Cool air flowed from the open door of the house behind them and made the fabric of Victoria's robe sway. Nick welcomed the promise of relief from the heat of the outdoors, but he stayed on the porch long enough to laugh at his host's pleasantry and say, "You must have been homesick."

The other nodded, his cheeks shook, and his accent thickened briefly.

"That I was, wasn't I, Vicky? But it's comfortable." He leaned over the porch railing to pluck a newly opened rose, pinched off the thorns, and held it out.

"Emily, my dear. Put it in your hair." As she obeyed, he gestured toward the interior of the house. "Drinks on the left." In an alcove off the entranceway, one of Wilma Atkinson's genetic sculptures moaned and writhed as people pa.s.sed it by. Nick paused to examine it and found a pair of flexible rods that twined around each other to form a double helix, emblem of heredity, that twisted into a complex knot. He petted it, luxuriating in the short, silky fur that covered its surface. Its voice became a purr, and its motions grew less random, as if it were b.u.t.ting for attention. "This must be half cat," he said softly to his wife.

"I wouldn't be surprised," she answered. "Although she's never said."

They found the bar, dominated by an octopoid genimal whose arms were pigmented with green and white stripes, like sinuous barber poles. It was taking verbal orders, and the arms worked in pairs, serving four customers at a time, pouring, mixing, shaking, wiping up occasional spills.

"I've never seen one of those before," said Nick.

"I saw a description in Genginews." That was the industry's trade paper.

"But I didn't know they were on the market yet."

"They aren't."

Emily turned toward the speaker and cried, "Frank! What do you know about it?"

Frank Janifer lifted his gla.s.s to them with a grin. "I hear our host let a friend do him a favor."

They laughed, and then they turned to note the buffet the caterers were a.s.sembling--vast seas of food surrounding islands of flower arrangements--and survey the rooms within their view. Polished tables, antique chairs, flower-filled vases, deeply cushioned sofas, thick carpets as soft as moss beneath their feet, all impressed Nick, and he murmured to his wife, "Much more tasteful inside." They accepted small bits of meat wrapped in pastry crusts from a tray proffered by a perambulating waiter. And then people were leaving the circulating flow of guests to congratulate Emily on the patent, to speculate among the clinks of gla.s.ses on the applications of her Bioblimps, to wonder how they would contribute to the company's fortunes.

"I hear the stock went up a bit already."

"Have you thought of designing a walking suitcase?"

"Or an incubator for preemies."

"Wait till the word about the Mayflower order gets out!"

"You could start with an ordinary kangaroo..."

"Should be something four-legged."

"Use your options now!"

"Like a wallaby."

"Delicious appetizers! You should try..."

"Whatever. Leave it just enough brains to follow you on a leash. And a couple of big pockets on its sides."

"Make a great baby carriage!" "Make it an imprinter, so if anyone else tries to open the pockets..."

"Chomp!"

Laughter. A small bell invited everyone to the buffet, where Nick found the centerpiece to be a whole roast litterbug, easily identifiable by its distinctive jaw. The roast, steam rising from its crusted back, was presided over by a j.a.panese chef wielding a carving knife the size of a samurai's short sword and saying, over and over again, "Don't worry. Grain-fed, perfectly healthy, very tasty!"

No one seemed to have trouble believing him, for the carca.s.s was rapidly diminishing beneath the strokes of the carver's blade. Nick obtained portions for himself and Emily, pa.s.sed her a plate, and then, realizing that she was quite absorbed in her conversation, found a quiet corner beside a bookshelf on which he could rest his plate. Not far away, he recognized Bernie Fischer, the cop, likewise by himself, a plate in his hand, surveying the crowd.

He wondered how the detective had managed to be invited, but then he forgot the matter. A small man--gray-suited, his skin a shade darker than any tan could reasonably achieve, flat, reflecting panes of gla.s.s revealing only intermittently his dark brown eyes--was approaching. He was apparently looking for a niche like Nick's own in which to eat his meal.

"You're..." He groped for the name. "Ralph Ch..."

