Patron of the Arts

by William Rotsler

  But Nova Sunstrum was the obvious physical beauty, the head-turner. She must have been the focus of many desires even on Earth. Shipboard protocol brought us together rather rapidly. The second dinner saw me at the Captain’s table, for even a lowly publicist has his status, and his uses to the Navío Estrella company that operated the Balboa. I was introduced to Nova Sunstrum by Capitano Garcia Ramírez.

  Her eyes regarded me calmly. She raised a tulip glass of wine to her lips. “And what do you do, Mr. Braddock?” She sipped the wine as I thought about my answer.

  “I point a finger,” I said. She raised her eyebrows. She ignored the politician on her left who was trying to capture her attention with a tale of how he had mastered a tricky situation with the natives at Ares Center. She was watching me steadily. I felt constrained to explain a little further.

  “I point and make appropriate noises and people start paying attention. The pointee becomes famous, or at least noticed.”

  “Do you like being a pointer, Mr. Braddock?” she asked. Just for a second I thought that perhaps the fragile disguise I had concocted for this adventure had been penetrated. A slight dyeing of my hair from dark brown to near-black, a change of name and papers, and the simple unlikelihood of B. Thorne being aboard had seemed sufficient. Somehow, now, I was not so certain.

  “Sometimes,” I said, answering her question. “It depends at what I point.”

  “Do you point at things or people?” The lady botanist at my side had joined the conversation.

  “Both,” I said. “Whichever interests me.”

  “He’s a flack for Publitex,” the politician said quickly. “Miss Sunstrum, may I call you Nova? I know your father, of course. Fine man. We are going to be together here for quite some time and —“

  “Yes, we are, aren’t we?” She smiled at the politician and said,

  “There will be time for almost everything, won’t there?” She turned back to me and asked softly, “And what interests you on Mars, Mr. Braddock?”

  “Everything,” I said, looking into her dark eyes, trying to read them, and seeing only the tiny blurred reflections of myself.

  “Won’t that make it difficult to point at any one thing?” asked Miss Blount.

  “I’ll manage to find something to . . . point at, I’m sure,” I answered, but my eyes were still on the Martian-born beauty. Nova smiled and turned her gaze to the soyalgae soup, while Miss Blount buried me under wondrous stories of how they were bringing the dead Martian sands to life, and how well the Lycoperscion esculentum had adapted, giving superb tomatoes with their own built-in salty taste. After dinner I went to my usual spot, the observation blister, which was still on the “down” side, toward Earth. I slumped in the couch, opened my spacesuit, and wondered about a lot of things, from unfinished business to business to finish. Would Warfield be able to pull off the merger with Selenite, Ltd. over the Eratosthenes Crater deal?

  Would the Mythos fun park hit the estimated attendance? Would Huo keep my marker moving across the map without premature detection? I wondered how Africaine would do in her new film, and if the Valencia project would really result in low-cost housing. I thought about the cost of the archotolog for retired people and if the Malayan hotel complex would open as scheduled.

  And I thought about Nova Sunstrum.

  Was she a plant by the Navahoe Organization to divert me somehow? Had the boys in Quebec found out about my trip? Had they put Clarke into the picture with his play-rough tactics? Was it something cooked up by Raeburn’s bunch in Toronto?

  Angrily, I thrust all these thoughts aside. There was nothing much I could do about any of it. The wheels were rolling, the computers were humming, the people were moving from Square A to Square B. Everything was geared to run without me, at least for awhile. If I died, or was killed, would the General Anomaly board just keep alive the fabrication of Brian Thorne “resting” or “vacationing” or “tripping” while they sliced out chunks of my empire for themselves?

  But what did it matter, really? If I were dead I couldn’t care. I had long ago arranged for trusts to be established for certain friends. Certain organizations and grants and foundations would be happy. Michele, Louise, Huo, Langley, and Caleb would have theirs. What did it matter now to the world if Brian Thorne never came back? A few artists would find patrons elsewhere. Some music might not be written, some sensatrons not constructed, some paintings not painted. But the world would go on.

