Astra Per Aspera.”

“A good choice to begin with,” she said. “I’ll count to three. Then you start walking toward it One—two—”

At first he saw nothing except the sculpture itself, an ungainly, unappealing-looking assemblage of wooden struts arranged at awkward angles with some sort of metallic armature visible within. But then something began to glow in the sculpture’s depths, and in another moment he became aware of a distinct psychogenic field beginning to kindle within him: a pulsation at the back of his neck, another in his belly, a sensation of odd disorientation everywhere. As though his feet were beginning to leave the ground, almost as if he was starting to float upward and outward, through the doorway that led to the main part of the house, up through the ceiling, into the hot muggy night—

Well, it was Ad Astra PerAspera, wasn’t it? So probably he was supposed to be experiencing a simulated star voyage, then. Upward and outward to the for galaxies.

But all Enron felt was the initial sense of rising. He went nowhere, he experienced nothing beyond a certain queasy strangeness in his nervous system. It was as if his starward impetus was limited, that he could journey only so far and no farther before he hit some kind of psychic wall.

“There,” Jolanda said. The sensations went away. “What did you think?”

He was ready, as always. “Magnificent, wholly magnificent. I was scarcely prepared fully enough for the intensity of it. What I felt was—”

“No! Don’t tell me! It has to stay private—it’s your personal experience of the work. No two are alike. And I wouldn’t presume to ask you to put the essentially nonverbal into words. It would spoil it for you, don’t you think?”

“Indeed.”

“Shall we do Tower of the Heart next?”

“Please.”

She touched each electrode, as if adjusting the receptors in some minor way, and went to the cupboard again.

Tower of the Heart was wide, squat, not in any way towerlike that Enron could see. The glow of its internal workings was of a deeper hue than the other’s, violet blue rather than golden pink. Approaching it, he felt very little at first, and then came some of the queasiness he had felt with the first sculpture, indeed pretty much the same sensation. So it is all foolishness, he thought, a mild electric current that gives you the twitches and some gentle discomfort, and then you pretend that you have had a deeply moving aesthetic experience which—

Suddenly, without warning, he found himself on the verge of an orgasm.

It was immensely embarrassing. Not only was it his intention to save that orgasm for better use a little later in the evening, but the whole idea of losing control this way, of staining his clothes like a schoolboy, was infuriating to him. He fought it. The emanations coming from the second sculpture were far stronger than those of the first, and it was a struggle for him. His face, he knew, must be ablaze with shame and rage, and his erection was so powerful that it made him ache. He didn’t dare look down to see if it showed. But he fought. It had probably been thirty years since he had had to fight so desperately against the release of pleasure: not since the hairtrigger days of his hot adolescence. His mind was filled with thoughts of Jolanda Bermudez’s overflowing body, her immense swaying breasts, her hot slippery throbbing hole. She was devouring him, she was engulfing him, carrying him away on a tide of ecstasy. Think of anything, he ordered himself sternly. Think of the Dead Sea, the harsh metallic taste of its water, the thick slimy coating on your skin after you emerge from it. Think of the Mosque of Omar’s golden dome shining in the noon sun. Think of the nauseating ball of greenhouse gases that surrounds the spinning globe of Earth. Think of yesterday’s stock-market quotations—of toothpaste—of oranges—of the Sistine Chapel—

—of camels in the marketplace at Beersheba—

—of lamb kebabs sizzling over a grill—

—of the coral reefs at Eilat—

—of—of the—the—

But the pressure lifted, just then. The surging tide of his blood receded; his erection subsided. Enron caught his breath and forced himself back toward calmness.

The room was very quiet. He had to make himself look toward her. When he did, he saw that she was smiling—slyly, knowingly, perhaps? Was she aware of what had happened? Impossible to tell. She must know what effect the work had had on him. On the other hand, everyone was supposed to respond to these things differently. A purely subjective art form.

He would reveal nothing. As she said, a person’s experience of her art was his own private business. “Extraordinary,” he told her. “Unforgettable.” His voice, hoarse and breathy, sounded almost unrecognizable in his own ears.

“I’m so glad you liked it. And shall we do the Agamemnon now?” she asked cheerily.

