To Live Again, Page 6

  Kaufmann thought it over. It was within his power to prevent Risa from taking this persona on; but he saw the futility of the attempt at once. If thwarted, Risa would merely apply more pressure, and she was an expert at getting her way. He knew he had to adjust to the changed Risa that would come forth, that it was idle to try to block and control her.

  He waved his hand. “Let her do as she likes. But I hope she’ll take Y.”

  “Your hope will be disappointed,” said Santoliquido. He looked at his watch. “I’m afraid I must leave you now, Mark. I’ll turn you over to a technician who’ll see to it that your new persona recording gets made right away. That is why you came here today, I’m sure you remember.”

  “Yes,” Kaufmann said dryly. “All this spying was only the appetizer. Now for the main course.”

  Santoliquido produced a young, earnest technician named Donahy, with black hair so dark it seemed to have purple highlights, and startling, bushy eyebrows slashing across his too white forehead. Kaufmann bade Santoliquido farewell, thanked him for his favors, looked forward to his presence on Dominica the next day.

  “If you’ll come this way—” said Donahy.

  Shortly Kaufmann was out of the storage section of the building and back on familiar ground, in the public area where persona recordings were made. Here there was none of the carefully cultivated gloom of that great central vault. Everything was bright, glowing, radiant; the tiles gleamed, the air had a vibrant tingle. This was the place where one came to purchase one’s claim to immortality, and its gaiety mirrored the moods of those wealthy enough and determined enough to preserve their personae for future transplants.

  He had been here many times. He had left a trail of recordings stretching back to the youthfully restless, ambitious Mark Kaufmann of twenty. And, he now knew, all those recordings still existed in some remote but accessible archive. A biographer, given the right influence, could trace the unfolding of his development from youth to decisive manhood, stage by stage. Now the latest Mark Kaufmann would be added to the cache. Since he had been neglectful about reporting to be taped, nearly a full year’s experiences were to be incorporated in the file now. It had been a more eventful year than usual, marked by his uncle’s death, by his own increasingly complex relationship with his daughter, by several turns of his dealings with Elena Volterra, and now—in the final hours of the record—by this quartet of new experiences, his moment of entry into his uncle’s persona and the three samplings of female personae. Those most recent events had left their imprint on him most clearly, and they would now become the potential property of the future recipient of his persona.

  “Will you lie down here?” Donahy asked.

  Kaufmann reclined. The Scheffing process had two phases—record and transplant—and the recording phase was the essence of simplicity. The sum of a human soul—hopes and strivings, rebuffs, triumphs, pains, pleasures—is nothing more than a series of magnetic impulses, some shadowed by noise, others clear and easily accessible. The beautiful Scheffing process provided instant mechanical duplication of that web of magnetic impulses. A spark leaping across a gap, so to speak: the quick flight of a persona from mind to tape. A lifetime’s experience transformed into information that can be transcribed, billions of bits to the square millimeter, on magnetic tape; and then, to play safe and provide an extra dimension of realism, the same information translated and inscribed on data flakes as well. There was nothing to it. A transplant, involving the imprinting of all this material on a living human brain, was much more difficult, requiring special chemical preparation of the recipient.

  The telemetering devices went into position. Kaufmann looked up into a tangle of gleaming coils and struts. Sensors checked his physical well-being, monitored the flow of blood through the capillaries of his brain, peered through the irises of his eyes, noted his respiration, digestive processes, tactile responses, and vascular dilation.

  “You haven’t been with us a while,” observed Donahy, making an entry in his dossier.

  “No, I haven’t. I suppose I’ve been too busy.”

  The technician shook his head. “Too busy to preserve your own persona! You must have really been busy, then. You know, you never would forgive yourself if you suddenly woke up as a transplant and found a year-long chunk of your life missing from your package of experience.”

  “Absolutely right,” Kaufmann said. “It’s unutterably stupid to neglect this obligation.”

