“It’s unlikely.”
“I don’t agree. Goth’s assistant sold you a copy, didn’t she?
Why couldn’t she have sold one to someone else?”
Stewart didn’t bother to argue the point. She could be right, after all.
“And we must be more careful with our own copies,” the baroness continued. “At this moment there are four: one in my Munich office, one in your New York office, and two at the Romanian clinic. They must all be copy-proof.”
“I thought they were.”
“Not sufficiently, according to my lab in Munich. They can add a ten-digit access code to the program. If anyone attempts to copy or print from it, or even call it up on the screen, without entering the correct number sequence, it automatically shuts down. The copies in Sibiu and Munich are already encoded that way. That leaves the copy in New York. We must fix it immediately.”
“It’s locked in a safe in the wall of my office. No one else has access except Ajemian. It’s perfectly secure.”
“We must code it. That’s not an unreasonable request, Dalton.
There’s no way to copyright Jupiter, after all. It’s illegal in most countries. So our only protection is to make sure it doesn’t get out of our hands. Karla is in New York now. She could take it to the Munich lab. Would you please instruct Ajemian to give it to her?”
“If you insist.”
The baroness wrapped the towel over her breasts and tucked it in under her arms so that it hung from her like a strapless gown.
“In the meantime, we must get to work in Romania. We only have a few months to renovate that place.”
She headed for the bathroom. She paused at the door and smiled at him.
“Don’t go away,” she said. “I have something important to discuss.”
She closed the door behind her, and in a few minutes Stewart heard the shower running.
Watching her with the towel had aroused him. Despite his alcohol-induced headache and general lassitude, he thought he could probably perform adequately enough—if she was interested.
If she was interested.
The uncertainty was a novel experience for a man who had indulged himself much of his adult life energetically pursuing and seducing women.
The baroness, he had discovered, was quite different from the women he had known. For one thing, she had an uncanny ability for stealing the initiative—of somehow always being in a position to dictate the terms of their relationship.
He understood now why she was so successful in her business dealings.
She was always the most determined, the most organized. She was untiring and perfectly focused. And she always knew exactly what she wanted. This, combined with her willpower and lack of scruples, enabled her to get her way in almost any situation.
She seemed to have no exploitable weaknesses, either. She didn’t take drugs, she didn’t drink much. She had no family that she cared about, no children, no close friends. And she lived in a fortress environment, protected by alarm systems, bodyguards, and attack dogs.
Gradually—bit by bit, day by day—Stewart found himself sliding into a subordinate relationship with the woman. He was aware that it was happening, yet he felt powerless to do anything about it. And ending their partnership now was out of the question.
He had hoped, in the beginning, to forge some kind of acceptable association with hen-if not a completely loving and intimate one, at least an alliance of mutual interest. But that now seemed impossible.
She was simply too demanding and difficult a woman, unable to accept any show of affection on his part as anything other than an invitation to tease and manipulate him.
For weeks she would massage his ego, praising him in the presence of others, deferring to him, acting supportive. Then, when he was beginning to feel some comfort in her presence, she would start subtly undermining him by criticizing him or even embarrassing him in public.
Nothing about her could ever be taken for granted. She kept him constantly off guard. It was quite maddening.
As for sex, it was to her an itch to be scratched, no more. And the more satisfaction one could get out of the way one scratched, the better—as long as it didn’t interfere with one’s real life. If he wanted good sex, she explained, then he should learn to experience it her way. He soon found out exactly what she meant.
One night fairly early in their relationship he was awakened from a deep slumber to feel the bed shaking violently under him.
The room was in semidarkness. A small lamp was lit on the baroness’s dressing table.
He raised his head, alarmed. There was violent movement, other bodies, sharp cries . . . some kind of struggle going on. His first confused thoughts were that the baroness was being attacked by somebody. He twisted around and sat up, ready to fight or flee for his life.
In a few seconds his first impressions dissolved. Fright gave way to astonishment.
Two other people were on the bed—Aldous and Katrina. And both were piled on top of the baroness. Katrina was lying prone with her legs spread wide and her face buried in the baroness’s blond hair. Aldous, in turn, was on top of Katrina, grunting like an animal and ramming his penis violently into her from behind.
One of Katrina’s elbows kept hitting Stewart in the side.
It was too late to feign sleep. He sat there, immobile, trying to decide how to react. Expressions of outrage would probably be laughed at. And retreating from the bed would be cowardly.
The scene changed. The women were now wrapped in a passionate kiss, and Aldous was now pumping away furiously inside the baroness. She was moaning and shuddering with pleasure.
Seeing Stewart awake, Katrina reached a hand across and grabbed his penis. She fished it impatiently through his pajama fly, then squeezed it hard and giggled. She seemed drunk, or high on drugs. In spite of himself, Stewart felt powerfully aroused. He had had sex with many women, but never in a crowd.
Katrina climbed on top of him. Protestation was pointless. Katrina swiftly straddled his hips and impaled herself on him with a long, shuddering moan.