"Chowdhury. Ralph Chowdhury. I have a lab just down the hall from your dear wife's." He pushed a polished crystal knickknack aside and set his plate on the shelf below the one Nick was using.

Nick blinked in surprise before he realized that, of course, the man was shorter than he. "The armadillo man," he said.

Chowdhury beamed as if delighted to be so known. "Your wife has told you of my poor efforts! I hope she hasn't made too much of our silly rivalry. I am delighted that she has her patent!" He raised his gla.s.s in a gestured toast.

Then he tasted his roast litterbug. "Delicious!"

"I didn't see one outside," said Nick.

Chowdhury's laugh seemed strained, as if he were trying hard to be congenial. "I walked! I live not far away, right in the neighborhood. Besides, my Armadons are not yet ready for the road. Nor are they quite ready to take to Washington. But they will be. Soon! And then Neoform will dominate the transportation market in the sky and on the ground. Both!"

"It surely won't be long before Sean is throwing a party like this for you."

Chowdhury shrugged as if it didn't matter, or as if..."Not for me. He likes your Emily much better." A grin. "She's prettier."

Nick grinned back. "She is, but..." What could he say? He brought the subject back to the Armadons, and then, while Chowdhury described his genimal, concentrated on his food. The roast was indeed delicious, and he finished his serving quickly, but when he looked toward the buffet table, wondering whether there might not be a little more, he saw nothing but an empty s.p.a.ce. The remnants had already been removed.

Chowdhury followed his gaze. "We had our share," he said. "Though I too would like some more." A thought occurred to Nick as he nodded. "Neoform doesn't make the litterbugs, does it?" When the other indicated that he was right, he added, "Then serving one is quite symbolic, isn't it?"

"Devouring the compet.i.tion, you mean?" Chowdhury stared at him for a moment. Then his gaze flicked to the nearby policeman. "You have a poetic mind."

Nick shrugged. "Perhaps I give Sean too much credit."

"Or perhaps not." Chowdhury's tone became quieter, almost musing. "And you make me wonder. Are the police making any progress?"

"On...?"

"On those attempts on your Emily's life."

Bernie Fischer, just a few feet away, suddenly a.s.sumed a more erect posture, as if something he had just heard or seen had made him more alert.

The movement drew Nick's eye, and he wondered what the reason might have been.

But he did not pursue the question. Chowdhury's query still awaited an answer.

As far as Nick knew, the police had made no discernible progress at all.

At least, no one had told him that they had any clues to who had programmed the a.s.sa.s.sin bird to attack Emily. Yet, for some reason he did not himself understand, he said, "I'm not in their confidence." He gestured toward Bernie Fischer. "There's the one in charge, and he does his talking to my wife. But from what she tells me, they're getting very close."

"How nice!" Chowdhury showed his teeth in a broad, beaming grin, but Nick could see the corded lines in his neck that said his jaw muscles were tense.

His body odor seemed to carry a touch of spice that Nick thought made it seem to fit the other man. The spice was...what? Then he had it. Curry.

"I expect they'll have him very soon."

The other drained his gla.s.s abruptly. "It would be a shame if anything happened to Emily. You have a child...?"

They chatted for a few moments more while they emptied their plates. Then Chowdhury left, saying he wanted to find a sweet. Nick remained by the wall, watching the crowd, glancing from time to time toward Bernie Fischer, who in turn seemed to be following Chowdhury with his own gaze.

According to Emily, Chowdhury was abrupt, abrasive, abusive, temperamental, secretive, impatient, and intolerant. But he had been quite cordial just now. He had been willing to speak at least a little about his Armadons. He seemed interested in the search for whoever had programmed the a.s.sa.s.sin bird to attack Emily. He seemed sympathetic and concerned.

Nick preferred to believe his wife. She was not the sort of person who could convince herself that a thoroughly nice person was so awful, and then describe that person so to others.

Chowdhury therefore had to be dissembling. But why? Was he hoping to get on the good side of Neoform's current fair-haired girl? Did he wish that some of her good fortune would rub off on him and make his Armadons as great an initial success as her Bioblimp? Or...?

