Rama II

6 LA SIGNORA SABATINI

So you were working on your doctor­ate in physics at SMU when your husband made his famous prediction about supernova 2191a?”

Elaine Brown was sitting in a large soft chair in her living room. She was dressed in a stark brown suit, sexless, with a high-collar blouse. She looked stiff and anxious, as if she were ready for the interview to be completed.

“I was in my second year and David was my dissertation adviser,” she said carefully, her eyes glancing furtively at her husband. He was across the room, watching the proceedings from behind the cameras. “David worked very closely with his graduate students. Everybody knew that. It was one of the reasons why I choose SMU for my graduate work.”

Francesca Sabatini looked beautiful. Her long blond hair was flowing freely over her shoulders. She was wearing an expensive white silk blouse, trimmed by a royal blue scarf neatly folded around her neck. Her lounging pants were the same color as the scarf. She was sitting in a second chair next to Elaine. Two coffee cups were on the small table between them.

“Dr. Brown was married at the time, wasn’t he? I mean during the period when he was your adviser.”

Elaine reddened perceptibly as Francesca finished her question. The Ital­ian journalist continued to smile at her, a disarmingly ingenuous smile, as if the question she had just asked was as simple and straightforward as two plus two. Mrs. Brown hesitated, drew a breath, and then stammered slightly in giving her response. “In the beginning, yes, I believe that he still was,” she answered. “But his divorce was final before I finished my degree.” She stopped again and then her face brightened. “He gave me an engagement ring for a graduation present,” she said awkwardly.

Francesca Sabatini studied her subject. ! could easily tear you apart on that reply, she thought rapidly. With just a couple more questions. But that would not serve my purpose.

“Okay, cut” Francesca blurted out suddenly. “That’s a wrap. Let’s take a look and then you can put all the equipment back in the truck.” The lead cameraman walked over to the side of robot camera number one, which had been programmed to in stay a close-up on Francesca, and entered three commands into the miniature keyboard on the side of the camera housing. Meanwhile, because Elaine had risen from her seat, robot camera number two was automatically backing away on its tripod legs and retracting its zoom lens. Another cameraman motioned to Elaine to stand still until he was able to disconnect the second camera.

Within seconds the director had programmed the automatic monitoring equipment to replay the last five minutes of the interview. The output of all three cameras was shown simultaneously, split screen, the composite picture of both Francesca and Elaine occupying the center of the monitor with the tapes from the two close-up cameras on either side. Francesca was a consum­mate professional. She could tell quickly that she had the material she needed for this portion of the show. Dr. David Brown’s wife, Elaine, was young, intelligent, earnest, plain, and not comfortable with the attention being focused on her. And it was all clearly there in the camera memory.

While Francesca was wrapping up the details with her crew and arranging to have the annotated interview composite delivered to her hotel at the Dallas Transportation Complex before her flight in the morning, Elaine Brown came back into the living room with a standard robot server, two different kinds of cheese, a bottle of wine, and plenty of glasses for everyone. Francesca glimpsed a frown on David Brown’s face as Elaine announced that there would now be “a small party” to celebrate the end of the interview.

The crew and Elaine gathered around the robot and the wine. David ex­cused himself and walked out of the living room into the long hall that connected the back of the house, where all the bedrooms were, with the living quarters in the front. Francesca followed him.

“Excuse me, David,” she said. He turned around, his impatience clear. “Don’t forget that we still have some unfinished business. I promised an answer to Schmidt and Hagenest upon my return to Europe. They are anx­ious to proceed with the project.”

“I haven’t forgotten,” he replied. “I just want to make certain first that your friend Reggie is finished interviewing my children.” He heaved a sigh. “There are times when I wish I was a total unknown in the world.”

Francesca walked up close to him. “I don’t believe that for a minute,” she said, her eyes fixed on his. “You’re just nervous today because you can’t control what your wife and children are saying to Reggie and me. And nothing is more important to you than control.”

Dr. Brown started to reply but was interrupted by a shriek of “Mommeee” reverberating down the hall from its origin in a distant bedroom. Within seconds a small boy, six or seven years old, swept past David and Francesca and raced pell-mell into the arms of his mother, who was now standing in the doorway connecting the hall and the living room. Some of Elaine’s wine sloshed out of her glass from the force of the collision with her son; she unconsciously licked it off her hand as she sought to comfort the little boy.

“What is it, Justin?” she asked.

“That black man broke my dog,” Justin whined between sobs. “He kicked it in the butt and now I can’t make it work.”

The little boy pointed back down the hall. Reggie Wilson and a teenage girl — tall, thin, very serious — were walking toward the rest of the group. “Dad,” said the girl, her eyes imploring David for help, “Mr. Wilson was talking to me about my pin collection when that damned robot dog came in and bit him on the leg. After peeing on him first. Justin had programmed him to make mischief—”

“She’s lying,” the crying little boy interrupted her with a shout. “She doesn’t like Wally. She’s never liked Wally.”

Elaine had one hand on the back of her nearly hysterical son and the other firmly around the stem of her wineglass. She would have been unsettled by the scene even if she hadn’t noticed the disapproval she was receiving from her husband. She quaffed the wine and put the glass on a nearby bookshelf. “There, there, Justin,” she said, looking embarrassed, “calm down and tell Mom what happened.”

“That black man doesn’t like me. And I don’t like him. Wally knew it, so he bit him. Wally always protects me.”

The girl, Angela, became more agitated. “I knew something like this would happen. When Mr. Wilson was talking to me, Justin kept coming into my room and interrupting us, showing Mr. Wilson his games, his pets, his trophies, and even his clothes, Eventually Mr. Wilson had to speak sharply to him. Next thing we know Wally is running wild and Mr. Wilson has to defend himself.”