“In a little while, maybe. I would like to—savor what I have already been shown. To think about it, if I may.” Enron was sweating as though he had just done a ten-kilometer race. “Is that all right? That we wait until later for the third one?”

“It can be overwhelming, sometimes,” she said.

“And perhaps if there is something to drink—”

“Yes. Of course. How stupid of me, to haul you right in here so fast, without even offering you a drink!”

She got the electrodes off him and found a bottle of wine. White wine, warm, sweet. Americans! What did they know of anything that mattered? Gently Enron asked if there might be red, and she found some of that too, even worse, dusty-tasting stuff, full no doubt of baneful pollutants and ghastly insecticide residues. They left the studio and settled on a sort of divan before a long low window in one of her front rooms, and sat looking out at a sunset of stunning photochemical complexity, an astounding apocalyptic Wagnerian thing: enormous bold jagged streaks of scarlet and gold and green and violet and turquoise warring frantically with each other for possession of the sky above San Francisco. Now and then Jolanda sighed heavily and shook her shoulders in a little shiver of aesthetic joy. Ah, yes, such beauty, God’s own heaven dazzlingly illuminated by God’s own industrial contaminants.

We will go for dinner soon, Enron thought, and there I will ask her the things I must ask her, and then we will return here and I will have her right on the floor of this room, on the thick Persian carpet, and then I will go back to the city and I will never see her again; and in a pig’s eye will I let her put those electrodes back on me, not tonight or any other night.

The investigation, first, though. How to bring the subject of discourse around to the area of his main interest here? A little maneuvering would be necessary. And with all this romantic business going on in the sky—

But as it happened he was able to get down to his inquiries much sooner than he had expected. She gave him the opening he needed even as they sat watching the sunset.

“The night we all had dinner, Marty, Isabelle said you were a spy. Do you remember that?”

Enron chuckled. “Of course. A spy for Kyocera-Merck, she said.”

“Are you?”

“You are so very direct. It is charmingly American of you.”

“I was just thinking. I’ve never slept with a spy, not that I know of. Unless you are. It would be interesting to know.”

“Naturally I am,” he said. “All Israelis are spies. It is a widely known fact.”

Jolanda laughed and poured more of the abominable wine for them both.

“No. No, it is true. In our country we lived so long in a condition of dire peril, surrounded by enemies on every side, just a stone’s throw away: how could we not develop ingrained habits of watchfulness? A nation of spies, yes. Wherever we go, we look, we prowl, we lift up coverlets to find out what might be beneath. But a spy for Kyocera-Merck? No. That I am not. I do my spying for my country. It is a matter of patriotism, not of economic greed, do you see?”

“You really are serious,” she said, in wonder.

“A journalist, a spy—it is the same thing, is it not?”

“And you came here to talk to Nick Rhodes because your country wants to steal the adapto technology that he’s working on.”

She was, Enron realized, getting drunk very quickly. This conversation had veered from the merely playful into something rather different.

“Steal? I would not do that. We never steal. We license, we copy if necessary, we reinvent. Steal, no. It is forbidden by the laws of Moses. Thou shalt not steal, we are told. Imitate, yes. There is nothing in the commandments about that. And I do confess to you, freely without hesitation, that we wish to learn more about this project of your friend Dr. Rhodes, this scheme for the genetic transformation of mankind.” Enron eyed her closely. She was flushed and at least half-aroused: the heat of the evening, the wine, his no doubt apparent response to Tower of the Heart, all had been working on her. Leaning close, letting his hand rest on hers, he said in an insinuating, confidential way, “Now that I have admitted that I am a spy, you will not mind that I must do some spying now. Yes? Good.” She seemed to think he was playing a game. Very well. He was happy to amuse her. “Answer this for me,” he said. “What do you think about Rhodes, truly? Is he on to something? Are they going to produce some new kind of human being over at that laboratory of his?”

“Oh, you aren’t joking! You really are a spy!”

“Did I ever deny it? Come on.” Enron stroked her arm. Her skin was amazingly smooth, the smoothest he had ever touched. He wondered if she had had herself covered in something synthetic. There were women who did that. “What about him? What do you know about his work?”

