To Live Again

“Where we’re heading? Of course. We’re going uptown. To my apartment.”

He scarcely seemed to believe any of this was happening to him. His posture was rigid; he looked straight ahead, never venturing a glance in her direction. He was terrified of her.

She brought the hopter in for a smooth landing at her home lot. Minutes later, they entered her apartment.

“Take a good look around,” she told him. “It’s nice, isn’t it? Ever been in a place like this before?”

“N-no, Miss Kaufma

“Call me Risa. Why are you so frightened, Leonards? You’re a big, handsome young fellow, aren’t you? A skilled technician, a man with a bright future? Are you married?”

“Yes, Miss Kaufma

“Children?”

“One child. We’re going to have another after my next increment comes through.”

“Fine, Leonards. I’m sure you’re a wonderful family man. And I’m glad to know you’re so virile.” She put her hand to her shoulder, touched a stud. Her light summer clothing fell away in a rustling swirl. She stood before him incandescently nude, and, he gaped at the sudden sight.

He backed away from her, shielding his eyes. “Come here, Leonards,” she said in a husky voice Tandy Cashing had taught her how to use. “You’re not really afraid. You want me, don’t you? Admit it. I’m yours for the taking. The experience of a lifetime. A Kaufma

“Please — I don’t understand—” She swept up against him. She took his hand and put it to her small breasts. Her own hand traveled expertly over his body. Leonards gasped. Leonards moaned. Leonards shook his head and tried to push her away, but the attempt was not a success.

“I want you, Leonards! What’s your first name?”

“Harry.”

“Harry! Harry! Harry! Love me, Harry!” She tugged at him and they toppled to the floor. Her lithe body entwined itself with his. Urgently she awakened his desires and banished his timidity.

“Harry,” she whispered. “Harry!”

He made a sound that was half a protest, half an acceptance. And then, with sudden desperate willingness, he pulled her against him.

He was not very good, Risa concluded. But he was appealingly earnest.

When it was over, she slipped away from him and got nimbly to her feet. He lay still, rumpled and glassy-eyed.

“You’ve just committed an act of rape,” Risa told him. “Your helpless victim was a girl of the highest social position, less than seventeen years old. You’ll get your mind blotted out for a crime like that.”

Leonards came to a sitting position, and the color drained from his face a moment, then returned in a crimson rush. “What are you saying?”

“I’m explaining to you the nature of the trouble you’re in. Forcibly entering my hopter while I was visiting the Scheffing Institute, compelling me to bring you here, disrobing me, inducing me through superior strength to submit to sexual violation — oh, it’s bad, Leonards, it’s very bad!”

“I feel like I’m in a dream,” he whispered. “It’s real enough. I’ll have the quaestors here any minute.”

“Why are you doing this?” She crouched before him, her face close to his. “Would you like to avoid going to trial? Would you like me to forgive you for your audacity in perpetrating this hideous rape?”

“What do you want from me?”

“A favor,” she said harshly. “A small favor, and I’ll forget all about what happened here today, and leave you with your memories of pleasure.”

“What kind of favor?”

“You’ll have to break the rules of the Scheffing Institute,” she said. “But that’s a much smaller crime than raping a girl my age, and if you’re smart and lucky you’ll get away with it. There’s a certain persona I want, Leonards. Get it for me from the files, just borrow it for a little while tomorrow. And transplant it to me. That’s all I ask. I’ll come to the tower, and you’ll handle the transplant, and we’ll call it quits. But we’ll have to move swiftly, because this particular persona recording is due to be destroyed very soon. All right, Leonards? Do we have a deal?”

“Everything’s settled, then,” Mark Kaufma

“Yes,” said Santoliquido. “Which is to say, at least another year or two.”

“Long enough for some of the voltage to bleed out of the dynamo, at any rate. He’ll be less formidable coming back then. If he comes back at all.”

Santoliquido shrugged. “I’ll hold him in storage until a qualified recipient appears, Mark. And with Roditis permanently disqualified, it might be a long, long time. You don’t need to worry about that.”

“Fine. See you at my party on Saturday?”

“Of course,” said Santoliquido. “I’ll reach Dominica about noon, I suppose. It’ll be a novelty, going south to the tropics to find cooler weather. My best to Elena, yes?”

“Of course.” Kaufma

“How do you like that, you old fox? I’ve handled things pretty well, haven’t I, eh?”

—You’ve done well for yourself, Paul replied. But don’t get overconfident. Smugness was Roditis’ undoing. “Don’t worry about me,” Mark replied. “I try to calculate all the angles. And with you in there helping me, we shouldn’t miss very many of them.”

—There’s always the unpredictable. Be on guard for it. “Mark?” It was Risa’s voice, outside. “I’m here, Mark.”

“Come in,” he said. She entered his office. In her sketchy summer wrap she looked crisp and cool, and she carried herself with a no-nonsense selfpossession that he admired greatly. Here was the one person in the world who mattered most to him; and also the one person to whom he might be vulnerable. He had an idea that Risa suspected what he had done with Paul’s persona. She knew Paul’s ma

“I’m here for a business discussion,” Risa a

“Preliminary business, really. I’d like to get some idea of the family assets. What we have where, in whose name, what slice of equity in each.”

Kaufma

“You know it does. And now that Roditis is through, we can begin to make a new move, Mark. I’d like to close in on that Latin American electrical empire of his. I’ve been thinking, we could undercut the Roditis trustees by a takeover of the company that makes the transmission pylons, and then—”

“Do you have a cold, Risa?”

“Why?”

“Your voice sounds odd. Deeper. Hoarser.” She shook her head. “That’s just Tandy’s influence, I guess. She must have had a very lush contralto, and she’s trying to pitch my voice down there too. You know how it is, the way a persona influences the host in little ways, certain ma

“Yes,” Kaufma

“Very well, then. If we can get a grasp on the pylon company, we’ll have Roditis Securities caught between Scylla and Charybdis, and—”