"In most ways," Lee nodded. "However, I don't claim that women are equal to men in all respects."
The other looked at her sharply. "Why not? Certainly women are equal to men in all respects."
"For one thing," Lee said wryly, "they don't have as long a penis. We can carry this chip on our shoulder to ridiculous extremes. It's like the contention that blacks are the same as whites in all respects. Nonsense. One has a darker complexion than the other. So far as women are concerned-well, there has never been a female heavyweight champion of the world. A second-rate male pro would flatten the best female fighter who ever lived; they simply have more upper-body strength! On the other hand, I've always thought the first astronauts should have been women. We're generally smaller and take up less space, use less food and oxygen, and on an average, we're more deft with our hands. We seem to have more endurance under stress. I wonder how the average man would hold up under a difficult childbirth."
The tall Sheila eyed her. "You have one quality that doesn't come out in the computer reports-the strength to state strong opinions, darling. Do you have any other questions?"
"Yes," Lee said definitely. "I'm surprised that both you and Mr. McBride have revealed so much to me, even before I've consented to take the position. You've told me that most workers for the World Club don't even know it exists. But you've bared everything to me."
The other lit still another cigarette. "Not quite everything, dear," she said dryly. "You must realize that our computers selected you above all others. The computers seldom make mistakes in these things. We are assured that you are the best person for the position and the computers are of the opinion that you will take it. Obviously, it was required that you know what you are stepping into."
Lee took a deep breath and said in resignation, "What would my duties be?"
"This first week, to give members the chance to become acquainted with you, since in this position you will be privy to many of their innermost decisions. The committee is now in session and will be for the rest of this month. Most of them are now in residence. These regular sessions are held twice a year. They're informal, and consist largely of their sitting around, two by two or in larger groups, and discussing developments of the program. Not all are present at this session. Grace Cabot-Hudson, who is rather old and infirm, remained at her residence in North America." Sheila Duff-Roberts looked at her timepiece. "But now, my dear, you must be tired, and will wish to see your suite and freshen up. And I have duties, of course." Her eyes shifted slightly. "By the way, there is to be apanous tonight. Would you be interested?" Lee shook her head. She wasn't shocked, not in this age, but she was somewhat surprised. She said, "No, I'm not interested in group sex." The Amazon's brows went up. "Lesbian?"
"No."
"Pity," Sheila said. "However, perhaps in time you'll change your mind. Which reminds me. We have a staff of half a dozen office girls." She took her lower lip in her perfect teeth. "Some of them are quite darling."
There was a knock at the door and a man with the look of a well-tanned European, somewhere in his mid-thirties sauntered through. He wore his red hair in a young athlete's crew cut and his dark blue eyes seemed out of place in his dark complexion. There was an easygoing sardonic quality in his smile. "Sheila," he said, "you are looking particularly Brunhildic today. Have you been butchering male chauvinists with your broadsword again?"
The secretary of the Central Committee snorted at that and said, "Where the hell have you been, Jerry? I've been trying to get in touch with you for weeks."
"Reclusing," he told her easily. "Haven't you heard? I am currently labeled the world's wealthiest recluse and also its most eligible bachelor. Want to get married? Oops, no, of course not."
Sheila snorted again and said, "This is Lee Garrett. She's to be my new secretary. Lee, Mr. Jeremiah Auburn. Mr. Auburn is a member of the Central Committee; its youngest, by the way. How he ever got into its membership is a mystery to me."
"Mind how you speak to your superiors, Ms. Duff-Roberts," he said amiably. And then, as he shook hands with Lee, "Wizard, we meet again."
Lee wrinkled her forehead. "I. I've heard about you, Mr. Auburn, but where did we ever meet? I'm sure that I would recall."
A glint of laughter came into his eyes. "It's an old ploy of mine. I'm terrible at remembering people and women become so distressed when I don't recall their faces, particularly if I
once spent a long weekend with them in the Bahamas, or Hawaii, or wherever, that I say, 'Wizard, we meet again,' just to be sure." He headed for an elaborate Florentine cabinet, which turned out to be a disguised bar.