“Nothing,” she said. “God’s honest truth, Marty.” He had told her to call him “Marty,” because “Meshoram” sounded too alien for her. She giggled. Maybe the idea of being an espionage source had some appeal for her. “I’d tell you what I knew, if I knew anything, but I don’t. You should have made a pass at Isabella instead, if that’s what you were after. Nick tells her things, sometimes, about his work. But she doesn’t pass them along to me, not so they would be of any use to you. I just hear bits and patches.”

“Such as?” He ran his hand lightly along the curve of her breast. She shivered and wriggled a little. “Come on,” he said. “Such as?”

She closed her eyes for a moment and seemed to be thinking.

“Well, that they have some young guy there who’s working on a big breakthrough, something to do with changing our blood so that it’ll be green instead of red. And other changes beyond that. I don’t know what they are. I really don’t. —Here, have some more wine. It’s nice, isn’t it? Green blood! Better than having to drink green wine, I guess.”

Enron pretended to sip the wine. Green blood, he thought. Some sort of hemoglobin adjustment? But he realized that she was telling the truth: she knew nothing. Probably it was useless to pursue the details.

Nevertheless he said, “Do you know this other scientist’s name, the younger one?”

“No. Isabelle might. You ought to talk to her.”

“She is a very difficult woman. I think she might not want to cooperate with me.”

“Yes,” Jolanda said, peering into her wine. “Most likely you’re right. After all, if Israel wants to develop its own adapto technology, and you’ve come here to find out what Samurai has actually achieved along those lines, then by helping you, she’d be helping the cause of adapto technology. And you know how she feels about that.”

“Yes.”

“Me too, for that matter. I think it’s tremendously scary. Frankly, it gives me the creeps.”

They had been through all this before. Enron forced himself to be patient with her. “But if it is necessary, the adapto, the only step left to us for the preservation of human life on Earth—”

“Is it so important that the human race remain on Earth, if Earth is so terribly fucked up? We could all emigrate to the space habitats, after all.”

He gave her some more wine. The sun had set now; the sky was swiftly turning black. Across the bay the lights of San Francisco were coming on, twinkling in the dense haze. Casually Enron’s hand roamed Jolanda’s generous body: breasts, belly, now her knee, now sliding up along her thigh. Such foreplay seemed to loosen her tongue, he thought. Or maybe it was loose all the time. He went on touching her regardless. She sat with her head thrown back, her eyes closed. One of the cats jumped up beside him and began to rub its head against his elbow. He knocked it away with a quick sidewise nudge.

Quietly he said, “We love our land. We fought for centuries to possess it. We would not want to leave it now, not even for some New Israel in the sky.”

“The Japanese left their land. The rich ones did, anyway. They’re scattered all around the world, now. They loved their country as much as you love yours. But they’re gone. If they could go, why can’t you?”

“They left, yes, because their islands were flooded by the rising seas. They lost all their fertile land and most of their cities, and nothing but barren mountaintops remained. They would never have gone otherwise. They would still be clinging to every rock. But they had no choice but to go. Just as we once left Israel to go into exile, long ago, two or three thousand years ago, because we were forced to by our enemies. And then one day we returned. We struggled, we suffered, we built, we fought. And now we live in the Garden of Eden. The sweet rains fall, the desert plains have turned green. We will not leave again.”

“What good is staying, though, if everything is going to change so much?” Her voice had grown eerie and thin, as though it came from far away. “If we all turn ourselves into weird mutant adapto creatures, will any of us still be human? Can you still be a Jew if you have green blood and gills?”

Enron smiled. “There is nothing in the Bible, I think, about what color our blood must be. Only that we must obey the law and live honorable lives.”

She considered that for a time.

Then she said, “And is it honorable to be a spy?”

“Of course. It is a very old tradition. When Joshua made ready to lead us across the Jordan, he sent two spies into the land on the other side, and they returned to tell Joshua that it was safe to go across, that the people on the other side were petrified with terror because they understood that the Lord had given their land to the Jews. The names of those two spies are not mentioned in the Bible. They were the first secret agents.”

“I see.”

“And even to this day we send our people forth to search out dangers,” Enron said. “There is nothing dishonorable about that.”