  It was not the best batch of thoughts I ever had.

  So, instead, I thought full-time about Nova. If I were Brian Thorne I would already have received a coded dossier on her from Huo, with everything worth knowing in it, everything that could be put into words or graphs or on film. But as Diego Braddock I would have to use my gut instincts, the same ones that had brought me up from Brian Thorne, a diversified but minor investor in this and that, to Brian Thorne. I decided I wanted Nova Sunstrum.

  I wanted to make love to her, to that voluptuous body, to make love with her, with that quicksilver mind I detected. I wanted to penetrate her flesh and to couple with her intimate thoughts. To mate only with flesh, however beautiful, is pleasant, but hardly meaningful. I had had enough of that. I wanted more.

  Someone like Madelon.

  The thought of her came unasked, trapping me in an awkward moment. Triggered by something perhaps hidden, the images and feelings flooded back. I had loved.

  Would I love again? Nova and Madelon popped in and out of my awareness like spacewarping gypsies.

  Nova, fresh and unique.

  Madelon, lost and special.

  It was too soon, and I did not yet know enough. But I knew myself well enough to recognize the tug. I forced the all-too-familar feelings away, back into the dark closet, where I hoped they would gather dust and melt away, silently, unseen, unfelt. I knew those feelings had been “decontaminated” many times and were but shadows of their former pain, but they had not gone entirely.

  Nova was now; Madelon was then. I had no desire for Madelon now, only curiosity. What I did have was a battered ego, one of life’s greatest pains. But I had lived and I had met Nova. I was well aware that I was building a fantasy on a very tenuous foundation. I knew little about her, but I felt much.

  Oh, how we trap ourselves!

  I heard the lock behind me cycling and I turned my head and saw her appear in the light from the inner lock. She saw me, hesitated a moment, then mumbled an apology and started to leave.

  “Don’t go!” I said quickly.

  “I didn’t know anyone was in here,” she said. “I didn’t mean to intrude.”

  “No, please, come in.”

  She stepped over the lip of the hatch, thumbing the lock controls to close and recycle. She stood looking out of the port for a moment, then started to remove her suit. “I hate these things. They are like wearing a cardboard box.”

  I watched her as she took it off and, as awkward as that procedure is, she did it with grace. I am definitely attracted to graceful women, especially when they can be graceful under disadvantageous circumstances.

  She wore only a simple thin white dress that clung to her golden skin like flowing milk. She hugged herself and said, “It’s cold out here!”

  “Sit here,” I said and thumbed a heater circuit. She curled into the padded couch like a cat and her lips formed a slight smile as she stared out at Earth. Her scent was delicate and something I couldn’t place.

  I let the long moments pass as my eyes moved from one beautiful sight to another.

  “Isn’t it exquisite?” she murmured at last.

  “Yes,” I said, and meant more.

  “It’s only the second time I’ve seen it, you know, I mean, for real. The first time was eight years ago when I came to Earth for school.”

  “You were born on Mars, weren’t you? Someone told me.”

  “Yes. At Bradbury.”

  “You must be glad to rid yourself of Earth’s extra gravity.”

  She smiled at me. “
Oh, yes, but it made me very strong. I shall be an Amazon back home!” She laughed, softly and delicately, flipping back a wing of long black hair. “Have you been to my planet before, Mr. Braddock?” I shook my head. “Then you will not know at what to point, will you?”

  I raised a fist slowly, and slowly a finger swung out from it to point at her. She laughed lightly once again, and asked, “Am I now famous?”

  “You are noticed.”

  Slowly, with a smile twitching at her mouth, she raised her own small fist, and staring at it instead of me, as if her hand were something apart, she slowly pointed a finger at me. Then she looked along the path of the finger and seemed astonished at what she found.

  “By the sword and shield of Ares,” she said solemnly, “I do believe I have noticed someone.”

  We sat there a moment with our fingers pointing at each other, then she said, “I was told it was impolite to point.” She closed her fist with a pop of her mouth and I made a show of putting my fist into a holster.

  “Nova Sunstrum,” I said.

