The Zenith Angle - Bruce Sterling [85]
The second man was also humble and ghostlike, but in a very different way. His padded jacket, his tartan shirt, his felt cowboy hat, they were perched on his quiet flesh like the clothes on a cowboy paper doll.
The two horses plodded by gently, long heads down, on some very private go-round. Van and Dottie sank deep into the hot water. The servant ignored them serenely, as if two naked lovers in a tub were no more than two pinecones. The old man’s gaze fell on them and lingered. He had eyes in a waking dream. They seemed to stare across a thousand light-years.
The horses plodded on and carried their human cargo into the pine trees.
“I should have stood right up and waved,” Dottie said.
Van laughed, startled.
She swam over and wrapped her chunky little body around him.
“We don’t have many illusions about that old man,” she told him, her lips an inch from his neck. “At the Facility, nobody does. When he was between marriages, he used to go to astronomy seminars and hit on all the women. Oh, boy, the stories you used to hear whenever Tom DeFanti was on the prowl.”
“How do you know all that? Aren’t you a little young for that old guy?”
“There aren’t that many women in astronomy, honey. Word always gets around.”
Van gave her a smile. Somehow, it all made sense.
“I got myself one of the cute guys,” she told him, rubbing his collarbone. “Everybody knows.”
Van kept his smile up, but the sight of Tom DeFanti had given him a real turn. Van had met a lot of odd and remarkable people lately. He had met the President of the United States. He’d met the Secretary of Defense, the National Security Adviser, and the Attorney General. Once, at an industry junket, he had had a long chat by an elevator with both Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, who were riding up to the penthouse together to drink beer and play poker. Bill Gates had noticed Van’s name badge. He had said something nice about how “hard-core” Van might get, working at Microsoft Research in Redmond.
Maybe if Bill Gates had caught it in the neck from some huge Enron scandal. If Bill Gates had suffered a total mental breakdown. If Bill Gates was shambling around like some kind of snake-bitten ghost. Then maybe Bill Gates would be as scary as Tom DeFanti had just been.
The world’s rich people were all getting spookier. During the Bubble, there had never been so many truly wacky people who were just totally, crazily loaded with cash. Up at the very top, they stopped counting their money and they wanted to act just like governments. George Soros had his agents all over Eastern Europe. Ross Perot wanted to be President, and Ken Lay . . . they’d all lost the idea that there was any kind of limit to what money could do to the world. Even Osama bin Laden was a rich guy. It was like they were all staring straight into the sun.
“Honey,” she said.
“What?”
“Try to relax, okay? I’m Facility staff, I rented this place. We get to do that with Pinecrest, it’s, like, an understanding. They won’t do anything. It’s all just fine here.”
“Right,” he said.
“What do you want to do today, honey? We have our own day just for once, we can do anything we like. Hiking, or horseback riding . . .”
“No.”
“We could go back inside and try out that big waterbed.”
Van finished his beer. The pores had opened up all over him. He was never going to get any cleaner. All the lovemaking had reset Van’s erotic dials to zero. He didn’t want to stay around this place anymore. He was ready to put some clothes on and get something serious accomplished. “I’ve got a great idea,” he told her. “Why don’t we go see your work?”
“Okay. After lunch.”
“Let’s go.”
“Derek, we’re having shrimp bisque at the ranch house. With blackened tuna. Plus sautéed morels in truffle oil.”
Well then. Maybe Dottie’s plans would be