Читать книгу Operation Isis - E. Hoffmann Price - Страница 9

Chapter 6

Garvin’s meeting with Felix left him groping. Flora had not even grazed the subject with which that boy had nailed the Old Man, dead center. It was all too clear in retrospect how the Old Man’s bypassing France after he had convoyed the pseudo-Imperatrix to her funeral had deeply wounded the youngster, leaving the almost grown man with an unhealed psychic injury. Flora apparently had taken an adult view and, after having digested rumors concerning the Imitation Empress, realized that Garvin’s mission had not been as simple as surmise had made it. Furthermore, there had been circumstances sufficiently odd about the death of the retired Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Honorable Harry Offendorf, to indicate one of Garvin’s off-the-record capers, which likely would have necessitated his immediate return to Maritania.

He decided not to mention the subject to Flora. The rule was: Don’t fix it if it’s working—and the honeymoon was. Having started with cocktails and dinner at four-nineteen in the morning, they breakfasted late. Parachuting to sea level occasionally, they eventually arrived at the conventional time for “Happy Hour.” And while the chatelaine was busy with cosmetics and selecting a dress appropriate to her mood, Garvin prowled the shops of rue Pont Neuf. Some of his purchases went into the trunk of Flora’s “darling” acacia yellow Guiletta Veloce. No woman has greater love than she who lets a husband drive such a gran turisimo treasure. Others of the goodies that Monsieur Chevigny sold were for delivery to the Semiramis, to be locked in the Garvin stateroom: a lot of cognac and several cases of Hungarian Tokaija, not remotely akin to North American Tokay.

Two doors from Chevigny’s on the river side was a camera shop where Garvin bought a Swiss-made single lens reflex Alfa, thirty-five millimeter, with a hand-finished optical system far superior to the best that German or Japanese makers produced. He wondered at Flora’s sudden passion for photography, but instead of asking questions such as why had she never bothered with pictures during their Martian years, he settled down to scooping up the best.

Before he had finished studying the owner’s manual for a minicamera that cost about as much as a moderately good compact car, Garvin learned that it was for something they had totally overlooked. Before he could ask where in Bayonne one could get a Chinese Pillow Book, Flora explained: “We have not taken a honeymoon trip.”

She shushed Garvin’s quips about getting a sign painter to put the French equivalent of “Just Married” on the trunk and picking the his-and-hers shoes to hang on the bumper. “We’ll drive to Pau,” Flora elaborated, “and have someone take our pictures at the door of King Henry IV palace. And then, in Lourdes, in front of the Grotto, a picture.”

“You going to be Bernadette Soubirous or the Holy Mother?”

“You sacrilegious bastard! We’ll face the camera.”

“Mmm...turn our hind ends to the Grotto. Madame—”

“And it’s not far,” Flora continued, “looping about, and homeward, to something you’d really love. Where the first Armagnac brandy was distilled, in the thirteenth century.”

“Uh. That’s near the town of Condom, in the Gers Departement. That’d be educational. And then?”

“There’s Domaine de la Mothe, where cognac brandy was first distilled in 1470. You’d love that, you old sot!”

“Starting with the unholy mother—then king, kondom, kognac. Grand honeymoon tour.”

And it was, with a detour to Tarbes, the town founded by Tarbis, Queen of Ethiopia, who quit her realm when Moses would not marry her and, instead, herded the Children of Israel into the Promised Land.

Garvin was beginning to suspect that Flora was trying to sell him something, and at times it seemed that it would be very good indeed to leave space to the young and unwary and have Azadeh, and even Aljai, just for old time’s sake, join him and Flora in this marvelous corner of France. His entire life, had it not been such a stern reality, would have been fantasy. For Azadeh and for Flora, at least, it must have been the same, in their feminine terms.

Retiring in France could be a pleasant opium dream, except that Azadeh, loathing North Americans, included all Terrestrians in her tabulation of the Damned and the Forgotten of the Goddess of Far Faring.

And here they were again, back in Bayonne; and here she was again, Flora shed of her seductive peignoir and glowing through one of the gowns she had herself designed. For many women, dresses do things. Flora was otherwise: She did things for the garments she designed. Whenever she flipped one over the foot of her bed, its magic was gone, for it no longer contained Flora.

Now they came to the balcony of their villa overlooking Lycée de Maracq, which had begun in the early 1700s as the home of an exiled Queen of Spain, and later, after having been gutted by fire, had been resurrected as a school where Felix might resume education. It was quite too early for dinner but never too late for the absinthe and Amer Picon wagon.

