Rama II

The people mover stopped outside the hotel. Reggie was looking at her with a fixed stare. Francesca realized that he had just asked her a question. “Well?” he said, as they descended from their car.

“I’m sorry, dear,” she answered. “I was daydreaming again. What did you ask?”

“I didn’t know I was that boring,” Reggie said without humor. He turned dramatically to ensure that she was paying attention. “What choice did you make for di

At that particular moment the thought of having di

Once inside her hotel suite, Francesca’s first action was to activate her computer terminal and check for messages. She had four altogether. The printed menu told her the originator of each message, the time of its trans­mission, the duration of the message, and its urgency priority. The Urgency Priority Network (UPN) was a new i

She had a single Priority Two message, three minutes long, from Carlo Bianchi. Francesca frowned, entered the proper codes into the terminal, and turned on the video monitor. A suave middle-aged Italian dressed in apres-ski clothes, sitting on a couch with a burning fireplace behind him, came into view. “Buon giomo, cara,” he greeted her. After allowing the video camera to pan around the living room at his new villa in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Signor Bianchi came right to the point. Why was she refusing to appear in the advertisements for his summer line of sportswear? His company had offered her an incredible amount of money and had even tailored the advertising campaign to pick up on the space theme. The spots would not be shown until after the Newton mission would be over, so there was no conflict with her ISA agreements. Carlo acknowledged that they had had some differences in the past, but according to him they were many years ago. He needed an answer in a week.

Screw you, Carlo, Francesca thought, surprised at the intensity of her reactions. There were few people in the world who could upset Francesca, but Carlo Bianchi was one of them. She entered the necessary commands to record a message to her agent, Darrell Bowman, in London. “Hi Darrell. It’s Francesca in Dallas. Tell that weasel Bianchi I wouldn’t do his ads even if he offered me ten million marks. And by the way, since I understand that his main competition these days is Donatelli, why don’t you find their advertis­ing director, Gabriela something or other, I met her once in Milano, and let her know that I would be happy to do something for them after Project Newton is over. April or May.” She paused for a moment. “That’s it. Back in Rome tomorrow night. My best to Heather.”

Francesca’s longest message was from her husband, Alberto, a tall, gray­ing, distinguished executive almost sixty years old. Alberto ran the Italian division of Schmidt and Hagenest, the multimedia German conglomerate that owned, among other things, over one third of the free newspapers and magazines in Europe as well as the leading commercial television networks in both Germany and Italy. In his transmission Alberto was sitting in the den in their home, wearing a rich charcoal suit and sipping a brandy. His tone was warm, familiar, but more like a father than a husband. He told Francesca that her long interview with Admiral Otto Heilma

Alberto shared some good news about one of his children (Francesca had three stepchildren, all of whom were older than she) before telling her that he missed her and was looking forward to seeing her the next night. Me too, Francesca thought before responding to his message. It is comfortable living with you. I have both freedom and security.

Four hours later Francesca was standing outside on her balcony, smoking a cigarette in the cold Texas December air. She was wrapped tightly in the thick robe supplied to the rooms by the hotel. At least it’s not like California, she thought to herself as she pulled a deep drag into her lungs. At least in Texas some of the hotels do have smoking balconies. Those zealots on the American West Coast would make smoking a felony if they could.

She walked over to the side of the railing so that she would have a better view of a supersonic airliner approaching the airport from the west. In her mind’s eye she was inside the plane, as she would be the next day on her flight home to Rome. She imagined that this particular flight had come from Tokyo, the undisputed economic capital of the world before The Great Chaos. After being devastated by their lack of raw materials during the lean years in the middle of the century, the Japanese were now prosperous again as the world returned to a free market. Francesca watched the plane land and then looked up at the sky full of stars above her. She took another pull on her cigarette and then followed the exhaled smoke as it drifted slowly away from her into the air.

And so, Francesca, she reflected, now comes what may be your greatest assignment. A chance to become immortal? At least I should be remembered a long time as one of the Newton crew. Her mind turned to the Newton mission itself and briefly conjured up images of fantastic creatures who might have created the pair of gargantuan spaceships and sent them to visit the solar system. But her thoughts jumped back quickly to the real world, to the contracts that David Brown had signed just before she had left his home that afternoon.

That makes us partners, my esteemed Dr. Brown. And completes the first phase of my plan. And unless I miss my guess, that was a gleam of interest in your eyes today. Francesca had given David a perfunctory kiss when they had finished discussing and signing the contracts. They had been alone together in his study. For a moment she had thought he was going to return the kiss with a more meaningful one.

Francesca finished her cigarette, stubbed it out in the ashtray, and went back into her hotel room. As soon as she opened the door she could hear the sound of heavy breathing. The oversized bed was in disarray and a naked Reggie Wilson was lying across it on his back, his regular snores disturbing the silence of the suite. You have great equipment, my friend, she commented silently, both for life and for lovemaking. But neither is an athletic contest. You would be more interesting if there was some subtlety, perhaps even a little finesse.