The baroness reached over and began stroking Katrina’s belly.
She slipped her hand further down and closed her fingers around the base of Stewart’s penis. Katrina increased her movement, pistoning up and down violently. He exploded inside her almost immediately.
Katrina paused, then gently began her pumping motion again.
The baroness kept her fingers around him. His penis stayed hard, and within minutes Katrina had him on the verge of coming again. And then her own orgasms began—one after another, at rapid intervals. She shuddered, whimpered, moaned, tossed her head back and forth. Her eyes and jaw shut tight. He could feel her vagina muscles squeezing him powerfully.
The baroness, far more excited now than Stewart had ever seen her, began her own paroxysms. She locked her legs around Aldous, clamped jaw and eyes shut, and launched herself into an extraordinary series of angry convulsions that seemed to last for minutes.
Stewart came again, even more powerfully than the first time.
The orgasm seemed to start somewhere in his toes, shoot to the base of his spineand explode through his penis in a scalding eruption that was as painful as it was ecstatic.
Katrina, still in a state of sexual frenzy, rolled off Stewart and returned her attention to the baroness, licking and sucking at her breasts hungrily.
The other three continued their revelry, moaning and squealing and giggling and gasping in various configurations. Stewart, stunned, spent, and vaguely angry, lost interest in the proceedings and retreated to a bed in a room down the hall.
More nights like that first one soon followed.
Sometimes only Katrina was present, sometimes only Aldous—whatever suited the baroness’s whim. Sometimes they were in costume; sometimes they were in restraints. The baroness loved to wield a whip on both of them.
Conventional sex held little interest for the baroness. Some of what did interest her repelled Stew
art—especially her penchant for sadomasochism—but gradually the shock was wearing off, as the baroness repeatedly challenged him to broaden his sexual horizons. Sex became a kind of no-holds-barred competition, a game of sexual chicken. The baroness’s kinky tastes kept her constantly out in front of him. She initiated; he reacted, permanently on the defensive.
His sudden immersion in this bacchanalian maelstrom disoriented Stewart. He found himself spending far too much time recovering from some of the sessions, and far too much time thinking about them afterwards. The baroness, by contrast, compartmentalized her life rigorously. Sex was simply not central to the passions that powered her existence.
Stewart suspected that she was laying on all this sex for him at least in part just to probe him for his own weaknesses—to get him ever more deeply hooked and dependent.
By slow degrees the woman was shattering Stewart’s complacent assumptions about himself, luring him ever deeper into a pattern of self-destructive behavior.
Katrina had further muddied the situation by developing an attachment to him. She was immature and clinging, and prone to getting herself into trouble. She was also a heavy drug user, and despite the baroness’s threats she was unable to give them up. She had been arrested several times; twice Stewart himself had pulled her out of trouble.
Stewart persuaded himself that he was just biding his time. He would tolerate whatever he had to, and eventually things would go his way.
Once the Jupiter program was established, the money would start coming in, and he could free himself of his indebtedness to the baroness. He could rebuild and expand his companies and see his empire grow again.
And he still clung to the hope that he would eventually persuade Anne to come back to him.
The baroness came out of the shower with a fresh towel wrapped around her. “I was thinking that it might be a good idea if we got married,”
she said.
Dalton stared at her, dumbstruck.
She smiled teasingly. “Are you against the idea?”
“I don’t know. But I certainly assumed you were.”
The baroness sat on the edge of the bed and began drying between her toes with the towel. “I’ve changed my mind.”
“Why?”
“Neither of us is suitable for a conventional marriage, of course.
You’ve been divorced twice, and are about to be divorced again. I’ve never remarried because I knew beforehand that it wouldn’t work. But the kind of arrangement that the two of us now have could just as easily be continued in the legal framework of a marriage. And under those circumstances, there would never really be any reason to get divorced.”
“Why get married in the first place, then?”
“There are business advantages. For both of us. And that’s really how I would view a marriage—strictly as a business contract.”
“Anne and I are still a long way from divorced. And there’s Genny’s welfare to think about.”
“Of course. She’s the main reason that we should do this,” the baroness said. “I can help you get custody.”
Stewart brought his eyes up from the baroness’s vigorous toweling of her thighs. “How can you do that?”
“Obviously, if you’re going to marry again, the court’ll look more favorably on you for being able to provide a wholesome family environment for your daughter.”
Stewart wondered if the baroness was making a joke.
“And that, combined with an extremely generous financial settlement, should do it. Your wife has no money of her own, after all. She should be grateful for a reasonable arrangement—frequent visiting privileges, that kind of thing.”
“The child is much more important to Anne than money.”
“Nothing is more important to anyone than money, if there’s enough of it. Your wife grew up poor. She doesn’t want to be poor again. And she doesn’t want her daughter to be, either. She can be persuaded.”
“Why do you want me to have custody? You don’t like children. And you and Genny certainly didn’t hit it off.”