  “Diego Braddock,” she said, just as solemnly.

  We watched the Earth for awhile, then I asked, “Will you be happy to be getting back?” I thought the question banal, but wanted to continue the conversation.

  “Oh, yes. It has been so long, even though I got tapes on almost every ship. Mars is really growing up fast, almost too fast. There are farms now where there was only desert. An atmosphere is forming. The air of Earth seemed so heavy and thick and filled with stink. The air at home will be cold, but clean.”

  She leaned back in her chair, and I couldn’t decide if the display of the richness of her body was consciously bold or innocently naive. She sighed, and the only other sounds were the faint hum from deep within the asteroid, transmitted through the rock, and the beeps and clicks of the read-outs on the repeater console before us.

  Slowly her face changed expression and a shy smile formed on her lips. There was something about her look that sent the warning signals up. Without looking at me she said, “Do you desire me?” Then her eyes swiveled towards me, dark and slanted.

  I waited a beat and nodded, carefully. “Of course. You are beautiful. And . . . my type.” I made a gesture with my hand. “If you are as much a woman inside as outside . . .” I left it unfinished.

  “I am a type, then?”

  “Everyone’s a type. Some types we respond to, for whatever reasons, and others we do not.”

  “Many men have desired me,” she said.

  “Yes, I’m sure, but you need not cite testimonials.” Her smile broke wide and she moved in a very self-aware and sensuous manner.

  “Then you will protect me?”

  I sighed. “Protect you? From men? From the others? Why? You are grownup, a woman, a citizen.”

  “I’m tired of being groped,” she said. “I grew up on Mars, with space all around. Living on Earth was living in a box. I always felt confined, pressured. I had so little personal space.” She looked sad now.

  “I’m so damned tired of it. I want to get home.” She looked up at me again, through her fall of dark hair. “Perhaps if I were, you know, with you, there would not be so much pressure.”

  “You desire a champion, my lady? If there were some zongo aboard who really wanted you I might be ‘accidented’ to death some dark watch, or find that I had taken a walk on the outside of this pebble without a suit. So would any other man who was foolish enough to try and ‘protect’ you.”

  She looked at me angrily and sat up straight, sticking out her chest. “You desire me, but you wouldn’t even try to protect me?” She made a rude sound and slumped back, and her long black hair flowed over her shoulders and fell before her face in a black waterfall.

  “There were no serious fights when I came to Earth in the Armstrong,” she said, “but I was only sixteen then. I am . . . different now.”

  “You must have had fun trying out your powers on Earth,” I said with a grin. She blew air at me but did not look. “Granted, the trips now aren’t like the old days when they were seven, eight times longer. But even a month in space . . . Well, for example, what would happen if you were to smile at just one crewman, the same crewman, every day?”

  She tossed back her hair and looked proudly at me. “He would fall madly in love with me,” she said casually. “They always do.”

  “And that’s the trouble. On Earth, on Luna, perhaps even on Mars, we would not all be confined together, in enforced intimacy, without privacy, stepping on each other’s territory. Even in those massive city-buildings, even in the most crowded archo, we would not be so contained. This is a sealed environment. You, me, everyone, must act in a responsible manner. You do not cry fire in a crowded sensatorium.”

  She tossed her head and looked down at the crescent of vanishing Earth. “You sound like Primrose or Billinger, my teachers, the old wallabies. Live up to your responsibilities, dear. Act your age. Don’t make waves. What do they know of life, those wizened hags?” She sat up again, defiantly throwing out her ample chest, the lovely heritage of her Scandinavian ancestors. “I’ve spent years being controlled by others. Teachers, security people who knew what was best for me, my father’s factors, the people at the bank. I ran away sometimes, catching hell when they traced me.”

  She looked at me moodily. “I thought you would be fun to be with. You look powerful and just a little deadly and as though you know a lot, but you are just dried munga like the others! ‘Don’t be like that, dear!’ ‘Behave yourself, Nova.’ ” She rose and stood over me, unsteady in the light gravity, the wet-like fabric swirling, glimmering in the faint cold Earthlight and the reddish glow from the heater.