“She’s a liar, Mom. A big liar. Tell her to stop—”

Dr. David Brown had had enough of this commotion. “Elaine,” he shouted angrily above the din, “get… him… out of here.” He turned to his daughter as his wife pulled the weeping little boy through the door into the living room. “Angela!7 he said, his anger now raw and unconcealed, “I thought I told you not to fight with Justin today under any circum­stances.”

The girl recoiled from her father’s attack. Tears welled up in her eyes. She started to say something but Reggie Wilson walked between her and her father. “Excuse me7 Dr. Brown,” he interceded, “Angela really didn’t do anything. Her story is basically correct. She—”

“Look, Wilson,” David Brown said sharply, “if you don’t mind, I can handle my own family.” He paused a moment to calm his anger. “I’m terribly sorry for all this confusion,” he continued in a subdued tone, “but it will all be finished in another minute or so.” The look he gave his daughter was cold and unkind. “Go back to your room, Angela. I’ll talk to you later. Call your mother and tell her that I want her to pick you up before dinner.”

Francesca Sabatini watched with great interest as the entire scene un­folded. She saw David Brown’s frustration, Elaine’s lack of self-confidence. This is perfect, Francesca thought, even better than I might have hoped. He will be very easy.

The sleek silver train cruised the North Texas countryside at two hundred and fifty kilometers per hour. Within minutes the lights from the Dallas Transportation Complex appeared on the horizon. The DTC covered a mammoth area, almost twenty-five square kilometers. It was part airport, part train station, part small city. Originally constructed in 2185 both to handle the burgeoning long-distance air traffic and to provide an easy nexus for transferring passengers to the high-speed train system, it had grown, like other similar transportation centers around the world, into an entire commu­nity. More than a thousand people, most of whom worked at the DTC and found life easier when there was no commute, lived in the apartments that formed a semicircle around the shopping center south of the main terminal. The terminal itself housed four major hotels, seventeen restaurants, and over a hundred different shops, including a branch of the chic Donatelli fashion chain.

“I was nineteen at the time,” the young man was saying to Francesca as the train approached the station, “and had had a very sheltered upbringing. I learned more about love and sex in that ten weeks, watching your series on television, than I had learned in my whole life before. I just wanted to thank you for that program.”

Francesca accepted the compliments gracefully. She was accustomed to being recognized when she was in public. Wlien the train stopped and she descended onto the platform, Francesca smiled again at the young man and his date. Reggie Wilson offered to carry her camera equipment as they walked toward the people mover that would take them to the hotel. “Does it ever bother you?” he asked. She looked at him quizzically. “All the atten­tion, being a public figure?” he added in explanation.

“No,” she answered, “of course not.” She smiled to herself. Even after six months this man does not understand me. Maybe he’s too engrossed with himself to figure out that some women are as ambitious as men.

“I knew that your two television series had been popular,” Reggie was saying, “before I met you during the personnel screening exercises. But I had no idea that it would be impossible to go out to a restaurant or to be seen in a public place without running into one of your fans.”

Reggie continued to chat as the people mover eased out of the train station and into the shopping center. Near the track at one end of the enclosed mall a large group of people were milling around outside a theater. The marquee proclaimed that the production inside was In Any Weather, by the American playwright Linzey Olsen.

“Did you ever see that play?” Reggie idly asked Francesca. “I saw the movie when it first came out,” he continued without waiting for her to answer, “about five years ago. Helen Caudill and Jeremy Temple. Before she was really big. It was a strange story, about two people who had to share a hotel room during a snowstorm in Chicago. They’re both married. They fall in love while talking about their failed expectations. As I said, it was a weird play.”

Francesca was not listening. A boy who reminded her of her cousin Roberto had climbed into the car just in front of them at the first stop in the shopping center. His skin and hair were dark, his facial features handsomely chiseled. How long has it been since I have seen Roberto? she wondered. Must be three years now. It was down in Positano with his wife, Maria. Francesca sighed and remembered earlier days, from long ago. She could see herself laughing and running on the streets of Orvieto. She was nine or ten, still innocent and unspoiled. Roberto was fourteen. They were playing with a soccer ball in the piazza in front of II Duomo. She had loved to tease her cousin, He was so gentle, so unaffected. Roberto was the only good thing from her childhood.

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 dinner tonight? I had narrowed it down to Chinese or Cajun,”

At that particular moment the thought of having dinner with Reggie did not appeal to Francesca. “I’m very tired tonight,” she said. “I think I’ll just eat by myself in the room and do a little work afterward.” She could have predicted the hurt look on his face. She reached up and kissed him lightly on the lips. “You can come by my room for a nightcap about ten.”

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 innovation of International Communica­tions, Inc., one of the three surviving communications companies that were finally flourishing again after massive consolidation during the middle years of the century. A UPN user entered his daily schedule early in the morning and identified what priority messages could interrupt which activities. Fran­cesca had chosen to accept forwarding of only Priority One (Acute Emer­gency) messages to the terminal at David Brown’s house; the taping of David and his family had to be accomplished in one day and she had wanted to minimize the chances of an interruption and delay, The rest of her mes­sages had been retained at the hotel.

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 Heilmann Had been on the news throughout Europe that day, that he had enjoyed her comments and insights as always, but that he had thought Otto came across as an egomaniac. Not surprising, Francesca had mused when she heard her husband’s comment, since he absolutely is. But he is often useful to me.

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.