"How good of you, Jerry," Sheila said sarcastically. "It must be distressing to be such a ladykiller."
"A distress you'd love to share," he said over his shoulder. And then, "Hmmm, perhaps you do."
"I hope you worry about that a lot," Sheila said, obviously well used to his banter.
He called, "Anybody else up to a bit of guzzle? I just checked. It's twelve, so you won't be considered a morning lush."
Sheila asked for Scotch but Lee shook her head, still uneasy. Somehow, this man seemed familiar; possibly it was his voice, but she knew that she'd never seen him. There wasn't a woman in the world who could meet Jerry Auburn and forget about it. The leading light of the rocket set for a decade, he had suddenly reversed his engines and disappeared from sight, in the tradition of Howard Hughes. From time to time he would pop up in the news but largely he was, as he had said, a recluse. Lee couldn't imagine him being a member of the World Club, much less of its Central Committee.
He brought Sheila's drink back to her, held up his own darkish brandy and water, and said, "Cheers, Sheila, old chum-pal. A new secretary, eh? What happened to the ultra-efficient Pamela?"
"I'm sure you'll leam all about it," she said, and sipped. "Lee just came in today."
"Wizard," Jerry Auburn said, looking Lee over again. He made with a mock leer. "You certainly pick them, Sheila."
Sheila didn't disguise her impatience at that. "Attractiveness and poise are requirements of employees who must meet the public, the news media, and so forth, Mr. Auburn. As you very well know."
He finished the drink in one fell swoop and looked at his chronometer. "This is as good an opportunity as any for me to become acquainted with our beauteous Ms. Garrett. Are you available for lunch, ah, Lee?"
"Why," she said, "I haven't even seen my rooms yet, but
I'm not really tired and we didn't eat on the shuttle from Paris."
"Wizard," he said. "Then with Sheila's permission, I'll whisk you off."
"I'll see you later this afternoon, dear," Sheila told her. "Don't forget about the, uh, party this evening, if you change your mind."
Out in the hall, as they walked toward the staircase, Jerry Auburn grinned and said, "Has Sheila already invited you to one of her versions of the partousT'
She looked up at him from the side of her eyes. "Yes."
"I went to one once. They're rather in the far-out line-in the Roman tradition of Nero. Not my cup of tea. I love ladies one at a time and I don't like boys at all. And I'll leave the building of horizontal pyramids to the pharaohs. Must've been unhealthy; they're all dead, I notice."
She laughed. "We seem to share similar ideas," she told him, before realizing that he might misinterpret that.
He chuckled and took her arm as they began to descend the stairs without saying anything further on the subject of sex.
The pages at the door came hurriedly to attention as Jeremiah Auburn approached, as did the guards with their halberds.
There was a beautiful sportster at the curb, one of the extreme models from Bucharest. Lee was moderately surprised when he ushered her to it and saw her seated on the passenger side. "You have permission to drive your own car in Rome?" she said.
"Ranking members of the World Club have their prerogatives, Lee. Having our central headquarters here is a feather in the caps of the city fathers. They turned over the Palazzo Colonna t
o us about ten years ago. Do you know Rome? Any preferences on where to eat?"
"I haven't been here for years. I'll leave it to you."
"Wizard, let's say the Hostaria dell'Orso. I believe it's supposed to be the oldest restaurant in town. Dante used to live in the building."
He turned the corner and sped down the Via Battisti in the direction of the looming monstrosity that was the monument to Vittorio Emanuele.
As they passed it, Lee shook her head. "Imagine leveling several acres of the Roman forum to erect that thing."
"My sentiments exactly," he said. "So, you're to be Sheila's new secretary. Did she give you her song and dance about the dream?"
Lee looked over at him in some surprise. "She made rather a moving appeal for the goals of the World Club, a stable society in which most of history's problems would be solved."
