“I see.”
“And even to this day we send our people forth to search out dangers,” Enron said. “There is nothing dishonorable about that.”
“You people see enemies everywhere, don’t you?”
“We see dangers.”
“If there are dangers, there have to be enemies. But the age of war between nations is in the past. There are no enemies any more. We’re all allies now in the struggle to save the planet. Can it be that the enemies you people are worrying about are all in your imaginations?”
“Our history teaches us to be cautious,” he said. “Three thousand years of being driven from place to place by people who disliked us or envied us or merely wanted to turn us into scapegoats. Why should it be any different today? It would be foolish of us to assume that the millennium has arrived.” Enron felt himself on the defensive, suddenly. It was an unfamiliar sensation for him. He was here tonight to ask questions, not to answer them. She was very persistent, though. He took a deep gulp of the dreadful wine. “The Assyrians massacred us. The Romans burned our temple. The Crusaders blamed us for the death of Christ” The wine was going down more easily, now. “Do you know of the death camps that the Germans built for us in the middle of the twentieth century?” he asked. “Six million of us died for nothing more than being Jews. The survivors went to Israel, then. All around us were Muslims who hated us. They swore to finish the job that the Germans had begun, and several times they attempted to do it It is not easy to live a quiet and productive life, when just on the other side of the river is an enemy who has decreed a holy war against you.”
“But that was a long time ago. The Arabs are your friends now.”
“It is nice to think so, isn’t it? Well, their oil wealth is gone, and although our region is more fertile now than it was before the climate changed, their lands are greatly overpopulated, and so they can no longer afford the luxury of the holy war that they would probably still like to wage. So they have turned to their suddenly acceptable Israeli neighbors for technological and industrial assistance. We are all friends now, yes. We are partners. But that can always change. As things get worse and worse on Earth, those who lack our advantages may decide to turn on us. It has happened before.”
“How terribly suspicious you people are!”
“Suspicious? But there is everything to suspect! And so we remain ever alert. We send our agents everywhere, sniffing out trouble. We worry about the Japanese, for example.”
“The Japanese? Why?”
Enron realized that he was getting a little drunk. Which was also something that was very unusual, for him.
He said, “They are a hateful people. I mean, full of hatred. They have such great wealth and yet they are miserable exiles. Living their isolated, paranoid lives in their little super-protected enclaves here and there around the world, sealed away behind their walls, bitter about having been driven from their homes, hated by everybody else for their money and their power but hating back even harder, because their hatred is fueled by such enormous resentment and envy. And the ones they hate more than anyone are us Israelis, because we too were exiles once but we were able to go home, and it is a beautiful home, and because we are strong and enterprising and we are challenging them now for positions of power all over the world.”
His hand had still been exploring the region between her thighs. Now she clamped her legs closed on his wrist, not so much to prevent him from going further as just to hold him pleasantly in place. Did she want to talk or to make love? Perhaps both at once, he thought. The two things seemed to be related, for her. She was a manic talker—the drug she uses causes that, he thought, the hyperdex—and a sexual maniac as well. I should stop all this chatter, Enron told himself, and simply pull her down with me onto that carpet. And then out to dinner. He felt as if he hadn’t eaten in three days.
But he too was somehow unable to stop talking.
“The accidents of life in the greenhouse world brought Israel into world economic prominence even as they drove the Japanese from their home islands,” he heard himself say. “We are moving on many fronts at once. The Israeli government has invested heavily in most of the great megacorps, do you know that? We hold significant minority interests in Samurai and Kyocera both. But the megacorps are still basically Japanese-dominated, and they are fighting to keep us out. They are eager to see us cast down from our high place. They will do anything. Anything. So we watch them, Jolanda. We watch everyone.”
“And developing the adapto technology before Samurai does—that’s going to put Israel into a stronger position in the world that’s coming?”
“We believe so.”
“I think you’re wrong. I think we have to forget about Earth and move to space instead.”
“To the habitat worlds, yes. Your great obsession.”
“You think I’m silly, don’t you?”
“Silly?” he cried. “Oh, no, never!”
Enron didn’t even bother to try to sound sincere. He was bored and irritated by her, now. To his surprise he found himself even starting to lose sexual interest in her. She is not a she-camel but a cow, he thought, a preposterous cow with delusions of intelligence.
Even so, he kept his hand where it was.
Jolanda rocked back and forth on it, squeezing her thighs. Then she turned and opened her eyes and looked at him in an oddly flirtatious, provocative way, smiling dreamily as though she had decided to impart some immensely important secret to him. “I ought to tell you, I may not even wait around down here for the environment to decay any further. I’m seriously thinking of moving to an L-5 world quite soon now.”
“Are you? And have you chosen any one in particular?”
“It’s a place called Valparaiso Nuevo,” she said.
“I don’t know it,” Enron said. They were sitting in near darkness, staring at darkness. A cat that he did not think he had seen before, very long-legged with a thin, angular head, had emerged from somewhere and was nuzzling against his shoe. The wine bottle was empty. “No—wait. I remember. It’s a sanctuary world, isn’t it? Where runaway criminals go to hide?” He was starting to feel light-headed from the heat, the endless talking, the wine, his own mounting hunger, the intensity of Jolanda’s looming physicality, perhaps even the aftereffects of having exposed himself to her bioresponsive sculptures. Desire began to stir in him again, sluggishly at first, then with greater intensity. She was maddeningly annoying but oddly irresistible. The conversation was becoming surreal, now. “Why would you want to go there?” he asked.
Her eyes flashed at him. A stagily wicked look, a child being wicked.
“I really shouldn’t be telling you this, I suppose.”
“Go on. Do.”
“Will you keep it entirely to yourself?”
“Keep what?” he asked. “I don’t understand.”
“Imagine. Swearing a spy to secrecy! But you’ll be gone in a few days anyway and none of it matters to you. It doesn’t concern Israel in the slightest.”
“You can tell me, then.”
“Yes. All right. I will.” Another wicked-little-girl flash of the eyes. “But it goes no farther than you. Agreed?” I have a secret, buttwillshare itwithyou, only you, becauseyou are my friend and because I think you’re very cute.
“I swear it,” he said.
“You’ve got it right that Valparaiso Nuevo is a sanctuary world, full of criminals of all sorts who pay local government to protect them from law-enforcement agencies that might be looking for them. It’s run by some kind of crazy old Latin American dictator who’s been in charge there since the Year One.”
“I still don’t follow. What does this have to do with you?”