The Masks Of Time Part 10

Vornan agreed. We moved forward across a vast internal plaza of yielding purple tile. Before us stretched a s.h.i.+ning blank wall broken only by reception cubicles. I had been briefed on what was expected of us. Vornan entered one cubicle; I took a seat in the cubicle to the left of his.

A small output screen lit up the moment I crossed the threshold. It said,Please reply to all questions in a clear, loud voice. A pause.If you have read and understood this instruction, indicate your understanding with the word yes.

"Yes," I said. Suddenly I wondered if Vornan were capable of comprehending written instructions. He spoke English fluently, but he did not necessarily have any knowledge of the written language. I thought of going to his aid; but the brothel computer was saying something to me, and I kept my eyes on the screen.

It was quizzing me about my s.e.xual preferences.Female?

"Yes."

Under thirty?

"Yes." After some thought.

Preferred color of hair?

I hesitated. "Red," I said, just for the sake of variety.

Preferred physical type: Choose one by pressing b.u.t.ton beneath the screen.

The screen showed me three feminine contours: fas.h.i.+onably thin and boyish, middle-of-the-road girl-next-door curvaceousness, and hypermammiferous steroid-enhanced ultra-voluptuousness. My hand wandered across the b.u.t.tons. It was a temptation to go for the fles.h.i.+est, but reminding myself that I was seeking variety, I opted for the boyish figure, which in outline reminded me of Aster Mikkelsen's.

Now the computer began to grill me about the sort of lovemaking I wished to enjoy. It informed me crisply that there were extra charges for specific enumerated deviant acts. It listed the additional fee for each, and I noted in a certain chilly fascination that sodomy was five times as expensive as f.e.l.l.a.t.i.o, and that supervised sadism was considerably costlier than masochism. But I pa.s.sed up the whips and boots, and also chose to do without the use of the nongenital orifices. Let other men take their pleasure in navel or ear, I thought. I am a conservative in such matters.

The next sequence to pa.s.s across the screen was choice of positions, since I had opted for regulation congress. Something like a scene out of theKama Sutra came in view: twenty-odd male and female stick figures, coupling in extravagantly imaginative ways. I have seen the temples of Konarak and Khajurao, those monuments to bygone Hindu exuberance and fertility, covered over with virile men and fullbreasted women, Krishna and Radha in all the combinations and permutations man and woman have ever devised.

The cluttered screen had something of the same feverish intensity, although I admit the streamlined stick figures lacked thevolupte, the three-dimensional fles.h.i.+ness of those s.h.i.+ning stone images under the Indian sun. I brooded over the extensive choice and selected one that struck my fancy.

Lastly came the most delicate matter of all: the computer wished to know my name and ID number.

Some say that that regulation was tacked on by vindictive legislative prudes, fighting a desperate rearguard battle to scuttle the entire program of legalized prost.i.tution. The reasoning was that no one would use the place in the knowledge that his ident.i.ty was being recorded on the master computer's memory film, perhaps to be spewed forth later as part of a potentially destructive dossier. The officials in charge of the enterprise, doing their best to cope with this troublesome requirement, announced vociferously that all data would remain forever confidential; yet I suppose there are some who fear to enter the house of automated a.s.signations simply because they must register their presence. Well, what had I to fear? My academic tenure is interruptible only for reasons of moral turpitude, and there can be nothing turpid about making use of a government-operated facility such as this. I gave my name and identifying number. Briefly I wondered how Vornan, who lacked an identifying number, would make out; evidently the computer had been forewarned of his presence, though, for he was pa.s.sed through to the next stage of our processing without difficulty.

A slot opened in the base of the computer output. It contained a privacy mask, I was told, which I was to slip over my head. I withdrew the mask, distended it, and pulled it into place. The thermoplastic compound fit itself to my features as though it were a second skin, and I wondered how anything so snug could be concealing; but I caught sight of myself in the momentarily blank face of the screen, and the reflection was not that of any face I would have recognized. Mysteriously, the mask had rendered me anonymous.