Jerry laughed softly. "Did she discuss her final solution to the women's rights problem?"
"Why, no. She asked how I stood on the question but we didn't go very far into it."
He said, "I suspect her goal is the reestablishment of a matrilineal society. Get Sheila a bit into her cups and she begins to point out that women predominate numerically in the world but for all practical purposes are ignored in its governing. For instance, we've never had a female president of the United States. I suspect that Sheila wouldn't object to taking the job." He grinned again. "I can just see a whole cabinet of lesbians."
Lee said, confused, "But what does motivate the Central Committee, if not what Sheila calls the dream?"
He shot a look over at her, even as he maneuvered through the narrow streets. "Did our good Sheila tell you anything about the composition of the Central Comitttee?"
"No, not yet. Aside from you, she mentioned Grace Cabot-Hudson."
"And what do you know about Grace?"
"Not much, really. Isn't she supposed to be the richest woman in the world?"
"Uh huh. And what do you know about me?"
"Well, aside from the news media nonsense, not much. Oh, yes, I've heard that you were possibly the richest man in the world."
Jerry laughed outright. "Harrington Chase would hate you for that."
"You mean that anti-semitic Texan who supports those ultra-right wing organizations. Good heavens, what has he got to do with it?"
"Harrington's a member of the Central Committee, my dear. So is Mendel Amschel, for that matter, which sometimes drives poor Harrington up the wall."
"The Viennese banker? He's another one that's sometimes called the richest man. Why should Mr. Chase object to him?"
"If you count his whole family, Mendel may control more wealth than anyone else. The irony is that while he's a Jew, I doubt if he's religious at all. Ah, here we are."
The Hostaria dell'Orso was located in a medieval palace, elegant and very expensive. Jerry Auburn asked the maitre d' for a private dining room and they were immediately escorted to the second floor.
"Sorry," Jerry said to Lee. "There are still some who remember my face, especially women. Unfortunately, I'm seldom mentioned without that 'most eligible bachelor' label being hung around my neck, as though anybody bothered to get married anymore. But even in a place like this, it can be a hazard. Especially when radicals sometimes send a nut case to nice joints on the off chance that they can take a shot at some bloated aristocrat like me."
"No wonder you're a recluse," she told him in a low voice, as they were shown into a luxurious private room.
The maitre d' turned them over to a captain and bowed himself out. The captain gave them menus and stood back, his face stolid.
"Are you a bloated aristocrat too?" Jerry said as they scanned their cartes.
"I suppose so," she sighed. "But not as bloated as you are. I'm sure I'm not bloated enough for a Nihilist to take a crack at me, as you put it."
He looked over at her appreciatively and said, "Bloat is not the word. Zaftig, guapa, sleek-those are the words."
"Oh, hush," she said, laughing.
When the captain was gone, Lee looked at him accusingly. She said, "Very well, then. If you don't have the dream, why are you a member of the Central Committee?"
He thought about that a moment. "Probably to protect my own interests."
"And all of the other members?"
"To protect theirs. That's what motivates almost everyone, you know-their own interests."
She looked at him in disbelief. ' 'Sheila said that it was the World Club which pushed through the assimilating of the United States of the Americas. In my opinion that is the
outstanding political development of this century. How did that protect your interests, Mr. Auburn?"
He smiled mockingly at her and said with deliberate pomposity, "Ms. Garrett, the greater part of my investments are in multinational corporations. Almost all corporations of any size are multinationals these days, staffed by the most competent people the computers can locate. But we still have our Cubas to deal with. Americans owned practically everything in basic Cuban industry until Castro took it over. No buy-out, nothing; lady, the investors took some lumps. Why d'you think the CIA financed the Bay of Pigs invasion? To let us get 'our' Cuba back! We feared Allende, in Chile, might take the Castro route, so Allende was murdered and a military junta took over, demolishing what was left of democracy in Chile. However, we could never be sure that our properties were safe. Now, Ms. Garrett, with the establishment of the United States of the Americas, they are safe. And so are all the raw materials of Latin America, in return for a comparatively small amount of GAS to keep the peons pacified."