“You people see enemies everywhere, don’t you?”

“We see dangers.”

“If there are dangers, there have to be enemies. But the age of war between nations is in the past. There are no enemies any more. We’re all allies now in the struggle to save the planet. Can it be that the enemies you people are worrying about are all in your imaginations?”

“Our history teaches us to be cautious,” he said. “Three thousand years of being driven from place to place by people who disliked us or envied us or merely wanted to turn us into scapegoats. Why should it be any different today? It would be foolish of us to assume that the millennium has arrived.” Enron felt himself on the defensive, suddenly. It was an unfamiliar sensation for him. He was here tonight to ask questions, not to answer them. She was very persistent, though. He took a deep gulp of the dreadful wine. “The Assyrians massacred us. The Romans burned our temple. The Crusaders blamed us for the death of Christ” The wine was going down more easily, now. “Do you know of the death camps that the Germans built for us in the middle of the twentieth century?” he asked. “Six million of us died for nothing more than being Jews. The survivors went to Israel, then. All around us were Muslims who hated us. They swore to finish the job that the Germans had begun, and several times they attempted to do it It is not easy to live a quiet and productive life, when just on the other side of the river is an enemy who has decreed a holy war against you.”

“But that was a long time ago. The Arabs are your friends now.”

“It is nice to think so, isn’t it? Well, their oil wealth is gone, and although our region is more fertile now than it was before the climate changed, their lands are greatly overpopulated, and so they can no longer afford the luxury of the holy war that they would probably still like to wage. So they have turned to their suddenly acceptable Israeli neighbors for technological and industrial assistance. We are all friends now, yes. We are partners. But that can always change. As things get worse and worse on Earth, those who lack our advantages may decide to turn on us. It has happened before.”

“How terribly suspicious you people are!”

“Suspicious? But there is everything to suspect! And so we remain ever alert. We send our agents everywhere, sniffing out trouble. We worry about the Japanese, for example.”

“The Japanese? Why?”

Enron realized that he was getting a little drunk. Which was also something that was very unusual, for him.

He said, “They are a hateful people. I mean, full of hatred. They have such great wealth and yet they are miserable exiles. Living their isolated, paranoid lives in their little super-protected enclaves here and there around the world, sealed away behind their walls, bitter about having been driven from their homes, hated by everybody else for their money and their power but hating back even harder, because their hatred is fueled by such enormous resentment and envy. And the ones they hate more than anyone are us Israelis, because we too were exiles once but we were able to go home, and it is a beautiful home, and because we are strong and enterprising and we are challenging them now for positions of power all over the world.”

His hand had still been exploring the region between her thighs. Now she clamped her legs closed on his wrist, not so much to prevent him from going further as just to hold him pleasantly in place. Did she want to talk or to make love? Perhaps both at once, he thought. The two things seemed to be related, for her. She was a manic talker—the drug she uses causes that, he thought, the hyperdex—and a sexual maniac as well. I should stop all this chatter, Enron told himself, and simply pull her down with me onto that carpet. And then out to dinner. He felt as if he hadn’t eaten in three days.

But he too was somehow unable to stop talking.

“The accidents of life in the greenhouse world brought Israel into world economic prominence even as they drove the Japanese from their home islands,” he heard himself say. “We are moving on many fronts at once. The Israeli government has invested heavily in most of the great megacorps, do you know that? We hold significant minority interests in Samurai and Kyocera both. But the megacorps are still basically Japanese-dominated, and they are fighting to keep us out. They are eager to see us cast down from our high place. They will do anything. Anything. So we watch them, Jolanda. We watch everyone.”

“And developing the adapto technology before Samurai does—that’s going to put Israel into a stronger position in the world that’s coming?”

“We believe so.”

“I think you’re wrong. I think we have to forget about Earth and move to space instead.”

“To the habitat worlds, yes. Your great obsession.”

“You think I’m silly, don’t you?”

“Silly?” he cried. “Oh, no, never!”

Enron didn’t even bother to try to sound sincere. He was bored and irritated by her, now. To his surprise he found himself even starting to lose sexual interest in her. She is not a she-camel but a cow, he thought, a preposterous cow with delusions of intelligence.

