But as it happened he was able to get down to his inquiries much sooner than he had expected. She gave him the opening he needed even as they sat watching the sunset.
“The night we all had dinner, Marty, Isabelle said you were a spy. Do you remember that?”
Enron chuckled. “Of course. A spy for Kyocera-Merck, she said.”
“Are you?”
“You are so very direct. It is charmingly American of you.”
“I was just thinking. I’ve never slept with a spy, not that I know of. Unless you are. It would be interesting to know.”
“Naturally I am,” he said. “All Israelis are spies. It is a widely known fact.”
Jolanda laughed and poured more of the abominable wine for them both.
“No. No, it is true. In our country we lived so long in a condition of dire peril, surrounded by enemies on every side, just a stone’s throw away: how could we not develop ingrained habits of watchfulness? A nation of spies, yes. Wherever we go, we look, we prowl, we lift up coverlets to find out what might be beneath. But a spy for Kyocera-Merck? No. That I am not. I do my spying for my country. It is a matter of patriotism, not of economic greed, do you see?”
“You really are serious,” she said, in wonder.
“A journalist, a spy—it is the same thing, is it not?”
“And you came here to talk to Nick Rhodes because your country wants to steal the adapto technology that he’s working on.”
She was, Enron realized, getting drunk very quickly. This conversation had veered from the merely playful into something rather different.
“Steal? I would not do that. We never steal. We license, we copy if necessary, we reinvent. Steal, no. It is forbidden by the laws of Moses. Thou shalt not steal, we are told. Imitate, yes. There is nothing in the commandments about that. And I do confess to you, freely without hesitation, that we wish to learn more about this project of your friend Dr. Rhodes, this scheme for the genetic transformation of mankind.” Enron eyed her closely. She was flushed and at least half-aroused: the heat of the evening, the wine, his no doubt apparent response to Tower of the Heart, all had been working on her. Leaning close, letting his hand rest on hers, he said in an insinuating, confidential way, “Now that I have admitted that I am a spy, you will not mind that I must do some spying now. Yes? Good.” She seemed to think he was playing a game. Very well. He was happy to amuse her. “Answer this for me,” he said. “What do you think about Rhodes, truly? Is he on to something? Are they going to produce some new kind of human being over at that laboratory of his?”
“Oh, you aren’t joking! You really are a spy!”
“Did I ever deny it? Come on.” Enron stroked her arm. Her skin was amazingly smooth, the smoothest he had ever touched. He wondered if she had had herself covered in something synthetic. There were women who did that. “What about him? What do you know about his work?”
“Nothing,” she said. “God’s honest truth, Marty.” He had told her to call him “Marty,” because “Meshoram” sounded too alien for her. She giggled. Maybe the idea of being an espionage source had some appeal for her. “I’d tell you what I knew, if I knew anything, but I don’t. You should have made a pass at Isabella instead, if that’s what you were after. Nick tells her things, sometimes, about his work. But she doesn’t pass them along to me, not so they would be of any use to you. I just hear bits and patches.”
“Such as?” He ran his hand lightly along the curve of her breast. She shivered and wriggled a little. “Come on,” he said. “Such as?”
She closed her eyes for a moment and seemed to be thinking.
“Well, that they have some young guy there who’s working on a big breakthrough, something to do with changing our blood so that it’ll be green instead of red. And other changes beyond that. I don’t know what they are. I really don’t. —Here, have some more wine. It’s nice, isn’t it? Green blood! Better than having to drink green wine, I guess.”
Enron pretended to sip the wine. Green blood, he thought. Some sort of hemoglobin adjustment? But he realized that she was telling the truth: she knew nothing. Probably it was useless to pursue the details.
Nevertheless he said, “Do you know this other scientist’s name, the younger one?”
“No. Isabelle might. You ought to talk to her.”
“She is a very difficult woman. I think she might not want to cooperate with me.”
“Yes,” Jolanda said, peering into her wine. “Most likely you’re right. After all, if Israel wants to develop its own adapto technology, and you’ve come here to find out what Samurai has actually achieved along those lines, then by helping you, she’d be helping the cause of adapto technology. And you know how she feels about that.”
“Yes.”
“Me too, for that matter. I think it’s tremendously scary. Frankly, it gives me the creeps.”
They had been through all this before. Enron forced himself to be patient with her. “But if it is necessary, the adapto, the only step left to us for the preservation of human life on Earth—”
“Is it so important that the human race remain on Earth, if Earth is so terribly fucked up? We could all emigrate to the space habitats, after all.”
He gave her some more wine. The sun had set now; the sky was swiftly turning black. Across the bay the lights of San Francisco were coming on, twinkling in the dense haze. Casually Enron’s hand roamed Jolanda’s generous body: breasts, belly, now her knee, now sliding up along her thigh. Such foreplay seemed to loosen her tongue, he thought. Or maybe it was loose all the time. He went on touching her regardless. She sat with her head thrown back, her eyes closed. One of the cats jumped up beside him and began to rub its head against his elbow. He knocked it away with a quick sidewise nudge.
Quietly he said, “We love our land. We fought for centuries to possess it. We would not want to leave it now, not even for some New Israel in the sky.”
“The Japanese left their land. The rich ones did, anyway. They’re scattered all around the world, now. They loved their country as much as you love yours. But they’re gone. If they could go, why can’t you?”
“They left, yes, because their islands were flooded by the rising seas. They lost all their fertile land and most of their cities, and nothing but barren mountaintops remained. They would never have gone otherwise. They would still be clinging to every rock. But they had no choice but to go. Just as we once left Israel to go into exile, long ago, two or three thousand years ago, because we were forced to by our enemies. And then one day we returned. We struggled, we suffered, we built, we fought. And now we live in the Garden of Eden. The sweet rains fall, the desert plains have turned green. We will not leave again.”
“What good is staying, though, if everything is going to change so much?” Her voice had grown eerie and thin, as though it came from far away. “If we all turn ourselves into weird mutant adapto creatures, will any of us still be human? Can you still be a Jew if you have green blood and gills?”
Enron smiled. “There is nothing in the Bible, I think, about what color our blood must be. Only that we must obey the law and live honorable lives.”
She considered that for a time.
Then she said, “And is it honorable to be a spy?”
“Of course. It is a very old tradition. When Joshua made ready to lead us across the Jordan, he sent two spies into the land on the other side, and they returned to tell Joshua that it was safe to go across, that the people on the other side were petrified with terror because they understood that the Lord had given their land to the Jews. The names of those two spies are not mentioned in the Bible. They were the first secret agents.”