The plastiskin woman spoke, her lips arching in a seductive smile. “Good afternoon, man of culture. I am not alive, but there is a grace and beauty in all of Da Vincello’s creations, and, when you look at them, you forget that you have come here to pass an idle hour.
“The veils of the artificial are stripped away, and for a moment you gaze upon beauty naked and unadorned. Would you not like to take me into your arms?”
“I sure would, baby!” Revanche whispered.
He knew, of course, that the statue could not hear him.
But, by timing his questions to correspond with its disk-recorded utterances, an illusion of conversation could be maintained. To imagine even for a brief instant that he could bend so lovely a creature to his will brought out all of his sadism.
“I’m not interested in you as a work of art, baby,” he said. “I guess you know that.”
“Pass on, man of culture,” the statue said. “You linger too long here. If you look about you, you will find others more beautiful than II”
Abruptly the illusion snapped. Scowling, feeling cheated, Revanche swung about, and resumed his arrogant stride.
There were many vivoil paintings of scenes that gave the illusion, if you looked at them obliquely, of leaves fluttering, birds flying, women walking, and water flowing. All were signed with the name of the famed poet-scientist-financier-engineer-architect-painter-sculptor-cybemeticist and lover of the Second Italian Renaissance—Benangelo Michelardo Da Vincelleo.
There was only one man on Earth who was more widely known, more powerful. It was a measure of B. T. Revanche’s importance that no practical jokes were played on him.
Da Vincello was famous for his complicated, rubegold-bergish, and sometimes morbid sense of humor. Visitors had to have strong nerves if they cared to see him—and survive.
It was not unusual for trapdoors to open beneath their feet and drop them, kicking and screaming, down a two-story shaft before they were eased by antigrav to a slow stop. Or for a visitor to find the doorknob to the master’s office had turned into a shriveled plastic head. Or to step into what he thought was the office, and find himself neck-deep in water, or some less acceptable fluid.
If the enraged victim stalked off, Da Vincelleo howled with glee. And if a lawsuit followed, he had ways of scaring the unhappy wretch into withdrawing it.
The office help—including the thirty vice-presidents— earned big salaries largely because they boasted iron nerves and ulcer-resistant stomachs. After their imitation into Da Vincelleo’s extraordinary humor, many of them became quite sedate about the embarrasing noises and odors they seemingly made when they sat down on their chairs.
They even regarded with the classic calm of the clam’s eye the lightbulbs that exploded and flew apart, the mechanical mice, the cockroaches that jumped out of opened drawers, and the waterfaucets that straightened out and squirted them in the face. The few who couldn’t take it ceased drawing fabulous salaries, and retired to rest homes.
As it was, none of these disturbing things interfered with Revanche’s progress. He didn’t even pause on entering the Sanctum Sanctorum itself.
II
DA VINCELLEO was sitting behind a large desk with a Cellini-exquisite reading lamp at his elbow. He was clad only in a pair of businessman’s electric-blue shorts, and a scarlet beret. His forehead was lofty and square, a beautifully sculptured Greek temple dedicated to Thought. But the face that hung beneath was a fox’s, and the eyes were twin furnaces, red-rimmed and smouldering. Sometimes, beauty burned phoenixlike in them—more often, dollar bills.
Da Vincelleo barely had time to swing the tape-thrower back into its cabinet. He had just finished reviewing a case history of Revanche’s life. His agents had done a superb job on Revanche. He knew more about the great financier than that complex man himself, for included in the report were the opinions of ten top-flight psychiatrists. Despite the fact that all the reports were contradictory, the master of Bioid felt he had an excellent insight into his rival’s psyche.
The Messinan had painstakingly studied Revanche’s psych index as a child. He knew that the formative years counted most, for the child was father to the man. Understanding what kind of youngster Revanche had been gave him an advantage from the start.
Therefore, when the magnate bounded bristling into his office, he remained seated, sure that he had the upper hand.