Nick left his plate on the shelf and wandered through the house. Where was Emily? There, talking animatedly to her technician, Alan. She saw him andwaved her gla.s.s. Beside her was another Atkinson sculpture, a dozen narrow stalks thrusting from the dirt in a plain, brick-red flowerpot set atop a baby grand piano. The stalks merged to form two linked rings that were covered in fine scales picking out a colorful mosaic. He could not see the details clearly enough to tell what, if anything, the pattern signified, but he could hear the thing's metallic, chiming voice.

There were more conventional artworks as well--paintings, prints, antique scientific instruments, small carvings in wood and stone, each displayed to good advantage but safely set behind gla.s.s barriers, all originals, all expensive. Either Neoform was very successful or, as he had heard from Emily, Victoria Gelarean had indeed brought money to the marriage. There were very few houseplants other than the sculptures.

Nick would have liked to climb the tower both for its view and for the sense of power, of overlordship, that he thought might accompany having such an extension of one's house. He would also have liked a look at the greenery there, and thus some sense of what Sean Gelarean might really be like behind the bluff exterior he showed the world. But locked doors barred all exits from the party's a.s.signed rooms, except to the outdoors.

One of those locked doors turned a narrow hall into a cul-de-sac. He was testing the k.n.o.b, thinking the door might open to the tower, when he felt a hand on his arm. He let go of the doork.n.o.b abruptly, embarra.s.sed even before he realized that the hand belonged to Victoria Gelarean. The hood of her red monk's robe was back, revealing wrinkled skin, a vividly birthmarked cheek, and twinkling eyes. Her lips were pursed as if she were recalling something for which she did not care. She shook her head gently and said, "He doesn't let me go up there. Not even me."

Her hand exerted gentle pressure, steering him back toward the living room, where the bulk of the party still was concentrated. As they turned, he saw that Bernie Fischer was watching them. He had a drink in his hand, but he looked as if he too had been wandering curiously, trying doors much as Nick had been doing. Was Sean Gelarean then a suspect in some heinous crime? Or were police detectives simply just as nosy as he himself was?

Victoria released him when they came to the bar, saying, "Why don't you have a little wine, dear?" Nodding, Nick filled a gla.s.s before turning toward the room to find her already gone from his side, circulating among the other guests. Gelarean was nowhere in sight, but there was Chowdhury, in a corner near a bathroom, so close against a stranger that their bellies were almost touching. Nick smiled at the sight. The stranger's pink tuxedo covered a ma.s.s of solid flesh that matched the slight gengineer three times over. He listened impa.s.sively, and when he spoke, when he reached out to pat Chowdhury's shoulder, his smile seemed a decal pasted into place to simulate approval.

When the two men turned away from each other, that smile disappeared as if it had never been, and Nick glimpsed a coldness of soul that would have been out of place in an insect.

Nick had been to other Neoform parties, but he had never seen the man before. Was he a neighbor? If so, Nick thought, then Greenacres was a much less congenial place to live than its obvious wealth and stylishness might suggest. If he was a business contact--Nick hardly dared to wonder what sort of business, or how he must treat his employees. If he was a friend, then what sort of person could Sean Gelarean really be?

A hand clasped his arm from behind. He jumped.

"Did I startle you?" It was Emily. "I was spooked. By a real creep. Over there, in the pink tux." He pointed, but the stranger was gone. He had to settle for describing the man. He said nothing about his attempt to open locked doors, or the way Gelarean's wife had stopped him.

Emily shuddered. "There's no one like that around the company, I know. You ready to go home?"

He was.

Chapter Twelve.

WHAT A WEAK-SPINED, p.u.s.s.y-whipped excuse for a man was that Nick Gilman! A jobless househusband! A p.u.s.s.ycat, neutered and turned into a hearth rug for his wife to walk upon! Chowdhury pitied their son. A boy should grow up with proper role models, women who stayed home, content with children, kitchen, church, men who showed their strength, who dominated their women and the land as one.

