Tom Hyman

by Jupiter's Daughter

  Dieterbach had played her even, six games apiece, and they were now playing a tiebreaker for the set. The score stood at 8-7. The baroness was serving.

  Despite the chilly spring day, Dieterbach, a muscular man in his late forties, was sweating profusely. He had expected to win without much effort and had been irritated to discover that it was all he could do just to stay in the game.

  Crouched at the baseline, waiting for her to serve, the sturdy German official looked stricken. His normally florid features had turned ashen. His mouse-brown hair, dripping with sweat, lay slicked back against his skull, as if he had just emerged from the shower.

  The baroness bounced the ball on the baseline with a delicate, taunting leisureliness, giving Dieterbach plenty of time to reflect on his situation. She looked across at her opponent and smiled to herself.

  The possibility of losing to a woman would be causing him great stress.

  She tossed the ball skyward, arched her back, and swept the racket back far behind her head, as if to deliver an overhead smash. Instead, she sliced, whipping the racket face across the ball in a furious glancing blow, imparting tremendous spin but very little forward motion. The ball came off her racket

  92 strings whirring like a gyroscope and began losing altitude before it had even reached the net.

  Dieterbach, expecting a deep drive on first service, was momentarily paralyzed, thinking she had mishit the ball and that it was destined to fall short. By the time he realized what was going to happen, it was too late for him to save himself.

  He lunged forward, his face a mask of acute desperation. The tennis ball, dropping almost vertically, struck Dieterbach’s side of the court about a foot from the net. Its spin caused it to bounce hard and low to Dieterbach’s right, on a course parallel with the net and well below the top. Even if he had been able to reach the ball in time, its trajectory made it virtually impossible to return.

  The secretary made the maximum effort nevertheless. When he saw he wasn’t going to get to the ball in time, he launched himself into a dive. His racket went flying, and his 220-pound bulk pitched headfirst into the net.

  The baroness suppressed her amusement. She recovered his racket, which had fallen into her back court, and carried it around to the other side of the net. Her opponent was still lying facedown in the dirt. “Are you all right, Herr Dieterbach?”

  The secretary braced himself on one knee, then stood up, tottering and off-balance. He brushed off his shirt and shorts and took his racket back from the baroness. “I slipped,” he complained. “Your damned clay court. I’m used to the all-weather.”

  “I’m sorry my court isn’t up to your standards,” she teased, walking alongside him.

  Dieterbach snorted. “You’re not sorry at all.”

  The baroness nodded. “You’re quite right, Herr Secretary. I’m not sorry at all.” She glanced at her watch. “Time for lunch.”

  They strolled up the winding path from the tennis court toward the back entrance of the eighteenth-century castle that served as the baroness’s country retreat. The huge stone edifice, Schloss Vogel, was located in the mountains of the Bayerischer Wald, eighty miles north of Munich.

  The baroness kept a town house in Munich, where her company’s headquarters were located, but she spent much of her time here at the castle.

  The baroness served the secretary sandwiches and wine in an enclosed glass terrace she had had constructed on one of the castle’s higher ramparts. From this lofty height they could dine and view the surrounding mountains and valleys for many miles.

  Dieterbach eyed the baroness appreciatively across the small table. He had made advances toward her in the past, and she had deflected them each time; but he hadn’t yet given up hope.

  “I have a favor to ask,” she said, refilling his glass.

  “I expected you would.”

  The baroness batted her eyes flirtatiously. “I do enjoy your company, too, Herr Dieterbach.”

  “Not as much as you could, Baroness.”

  “Don’t be naughty. I have something serious to discuss.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “You know President Despres of El Coronado?”

  “Yes. In our office he’s referred to affectionately as ‘that little black swine.”

  “ “He needs foreign aid.”

  “He needs a firing squad.”

  “Fifty million marks. That’s all.”

  “Never. He’s on the department’s shit list. Right near the top, in fact.”

  “Take him off it, then.”

  “On what grounds?”

  “I don’t know. Recent evidence of reform. Whatever excuses you people traditionally make when you change your minds.”

  “You’re a very cynical woman, Baroness.”

  “I’m a very practical, realistic woman.”

  “Why should we help him?”

  The baroness explained about Goth’s program. She didn’t tell the secretary that Dalton Stewart had already beaten her out of it. She made it appear that the deal would be in the bag for her if Dieterbach could persuade his government to open the foreignaid tap for Despres.

  “Why not give him the money yourself? Fifty million? You can afford it.”

  “He’s already extorting me to the hilt.”

  Dieterbach looked uncomfortable. “It won’t look good. Despres is an international pariah.”

  “But you can do it, can’t you? It’s so little money.”

  The secretary rubbed his chin and thought about it. “I suppose I could hide it in a larger program—the Caribbean Development Fund. But I’ll have to twist some arms even so.”

  The baroness smiled and patted Dieterbach’s hand. “I knew I could count on you.”

  Dieterbach gave her a pleading look. “I don’t have to be back in Berlin until tomorrow, and my wife’s in England….”

  The baroness slapped his arm lightly. “No, no. I have a killing work load today. Look, when you’ve got this thing done for me, come back and we’ll celebrate. How’s that?”