  “Well, now, at least you’ll be up to date again. But we hope you’ll come to see us more regularly in the future. Here we go, now—lift your head a little—fine, fine—”

  The helmet was in place. Kaufmann waited, seeking as always to determine the precise moment at which his soul leaped from his brain, impressed a replica of itself on the tape, and hurried back into its proper house. But, as ever, the moment was imperceptible. His concentration was broken by the voice of the technician, saying, “There we are, Mr. Kaufmann. Your central will be billed, as usual. Thank you for coming, and I hope we have the pleasure of recording you many more times in years to come.”

  Kaufmann left the building and entered his hopter. According to the ticker, the market had risen sharply; he had profited not a little while wandering within the maze of the Scheffing Institute. And he had fulfilled his obligation to his future recipient by extending the unique and irreplaceable record of his life. Complete with a trifle of Uncle Paul’s persona, and minute slices of the lives of three unknown girls.

  Within his mind his own resident personae made their presence felt. They reminded him of other duties of this day, still undone. Planning for the party; a realty closing; a conference in Washington. Busy, busy, busy. But at least his conscience was clear for the moment. And tomorrow he could relax.

  5

  The island of Dominica rises like a great many-humped green beast out of the blue Caribbean, well down the chain of the Antilles. Trade winds blow steadily; a tropic sun keeps watch; the lofty mountainous spine intercepts rainfall and keeps the island constantly moist. Here in this still unspoiled island the Kaufmanns had assembled a lordly estate. Industry had come to most of the neighboring isles of the West Indies, but the rain forests of Dominica remained as green and glistening as in primordial times, and in its humid lowlands the banana plantations spread from stream to stream. The arrangement, a quasi-feudal one, did not greatly please the Dominicans, who hungered for the prosperity experienced by Martinique and St. Lucia and Barbados and the rest. But their island was safe from defilement, whether they willed it or not.

  The Kaufmann property lay in the northwest quadrant of the island, between Point Round and the thriving town of Portsmouth. There the family had purchased a series of waterfront tracts encompassing not only a majestic crescent arc of white beach, but also a string of the humbler dark beaches of black volcanic sand. Their holdings ran inland, up the rising slope of Morne Diablotin, Dominica’s highest mountain, and so they sampled the available environments from the dry shoreline to the riverine interior to the mysterious cloud forest of the mountain. It had taken three generations of haggling and title search to put the estate together, and no one could venture to guess what its true value might be in a world where such tracts no longer could be had at all.

  Risa liked to think of it as her own property, due to descend to her in time. In fact that was untrue; the estate belonged communally to the Kaufmann family association. It was administered on behalf of the family by her father, but that did not put her in line to inherit it. Each of her many cousins and aunts and uncles and more distant relatives had a share in the property. But Risa thought of herself as belonging to the main line of the Kaufmanns, and since she was her father’s only child, she saw herself as the point of convergence toward which all the family wealth flowed.

  It was midday, now: the most dangerous hour under the hostile sun. She stood nude in hip-deep water on the crescent beach, relaxing before more guests arrived. About a dozen were here already. Risa and her father had f
lown down from New York late the previous night to oversee the preparations for the party. Looking up and down the beach, she eyed the early arrivals. They were scattered like flotsam on the pink-white sand, sunning, dozing. Four Kaufmanns, a pair of Lehmans, and a trio of Kinsolvings. Some of them bare, others—not modest but aware of the esthetics of ungainliness—covering selected portions of their bodies. Not one was less than fifteen years her senior. Risa wished her cousins would arrive.

  Turning her back to the beach, she waded seaward.

  Her body glistened. She had oiled it to protect herself from the sun. Her eyes were lensed against the salt water. She dug her toes into the sandy bottom, kicked forward, and began to swim, cutting a lean swathe through the green, glass-clear water. She liked the touch of it against her breasts and belly. The sunlight made sparkling patterns on the ocean floor, five feet below her. Soon she was past the sandy zone and out above the coral reef that lay a hundred yards off shore. Gnarled, twisted coral heads jutted from the bottom. Fish of a thousand hues danced and played between the stony orange and green slabs. Malevolent black sea urchins twitched their spines hopefully at her. Risa sucked air, dived, plucked a sand dollar from the bottom.