Even so, he kept his hand where it was.

Jolanda rocked back and forth on it, squeezing her thighs. Then she turned and opened her eyes and looked at him in an oddly flirtatious, provocative way, smiling dreamily as though she had decided to impart some immensely important secret to him. “I ought to tell you, I may not even wait around down here for the environment to decay any further. I’m seriously thinking of moving to an L-5 world quite soon now.”

“Are you? And have you chosen any one in particular?”

“It’s a place called Valparaiso Nuevo,” she said.

“I don’t know it,” Enron said. They were sitting in near darkness, staring at darkness. A cat that he did not think he had seen before, very long-legged with a thin, angular head, had emerged from somewhere and was nuzzling against his shoe. The wine bottle was empty. “No—wait. I remember. It’s a sanctuary world, isn’t it? Where runaway criminals go to hide?” He was starting to feel light-headed from the heat, the endless talking, the wine, his own mounting hunger, the intensity of Jolanda’s looming physicality, perhaps even the aftereffects of having exposed himself to her bioresponsive sculptures. Desire began to stir in him again, sluggishly at first, then with greater intensity. She was maddeningly annoying but oddly irresistible. The conversation was becoming surreal, now. “Why would you want to go there?” he asked.

Her eyes flashed at him. A stagily wicked look, a child being wicked.

“I really shouldn’t be telling you this, I suppose.”

“Go on. Do.”

“Will you keep it entirely to yourself?”

“Keep what?” he asked. “I don’t understand.”

“Imagine. Swearing a spy to secrecy! But you’ll be gone in a few days anyway and none of it matters to you. It doesn’t concern Israel in the slightest.”

“You can tell me, then.”

“Yes. All right. I will.” Another wicked-little-girl flash of the eyes. “But it goes no farther than you. Agreed?” I have a secret, buttwillshare itwithyou, only you, becauseyou are my friend and because I think you’re very cute.

“I swear it,” he said.

“You’ve got it right that Valparaiso Nuevo is a sanctuary world, full of criminals of all sorts who pay local government to protect them from law-enforcement agencies that might be looking for them. It’s run by some kind of crazy old Latin American dictator who’s been in charge there since the Year One.”

“I still don’t follow. What does this have to do with you?”

“I have a friend in Los Angeles,” Jolanda said. “Who is part of a kind of guerrilla group, in a way—they’re planning to infiltrate this Valparaiso Nuevo and seize control. Take the whole place over, collect all the fugitives and turn them in for rewards. There’ll be a fortune in it, selling them all. And then they’ll live there like kings and queens. Fresh air, fresh water, a brand-new life.” Her gaze was curiously fixed and bright, brighter even than her usual druggy glare. She seemed to be staring past or through him, into some gleaming realm of fulfilled fantasies. “My friend asked me if I wanted to join them. We’d be billionaires. We’d own a whole little planet. It’s supposed to be beautiful up there in the L-5 worlds.”

Enron was fully sober at once.

“When is all this supposed to happen?” he asked.

“Very soon, actually. I think they said they would—” Jolanda put her hand over her mouth. “Good God, look at what I’ve done! I should never have told you any of this!”

“No, it is very interesting, Jolanda.”

“Listen, Marty, it’s not true, none of it, not a word! It’s just a story, a movie idea that they were making up, there’s nothing real about it! You mustn’t take it seriously. It isn’t true!” She was staring at him in horror. In a low somber tone she said, “You shouldn’t have let me have so much wine. Please forget everything I just said about Valparaiso Nuevo. Everything. I could get into enormous trouble if—if—” She began to cry, great lalloping sobs that shook her entire body. His hand was still caught between her legs and he feared that in her convulsive movements she would sprain his wrist.

“Shh. There’s nothing to worry about, Jolanda. I’m not going to say a word to anyone about this.”

Hope glistened in her eyes. But she still seemed terrified.

“You swear it? They would kill me!”

“The smart spy protects his sources, love. I am a very smart spy.”

She was still trembling.

Enron said, “But you must do one thing for me. I want to meet your Los Angeles friend. I want to talk with him, with his group. To work with them.”