She was inwardly upset. "I still say it was a wonderful step of progress."
"Wizard," he said. "I didn't say that the Central Committee worked against the interests of the majority of people. It was to the personal interest of Washington, Jefferson, John Hancock, and Franklin to win independence from England. They were all rich men. But it was also a good thing for the poorer colonists as well."
She looked confused, doubtful.
He grinned wryly and said, "Believe me, Lee, in taking all of Latin America into the United States, the multinationals didn't exactly lose money. Oh, in some of the poorer countries and islands, we drew blanks temporarily. But how do we know what riches might lie under the jungles of, say, Paraguay? Just imagine taking over such nations as Brazil, potentially almost as rich as the original United States. Not to speak of Mexico, Venezuela, and Bolivia, with all their unexploited raw materials. We get contracts for high-rise apartments for all the new recipients of GAS. And somebody has to get richer building roads, public transportation, communications systems, power distribution systems. Believe me, Lee, the multi-nationals did not lose money when the States invited Latin America to join our union."
She said, still arguing, "But the expense of putting all of those millions on GAS. Your taxes have skyrocketed. It surely must have counterbalanced."
He was smiling still. "No. You'd be amazed how cheaply a prole can be maintained from the cradle to the grave. Planned obsolescence has disappeared, so far as the prole is concerned. Everything he consumes has been produced by the most advanced automated equipment. He wears textiles that last damn near forever. He lives in prefab buildings that can be erected overnight. He eats mass-produced foods manufactured largely in factories: His entertainment is canned. His medical care is computerized and automated, as is the pitiful education he wants. I repeat: it costs practically nothing to send a prole from the cradle to the grave."
The waiter entered with Jerry Auburn's cognac, put it on the table, and stepped back.
Lee felt puzzlement but did not know why. Perhaps it was something subtle in the waiter's movements.
Suddenly, Jerry Auburn knocked back his chair and spun. His foot lashed out and upward with the grace of a ballet dancer and kicked the small automatic in the hand of the slim, now snarling, Italian waiter. The weapon struck the ceiling before falling to the side.
The waiter cursed in some dialect that neither of the two
diners understood and snatched for something in his clothing.
Jerry reversed himself, his back to the other, and lashed out with his foot again, high. The shoe connected with the chin and mouth of the attacker, who was slammed back viciously against the wall behind him. In a daze, he slid down to the floor. Jerry did not see the automatic.
Lee got out in a gasp, "Where did you ever learn Savate?"
"From the first guy who used it on me," he said. "We bloated aristocrats learn fast, don't we?"
"Yes, we do," she said, and displayed the automatic in her hand.
Chapter Eleven: The Graf
On the Eastern side of the Rhine, between the Orisons and Lake Constance, lies a tiny baroque toy of a country, Liechtenstein, the last remnant of the Holy Roman Empire and, save for Switzerland, the only nation in western Europe still aloof from the loose confederation called Common Europe. It boasts a population of some 22,000 and an area of 62 square miles, supposedly still a monarchy under His Highness Prince Johann Alois Heinrich Benediktus Gerhardus von und zu Liechtenstein und Duke von Troppau und Jaegerndorf. The prince had gone bankrupt a quarter of a century earlier and these days lived a rocket-set existence on the proceeds of the outright sale of his country. The buyer was Graf Lothar von Brandenburg, who now resided in the Wolfschloss. The schloss, once a robber-baron stronghold, had been built in the 13th century, burned in the Swabian Wars of 1499, then last overhauled in the late 20th century. The Wolfschloss was a forty-minute climb by path northeast of Vaduz, the tiny capital of Liechtenstein, or a few minutes by modern road ending in a cablecar terminal which provided access to the castle. The climb was forbidden to such tourists as still came to the country, and the road was private-unbelievably well patrolled. There were various roadblocks along it.
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