  In time she lost interest in the reef. When she swam back to shore, she found that another dozen guests or more had arrived—among them, finally, someone of her own generation. Her cousin Rod Loeb stood at the water’s edge: eighteen, brawny, tanned, vain. She knew him well and liked him. He wore only a taut red loinstrap. His eyes passed easily over her slender nakedness as she emerged from the water.

  “Just get here?” she asked.

  “Half an hour ago. There was hopter trouble at the airport and we were delayed. You’re looking good, Risa.”

  “And you. Let’s walk.”

  They strolled through the slapping surf toward a cluster of jagged, metallic-looking rocks piled at the north end of the beach. Risa felt the noon warmth probing her skin for some vulnerable place to singe and blister; but the molecule-thick coating of cream protected her. She reveled in her nudity. She broke into a trot, her small breasts barely swaying. If Elena tried to run like this, Risa thought, she’d hit herself in the face with all that swinging meat.

  They reached the rocks, neither of them short of breath. The white turrets of barnacles sprouted on the lower surfaces, licked by the waves. Rod said, “I hear you’ve had a transplant.”

  “News travels fast if it’s reached Majorca already.”

  “Gossip moves at the speed of light in this family. Is it true?”

  “Partly. I’ve applied for one. Mark gave his consent a few days ago. I went to the soul bank and tried a few personae out, and on Tuesday I’ll have the transplant.”

  “Who’ll it be?”

  “I’m not sure yet. I’m deciding between some different types. Whichever it is, it’ll be a girl who died young and sexy. Maybe even someone you’ve slept with.”

  Rod laughed. “Is that incest? If you pick up a persona with a memory of having been to bed with me, I mean?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t care. Is there anything so special about going to bed with you?”

  “Try me and see,” Rod said. “Without filtering it through a transplant.”

  She eyed his loinstrap. “Right out here on the beach, or should we go to your cottage?”

  “Why not right here?” he asked.

  “All right,” said Risa. She stretched out on a flat palm of stone, flexed her knees, drew her legs apart. Anyone on the beach could see them from here. She propped her fist against her chin. “Go ahead,” she said. “I’m waiting.”

  “I almost think you’re serious,” Rod said.

  “I am. And you are too, aren’t you? That strap doesn’t hide much. You want me. You’ve been hinting about it long enough. So here’s your chance. Get on top of me.”

  His eyes sparkled maliciously. “I wouldn’t take advantage of a child.”

  “Monster! I’m past sixteen.”

  “Chronologically. But only a child would want to put on a sick exhibition like that in front of everybody. It’s tasteless, Risa. If you really want to have sex with me, get up and we’ll go somewhere private and I’ll oblige you. But just to show everyone that you’re old enough to sin a little—”

  “Would I be the first to make love at one of these parties?”

  “Stop it,” he said. He swung himself down beside her and lightly slapped the outside of her left thigh. “Can I change the subject? What do you know about Uncle Paul’s transplant? Who’s going to get him?”

  Disgruntled by his casual disregard of her wanton mood, Risa closed her thighs and said, “How should I know?”

  “The story I hear is that he’s going to go to John Roditis.”

  “Not if my father has anything to say about it.”

  “That would be a blow, wouldn’t it?” Rod said. “Roditis is big enough as he is. With Uncle Paul, he’d be a titan. He’d have the business mind of the century.”

  Risa yawned. She swiveled around, dipping her toes in the water. A gray ghostly crab scuttled along the sand and vanished, digging down with startling swiftness. Risa said, “My father doesn’t want Roditis to have Uncle Paul. My father’s a good friend of Santoliquido, and Santoliquido decides. See?”

  Rod nodded. “You make it sound very open and shut.”

  “It has to be. Why, if Roditis got Uncle Paul, he’d be able to come to our family gatherings, he’d have a wedge right into our whole group. Wouldn’t that be horrible? That nasty, aggressive little man sitting right there on the beach, sipping a drink, making us be polite to him for Uncle Paul’s sake? But it won’t happen.”