“Seriously?”

“I am always serious, Jolanda.”

“But what I just told you about has nothing to do with your—”

“Ah, but it does. There are people on Valparaiso Nuevo who would be of great interest to the state of Israel, of that I am certain,” Enron said. “If these people are going to be for sale, we would like to contact the sellers very early in the proceedings. For that matter we would probably be willing to provide your friends with support of a very material kind as they undertake their project What is your friend’s name, the one in Los Angeles?”

Jolanda paused a moment before answering.

“Davidov. Mike Davidov.”

Enron felt his pulse rate pick up. “Jewish?”

“I don’t think so. I think it’s a Russian name. He looks sort of Russian.”

Enron slipped his hand free of her thighs and began to stroke her breasts again. In his most seductive imploring tone he said to her, “Take me with you to Los Angeles. Introduce me to your friend Mr. Davidov.”

“I don’t know, Marty—I don’t think I should—”

“Tomorrow. The nine o’clock shuttle.” No longer seductive. Commanding, now.

“It’s no use,” she said. “He’s already gone to Valparaiso Nuevo. A lot of the key people are up there already, scoping the place out.”

“Ah,” Enron said. “I see.”

He was quiet for a moment, thinking.

She leaped right into the opening he had provided for her. “Do you know what I want to do now?” she asked. “I want to stop talking about all this, all right? I’m a little bit drunk. More than a little. I’ve talked much too much and I don’t want to talk any more.”

“But if you would just—”

“No, Marty. It’s too dangerous. You’ll just take advantage of whatever I tell you. I want you to take advantage of me in a different way.”

“Take advantage?”

“You ought to know what I mean. But here. I’ll give you a hint.”

She took him by the shoulders and pulled him down to the floor with her. They landed in a tangle of arms and legs, laughing, and he buried himself quickly in the billowing abundance of her. A hot mingling of aromas came upward from her, wine and desire and sweat and even, he thought, the smell of the Screen with which she protected her fantastic satiny skin. Good. Good. He lost himself in her. There had been enough talk for now, he thought. He had been holding himself back for hours, patiently playing the games of espionage with her, and now he allowed himself to put his profession aside for a little while.

“Oh, Marty,” she murmured, over and over again. He gobbled the heavy globes of her breasts as though they were melons and thrust with the zeal of a prophet wielding his lance into the mysterious and apparently infinite depths of her quivering cunt. “Marty Marty Marty.” She held her body tilted high, her legs far apart with her feet waving somewhere in the air behind him, and slammed her thighs steadily against the sides of his body with each of his jolting thrusts. Fucking this Jolanda was like exploring some unknown continent, Enron thought. So big, so moist, so strange, so full of wonders and novelties. It was always like that, for him, with a new woman. The Jewish Balboa, the Jewish Mungo Park, Orellana, Pizarro, plowing unceasingly onward through one uncharted hairy jungle after another in the eternal quest for the unknowable prizes at the core of their hot, throbbing hearts. But this one was a greater enigma than most. She was the mysterious kingdom of Prester John, the lost realm of El Dorado.

They lay side by side afterward, naked, sweat-shiny in the heat of the night, laughing softly.

“It’s too late to go anywhere for dinner,” she said. “I’ll make something here. Would that be all right?”

“Whatever you prefer,” said Enron.

“And then maybe you can take a look at the third sculpture, the Agamemnon. Would you like that?”

“Perhaps after a time,” he said vaguely. “Yes. Yes, perhaps so.”

She was very amusing, Enron decided. And more useful than he had suspected. This would not be their last night together after all, not if he could help it.

When they were washed and dressed and she was clanking around in the kitchen he called in to her, “What you told me, about the leaders of this plot having already gone to Valparaiso Nuevo: was it true?”

“Marty, please. I thought we weren’t going to talk about—”

“Was it?”

“Marty.”

“Was it, Jolanda? I have to know.”

Clattering sounds, pots and pans. Then:

“Yes. They’re up there already, some of them. As I said.”

Enron nodded slowly. “So, then. I have a proposition. Please treat it with great seriousness. How would you like to take a little trip to Valparaiso Nuevo with me, Jolanda?”