He brushed aside those who looked as if they might get in his way, stepped into an anti-gravity elevator, and was whisked up fifty stories to the immense suit of Bioid's GHQ. There a gold-plated treacher picked him up and preceded him, barking out his name with flattering precision.
"Make way for Signor Revanche! One side or a leg off, please! Lo, he cometh!"
Revanche frowned, and bit down on his cigar. He didn't like the slightest suspicion of levity in regard to himself.
Despite a twinge of annoyance, however, he was impressed by the offices. Blazing slogans hung along the walls: Bioid is more than skin deep! Our trinity: Art & Science & Da Vincelleo! Perfect both inside and out! For the Gods—and Da Vincelleo!
Diagrams and sketches of the great Messinan's works hung here and there—drawings of the human body in various positions, along with pictures of Bioid robots in corresponding postures.
Poised on plastiglass were germanium brains, startlingly life-like statues that breathed, and a mounted gorilla, last of his species, shot by the great Da Vincelleo himself. If you stepped on a plate set in the floor while admiring it, it would reach out for you—reach out and roar loud enough to scare the shorts off you.
B. T. Revanche paused for an instant before one of the statues, and manipulated a dial at its base. It was that of an attractive woman clothed in a simple tunic of green-gold gauze, her limbs gazelle-slender in the glare.
"Speak to me, baby," he said, rather coarsely.
The plastiskin woman spoke, her lips arching in a seductive smile. "Good afternoon, man of culture. I am not alive, but there is grace and beauty in all of Da Vincelleo's creations, and when you look at them you forget that you have come here to pass an idle hour.
"The veils of the artificial are stripped away, and for a moment you gaze upon beauty naked and unadorned. Would you not like to take me into your arms?"