The screen now told me to step forward as the door opened. I obeyed. The front of my cubicle lifted; I pa.s.sed through to a helical ramp leading to some upper level of the huge building. I caught sight of other men ascending on ramps to my left and right; like spirits going to salvation they rose, borne upward by silent glidewalks, their faces hidden, their bodies tensed. From above streamed the cool radiance of a gigantic light tank, bathing us all in brilliance. A figure waved to me from an adjoining ramp. Unmistakably it was Vornan; masked though he was, I detected him by the slimness of his figure, the jauntiness of his stance, and by a certain aura of strangeness that seemed to enfold him even with his features hidden. He soared past me and disappeared, swallowed up by the pearly radiance above. A moment later I was in that zone of radiance too, and swiftly and easily I pa.s.sed through another portal that admitted me to a cubicle not much larger than the one in which the computer had interviewed me.

Another screen occupied the left-hand wall. To the far side was a washstand and a molecular cleanser; the center of the cubicle was occupied by a chaste double bed, freshly made. The entire environment was grotesquely antiseptic. If this is legalized prost.i.tution, I thought, I prefer streetwalkers . . . if there are any.

I stood beside the bed, eyeing the screen. I was alone in the room. Had the mighty machine faltered?

Where was my paramour?

But they were not finished scrutinizing me. The screen glowed and words streamed across it:Please remove your clothing for medical examination.

Obediently, I stripped and placed my garments in a hopper that debouched from the wall in response to some silent signal. The hopper closed again; I suspected that my clothes would be fumigated and purified while they were in there, and I was correct. I stood naked but for my mask, Everyman reduced to his final prop, as scanners and sensors played a subtle greenish light over my body, searching for the chancres of venereal disease, most likely. The examination lasted some sixty seconds. Then the screen invited me to extend my arm, and I did so, whereupon a needle descended and speedily removed a small sample of my blood. Unseen monitors searched that fragment of mortality for the tokens of corruption, and evidently found nothing that threatened the health of the personnel of this establishment, for in another moment the screen flashed some sort of light pattern that signified I had pa.s.sed my tests. The wall near the washstand opened and a girl came through.

"h.e.l.lo," she said. "I'm Esther, and I'mso glad to know you. I'm sure we're going to be great friends."

She was wearing a gauzy smock through which I could see the outlines of her slender body. Her hair was red, her eyes were green, her face bore the look of intelligence, and she smiled with a fervor that was not altogether mechanical, I thought. In my innocence I had imagined that all prost.i.tutes were coa.r.s.e, sagging creatures with gaping pores and sullen, embittered faces, but Esther did not fit my preconceived image. I had seen girls much like her on the campus at Irvine; it was quite possible that I had seen Esther herself there. I would not ask her that time-h.o.a.red question: What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this? But I wondered. I wondered.

Esther eyed my body appraisingly, perhaps not so much to judge my masculinity as perhaps to hunt out any medical shortcomings that the sensor system might have overlooked. Yet she managed to transform her glance into something more than a merely clinical one; it was provocative as well. I felt curiously exposed, probably because I am not accustomed to meeting young ladies for the first time under such circ.u.mstances. After her quick survey Esther crossed the room and touched her hand to a control at the base of the screen. "We don't want them peeping at us, do we?" she asked brightly, and the screen darkened. I hazarded a private guess that this was part of the regular routine, by way of convincing the customer that the great staring eye of the computer would not spy on his amours; and I guessed also that despite the conspicuous gesture of turning off the screen, the room was still being monitored and would continue to be under surveillance while I was in it. Surely the designers of this place would not leave the girls wholly at the mercies of any customer with whom they might be sharing a cubicle. I felt queasy about going to bed with someone knowing that my performance was being observed and very likely taped and coded and filed, but I overcame my hesitation, telling myself that I was here purely on a lark. This bordello was clearly no place for an educated man. It invited too much suspicion. But no doubt it suited the needs of those who had such needs.