Chowdhury could not help but think so. His parents had set the model for him, even though they had also violated it. Neither of them had been in any position to dominate anyone's land. And his Papa had worked in the kitchen as often as his Mama, for she had often been off with their fellow exiles, listening to their dreams of return and treating their illnesses, even confined as she was to a wheelchair. But he had been a man who knew how to use his belt and his fist. He had also told the boy stories of the homeland, where men were men and women knew their place, and he clearly wished that things had never fallen apart. He wished, indeed, for only such change as would let him join the dominant whites on equal terms. His Mama as clearly wished the same, though she could also say, with full and laughing awareness of her irony, that a proper man was a Boer-boar-boor, and his slogan a borborygmic grunt.

Chowdhury had had his reasons to make so nice to Nick Gilman. But it had been an effort, a severe effort. He was, he knew it, a snarler, a croc, as his Mama might have put it, in the river of life. His temper was worse because he had finished his latest illicit creations and turned them over to his masters.

Now he was waiting for their reactions, and patience was not among the few virtues he numbered, in all honesty, among his own. In fact, he counted patience as the ant.i.thesis of what was necessary in the world's natural elite, its natural rulers, men of genius like himself. Though he did realize that just a little patience might help him bear the long wait for recognition a little better.

Chowdhury shivered at the thought of what he had learned by making so nice for so long to such an abysmal hearth rug of a man. His master, the one who gave him most of his orders now, was not far away. He could tell him things, frightening things, things that would demand action, or flight. But not here, not now. Later, later, the time would come. And then, perhaps...

Chowdhury obtained a cup of coffee, fortified with a dollop of Irish Cream, and a small square of cheesecake. He ate and drank, wishing that his Indian half were less strong, or that his inner mind could accept the fact of his professional position and attendant prosperity. In India, in the old, pre-Black South Africa, and for all he knew in the modern post-Boer SouthAfrica, men displayed their wealth in their bellies, in the fat that announced to all the world that they had enough, and more than enough, to eat. But somehow, he could never bring himself to eat enough to swell out with that commanding presence of the real man, Boer-boar-boor or not.

He watched the crowd around him. There was that cop, always around, poking, prying, destroying. There was Victoria Gelarean, a woman unfortunate of face and figure, but a woman for all that, serving her husband's needs as a woman should, quiet and self-effacing. She had one hand on the small of the hearth rug's back, and she was pushing him gently toward the bar. They had come from another room, and Chowdhury wondered if Nick Gilman had been exploring where he shouldn't. If so, perhaps he was less anemic than he seemed. He had wanted to see the tower room himself when he had first visited this house. Eventually, he had, but he knew that it was normally kept behind locked doors.

A ma.s.s of pink gestured Chowdhury imperiously to join it in the corner by the bathroom door. He obeyed, and as he drew close enough to see the doughy face atop the pink, he recognized the gesturer as that man who had first set him the task of making the cocaine nettle. The pink was his tux. The ma.s.s was his torso, well fed and enviably unattainable. The smooth, round face was smiling thinly, coldly, though that did not disturb Chowdhury. He did not know the man's name--the thugs and dealers and waitresses at the casino had called him just "The Boss"--but his rank was clear. Chowdhury knew that he, like his predecessors in the Family, the Mafia, the Cosa Nostra, whatever the papers called it at any one time, was a manipulator of games, dollars, drugs, and lives. He was also, as Chowdhury's Papa--and Mama--would have recognized immediately, a real man.

When Chowdhury was within reach, a pink-wrapped arm extended like the proboscis of some parasitic beast. A heavy hand clasped his shoulder and drew him in to face, too close, the other's diamond tietack. The fingers kneaded Chowdhury's flesh painfully. The voice, all threat softened by careful layers of oil, murmured, "You've done a good job, Ralph. Good work." The thin smile broadened. "Fetch me a drink? I don't want to be obvious out there." He glanced toward the cop, Bernie Fischer, and his smile became more genuine. "I do believe he recognizes me."

"Of course." Chowdhury shrugged free of the hand, marveling that the casino owner could enjoy so obviously the stares of a policeman. Vanity! he thought, even as he felt the niggling truth that he might well react in the same way. If only he had the recognition he deserved.

