Hot Sky at Midnight

24

Farkas had never seen San Francisco before. His usual base was in Europe: London, Paris, sometimes Frankfurt. When the Company had occasion to send him to the States, it was generally to New York. Once he had been in flat sprawling Los Angeles, which had struck him as a nightmarish place, hideously congested and monstrously hideous, strangling in its pestilent mephitic atmosphere and murderous heat: a city already unfit for human life even though the full unfolding fury of the greenhouse calamity was still said to be many years in the future.

But San Francisco was very different, Farkas thought. It was small and rather pretty, situated as it was between the ocean and the bay. His special way of sight translated its hilly terrain into a pleasurable pattern of square-topped wave forms, and from the two defining bodies of water on either side of the little city came a rich and harmonious burgundy-red emanation, velvety and soothing in its texture.

Of course, the air over San Francisco was stained by its heavy burden of greenhouse gases, yes, but that was true to some extent wherever you went on Earth; and at least in San Francisco the constant wind off the sea kept the more corrosive substances from sitting in one place for very long. And though the weather was disagreeably warm, the sea breezes did at any rate hold the degree of discomfort down a little. The climate was more like that of London or Paris than of any other American city he had visited. The rest were all like ovens; San Francisco’s heat was somewhat less unrelenting. But he missed the steady gentle rain of Western Europe. San Francisco baked under an unvarying blast of desert sunlight that Farkas perceived as a brilliant shower of golden daggers.

He and Jolanda and Enron had taken the high-speed underground transit capsule together from the space-shuttle terminal out in the broad, flat valley east of San Francisco. Jolanda and the Israeli had accompanied Farkas to his hotel in the central district of the city, and then had gone across the bay to Jolanda’s place in Berkeley, where they were planning to stay. A few days from now, when Jolanda had finished making certain arrangements for the care of her house and pets, the three of them would go on down to Southern California to meet with Davidov and conclude the terms of the Israeli-Kyocera partnership that was going to subsidize the conquest of Valparaiso Nuevo.

It might have been wisest, Farkas knew, for him to have proceeded straight on to Los Angeles with Davidov from the space habitat, and let the other two join them down there when Jolanda had taken care of her business here. That way he would perhaps have a chance to take a closer reading of Davidov and his associates and see how competent they really were. But Farkas was in no hurry to revisit the horrors of Los Angeles.

And, besides, he was eager to stay close to Jolanda Bermudez. His one assignation with her, in the hotel on Valparaiso Nuevo, had whetted his appetite for more. Farkas was a little abashed to admit even to himself that his decision to come to San Francisco rather than Los Angeles had been based mostly on the fact that Jolanda was going there first. After his long period of abstinence, Farkas found himself wholly captivated by the lavish generosity of her flesh, by the uncomplicated givingness of her temperament, by the easily aroused fevers of her passionate nature.

That was all very foolish, he knew, and very adolescent, and possibly risky, and probably futile as well: Enron seemed intent on keeping her out of his reach. But Farkas was sure that Enron’s possessiveness was nothing more than a power game that Enron was playing out of sheer masculine reflex. He sensed that the Israeli had no real use for Jolanda except as a commodity to be employed in the service of attaining his larger goals.

Jolanda seemed to see that also. Perhaps Farkas could detach her from him while they were here. Farkas suspected, with what he was certain was good reason, that she felt as strong an attraction for him as he did for her. When this unexpected Valparaiso Nuevo adventure was behind him, he thought, it might be pleasant to spend a few weeks’ holiday in and around San Francisco with Jolanda while she finished the sculpture of him that had been the pretext—a pretext, nothing more: he had no illusions about that—for their hotel-room rendezvous.

For the moment, though, he was in a different hotel room and he was alone. For the moment.

