Going across to the room's comset, he tapped out a code irritably. "Get me Curval on the line," he said, even before the picture had properly formed. "And get him now, whatever he's doing."
He looked across at the girl again. She had turned and was lying on her side, one breast exposed above the sheet. Lever shivered. No, it wasn't her fault. She had tried. Had tried her damnedest to be sweet to him. Besides, the girl was mute. So maybe he would keep her. Maybe he would have her assigned here, to his private rooms. He turned back as Curval's voice came through. "Curval... I want you to come here at once. I've a job for you. I want you to go up to Boston for me and see the boy again. I'll brief you when you get here." '
Curval made to answer, but Lever had already cut him off. Turning away, he crossed the room quickly and stood over the girl, shaking her until she came awake.
"Quick now," he said, pulling her up. "You must help me dress. IVe things to do."
And as she busied herself about him, he began to feel better; began to shrug off his earlier mood. No, it was no good skulking and sulking. One had to do something. First he'd draft a note—an answer to the T'ang of Africa—to be sent by way of Mach, agreeing to his offer. Then he would arrange a meeting of the major shareholders to the Institute and force them to agree to an increase in funding. Last, but not least, he would see Curval, and brief him. For Curval would be his key.
He smiled, letting the girl fuss about him, wondering why he had not thought of it before. At present Curval was Head of the Institute, his reputation as the leading experimental geneticist of his age unchallenged. But Curval, good as he was, wasn't good enough, not when it was a question of squaring-up to death. He had as much as admitted to Lever's face that he considered the problem unsolvable. Even so, he might be the means by which Ward could be wooed back to the fold. Yes, where money and threats had failed, maybe a play at Ward's natural scientific curiosity might succeed. If Curval could show him how wonderful a challenge it was. If he could fire him with a new enthusiasm.
Especially now, when the boy was down and vulnerable.
Lever looked down. The girl had stopped, staring at the fierce erection he now sported. He laughed, then drew her close, forcing her head down onto him.
Yes, he would be young again. He would, be young.
TWO hundred LI to the north, in the boardroom of a small company, four men sat about a long oak table, talking.
Michael Lever had been silent for some while, listening, but now he leaned forward, interrupting the stream of talk.
"Forgive me, Bryn, but the point isn't whether it can be done, but whether it ought to be done. I don't know about you, but I don't want to live forever. It's bad enough thinking of being fifty, let alone being fifty forever."
Bryn Kustow was hunched forward at the far end of the table, facing Michael, his elbows pressed against the polished surface, his long forearms stretched out along the wood, meeting in a handclasp. His ash'blond hair was cut aggressively short, but the style suited him. He looked like a soldier, sitting there.
"Fifty, no, but what if you could be twenty-five for the rest of time? Wouldn't that tempt you?"
Michael shook his head. "I know how I feel. Besides, I want sons of my own, and I want those sons to love and respect me. I don't want to be a barrier in their way."
Kustow nodded and leaned back in the big wheel-back chair. Between him and Michael, to either side of the table, sat their friends and longtime companions, Jack Parker and Carl Stevens. They were dressed simply and sported the same aggressive hairstyle as Kustow. It gave them a kind of uniformity. One look was enough to place them. Sons, they were. Part of the new movement.
"It sounds like you hate him," Stevens said, leaning toward him. "Has it really got that bad?"
"No. It's not as simple as that. For all he's done to me these past few weeks, I still don't hate him. But this obsession of his with immortality. Well, it's gone too far. All his energies seem to be channeled into the search for a new serum or for some new way of switching off the aging process." He looked across at Kustow, his face filled with hurt. "I've seen it grow in him these past few years, like a sickness. And I don't want to be that way. Not ever. I don't want to be old in the way he's getting old. Hanging on like a beggar. There's no dignity in that."
"My father's the same," said Parker, looking about him at the circle of his friends. "He's got no time for anything else, these days. The day-to-day stuff he delegates, then goes off to jaw with the old gang." He paused and shook his head. "And you know what they're talking about? They're talking about spending a further fifteen billion on the Institute. Fifteen billion! And who loses out?"
"Sure. So what do we do about it?"
They stared at Kustow, as if he'd said something that was difficult to grasp.
"Do?" Stevens asked, shaking his dark, cropped head and laughing. "What can we do? It's like Mitchell said the other night at Gloria's. TheyVe got all the money, all the real power. All we have is the vague promise of inheritance."
"Vaguer by the day," said Parker, nudging him and laughing.
But Kustow and Lever weren't laughing. They were watching each other. Kustow narrowed his eyes in a question, and Michael nodded.
"Okay . . . we'll come clean," said Kustow, standing up and walking around the table until he stood behind Michael. "The paperwork,
earlier . . . that was a front. Michael and I called you over today for a special reason. Not to make deals, or anything like that, but to work on this thing that's bugging us all. To see if we can do something."
"We're listening," Parker said, leaning back, assuming an air of businesslike attentiveness. Across from him, Stevens nodded.
It was Michael who spoke.
"Essentially, you're right, Carl. They have got all the real power. But let's not underestimate ourselves. What have we got? Let's look at it. Let's see what we"can rustle up between us."
He separated his hands and sat back, using his right hand to count the fingers of his left. "One, we've got our personal allowances. Not inconsiderable. There's many a small company who would welcome the same figure in turnover. Don't be offended, but Bryn and I have been checking up. Between the four of us we could count on a figure of some one and three quarter million yuan."
Parker laughed. "And where would that get us? Your accounts are frozen, Michael, or had you forgotten?"
"Hold on," said Kustow. "Michael's not finished yet."
Michael smiled, his handsome face showing patience and determination. "Two, there's what we could divert from those funds we control on behalf of our fathers' companies."
Parker frowned. "I don't like the sound of that. It sounds vaguely criminal."
"It is. But let's face that when we have to. From such funds we could probably command upward of twenty million yuan."
Stevens whistled. Personally he was in charge of three small production companies that serviced his father's near-space development corporation, but they were minnows—sops his father had given him to keep him quiet; more a hobby than a job. He was an engineering graduate and the eldest of them at twenty-eight, but in himself he felt like a boy still, playing when he should have been acting in the world.
"Three, there are Trusts we could borrow against. Even at the most pessimistic rate we could expect to raise something like fifteen million yuan."
Parker interrupted him. "They'd know." He laughed briefly, then shook his head. "Don't you see? If we set about realizing all of this they'd know at once that we were up to something."
Lever smiled. "Good. Then you're thinking about it seriously?"