B. T. faced him for a moment without greeting him, giving him the famous “once-over,” the scanning that had made strong men shake. His eyes were as hard as a Bioid’s. His nose had been heavily powdered, so that the tiny line which circled its tip would be concealed. The cleavage betrayed the artificiality of the tip, which was made of plasto-skin.
Revanche let his eyes crawl up and down his host like measuring worms. Then, abruptly, frankly, he came to the point of his visit. His request, and the whirlwind fury with which he thrust it, shook Da Vincelleo out of his sureness, brought him to his feet with a gasp.
“Di’, man!” he muttered hoarsely. “What’re you saying? That could only mean . . .”
“Da Vincelleo!” barked Revanche. He coughed the words out of the side of his mouth, without removing his cigar.
“My agents report you’re hard as etemalloy,” he went on, without giving the other a chance to reply. “They say you have the artistic genius of a Buonarotti, the ruthless ambition of a Borgia, and the depraved humor of a Caligulal”
The Messinan did not flinch. He looked pleased, as well he might, for Revanche meant the epithets as compliments.
“You’ll stop at nothing to get what you want,” the financier emphasized. “It was your remorseless drive and executive ability that made you build Bioid with only a servoshoeshiner as a start. And you know as well as I do that you stole the money to buy the servo from your blind and penniless mother!”
Da Vincelleo blinked. He had thought no one had known about that. But after all, what did he care? His mother had been paid back. He had buried her in a beautifully designed gold coffin.
“My psychologists say one of your ambitions is to become the richest, most powerful man in the System. Unfortunately, I’m in your way. Well, if you’ll do as I ask I’m prepared to turn over my entire holdings to you!”
Da Vincelleo’s rusty-brown eyes flaked with red desire. “How could I?” he countered. “If I tried it, I’d have to get out of the System. Every free city, every planet would band together to attack me. The universe would howl for my blood. What’s wrong with you, Revanche, that you can’t see that? Are you seriously trying to get me killed—or is it your contempt for the creative intellect which prevents you from realizing how the dogs would howl?”
“Let them howl!” Revanche countered. “I’ll sign over my entire fortune to you. I’ll make you president and owner of my company. We’ll draw up a contract which will make me head of Bioid. That way, I’ll bear all the responsibility. All, do you hear? You’ll actually be directing operations, but you’ll be legally blameless. Do you understand? Immediately after the job is finished, Bioid reverts to you.”
“And you, Revanche. What are you going to do?”
“As soon as my revenge is satisfied, I’ll take my yacht to the newly-discovered planet of Alpha Draconis. I’ll be beyond extradition there. I’ll start business all over again. It’s a raw planet that offers a challenge to me this tame System has lost.”
“Well, I don’t know. I’ll need time to think.”
Revanche growled, then barked: “My agents say you’re famous for making electronicfast decisions. Tell me right now—or I go to your competitor.
“Think, man,” he went on quickly. “You’re an engineer, and an artist. It will be the culmination, the masterpiece of your career. Historically speaking, Buonarotti or Nero won’t be able to hold a candle to you. And you’ll also be the richest man under the sun.”
Da Vincelleo’s eyes swiveled back and forth. Revanche could see the tubes glowing, the switches clickclacking on the tremendous grey boa
rd inside that Greek temple of a forehead. But, he reflected, it was a temple that needed a whip to drive out the moneychangers.
The Messinan made up his mind suddenly. “Done! I’ll get my lawyers, and we’ll make the transfer at once. I’ll conduct operations sub rosa. That’s best.”
He sat down at his desk, and ran his fingers over several electronic “eyes” and said, “Your hometown is a free city, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it has no contracts with the other cities. No alliances. It’s a non-coop all the way. It exists by its smug self-righteous little self!”
“And it refuses to use modem day mechanisms. Right?”
“Yes. It has reverted back to the horse-and-buggy days. Claims machines take the soul out of a man. Yet, and get this—here’s the irony of their set-up. Despising machinery, they’re still run by the most mechanical religion, and the most mechanical state, politically-speaking, imaginable. They think the devil invented the steam engine!
