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out?"
"Well & we have sources." He patted me on the shoulder. "I don't mean to be
mysterious. In fact, I'm not sure exactly where the information does come
from."
"That's reassuring." Maybe I should ask Sir Charles. "When are we going to get
down to business?"
He checked his watch. "Food in ten minutes, Claudia said. Then all the phems
go into town; they have tickets to the Bolshoi opening."
"Could we do that instead of the meeting?"
"It'll be fun." Pat, pat again. "I have to go help." His walk looked strange,
too sprightly for a plump man.
The implant probably weighed only a few ounces. Maybe I should get one the
next time I go private.
"He is a funny little man," Maria said.
"You met him at a party like this?"
"No, Stockholm was much more serious. He had sent me a letter & let me see. He
said there was an
'informal discussion group' of immortals that had decided to include me. I
went because I'd never been to
Stockholm except to change planes."
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"But what they talked about was interesting enough for you to return for
more."
"Not actually. I suppose that what they discussed could be of great interest
to an immortal. I'm just a well-preserved lady of a hundred and ten. Not much
longer to go."
Again, an ice water splash inside me. She touched the corners of my mouth.
"Smile. I told Lamont I
didn't think I'd make the next one, and he asked whether he could bribe me
with you being there. Funny that he should know."
"A lot of funny stuff going on. He told me I'd been blackballed for years."
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She smiled quizzically. "Black balls?"
"One person had objected to my joining the group. But he died."
"I heard, yes. That Russian." Lips pursed. "That was sad, or grotesque."
"The way that he died?"
"Well & that he should die there, in Stockholm. It's ironic, isn't it. Just
because he went to a meeting of immortals, he "
"Wait. He died at the meeting?"
"Just after. Some kind of car accident. I read about it the next day. He was
still in the Stockholm traffic net; but his car's brain went out, and I guess
all the failsafes did, too. There was a big smell, a big stink, I
mean, because he had been some kind of important government man in America.
Then he defected to
Russia. You must have read about it."
"No, I was in the tank."
"Oh! Of course. There were a lot of accusations. The Russians claimed the CIA
had done it."
"Let me guess. The CIA said the Russians did it to make them look bad."
"Maybe. All I recall was that everybody was investigating it, but there was no
conclusion. He'd gone almost straight up and fallen several kilometers into
the sea, that one by Stockholm "
"The Baltic."
"I suppose. The car seems to have exploded on the way down, and most of the
pieces sank. So you had the Americans and the Russians and the UN and the
Swedish traffic people, all making wild guesses and accusations.
Dio boia!
I didn't like him very much, but that's still an awful way to die."
I had the sudden paranoid certainty that he had been disposed of because he
stood in the way of my joining the group. That was ridiculous, of course. "He
was an unpleasant guy?"
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"Too pleasant. He was all over me, trying to be nice in this & oily Russian
way. An Italian man would simply ask."
"And keep asking," I said.
She smiled, teasing. "Only to be gallant. You're too American to understand
that."
"Gallant and optimistic."
Claudia was standing by the pool, ringing a silver bell. A procession of
white-suited men and women carried steaming trays.
"You still eat like a bird?"
"Yes." She laughed brightly, also remembering a seventy-year-old joke. "Half
my weight in bugs every day."
We lined up and filled plates, then tried to find places to sit. It probably
amused Claudia to see a hundred expensively dressed people standing with a [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]