  “I will not trouble you. There will not be trouble. I am not promiscuous.”

  “Perhaps it would be better if you were,” I said. “It’s when one or a few hog all the goodies that the revolutions start.”

  “I—!” She left it unsaid and turned to sit down abruptly. The calm, cool woman of the world had disappeared again. What I was seeing was the protected daughter of wealth, used to the power of her beauty and personality, aching to break loose into the imagined joys of freedom, and unsure of both self and world.

  Then very slowly I saw the return of that mood. Her face changed from the stern and unmoving to the serene and elegant. The posture slowly softened and she seemed more at ease.

  At last she again turned her gaze toward me. Before she had a chance to speak I said, “I like you better when you are playing the Queen of Outer Space.”

  She blinked and then broke into laughter and fell back against the cushioned couch. I liked her laughter, for it was full and unrestrained, and she could laugh at herself. Then she sobered and propped herself up, flipping back her long dark hair.

  “You!” she said accusingly, her lips fighting a smile. “How do you know I am not the Queen of Space?”

  I grinned at her. “I don’t. If anyone is qualified, you are . . . your majesty.”

  “Well, I could be,” she said. “If Mars becomes free my father could be king.”

  “You will be old and surrounded by grandchildren before Mars is terraformed and independent enough to stand alone. Don’t make it sound as if Mars were being ground under the heel of the Terran oppressors. You get more than your share.”

  Her shoulders slumped. “Boy, you’re just no fun at all. I paint a pretty little fantasy and you rip it down. It would have been ever so nice to think that I might one day be the Queen of Mars.”

  I shrugged. “There isn’t much romance in a democracy, is there?

  No twin princes, no princesses stolen by gypsies, no men locked in iron spacesuits, no sudden revelations about lockets given at birth, no mistresses of the king dictating policy in bed . . .”

  “You are still mocking me.”

  “Yes, I am. I apologize.” The words were out before I thought. Brian Thorne never apologized. Not in words, anyway. People would think it a sign of weakness or indecision. It was nice not to have
to be a robber baron all the time.

  “Go to bed and dream of the ancient Martians,” I said. “They rose from their dusty tombs and entered you at birth. The last royal princess, Xotolyl the Fifteenth, is within you, guiding you. One day the chrysalis of this mortal flesh shall split and the first of the new Martian royalty shall be born!” Her eyes were shining and her lips parted.

  “Great butterfly wings of gossamer dreams shall flutter again under the twin moons,” I said dramatically. “The ghosts of the distant, unknown past will gather around you, merging with those present, and they shall carry you to that hidden, ancient, untouched vault of time and mystery, where the long-dead lords of Mars made their sacrifices to the ageless gods, those gods that now sleep beneath the red sands. Mars will grow green again. The canals will flow with clear, life-giving water. The walls and battlements of olden times will rise, greater than before, and the curious barbicans will stand guard. There will be feasts of old wine and fresh fruit, there will be entertainments and marvels, and honors given.

  “There will be you, in the glittering jeweled robes of the queen . .

  . Nova the First, the Queen of Mars . . .”

  There was a long pause as she stared at me in wonder. “My god,” she said softly. “You are totally mad!” She jumped up and threw herself into my lap, hugging me and laughing. She pulled back, looking at me, her eyes sparkling, her mouth a tongue’s length away. My hands were on her bare, smooth arms and I pulled her to me. She came without resisting, her face softening, her eyes closing. We kissed softly, without passion, but with a gentleness and a quiet loving. After a very long time she moved away slightly and said huskily,

  “I did not give you permission to approach the throne. . .”

  “I always was a rebel,” I said and brought her close for another kiss. It was longer and grew more intense. With a sudden low growl Nova grabbed me tighter and our kiss became hunger, and I responded. Then, after a long moment, she pulled back and looked at me with great seriousness, her dark, slanted eyes searching my face. Then with a kind of brisk, businesslike move she nodded, pushed herself out of my lap and started putting on her suit. I helped her and we did not say anything at all.