Cycle of Nemesis Read Free

human-looking robots are open and transparent in their programmed effects.
    We got in and the vanes stirred and whickered and the voice grille said: “Where to, sir?”
    “Home, James,” said Pomfret and then, because he was Pomfret, added: “And don’t spare the horses.”
    I thought of the dead girl without a head and I thought of the man who had vanished and who looked like me.
    I had not, of course, mentioned him to the police. I had a good idea they would either have taken no notice and written me off, or they would have taken me down to the station and probably tried to pin the murder on me. Either way would do me no good. This was a thing I had to work through for myself.
    The heli slanted away in the sunshine and Gannets with its blue roofs and gray and yellow walls with their wide framed windows slipped back into its bower of green.
    Nice place, that. Restful. What had happened there bore no relationship to the house’s niche in history; a house, a home, a palace for a family—again I thought of the legends clustering around the name of Lester Northrop. Before I could start a conversation with Pomfret leading him around to telling me this tidbit of local scandal his phone rang. It was Benenson.
    “Now look here, George! What are you doing floating around in your heli for? Have you got the Bernini already?”
    Pomfret glanced sideways at me. “No, Paul, not yet, not yet. There was an—an accident....”
    On the screen the round harshly gray face of Benenson projected a strong personality. I didn’t much care for
    Paul Benenson. He was one of those uncomfortable people who seem to be incapable of a conversation but must at all times try to beat anyone else down, to argue without reason, always seeking to score points. Now he drew his brows down at George Pomfret.
    “That’s not good enough, George! I know we all agreed to let you represent the syndicate at the auction because you were local, but perhaps I ought to have gone myself. I know better than most how difficult it is to find trust these days—”
    I refrained from listening to any more, reflecting that George had evidently talked himself into this one, and trying to extract some amusement from the thought of his joining up with bores like Benenson. Since the prices of art treasures and antiquities had soared up beyond even the purses of the well-to-do, leaving the field clear for the super-rich and the art galleries and museums, the fashion had grown for men of taste to club together in syndicates to buy art treasures and share them, sometimes on a rotational basis, sometimes by mutual sharing of a private gallery. As Benenson so often remarked, “I damn well want the Aphrodite and I don’t mind sharing it with a few of you fellows who clubbed together with me. But I don’t want a horde of grubby little public faces and eyes goggling all over it.”
    He said that again now.
    Pomfret nodded. "We are resuming die auction in the morning, Paul. I think we can secure the Bernini, although there is tremendously strong opposition.”
    “Humph. Maybe. You can increase our top price by another half million. Marcel Lecanuet has joined our consortium. I don’t care for him, but he brings another half million.” Benenson’s face on the phone screen showed clearly the overmastering greed in him. "And I shall come down tomorrow, also. We must have it, George ! ”
    As the screen died I said to Pomfret, “It, George? I thought Benenson was an art lover?”
    “He’s all right,” said good old George, uncomfortably.
    We spun down to his own villa, modest in size compared to Gannets, but filled with all the latest gadgetry to make life worth living. His robots took over the moment we alighted from the heli and the salmon was delicious. The rest of that evening passed in a fog of cross-talk centering around the headless corpse of the young girl.
    As for me, I kept wondering who the devil could be the man who had looked like myself, and if he had, really