As the glow of the screen darkened, Esther said, "Shall I turn the room light off?"

"It doesn't matter to me."

"I'll turn it down, then." She did something to the k.n.o.b and the room dimmed. In a quick lithe gesture she slipped off her smock. Her body was smooth and pale, with narrow hips and small, girlish b.r.e.a.s.t.s whose translucent skin revealed a network of fine blue veins. She reminded me very much of Aster Mikkelsen as Aster had looked on that spy pickup the week before. Aster . . . Esther . . . for one moment of dreamy confusion I confounded the two and wondered why a world-famous biochemist would be doubling as a tart. Smiling amiably, Esther stretched out on the bed, lying on her side with her knees drawn up; it was a friendly, conversational posture, nothing blatant about it. I was grateful for that.

I had expected a girl in such a place to lie back, part her legs, and say, "Come on, buddy, get aboard,"

and I was relieved that Esther did no such thing. It occurred to me that in my interview below, the computer had sized up my personality, marked me as a member of the inhibited academic cla.s.s, and had pa.s.sed along to Esther, preparing herself for work, a memorandum to the effect that I was to be treated in a dignified manner.

I sat down alongside her.

"Would you like to talk awhile?" she asked. "We have plenty of time."

"All right. You know, I've never been here before."

"I do know."

"How?"

"The computer told me. The computer tells us everything."

"Everything?My name?"

"Oh, no, not your name! I mean, all thepersonal things."

I said, "So what do you know about me, Esther?"

"You'll see in a little while." Her eyes sparkled mischievously. Then she said, "Did you see the man from the future when you came in?"

"The one called Vornan-19?"

"Yes. He's supposed to be here today. Just about this time. We got a special notice over the master line. They say he's awfully handsome. I've seen him on the screen. I wish I'd get a chance to meet him."

"How do you know you aren't with him right now?"

She laughed. "Oh, no! I know I'm not!"

"But I'm masked. I could be-"

"You aren't. You're just teasing me. If I was getting him, they would have notified me."

"Maybe not. Maybe he prefers secrecy."

"Well, maybe so, but anyway I know you're not the man from the future. Mask or no mask, you aren't fooling me."

I let my hand roam along the smoothness of her thigh. "What do you think of him, Esther? Do you believe he's really from the year 2999?"

"Don't you think so?"

"I'm asking you what you think."

She shrugged. Taking my hand, she drew it slowly up over her taut belly until it was cupping the small cool mound of her left breast, as though she hoped to deflect my troublesome questions by leading me into the act of pa.s.sion. Pouting a little, she said, "Well, they all say he's real. The President and everyone.

And they say he's got special powers. That he can give you a kind of electric shock if he wants." Esther giggled suddenly. "I wonder if-if he can shock a girl while he's-you know, while he's with her."

"Quite likely. If he's really what he says he is."

"Why don't you believe in him?"

I said, "It all seems phony to me. That a man should drop out of the sky-literally-and claim to come from a thousand years in the future. Where's the proof? How am I supposed to know he's telling the truth?"

"Well," Esther said, "there's that look in his eyes. And his smile. There's something strange about him, everyone says. He talks strange too, not with an accent, exactly, but yet his voice comes out peculiar. I believe in him, yes. I'd like to make love with him. I'd do it for free."

"Perhaps you'll have the chance," I said.

She grinned. But she was growing restless, as though this conversation exceeded the boundaries of the usual sort of small talk she was in the habit of making with dilatory clients. I pondered the impact that Vornan-19 had had even on this crib-girl, and I wondered what Vornan might be doing elsewhere in this building at this very moment. I hoped someone in Kralick's outfit was monitoring him. Ostensibly I was in here to keep an eye on him, but, as they must have known, there was no way for me to make contact with Vornan once we were past the lobby, and I feared an outbreak of our guest's by-now-familiar capacity for creating chaos. It was beyond my control, though. I slid my hands across Esther's accessible sleekness. She lay there, lost in dreams of embracing the man from the future, while her body undulated in the pa.s.sionate rhythms she knew so well. The computer had prepared her adequately for her task; as our bodies joined, she slid into the position I had chosen, and she discharged her duties with energy and a reasonable counterfeit of desire.