“We must have her, that’s why. Think it through. So far she’s the only proof that the Jupiter program works. Her presence will be wonderfully persuasive. Nobody will be able to resist Jupiter after seeing her. Without her, we run the risk of losing our investment.”
Her words hit Stewart like a slap. He felt furious. “You’re talking about my daughter as if she was a sales gimmick.”
The baroness sat up. “But you must see my point. And you do want custody of the child, don’t you?”
“Anne’s a very good mother.”
“I’m sure she is. And what about you? Do you want to be a good father? Genny cannot live with both of you.”
The baroness got up from the bed and disappeared into her dressing room. She reappeared a few minutes later, wearing black silk lingerie.
She had combed her blond hair out and anointed herself with a particularly potent perfume. “You can stay, if you like.”
No. He needed time to think. “I’m driving back to Munich,” he said.
A light rain was falling, and Dalton Stewart drove slowly. All the way down the narrow, twisting turns of Route 16 south from Regensburg through Saal and Abensberg, and on the broad engineered stretches of the E-6 Autobahn from Geisenfeld to Munich, he reflected upon what the baroness had said.
He did want custody of Genny. And Anne would put up a ferocious battle to keep her. So marrying the baroness would probably help him get custody. But then what?
He remembered the rumors about the baroness—the suspect circumstances surrounding the deaths of both her father and her husband.
He stared through the windshield at the deep orange glow cast against the clouded night sky by the lights of Munich, still twenty miles distant.
The baroness didn’t want him. It made no sense. She wanted Genny.
And marrying him was the only way she could get her.
And once she became Genny’s stepmother, she’d have no need of Dalton Stewart.
Christ, he thought. He had made a business deal with the Devil.
Anne pushed her chair back from the desk. She had made some error, she decided.
She repeated the experiment. She inserted the RCD with her own genome on it into the computer and carefully followed the directions for transferring the data into the database of Goth’s program, reading the instructions out loud to herself as she proceeded. Then she repeated the process with Dalton Stewart’s genome.
When these steps were complete, she instructed Jupiter to do what Goth had presumably designed it to do—analyze the two genomes and produce the blueprint for a third one that would marry these two, correct any genetic flaws, and add its own mysterious genetic enhancements.
Once the program had done this—and it took a while, because even at the lightning speed with which this computer could crunch data, it had to compare and select among billions of base pair combinations before constructing its new genome—Anne then fed Genny’s genome into the database and asked it to compare its freshly created blueprint with Genny’s.
Anne had expected the results to show a one-hundred-percent match. The arrangement of all the billions of base pairs along the chromosomes of the two genomes should be identical in sequence.
But they weren’t. For the second time, they showed a roughly ninety-nine-percent match. And that, in genetics, was not accuracy; it was not even a close miss. It meant that the sequences 304
I differed in several million locations. It could just as well be the genome of a chimp or a pig.
She considered the possibilities.
Could some of the genome data itself be flawed? Unlikely. She was sure that both her and Genny’s genomes were correct, because she had obtained three genetic samples for each of them, gotten three separate genome readouts from three separate laboratories, and run numerous computer cross-checks on them. She had gotten perfect matches every time.
Dalton’s genome had been taken from hair samples co
llected by Anne from one of Dalton’s hairbrushes. Anne had also had multiple tests run on these, and again they had come out identical.
Was the Jupiter program itself flawed?
It was at least internally consistent. It made no mistakes with the material that Anne could cross-check. She had suspected at first that it might be designed to create automatically a different genome from the same two sets each time they were fed into it.
That was what nature itself did, after all. Except for identical twins, every new union of sperm and egg from the same man and woman produced a different child, with a slightly different genome.
But the program appeared to be designed to accommodate this.
It offered specific instructions that allowed the operator to determine in advance which of a whole range of variables she wished to manipulate and provided her a specific scale of choices to follow. It also allowed the operator to scan any genome fed into it and get back a detailed readout of all these variables.
Anne had done all that. She had loaded into the program the identical choice of variables it had informed her were in Genny’s genome, and she had rechecked herself every step of the way. But it didn’t matter.
Jupiter simply refused to reproduce Genny’s genome.
What possibilities were left?
That the hair taken from the brush didn’t belong to Dalton Stewart? Or that Dalton wasn’t Genny’s father? Goth could conceivably have substituted someone else’s sperm. For all she knew, he could have used his own.
No, no, no. That was all wrong. Genny’s genome had been screened genetically when she was only a few weeks old, and the laboratory results had shown unequivocally that Dalton Stewart was her father.
So it came back to Jupiter. The program was flawed. Yet how could that be?
There was her daughter, Genny—a most extraordinarily gifted child.
But not just gifted: Genny possessed capacities not known to be in the human gene pool. She appeared to be a unique specimen of Homo sapiens, something never seen before. Where else could these characteristics have come from except from Jupiter?
Tom Hyman Page 29