  “Perhaps. Perhaps not.”

  “It won’t.”

  “If it isn’t going to happen,” Rod said, “what’s Roditis’ private secretary doing here?”

  “Where?”

  “Look,” Rod said, pointing.

  Risa peered back and saw a group of new arrivals descending to the beach from the cabanas. Leading the way came Elena Volterra, wearing next to nothing, her oiled body agleam, fusion nodes glistening in her skin, her heavy breasts artfully cantilevered into position by a wisp of sprayon support. Beside her, pink and fleshy, walked Francesco Santoliquido. A pace behind them came an attractive couple whom Risa recognized as David and Gloria Loeb, and on Gloria’s right was a very tall, very thin, extremely pale and fair-haired man who indeed closely resembled Charles Noyes, a well-known associate of John Roditis.

  His appearance on the beach was exciting comment from many quarters. Heads were turning; whispers buzzed. Noyes himself looked ill at ease. He was thickly lathered to protect his skin from the sun, but even so he continually wrinkled his back as if to make sure he was suffering no harm.

  “What could he be doing here?” Risa muttered.

  “Maybe Roditis is here too,” said Rod. “Having a little discussion with your father in the main house.”

  “No. No.” Risa looked for Mark Kaufmann and failed to see him. This was impossible, she told herself. Then she recalled: “Noyes is Gloria’s brother. He must have just come along for the ride. This doesn’t have a thing to do with Roditis.”

  “Let’s hope you’re right. But it seems odd, having a Roditis man right in our midst. Like Death at the feast.”

  “I want to go over and find out more.”

  “Go ahead,” Rod said. “I’m going swimming. I’ll get all the gossip from you later.”

  He sprang from the rocks and hit the water in midstroke, heading outward toward the reef. Risa, disturbed, crossed diagonally to the new little group standing on the sandy crest of the beach at the midpoint of the crescent. She greeted Elena curtly and took Santoliquido’s hand. She smiled at David Loeb, a tall, courtly-looking man of about forty-five to whom she was related in some incomprehensible way, and embraced his lean, leggy blonde wife Gloria. Risa had never known either of them very well. Gloria looked tense and somehow irritated; but she turned smoothly and said, “Risa, I don’t t
hink you know my brother. Charles Noyes. Risa Kaufmann. Mark’s daughter.”

  “A pleasure,” Noyes said. It didn’t sound to Risa as though he meant it. His large blue eyes raced in all directions, as if trying to avoid any direct confrontation of her girlish nakedness; then, with an obvious effort, he smiled at her.

  “I’ve heard so much about you from Gloria,” Risa lied sweetly. “It must be so exciting to work with Mr. Roditis. Tell me, is he coming to our party too?”

  “No, he—ah—won’t be here,” Noyes said.

  “Pity. I’d love to meet him. Will you excuse me?” Risa grinned icily and went jogging across the hot sand, up onto the lawn and into the main house, where the servants were programing the buffet lunch. She looked for her father and found him, as she expected, in the bamboo-paneled study, on the telephone. She could not see the face in the screen. He hung up after a moment and looked at her.

  “Do you know who’s here?” she asked.

  She could tell from his sour, hooded expression that he did. “Yes. Gloria’s little surprise package. She should have had better taste than that!”

  “Why’d you let him in?”

  “He’s her guest. I can’t refuse him, even if he is Roditis’ right hand. It’s permissible to bring one’s brother to a party like this.”

  “But what does he want here? Spying for Roditis? Trying to soften us up?”

  Kaufmann relaxed and allowed himself to laugh. “Why are you so worked up over it, Risa? It’s my problem. You go out in the sun and have a good time.”

  “If I’m a Kaufmann, it’s my problem too. We have certain family standards to uphold!”

  “They’ll be upheld, love. I’ll deal with Mr. Noyes.”

  It was a dismissal. Mark still refused to accept her as an adult. He was patting her on the head and telling her to run off and play. Risa’s nostrils flared, but she kept her anger unvoiced and quickly left the building, narrowly avoiding tripping over a robot crawler that was polishing the patio floor.