Afterward we rolled apart. She looked satisfactorily satisfied; part of the act, I a.s.sumed. She indicated the washstand and snapped on the molecular cleanser so that I could be purified of the stains of l.u.s.t. We still had time left, and she said, "Just for the record: wouldn'tyou like to meet Vornan-19? Just to convince yourself that he's the real thing?"

I debated. Then I said gravely, "Why, yes, I think I would. But I suppose I never shall."

"It's exciting to think that he's right here in this building, isn't it? Why, he might be right next door! He might be coming here next . . . if he wants another round." She crossed the room to me and slipped her arms about me. Large, glossy eyes fastened on my own. "I shouldn't be talking about him so much. I don't know how I started. We aren't supposed to mention other men when-when-listen, did I make you happy?"

"Very much, Esther. I wish I could show-"

"Tipping isn't allowed," she said hastily as I fumbled for my credit plate. "But on the way out the computer may ask you for a report on me. They pick one out of ten customers for a sampling. I hope you'll have a good word for me."

"You know I will."

She leaned up and kissed me lightly, pa.s.sionlessly, on the lips. "I like you," she said. "Honestly. That isn't just a standard line. If you ever come back here, I hope you'll ask for me."

"If I ever do, I certainly will," I said, meaning it. "That's a solemn promise."

She helped me dress. Then she vanished through her door, disappearing into the depths of the building to perform some rite of purification before taking on her next a.s.signment. The screen came to life again, notifying me that my credit account would be billed at the standard rate, and requesting me to leave by the rear door of my cubicle. I stepped out onto the glidewalk and found myself drawn through a region of misty perfumed loveliness, a vaulted gallery whose high ceiling was festooned with strips of s.h.i.+mmertape; so magical was this realm that I scarcely noticed anything until I discovered that I was descending once more, gliding into a vestibule as large as the one through which I had entered, but at the opposite side of the building.

Vornan? Where was Vornan?

I emerged into the feeble light of a winter afternoon, feeling faintly foolish. The visit had been educational and recreational for me, but it had hardly served the purpose of keeping watch over our unpredictable charge. I paused on the wide plaza, wondering if I should go back inside and search out Vornan. Was it possible to ask the computer for information on a customer? While I hesitated, a voice from behind said, "Leo?"

It was Kralick, sitting in a gray-green limousine from whose hood projected the blunt snouts of a communications rig's antennae. I walked toward the car.

"Vornan's still inside," I said. "I don't know what-"

"It's all right. Get in."

I slipped through the door that the Government man held open for me. To my discomfort I found Aster Mikkelsen in the rear of the car, her head bent low over some sort of data sheets. She smiled briefly at me and went back to what she was a.n.a.lyzing. It troubled me to step directly from the brothel into the company of the pure Aster.

Kralick said, "I've got a full pickup running on our friend. It might interest you to know that he's on his fourth woman now, and shows no sign of running out of pep. Would you like to look?"

"No, thanks," I told him as he started to activate the screen. "That's not my kick. Is he making any trouble in there?"

"Not in his usual fas.h.i.+on. He's just using up a lot of girls. Going down the roster, trying out positions, capering like a goat." Muscles clenched suddenly in Kralick's cheeks. He swung about to face me and said, "Leo, you've been with this guy for nearly two weeks, now. What's your opinion? Real or fake?"

"I honestly don't know, Sandy. There are times when I'm convinced that he's absolutely authentic. Then I stop and pinch myself and say that n.o.body can come back in time, that it's a scientific impossibility, and that in any case Vornan's just a charlatan."