  Dieterbach persisted a few minutes longer, for his ego’s sake, then gave up.

  The baroness saw the secretary to the front portico, where his car was waiting.

  “You’re a most desirable woman,” Dieterbach announced in a solemn tone.

  “Thank you, Herr Secretary.”

  “But you’re not at all what you pretend to be, are you?”

  The baroness affected surprise. “What do I pretend to be?”

  Dieterbach stared at her knowingly. “You have enviable public relations, I’ll say that. The government should hire you to advise our diplomats. Auf Wiedersehen.”

  The baroness went up to her study on the second floor. The arrogant bastard, she thought. Thinking he understood her. How little he really knew. His attitude tempted her to take him off her books altogether. As soon as he got the loan to Despres in the works, she’d review the situation. God, how much had she paid him in bribes these past three or four years? It must be over half a million marks.

  Still, Dieterbach did deliver. That was more than one could say about many government figures she’d dealt with over the years.

  Karla Schmidt, her private secretary, came in. “Everything for this afternoon is on your desk, Baroness.”

  The baroness looked at the pile of correspondence and telephone slips.

  Several hours’ work.

  “Photographers are coming at two from that English magazine, Baroness.

  And Herr Hellmann from Deutschebank at three. Lotte Brandt about the new ad campaign at threethirty. And a woman from Earthly Scents at four.”

  “What does she want?”

  “A new perfume endorsement.”

  “Not another one?”

  “You’re enormously popular,” Karla said.

  “You think so?”

  “You’re a role model to women everywhere, Baroness.”

  “Do you think I’m a role model?”

  Karla blushed.
“Of course.”

  Karla had worked for her longer than any other secretary. She often wondered why the poor woman put up with her; she knew she was a slave driver.

  By six o’clock the baroness had cleared the day’s business. She summoned Karla back to her study.

  “What about Stewart Biotech?” she asked. “Have you found out if it’s a public company?”

  “It’s not, Baroness. The Stewart family owns eighty percent of the stock. The rest is in the hands of Stewart lawyers and Stewart’s chief assistant, Henry Ajemian.”

  “That’s a pity.”

  The baroness had for a while entertained the notion of trying a secret buyout of Stewart Biotech. She was still furious that Stewart had outmaneuvered her with Goth.

  But she had hardly given up. The profit potential in Goth’s program was simply enormous—far greater than anything she had ever invested in. Still, there was something bigger in Jupiter than money. If it worked, it would open up a new dimension in her life—something beyond the now well-worn satisfactions of international business and finance, or the invisible political power she was amassing. Jupiter represented an opportunity that was impossible to quantify. And it beckoned to her like some forbidden thrill, some ultimate kind of satisfaction beyond normal mortal experience. Jupiter was the chance to influence the human race in a way it had never been influenced before. It was the chance to play God.

  But if she was going to get possession of it, she knew she’d have to scramble. She had underestimated this Dalton Stewart.

  He was smarter than she had thought.

  The baroness sighed at her own Machiavellian scheming. How naturally the determination to dominate others came to her. She had spent a lifetime perfecting it.

  She said good night to her secretary, spent a few minutes reviewing some papers, and then turned off the desk lamp. She leaned back in her big leather swivel chair and stared at the painting on the wall. It was the work of an obscure artist from the late medieval period and depicted the Virgin Mary holding the baby Jesus to her breast. Mother and child both wore halos. It was pretty standard stuff from the period, and not terribly well executed at that. But something about it spoke to the baroness. Perhaps it was the expression of suffering on the faces of mother and child. The painting reminded her of the trauma her birth had caused her own mother-the woman had nearly bled to death—and the disappointment she had caused her father, who had wanted a son.

  She grew up wanting to be a boy; it was the central emotion of her childhood. She had prayed that she would wake one day and find that God had made a mistake and that she was a boy after all. Because boys were strong and girls were weak. If she had been born a boy, her father would not have taken everything from hen-her childhood, her virginity, even her fertility. The shame of those years burned in her still. She had wanted so much to love him, but he had made her hate him instead.

  No one defended her through those years—no one, not her mother, not the servants, not her governess. No one. Her father ruled. Everyone was terrified of him.

  Outside the household it was the same. Wilhelm von Hauser was far too important a personage in the community for anyone to risk his displeasure. Even the family physician—a despicable little toad of a man—colluded against her. He treated her for venereal disease. How old was she then—ten? He arranged an illegal abortion when she was only thirteen. The doctor who performed it was a drunk.

  She found out when she was twenty-two that he had so scarred her uterus that she could never have any children.

  Survival demanded strength, so Gerta became strong. She learned how to kill her emotions. And she learned how to be patient. And one day her prayers were answered.

  When her father was sixty-six, he had a stroke that left him paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair. He remained alert and conscious, but he was unable to move or speak.

  She was appointed his legal guardian. Since she would inherit his majority interest in Hauser Industries upon his death, she convened the board and had herself named the company’s new CEO.

  There was little opposition. She had already proved herself in the business world, and no one doubted that she was capable of running the company at least as well as her father had.