However much they had discussed their camera work and photos in general, there was not a word relating to the portrait of Garvin, a 15-by-28-centimeter news shot. Certainly it was not studio work. The girder structure supporting the domes was quite clear; besides, posing for formal likeness was never on his agenda.

What made the picture especially interesting was that the artwork that once had concealed the shoulder and upper arm of a woman now could be discerned, however faintly; it was enough to make one curious about her identity and why a larger photo had been cropped to exclude even a glimpse of her. The retouching dyes evidently had succumbed to Terrestrial air pollution. Garvin recalled the formal occasion: Only Azadeh, as First Lady of Mars, could have rated a seat beside him.

Clearly, this was no topic for honeymoon discussion. The photo was in Flora’s bedroom, and her thoughts were her own business. It set Garvin to wondering whether his three wives had gotten along as harmoniously as he had fancied—and hoped.

Azadeh’s son was half Garvin and half Gook.

Flora’s son was half Garvin and half “Holy Family,” which was hated or revered for the sake of Alexander the Imperator, who died in the battle that had routed the Socialist Liberators.

Long ago, a wisewoman had said to Garvin, “If your son turns out well, you have it made. Your daughter is another man’s problem.”

This was as true as history, which indicated clearly that many a war and many a campaign of assassination had been touched off by rival mothers, each maneuvering to advance her son.

The next Governor-General of Mars, whoever he might be, would control the present corps of selected scientists and the food Martian Eck & Ag would produce for an overpopulated world.

Old stuff, of course...and the cocktail moon was rising. Even Merlin, the Master Mage, had been charmed into giving a seductive enchantress the ultimate secret of power, the spell that not even he could resist.

Flora, the Enchantress, stretched luxuriously and picked from the silence what they had been saying of Pau and Lourdes and Armagnac Land, and cognac country. “You’re in love with the town and the country for kilometers around, the way I’ve been from the first sight of it. Let’s settle down and live for a little while before we die. Plenty of room for Azadeh, or if she’d rather, you could get her a spot not too far and not too close.”

Instead of saying, “I told you twice, goddamn it, no!” Garvin went Merlin-stupid and replied, “Terrestrians are as revolting to her as Mars is to you.”

He knew well that giving a reason against anything is half acceptance or, at best, inviting long debate with defeat built in. He ignored the fact that he had survived only because he fired from the hip and explained later.

Trusting her incantation, Flora continued as if she had not heard what he had said. “You and Admiral Courtney made Maritania a suburb of Megapolis Alpha. Taps sounded for him on the Asteroid, and he was there when you circled Saturn, and he mocked those who had put you both into the Rehab Facility for psychological renovation, as they called it. He needed a rest—and think of the years that have given you no rest. You gave your life to the Parliamentary Republic and to Alexander’s Democratic Empire, and before Felix was even thought of, you and Azadeh gave yourselves to the Warlords and their Limited Democracy. Rod, we’re all of us weary, and you are so tired, you do not even realize how tired you are.” There was silence, and he sat as if listening to far-off music.

Flora caught his hand. “Let’s go to Biarritz and phone Azadeh, and we’ll give her a look at some of the big blowups of our tour.”

“We’ll phone Azadeh,” she repeated, “and then we’ll have dinner at Chateau Basque. It’s not far from the communication center for the fat boys who think they have to keep in touch with Lunar stations and Maritania and don’t want to get too far from their fun and games.” And as the yellow Guiletta Veloce purred languidly toward the sea and the Devil’s Bridge, Flora murmured, “If Azadeh moved in with us and found this part of Terra pleasing, it would give our son, well, a chance to round out the education Diane is giving him.”

“Where does Azadeh come in? This gets a bit puzzling.”

“When Felix sees you and me and Azadeh together, when you with all your fame and status could have your choice of all the young and beautiful of Terra, Mars, and the Asteroid, he’ll begin to suspect that the opinion of women he learned during army service is—well, as silly as it is nasty.”

“Sweet Jesus, woman! It does not take a committee of experts. Just life and the course of living—”

“Rod Garvin, if you had been a woman as long as I have, you’d know that Felix was speaking for ninety percent of the male population from ages ten to a hundred! With all his possibilities, you’d not want him to set out in life as a thoroughbred clod!”