"Just club soda."

As Chowdhury crossed the room to the bar, he noted the flushed faces and loud voices of the other people at this party. Many of them had been guests at the party thrown by that company lawyer. They were not avoiding alcohol or, perhaps, less licit substances, but he saw no sign of any nettles in their pots.

This man, his master, The Boss, the "baas" in the language of home, was carefully staying sober. He wondered how drunk he could get in private, or at his own parties. Or did he always keep his senses solidly about him, the better to control, to manipulate, his games and drugs and lives?

When he returned, the other accepted the gla.s.s of bubbly liquid, raised it to eye level, and repeated, "Yes, good work." He sipped, and the toast was done. "I came to tell you so myself, though ordinarily we let him"--a flick of the eyes--"handle you." Then, Chowdhury thought, they must have found his creations interesting.

"The nettle was fine. Though perhaps you could shorten its life?" The words came slowly, laboriously, as if, like Chowdhury, he too had to strain to speak soft words.

"But never mind. It's quite marketable as it is. A considerable success.

But then..." He paused to sip once more from his gla.s.s. His dark eyes bored into Chowdhury's skin. "We weren't sure anything more was possible. You surprised us. Snakes and jellyfish!" Another pause. "We love them."

Chowdhury grinned nervously as someone pa.s.sed behind them to get into the bathroom. He wondered if this love, proclaimed in such a coldly pa.s.sionless voice, meant that he would be freed of his debts. He suspected not. He was more valuable than ever to these people. They would surely refuse to run any risk that he would escape. Freedom was not in the cards.

When the bathroom door closed, the other said, "We want two thousand of those jellyfish. Immediately. And two thousand of each of the snakes."

"I've already started the jellyfish." They had been easy to start. He had simply left the lights over their tanks on a little longer to convince them it was time to breed and then released a burst of pheromones into their water.

They had promptly generated millions of gametes, eggs, and sperm. Overnight, almost, he could have more larval cnidarians than he could possibly raise to maturity, or supply with tanks. He sighed at the thought that if they proved popular, there would have to be a factory of considerable size just for the necessary aquaria. Breeding nettles, jellyfish, and snakes would need another sort of factory, rather more like a farm. He hoped he would not wind up in charge of it.

Chowdhury recalled the scene when he had introduced his creations. His immediate master had come to his lab, pushing, insisting, demanding tangible progress. Reluctantly, he had produced the disks on which he kept his plans, spec sheets, and notes. He had described what he had done. He had pointed to the aquarium and its contents. Then he had brought out the snakes in their terraria, the asps, the coral snakes, the mambas. Tiny things, sleek and colorful, loaded with hedonic venoms.

Within himself, carefully hidden from this underworld lordling all in pink, he smiled at the memory of his master's initial revulsion, of how intrigue began to show, of how the man had wished to try the venoms out. He had had to caution him, saying, "Be careful. With the jellyfish, you just leave your hand in longer for a larger dose. With the snakes, I linked the drug and pigment genes in reciprocal tandem. The paler the color, the less pigment, the more drug there is in the venom. You can start the customers off easy, and then sell them stronger and stronger pets. Don't take a light one."

"I understand tolerance." His master had reached for one of the darker, more brilliant reptiles and let it bite his arm, nearly as dark-skinned as Chowdhury's own. His eyes had closed, his mouth half opened, his breath moaned outward in an ecstatic groan. "I like that," he had said at last. "And so will they. I'll pa.s.s them on."

And indeed they had. "The snakes," Chowdhury said, "will take a little longer."

"What a pity." The man in pink shook his head. "Those will be much more profitable." He sighed heavily. "In fact, one of our board members was saying he wished we could retail them through legitimate channels. He even suggested an advertising slogan: 'Make an asp of yourself!'" Chowdhury chuckled dutifully at this display of the other's wit.

But the lighter tone did not last. The other stuck the fingers of his free hand into the top of a pants pocket. Then, abruptly, as if the pocket concealed some secret switch, he asked, "How long?"