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“It’s James, Dad,” he said, knowing my weaknesses. “One day you better learn to tell us apart.”
“I do. You usually wear blue shirts.”
“This one is green—you have to do better than that.”
He poured a drink for me, his already in hand, and I reported the progress or lack of it by the police. Then he spoke the words we had been both avoiding.
“I’m sure Mom is all right. Disappeared, yes. In trouble, undoubtedly. But she is the toughest one in the family.”
“She is, of course, comes up aces always.” I tried, to keep the gloom from my voice, could not. He grabbed my shoulder, very hard.
“Something terrible has happened. But that Rowena women said gone—not dead. So we get to work to find her and that is that.”
“Right.” I heard the roughness in my voice; a sentimental old gray rat. Enough. “We’ll do it. If the diGriz clan can’t do it—it can’t be done.”
“Damn right! I have a message from Bolivar. He should be here very soon. He was in a spacer doing a lunar geological survey. Dropped everything and should be in faster than light drive by now.”
“Lunar geology? That’s a change. I thought he had become a stockbroker?”
“He was—found it too boring. When he had stacked away his millions, more profits than those of his clients I am sure, he burnt his business suits and bought a spacer. What do we do next.”
“Top up this drink, if you please.” I dropped into a chair. “Fill it with one—hundred—proof Old Cogitation Juice. We have some work to do.”
“Like what?”
“Like first forgetting about collaboration with the authorities. They have got this investigation completely wrong so far and can only get it worse.”
“And we can do better.” He said it as a fact—not a question.
“That’s for sure. The bureaucrats are going to do an incredibly detailed and thorough search for this Slakey. We are not.” I saw his eyebrows rise and I had to smile. “If their search is successful, which I doubt, we will bear about it quickly enough. Meanwhile we want to find out everything we can about the Temple of Eternal Truth. We go to the horse’s mouth, so to speak. The church members will tell us what we want to know.” I waved the membership list I had extracted from the police with not too much difficulty. “There are three of these ladies whom we are very closely acquainted with. Shall we begin?”
“As soon as I dipil my face and get a clean shirt. I’m a handsome devil and have a way with women.”
I sighed happily. Some might have called this braggadocio, but I saw it as simply speaking the truth. In this family we do not condone false modesty. “You do that. Meanwhile I’ll fire up the family car.”
An expression empty of meaning since this healthy planet had what was probably the most rigidly enforced clean air act in the galaxy. You would probably get clapped in jail for even thinking about an infernal combustion engine. Vehicles were powered by atomic or electric batteries. Or, like our luxurious Spreadeagle, they ran on the energy stored in a flywheel. It plugged into the electricity supply at night and the motor was run up to speed. During the day the motor became a generator and the spi
I sat on the divan and the television came on. It was a news program with no news I wanted to hear. “Sports,” I said and a high speed balloon race replaced it. The bar served me a glass of champagne just as James appeared.
“Wow!” he admired. “Real gold?”
“Of course. As well as diamond headlamps and a prescription windshield. No expense spared.”
“Where to?” he asked, sipping his drink.
“Vivilia VonBrun is first on the list. On anyone’s list I imagine. Incredibly rich, desirably attractive. I phoned and she awaits our pleasure.”
She swept out to greet us, smiling compassionately. She had permitted a tiny rim of red to remain around her gorgeous eyes, to express her unhappiness at recent events. Which of course had been described in gruesome detail by the news programs.
She was wearing something diaphanous and gray, which revealed enticing glimpses of ta
“Poor, dear Jim,” she sighed. “Such a tragedy.”
“It will all end well. May I present my son, James.”
“What a dear man. How nice of you to come. My husband, Waldo, is away on one of those boring hunting things, blowing up wild animals. So if you need a place to stay…”
Vivilia wasted no time. While Waldo was destroying robot predators she was doing a little predation herself. And she was probably old enough to be James’s great—great—grandmother.
Which meant she certainly had some experience—I put the thought from me and got to work.
“Vivilia, you can help us find Angelina. You are going to tell us everything you know about the Temple of Eternal Truth.”
“You are so forceful, Jimmy. I’m sure that your son takes after…”
“Facts first, lust later,” I snapped.
“Coarse but to the point,” she smiled, uninsultable. “I’ll tell you everything that I know.”
Enjoyable as that prospect was it would have taken far too long. I kept her memoirs to the point. A very interesting point as it turned out to be.
With boredom at Olympic intensity on Lussuoso, sports, escapism and cult religions were going concerns. Master Fanyimadu had begun to appear at various soirees and parties, his fascinating beliefs excelled only by the intensity of his gaze.
Ladies of leisure looked in on the Temple of Eternal Truth and most went back a second time. It was easy to see why. Vivilia explained. “It wasn’t so much the consolation of his religion as the positive promise of eternal bliss. Not that he doesn’t preach a good sermon, mind you, better than TV any day. It is what his sermons are all about. He tells you that if one attends often enough and prays with great intensity, as well as donating enthusiastically, one might get a little look—in on Heaven.”
“Heaven?” I asked, trying to remember some rudimentary theology.
“Heaven, of course, you must have heard of it? Or perhaps your religion…”
“Dad’s an atheist,” James said. “We all are.”
Vivilia sniffed meaningfully. “Well, I suppose most people are in this age of realism and social equality. But there is a down side to that, to worshiping the nitty—gritty of society. It is boring to be so practical. Therefore you can understand why some of us with more sensitivity search for a higher meaning.”
It was I who sniffed meaningfully this time but she graciously ignored me. “If you had studied more diligently in school and not ignored your Applied Theology class you would know all this already. Heaven is the place where we go after we die and if we have been good, there you will reside in happiness forever. Hell is where you go if you have been bad, to suffer intensely for eternity. I know it sounds very simplistic and illogical. I, as well as lot of the other girls, felt that way when we first heard of Heaven and Hell. But as I said, to add weight and gravitas to Heaven it is possible to visit the place, at least temporarily. So you see, having been there I have lost, shall we say, a certain amount of credulity.”
“Hypnotic suggestion,” I suggested.
“Jimmy, you sounded just like Angelina when you said that. She flared her nostrils and snorted lightly in exactly the same way. I told her that I bad felt exactly the same way when other of my friends had told me about their Heavenly excursions. But I know hypnotism when I see it—and this was no trance. I can’t begin to describe the process of going to Heaven. But I was there, with Master Fanyimadu holding one of my hands and that incredibly stupid Rosebudd holding the other. I don’t think she has enough mind to hypnotize. Yet we saw each other in Heaven, experienced the same things. It was simply wonderful and too beautiful to explain in mere words. It was very… inspirational.” She had the grace to blush when she spoke the word; inspiration not being her usual line of work.