“Yet, each soul in Dafess City is destined from birth to a certain rank in society. Destined to a certain job, a certain mate, and a certain place in Heaven! They’ve got a book which they call the Celestial Blueprint. It outlines the future in veiled, allegorical terms. But the Dafesses take every word literally, the letter being their spirit.”
“Dafesses?” asked the artist, pretending ignorance.
“After Multum Bonum Dafess, founder and prophet. Anyway, the Blueprint foretells the end of the world, when the inhabitants of Dafess will be saved, and the rest of the world will go to a nice little place reserved for them, called* Rejectus.
“Rejectus is furnished with all the comforts of home—with hot water, baked meats, specially-built furniture, highly-trained personal attendants. You get me. Only the Dafesses, the Truncated, will be left untouched after the Day of Judgment. The Untruncated will go to Rejectus.”
Da Vincelleo shifted uncomfortably in his chair. When he was a boy, his loving mother had described just such a place as his ultimate destination—if he didn’t mend his ways. And, though he had scoffed, his unconscious knew how to pitchfork certain uncalloused figments into his conscious mind.
“You really hate them, don’t you?” he gibed.
“I hate them because they’re so hateful,” Revanche replied. “You would, too, if you were destined to be looked
down on all your life by people you knew were stupid. Or if you fell in love, and you were forbidden to marry because the girl wasn’t slated by the Elders to be your mate. Or if you were forced to marry some fat cow with the brains of a magpie because the Elders interpreted a certain passage in the Blueprint as referring to you.”
His voice grew strained. “That’s not alii When I ran away, and made my pile, and could have any woman I wanted, I found I couldn’t endure any woman not from my hometown. Do you want to know why?” He touched his artificial nosetip, his voice soaring in a new scream.
“I’ll tell you why! From infanthood, I was drilled in the idea that only women with truncated noses were pure, glorious, and beautiful. Until I ran away, I never saw a woman with a normal nose. Never! And now, even though I’ve disguised the mark of my native community, and know, rationally, that untruncated women are beautiful, my nerves, my stomach, won’t admit it. I think Miss Solar System of 2052 is ugly!
“I could have her anytime, anywhere, understand? But I can’t endure her, or any of her sisters. They all look misshapen. And you know what, Da Vincelleo? Despite all my money, I can’t get a single beautiful woman in the System to cut off the tip of her nose for me. Not one! And I’ve met plenty who’ve said they loved me and would die for me. But they don’t love me enough to snip off the tips of their money-sniffing little noses. Oh, no!”
For an instant, there was agony in his stare. “Just why do you think I’ve fought my way up until I’m sitting on top of Sol? So I can take it easy, and play golf or go staryacht-ing? Not B. T. Revanche!
“It’s because I hate the guts of every soul in Dafess, every beakcut heaven-elected who won’t touch a machine because it might spot him with unholy oil, yet is himself a machine of the lowest type! I’m going to give them the most ironic justification of their creed.
“Funny thing, though,” Revanche added, as if it were still puzzling him. “A statue of a beautiful woman without a truncated nose does seem to stir me a little. Like that one in the slogan corridor. It shows my basic instincts are still biologically normal.”
Da Vincelleo sighed in mock sympathy and began running his fingers over the “eyes” that would summon the chiefs of his staffs. He knew that what he had in mind was going to be his masterwork. The secret excavation beneath Dafess would in itself tax his resources. As he blocked in the calls, his gaze fell upon a romantic historical novel on the desk before him, Renfrew Rides Again For The Mounted.
This novel, like many others written in the early 20th-century, had been taped and distributed Solarwide. The fad for viewing early Wild West movies had died out and been replaced by a passion for audiovisual recordings of romantic-historical novels. Of them all, Renfrew of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police was the most prominent figure. So popular that the motto of the mounties—“We always get our man”—was on every body’s lips (usually in the form of a perverted joke).
Da Vincelleo’s rocketing brain must have collided with a humorous thought, for his foxlike lips turned up even more. So Revanche wanted irony, did he? And poetic justice?
He looked at the financier but Revanche failed to notice the smile. He was still raving.