"A scientist," said Kralick heavily, "ought to begin with the evidence and construct a hypothesis around it, leading to a conclusion, right? Not start with a hypothesis and judge the evidence in terms of it."

"True," I conceded. "But what do you regard as evidence? I have experimental knowledge of time-reversal phenomena, and I know that you can't send a particle of matter back half a second without reversing its charge. I have to judge Vornan against that."

"All right. And the man of A.D. 999 also knew that it was impossible to fly to Mars. We can't venture to say what's possible a thousand years on and what isn't. And it happens that we've acquired some new evidence today."

"Which is?"

Kralick said, "Vornan consented to undergo the standard medical examination in there. The computer got a blood sample from him and a lot of other stuff, and relayed it all to us out here, and Aster's been going over it. She says he's got blood of a type she's never seen before, and that it's full of weird antibodies unknown to modern science-and that there are fifty other physical anomalies in Vornan's medical checkout. The computer also picked up traces of unusual electrical activity in his nervous system, the gimmick that he uses to shock people he doesn't like. He's built like an electric eel. I don't think he comes from this century at all, Leo. And I can't tell you how much it costs me to say a thing like that."

From the back seat Aster said in her lovely flutelike voice, "It seems strange that we should be doing fundamental research by sending him into a wh.o.r.ehouse, doesn't it, Leo? But these findings are very odd.

Would you like to see the tapes?"

"I wouldn't be able to interpret them, thanks."

Kralick swiveled around. "Vornan's finished with Number Four. He's requesting a fifth."

"Can you do me a favor? There's a girl in there named Esther, a slim pretty little redhead. I'd like you to arrange things with your friend the computer, Sandy. See to it that Esther is his next sweetheart."

Kralick arranged it. Vornan had requested a tall, curvy brunette for his next romance, but the computer slipped Esther in on him instead, and he accepted the subst.i.tution, I suppose, as a forgivable defect in our medieval computer technology. I asked to watch the video pickup, and Kralick switched it on. There was Esther, wide-eyed, timid, her professional poise ragged as she found herself in the presence of the man of her dreams. Vornan spoke to her elegantly, soothing her, calming her. She removed her smock and they moved toward the bed, and I had Kralick cut off the video.

Vornan was with her a long while. His insatiable virility seemed to underline his alien origin. I sat brooding, looking into nowhere, trying to let myself accept the data Kralick had collected today. My mind refused to make the jump. I could not believe, even now, that Vornan-19 was genuine, despite the chill I had felt in Vornan's presence and all the rest.

"He's had enough," Kralick said finally. "He's coming out. Aster, clean up all the equipment, fast."

While Aster concealed the monitoring pickups, Kralick sprinted from the car, got Vornan, and led him swiftly across the plaza. In the brutal winter weather there were no disciples about to throw themselves before him, nor any rampaging Apocalyptists, so for once we were able to make a clean, quick exit.

Vornan was beaming. "Your s.e.xual customs are fascinating," he said, as we drove away. "Fascinating!

So wonderfully primitive! So full of vigor and mystery!" He clapped his hands in delight. I felt the odd chill again creeping through my limbs, and it had nothing to do with the weather outside the car. I hope Esther is happy now, I thought. She'll have something to tell her grandchildren. It was the least I could have done for her.

ELEVEN.

We dined that evening at a very special restaurant in Chicago, a place whose distinction is that it serves meats almost impossible to obtain elsewhere: buffalo steak, filet of bear, moose, elk, such birds as pheasant, partridge, grouse. Vornan had heard about it somehow and wanted to sample its mysterious delights. It was the first time we had gone to a public restaurant with him, a point that troubled us; already an ominous tendency was developing for uncontrollable crowds to gather about him everywhere, and we feared what might happen in a restaurant. Kralick had asked the restaurant management to serve its specialties at our hotel, and the restaurant was willing-for a price. But Vornan would have none of that.