To THE LAND OF THE ELECTRIC ANGEL: Hugo and Nebula Award Finalist Author (The Frontiers Saga) by William Rotsler Read Free Book Online Page B

came out of the house bearing a tray with one drink. She saw Voss, paused to smile briefly and make a small bow, then knelt on a cushion next to Voss's sister and proffered the drink.
    Blake thought she had one of the finest and most beautifully proportioned bodies he had ever seen.
    Voss nodded his head toward the blonde, who was now oiling Theta's nude body, and took Blake's elbow. "Theta's taste is getting better. She's a nice one. I wonder what she paid for her."
    "Paid?" Blake spoke before he thought, and Voss smiled.
    "A labor contract, all very legal. Expensive, but legal. Lump sum upon signing, a weekly or monthly amount deposited in a Swiss account – and lo! a slave girl to do with as you wish. A year, three years, seven years, with options. I'd take very few for seven. They age too much. But that one, that one might be worth it. You'd have to pay through the nasal passages for her now that she's seen how it's done."
    Voss gestured Blake through the big oak door, heavily carved in an intricate design with big bosses of cast silver set with jade.
    "You look shocked, Blake. Don't you really know about the world of the rich? The rich rich? We have everything, anything. All we have to do is want something enough to spend the money." He gestured back toward the terrace as they went through the entry hall. "Everything but time. Oh, you get a little more time with the doctors, and the shots, and the little extras. Knapp is putting millions into immortality research; so am I, for that matter." He smiled. "The Methuselah Institute is funded by me. Warfield and Kemp have foundations researching democratic processes." Voss now came close to Blake and whispered to him with mock seriousness. "Want a slave girl, Blake? One that is your property? Want to whip her or have her do something ... dark? All you need is money, my friend. All they need is money, or so they think; then they are willing to do whatever they must. Beautiful boys, luscious women, any type you want. Just hunt around." Then he laughed and stepped away. "Or if you are a Voss, they send you pictures and details. Ah, Amelia!"
    Voss greeted a buxom Mexican woman in a plain dress. "Amelia, this is Mr. Mason. He is the man who is going to make me famous. Blake is going to design my tomb."
    "Oh,. Senor Voss! Why do you think of such things! Ahh!"
    Voss laughed easily and turned to Mason. "Amelia is my housekeeper and my friend. She keeps the girls from stealing the silver when they don't hook a millionaire by dinnertime."
    "Oh, senor! You are loco!"
    Blake looked around the big main room. Life-style chairs in warm colors. A Locke table, a bad Shembo and a good Kirk Austin mosaic. A tapestry that was probably a Shannon. An oriental girl asleep on a pile of velvet cushions, her skin creamy and flawless, her breasts small and perfect.
    "Which is his room, Amelia?"
    "The one with the blue door, senor, at the head of the stairs in the south wing."
    Blake turned to his host. "Why do you want to leave this and go live in a hole in a mountain? I don't mean to talk myself out of the biggest commission of my life, but I have to ask."
    "But I don't have to answer," Voss smiled. Blake noticed that only his mouth smiled; his eyes were flinty. "I don't blame you for asking, though; but don't get nervous. We shook, didn't we?" Blake nodded. "This is not a whim, Blake, remember that. It is important to me."
    Amelia showed Blake to his room, and Blake sat down on the bed.
    The room was big and comfortable, the baronial hall of a lord, fully equipped with a wall screen in an antique frame, a colorchanger, a computerized tape library, and an information terminal hooked into the Masterlibe in Omaha.
    He lay back on the fur spread and closed his eyes. He had cone a long way from the old neighborhood. There hadn't been as many of the big arcologs then, and more of the untidy urban sprawl. The San Fernando Valley had been one big bedroom, twenty or thirty floors deep. His parents were