I followed him, feeling awkward and tongue-tied. Zima led me into the chalet, through an old-fashioned kitchen and an old-fashioned lounge, full of thousand-year-old furniture and ornaments.

"How was the flight?"

"Fine."

He stopped suddenly and turned to face me. "I forgot to check... did the robot insist that you leave behind your Aide Memoire?"

"Yes."

"Good. It was you I wanted to talk to, Carrie, not some surrogate recording device."

"Me?"

The pewter mask of his face formed a quizzical expression. "Do you do multisyllables, or are you still working up to that?"

'Er...“

"Relax," he said. "I'm not here to test you, or humiliate you, or anything like that. This isn't a trap, and you're not in any danger. You'll be back in Venice by midnight."

"I'm okay," I managed. "Just a bit starstruck."

"Well, you shouldn't be. I'm hardly the first celebrity you've met, am I?"

"Well, no, but... "

"People find me intimidating," he said. "They get over it eventually, and then wonder what all the fuss was about."

"Why me?"

"Because you kept asking nicely," Zima said.

"Be serious."

"All right. There's a bit more to it than that, although you did ask nicely. I've enjoyed much of your work over the years. People have often trusted you to set the record straight: especially near the ends of their lives."

"You talked about retiring, not dying."

"Either way, it would still be a withdrawal from public life. Your work has always seemed truthful to me, Carrie. I'm not aware of anyone claiming misrepresentation through your writing."

"It happens now and then," I said. "That's why I always make sure there's an AM on hand so no one can dispute what was said."

"That won't matter with my story," Zima said.

I looked at him shrewdly. "There's something else, isn't there? Some other reason you pulled my name out of the hat."

"I'd like to help you," he said.

When most people speak about his Blue Period they mean the era of the truly huge murals. By huge I do mean huge. Soon they had become large enough to dwarf buildings and civic spaces; large enough to be visible from orbit. Across the Galaxy twenty-kilometre-high sheets of blue towered over private islands or rose from storm-wracked seas. Expense was never a problem, since Zima had many rival sponsors who competed to host his latest and biggest creation. The panels kept on growing, until they required complex, Sloth-tech machinery to hold them aloft against gravity and weather. They pierced the tops of planetary atmospheres, jutting into space. They glowed with their own soft light. They curved around in arcs and fans, so that the viewer's entire visual field was saturated with blue.

我跟着他，感觉自己很笨拙，甚至有点口吃。齐玛领着我走进了小屋，映入眼帘的是一个老式的厨房和一个老式的休闲室，屋子里放满了古老的家具和摆设，大概都有上千年的历史了。

“一路飞来感觉怎么样？”

“好。”

他突然停住了，转过头看着我。“我都忘了检查了……我的机器佣人有没有强调不能携带备忘录助手？”

“有。”

“很好。我只想跟你这个人谈，凯莉，而不是什么录音设备。”

“我？”

他脸上戴的银灰色面具形成了一个搞笑的表情。“呵呵，你就不能说句长一点儿的话吗，怎么回答都是一个字？”

“呃……”

“放松。”他说，“我让你到这儿来，不是考验你、羞辱你，或者对你做其他事。不是什么圈套，你在这儿不会有任何危险。你半夜就会回到威尼斯。”

“我很好。”我说，“就是有点儿激动，就像是追星族终于见到了自己的偶像。”

“呵呵，你没必要这样。我不可能是你见到的第一位社会名流吧，是吗？”

“当然不是了，只是……”

“人们觉得我很吓人。”他说，“他们最终还是习惯了，然后想要知道我这么小题大作究竟为了什么。”

“为什么选我？”

“因为你一直都是很友好地邀请我采访。”齐玛回答。

“别开玩笑了。”

“好吧，除了你很友好之外，也有其他一些原因。这些年我一直很喜欢你的大部分报道。很多人都很信任你，特别是那些即将离开人世的人们。因为你如实地记录了采访的内容，不带任何虚假的成分。”

“你找我是来谈退休的事，不是谈临终的事吧。”

“其实都一样，反正要从公众的视野里消失了。凯莉，我觉得你写的文章都很真实。我从来没注意到有人声称你写的文章歪曲事实。”

“我一直都是这样。”我说，“这就是为什么我总是带着备忘录助手的原因，这样就没人否认自己说过的话。”

“带不带备忘录助手不会影响你对我的报道。”齐玛说。

我警觉地看着他。“肯定有其他原因，要不然你怎么会只选我一个了？”

“我只想帮帮你。”他说。

人们常常谈起齐玛的蓝色时代，就是指他创作巨幅画作的时代。说巨幅可真不是吹的。他创作的画作尺寸特别大，大得足以覆盖大大小小的建筑物和市民广场，甚至从外太空轨道上都能看到。放眼整个银河系，居然还有 20 公里高的蓝色画卷。这些画一般建在私人的海岛上，像塔一样直插云霄；有的甚至直接放在暴风雨肆掠的大海上。创作这些画作的经费从来都不是问题，因为齐玛身边有一大堆赞助商，争先恐后地抢夺他最新最大的作品的赞助权。齐玛创作的巨幅画作越来越大，后来居然需要很复杂的高科技机械设备固定，防止画作因为重力或者天气的影响而损坏。这些巨型机械设备穿过了所在行星的整个大气层，一直延伸到外太空，自身还发出微弱的光。画作被弯曲成一定的角度，让那些狂热的艺术爱好者在行星上就能看到，他们会发现整个视野都被蓝色占据。

Zima Blue 齐马蓝 8