Ill
THREE MONTHS LATER, the noonday sun above Dafess City began dimming. In less than five minutes, it became a completely black ball and remained that somber and terrifying unnatural hue until it sank below the horizon.
In due course, the stars rose in their appointed courses. But, suddenly, without warning, many fell, hurtling across the sky and disappearing into the bottomless throat of space.
The full moon bounded up. Just as it cleared the horizon, it was struck by a large red star. Wounded, the moon dripped blood.
All these signs were accompanied, outwardly, at least, by great rejoicing in Dafess. The Celestial Blueprint was fulfilling itself. The Time had come. The Truncated were about to get their just reward.
They took baths for the first time in their lives. They put on immaculate white robes. Then, en masse, they marched to the great open square in the center of the city, and waited.
Meanwhile, all the Untruncated dwelling in Dafess had been cast out, and all intercourse with the outside had been cut off. Inasmuch as they used no radios, they had only to close the gates of their high-walled city to become incommunicado.
As soon as that was done, and the citizens were collected together to receive their long prophesied payment for holiness, they turned their short snouts upward to await further developments. Nor were they at all disappointed.
As predicted, the sky rolled up like a scroll. It did so with enough thunder to shake the bones and rattle the teeth of even the most hardened and secretly sceptical.
With the thunder came a blaze of light which revealed a Titanic forge, a cosmic smithy where brawny angels with soot blackening their robes and smudging their halos stood beating plowshares into swords and spears.
Flame leaped. Bellows pumped by a cherubic host wheezed like asthmatic Prometheuses. Hammers as large as hills clanged on white-hot weaponheads the size of skyscrapers held on anvils large as mountains. Fire and smoke puffed out in a great cloud that threatened to envelop the city. A clamor beat upon their ears and bounced from the heavens to the ground and back again.
Then, the sky snapped shut. It clicked like a camera-eye, and the tremendous vision was gone.
But the assembled Truncated were transported with joy. Had they not seen the swords prepared for the smiting of the heathen? All as foretold by the Celestial Blueprint?
An exultant buzz rose from the crowd. It was, however, stilled at once, for, across the blackened sky, lightning flashed, and twiste
d itself into words that seared the eyes of the multitude. Everyone, watched spellbound above them.
YOU HAVE BEEN CHOSEN.
A vast murmur of pleasure ascended from the crowd. Many of them looked relieved. They wiped sweat off their brows and glanced furtively at their companions to see if they had noticed the doubt on their faces.
The Elders of the Truncated, gathered upon a raised platform in the center of the square, lifted their arms and began the ritual whose words would start the gears of the final minutes of the Day into spinning.
As Blueprinted, the sky paled and became its normal afternoon azure. The citizens stood hushed, gazing expectantly upwards. After a tense two minutes, the sky suddenly turned black again. This time, however, streaks of blue appeared between the black clots. In a moment, it was seen that the sable hue had been caused by a host of figures, so many they had almost blotted out the blue.
It was as if the sky were an upside-down sea out of which dived a thousand bodies, plunging earth-ward head foremost.
A shout of rapture swelled from the ground to meet them. The dead Truncated were descending from Heaven to crown the faithful livingl
But there was one man who did not scream with joy. He was B. T. Revanche, clad in a white robe and showing a nose from which the plastiflesh had been removed. He was there because he had insisted, to Da Vincelleo that he could not get his money’s worth unless he actually participated.
“You can’t taste blood over a TV set,” he had growled.
So it was that he was the only one of the throng who did not at the next moment fall silent in an amazed numbness. For the falling figures did not carry laurels with which to crown the faithful on the ground. Far from it. They held swords before them—long and broad two-edged blades that flashed ominously in the bright sunlight.
A scream of mingled outrage and terror tore the air into tatters. Something was wrong! Somebody had thrown a monkey wrench into the celestial gears! The Blueprint had said nothing about this!
The figures swelled in size as they came closer. They slowed their headlong rush, uprighted themselves, and floated feet first to earth. There they paused a minute, glaring about, until the entire army had descended.