Read The Book of Levi for Free Online Page B

he realised. He didn’t need Elizabeth Dawson; he didn’t need political affiliation. He had been right to resist her charms. He needed scientific know-how. The business world, the whole world, he suddenly saw, was limited without the scientist; the inventor. They conceived of the world and then the engineers constructed it. The businessman and the consumer, the end user, only lubricated its wheels. Businessmen had nothing to sell and people had nowhere to work without the thinkers and their input. It became clear to him – he must speak with Woodford.
    However, it was not Woodford, but Dawson, who chose that moment to enter his apartment.
    ‘Sorry to interrupt,’ said Elizabeth, hanging elegantly by the door. ‘May I come in?’
    The answer was obvious and soon the two found themselves admiring the imaginary city on Damien’s wall.
    ‘I see the existing factories here,’ she pointed to the map at the outskirts of the central city, ‘but what are these ones in a ring further out towards the wasteland?’
    ‘They’re the factories I intend to build one day. They’ll eventually supplant the ones in existence now,’ he replied, looking at the map but noticing, more than anything, the delightful aroma of Elizabeth’s hair. ‘We’ll need to transport the workers out there of course, but if we can manage it, we can provide useful work for most of the street dwellers.’
    ‘You’re a visionary,’ she muttered to herself, but loudly enough so that Damien could hear.
    At that moment he so much wanted to be a visionary, just so that he could fit the picture of him she appeared to be forming in her head, but he had to be honest.
    ‘No,’ he admitted, ‘this is my father’s idea. I just had an artist paint it upon my wall so I never forget it.’
    ‘That shows vision,’ replied Elizabeth, turning the beacon of her bright eyes upon him.
    ‘Perhaps,’ he returned, though a little unsteadily, smote by the rigour of her eyes. He looked back to the wall and added, ‘If we had the means we might even be able to make use of the mountains.’
    ‘It’s illegal to live in the mountains, young man. You know that,’ Elizabeth replied, playfully.
    ‘I meant in the future,’ replied Damien.
    ‘I know you said that you can’t work for me,’ she said, ‘and I accept that, but I wonder if, perhaps, you might consider working with Leslie Woodford?’
    Damien was aghast. All of the thoughts he had entertained over the past few hours had suddenly borne fruition, as if the gods had been listening in and rewarded his desire.
    ‘I’d like to meet him,’ he replied.
    Elizabeth looked at his delicious, slender body that even a rustic baggy shirt couldn’t completely disguise. She took quick inventory of his fine but strong features and she sighed.
    ‘I’ll arrange it,’ she said.
    And she was gone in a dark swirling mass of unbridled hair and feline, tight-bodied elegance.
    Damien sighed. He sensed the double-edged sword of opportunity and danger lurking in every stride of that young woman.
    And he heard the sirens calling.

    *

    Leslie had spent a sleepless night. Unlike Damien, he didn’t have a young woman to pass the time, or an orgasm to act as a sedative. He had stayed wide awake for the majority of the night, enjoying only brief, broken spats of dreamtime. And what sleep he had managed was a compendium of missing manuscripts and Elizabeth Dawson’s rubescent cheeks. Her dark hair ripped like a tornado through his mind and the pages of his precious manuscript were sucked up into its vortex towards the oblivion of the sky in a thousand loose-leaf pages.
    He was dark-eyed and dishevelled when he found his way into a meeting with Nicholas Brand and Elizabeth Dawson the following morning.
    ‘My God. What happened to you?’ asked Nicholas as Leslie entered the meeting room.
    He didn’t have a chance to answer before Elizabeth arrived. She was dressed in a brown business suit and perfectly presented. She had not a