He unpacked, showered, drew a little brandy from the room’s minibar. Once again Farkas contemplated calling New Kyoto to let them know what he was up to; once again, he rejected the idea. Sooner or later, he was going to have to let the Company know that he was in the process of entangling it in an international conspiracy. But there was no binding commitment yet. That would come in Los Angeles, after the final meeting with Davidov and the other plotters. Then, then, only then, would he send the details up-level to the Executive Committee. If they didn’t like the scheme, or had some objection to any of its principals, whatever pledges he had seemed to give up to this point were easily enough deniable. If they did, he could probably write his own ticket upward, Level Eight for sure, possibly higher—Victor Farkas, Level Seven, Farkas thought, lovingly savoring the concept— Level Seven pay, Level Seven privileges, the high-rise flat in Monaco, the summer home on the coast at New Kyoto. Until the starship was ready to take off and he could put Earth behind him forever.

The telephone chimed softly.

Farkas was reluctant to let go of his fantasy of Level Seven life. But he answered anyway. There were only two people in the universe who knew where he was, and—

Yes. It was Jolanda. “Everything comfortable?” she asked.

“Very fine, yes.” Then, quickly—too quickly, perhaps: “I wonder, Jolanda, do you have any plans for dinner this evening? There are Kyocera people I could call, but if you would be willing to join me—”

“I’d love to,” she said. “But Marty and I are spending this evening with some people we know over here in Berkeley. Isabelle Martine, Nick Rhodes—she’s a kinetic therapist, my closest friend, a fascinating wonderful woman, and he’s a brilliant geneticist who’s with Samurai—adapto research, I’m sorry to say, really awful stuff, but he’s such a sweet man that I forgive him—”

“Tomorrow, then?” Farkas asked.

“That’s why I’m calling, actually. Tomorrow night—”

He leaned forward tensely. “Perhaps we could have dinner in San Francisco, just you and I—”

“Well, that would be pleasant, wouldn’t it? But what would I do with Marty? And in any case I want you to come over here, to see my sculptures—” A self-conscious giggle. “To experience them, I suppose I should have said. It’ll be a little dinner party. You’ll be able to meet Isabelle and Nick, and a friend of Nick’s named Paul Carpenter, who was an iceberg-ship captain for Samurai, and got into some sort of trouble out at sea and lost his job, and now he’s back in town, and we’re all trying to cheer him up a little while he tries to figure out what he’s going to do next—”

“Yes. Of course. How sad for him. And perhaps during the day, then, Jolanda—would it be possible to have lunch, do you think?”

Farkas felt absurd, pursuing her this way. But there was always the chance that—

No. There wasn’t.

Gently Jolanda said, “I’d love to, Victor. You know I would. But we have to wait until Marty goes back to Israel, don’t we? I mean, he’s here now, he’s staying with me, and it would all be terribly awkward—surely you see that. But later— after the thing with Valparaiso Nuevo is done with—there’ll be plenty of time then, and not just for lunch. I wish it could be some other way right now, but it can’t. It just can’t.”

“Yes,” Farkas said, dry-throated. “I understand.”

“Tomorrow night, then—at my house in Berkeley—”

He made a note of the transit code, blew her a kiss, broke the contact.

He was amazed at how irritated he felt: amazed, too, at his own sudden obsessiveness. It was a long time since he had behaved this way. Never, perhaps. Why did this woman matter so much? Because she was unattainable just now, maybe? There were other breasts in the world, other thighs, other lips. It seemed a little dangerous to him, his fascination with this Jolanda.

Through the hotel’s guest-services menu Farkas arranged a companion for himself for dinner and three hours afterward. He had long ago learned to rely on professional companionship in times of physical needs. A good professional was almost always quick to hide her initial reaction to his appearance; and there were no troublesome involvements afterward. Farkas had never cared for emotional involvements. But the physical side of things—ah, that!—there was no escaping it indefinitely, he thought. A good thing that ways and means were available for dealing with it.

He took another brandy from the minibar, and sat back to wait for his companion to arrive.