  Next, she fired all the top management—all the people who owed their positions to her father—and replaced them with new people, loyal to her.

  When she had consolidated her position in the company, she turned her attention to her father. She devoted herself to showing him just what it meant, just what it felt like, to be at someone else’s mercy—someone who had been taught cruelty from an early age. He learned a lot in those last days—about helplessness, about suffering.

  About pain.

  She kept him alive for six more months; then she let him go.

  No man was ever happier to die.

  Baroness von Hauser walked over to one of the study windows and opened it. A chill breeze ruffled the drapes. The thousand acres of field and forest that comprised the estate of Schloss Vogel lay invisible below her in the darkness of the new moon.

  She was emotionally dead inside. She regretted the loss, but it was the only way she could ever have survived. She liked to think of her unwillingness to feel love or compassion as a rare kind of strength.

  Love meant vulnerability, after all; and to be vulnerable was to negate the very purpose of her life, which was to rise to a position of such power that she could never be made vulnerable to anything or anyone again. Ever.

  l What a terrible way to get pregnant, Anne thought. It was like a rape in slow motion.

  Looking down, she saw her spread thighs and bare knees gleaming unnaturally white in the bright bath of light over the operating table.

  Her feet were hooked in the table’s stirrups, and Dr. Harold Goth sat on a stool positioned between them, clad in surgical green gown and cap.

  He was slowly inserting a long, flexible probe into her vagina.

  She could see his latex-gloved hands twisting it steadily forward, and she could feel its hard, unyielding foreignness as it penetrated deeper inside her. Beside him was a small video monitor that allowed him to follow the progress of the probe with ultrasound.

  “Relax,” Goth commanded. “Don’t tense your muscles.”

  He sounded irritated. But of course that was the way he sounded most of the time. He had explained the entire procedure to her, but not voluntarily. She had had to drag the details out of him over a period of days. He seemed from the outset to have adopted the attitude that the matter was really none of her business.

  She almost wished now that she didn’t know what he was doing. It was only making her more anxious.

  Anne Stewart had found it hard to like Dr. Harold Goth. He was a stiff, introverted man with little warmth or charm.

  She had spent the better part of four days at Dr. Goth’s unfinished clinic in the new wing of St. Bonaventure’s Hospital, where he had subjected her to seemingly endless batteries of tests and injections.

  During those long hours in the clinic, she had tried to engage Goth in conversation on topics like music and literature. He wasn’t much interested. The only thing she found out was that he had a passion for Sherlock Holmes—a subject about which she knew nothing. Her attempts to impress him with her knowledge of biology had made him even more uncommunicative.

  He did discuss the fragile X syndrome with her. He explained how he would extract the DNA from her fertilized egg, how he would isolate the gene on the X chromosome that carried the faulty DNA sequence, and finally how he would use restriction enzymes to surgically splice and replace the area of faulty sequence.

  She tried to draw him out as well about the so-called Jupiter program—the collaborative venture in which he and her husband were so deeply involved. But the mere mention of the subject seemed to make him nervous. He would only mutter something about “extensive gene therapy,” or that it was all “too technical for the layman to understand.” He finally got her off the subject for good by
telling her that his contract with Stewart Biotech did not allow him to discuss Jupiter with anyone.

  “But I’m the wife of the man financing your work,” she protested.

  Goth just pushed his eyeglasses back up the bridge of his nose and glanced away. “Then let your husband tell you.”

  Today the doctor was collecting her eggs. (“Harvesting your oocytes”

  was the phrase he had used; it made her think of the eggs as ripe little pumpkins.) Over the last several days her ovaries had been stimulated by injections of Pergonal to increase the egg production, and now Goth was performing what he called a “transvaginal aspiration.”

  Using the ultrasound monitor as a guide, he directed the probe into the vagina, up through the cervix, uterus, and fallopian tube all the way to the left ovary, suspended in the body cavity just outside the horn-shaped open end of the fallopian tube. One by one he burst the follicles surrounding the ripe eggs with the probe’s needle and gently vacuumed the eggs into the probe. The eggs traveled back through the probe and out along a length of thin tubing into a suction trap.

  Even with the light anesthesia he had given her, the pain caused by the procedure was considerable. The nurse standing behind her mopped her brow with a cool, damp cloth. Anne tried to distract herself by focusing on the suction trap. It consisted of a small glass test tube with a two-holed stopper in the top. The tubing from the probe was pushed just inside one of the holes. A second piece of tubing ran out from the other opening to the suctioning device. When the suctioned eggs reached the trap, they simply settled to the bottom. She wished she could see the eggs, but they were much too small—a mere two-hundredths of an inch in diameter.

  As uncomfortable as the harvesting of the eggs turned out to be, it was a pleasure compared with the harvesting of Dalton’s sperm the day before.

  She and Dalton had had sex the night before in their hotel suite, and Dalton had made a big fuss about having to use a condom.

  He had had a difficult time getting it on, and an even more difficult time removing it. The whole business had been messy, timeconsuming, and exasperating. It had put her on edge and made him angry. And of course it had ruined the sex.