I dawdled behind Nova, inspecting personal modifications, enjoying touching the machines as much as I enjoyed touching a Henry Moore or a Gene Lamont. I saw Nova looking at me with a quizzical smile from the opened lock and I hurried after her.
All my life it has been difficult to explain to others that all art is not on museum walls or in concert halls. A freshly fallen leaf in the gutter, a tool worn to the hand of its user, reflections of a megalopolis in the mirrored side of a building, a distant archotolog pyramid against the sunset were all things that had pleased me as much as a Goya or Piranesi’s fanciful engravings or Turandot. A cascade of blonde hair across a bare golden back or the esoterica washed up by the tide delighted me as much as a Praxiteles fragment or a performance of Ten Worlds by Kerrigan.
I suppose some of those things are not art, but beauty, and perhaps something becomes art only when it is touched by the hand or mind of man. But beauty is as much a part of man as his ugliness, his madness, his darkness. To me the ultimate beauty was that of the person, the completeness, not only the cosmetic exterior but the more important interior.
I had found it once in Madelon.
Was I close to it again?
The years of natural caution had prevented me from exposing myself beyond a certain point with Nova. Perhaps it was the secret of the Thorne-Braddock impersonation, perhaps it was the reluctance to once again be hurt. Perhaps it was everything, known and unknown. I grinned and the dour thoughts that had flooded my mind melted away. “Nice,” I said and patted a pockmarked sandcat. She made an expression that was in casual agreement but relegated it all to the everyday. I felt faintly patronized.
The next dome was a noisy one. It was not as large as the first dome, but it was more thickly populated. Various companies and guilds and unions operated “hotels” for their members and employees. Laser-cut letters in one immense sandblock wall announced to all it was the Martian Miners Union Hall and Hostel. Next to it, an imbedded mosaic of semiprecious stones proclaimed the Elysium Tripper. Three yellow-clad men lurched from the entrance as we passed, their faces flushed and their eyes dilated.
An incoherent growl of lust came from the biggest one, almost drowning out the redhead’s “Well, hello there, pretty one!” They aimed for us and canted to the right, laughing.
“Haw, Nikolai, you can’t navigate any better here than you can out on the Cimmerian!” The redhead laughed at the bigger man, whose face clouded as he pulled his gaze away from Nova’s figure. He refocused on the laughing redhead and without warning he struck him by the ear with a meaty fist. The slighter man reeled and fell to one knee.
“Goddamn it, you salt flat romeo! That hurt? ”
But Nikolai had Nova in his sights. Fresh from the sensory drugs that had aroused him but not satisfied him, he was ready for a woman. Any woman.
“Hold it, amigo,” I said, stepping forward. A sudden bearlike arm swept me aside and I fell, my breath knocked out for a moment. I came to my feet to see her struggling in his grasp, her face more annoyed than frightened. I started forward and the third man, hitherto silent, flashed a blade at me.
Perhaps if I had thought I would have been killed. But I didn’t think, I just responded. As Shigeta had trained me, I did not go into any predictable response of karate or kung fu, but rather the deceptive blend of many disciplines called mazeru, suitable for those who do not wish to completely devote their lives to learning one discipline. I was of the lowest grade, that of gunjin, or “soldier” class. I used my knee kick against the knife-man to propel myself at the hulking Nikolai. I wrapped myself around his head, carrying him with me, rolling as we hit the ground. He came up with a roar, blocking the redhead who was lurching in toward me. I spun, getting Nikolai with a boot in the face and clipping the redhead with a usui blow that ruined his throat. I heard Shigeta’s voice. Except for training or exhibition you never must fight. But if you must, fight to win. Combat is not polite conversation.
The redhead was down, choking hoarsely. The knife-man was glaring at me, holding his kneecap. “You busted it, you goddamn tank thief!”
Nikolai was on his hands and knees, shaking his head. Blood from his smashed nose was dripping into the pinkish ground. I looked at Nova, who was looking at the three men. Her eyes came up to me with a kind of horror.
“They were just a little borracho. I could have handled them.”
I gestured towards the ripped shoulder seam of her warmsuit.
“Sure, you could.”
The man with the broken kneecap was swearing at me. “You rusted crawler, you slipped your blessed latch! You fucked up my fucking knee, you dumb cleanboot!”
“Clear your core,” I said to him. “Shut up and we’ll get you a medic.”
“We just wanted to play with the lady, goddamn it!”
“Maybe the lady didn’t want to play,” I said.
“You tumbled your gyro or something? Hurting a man like that?”
I didn’t mention his knife. I gave Nikolai another look, then I went into the Elysium Tripper and spoke to the lean dispenser just inside. I came back out and spoke to Nova. “A medic team will be over from Dome Eight in a few minutes.” She was on her knees trying to get the redhead to breathe easier. She gave me a venomous look.
“You could have killed them!”
I rolled my eyes upwards. “Come on,” I said, “let’s go to the Inn.”
“And leave them?” She shrugged away my suggestion and I became angry. One minute they’re trying to rape her and the next she’s being Florence Nightingale on Mars.
“Which way is it?” I asked. She waved an arm toward the noisiest part of the dome. Already a few drunken and curious bystanders were gathering.
“God bless,” one of them said as I shouldered past. “Nikolai and his grunts. I wonder if the Tolliver boys did it to ’em.”
The Redplanet Inn was the biggest structure I had yet seen on the planet. Only a few months younger than the oldest dome, it was older than I was and considerably more famous. A scandal when it was first constructed, it had become a legend simply because the independent nuvomartians wanted it there and to hell with the bluenoses back home. Earth
had
plenty
of
sex
and
entertainment
places
and
computer-controlled roving bisexual professionals. Earth had tri-di sex shows, labor contracts that amounted to slavery in a vastly overpopped world, and specialists galore. Earth had “balancing salons” where men or women could “center” themselves by experiencing carefully applied amounts of everything from extreme pleasure to extreme masochism. But all Mars had was the Redplanet Inn and others like it. I can’t say I disapproved. Sex on Earth had become almost ritualistic, determinedly democratic, all-too-casual, and very, very zongo. They sold everything with sex, and if that wasn’t enough, the SensoryTrips provided anything you thought you might have missed. Even illegal pleasure-center brain probes were to be had, for a price. There was something old-fashioned about the Inn. Or perhaps the word is timeless. There was direct and personal social intercourse. This was no Dial-A-Prostie service, impersonal and efficient as hell.
“Whirr-click! 1.8-meter female, brunette, 101.6—60.96—81.44
centimeters, D-cup. Fellatio skill rating 12, as requested. Conversant with the Baroque Period and the subkingdom Embryophyta. B.A., Saskatchewan College of Erotic Arts. Minimum credit, period one, applied Account XL-7-4522-T-8733 . Whirr-click! 2.1 meter male, blonde, 29 centimeter penis, Type 6 muscularity, Fornicon rating 11. Conversant with the Zorgasm Method, Early American Football, and interior decoration of the Plastiform Period. M.A., School for Creative Sexuality, Boston; B.A. from Climaxite. Minimum credit, periods one to five, applied Account GA-6-487-W-8990. Whirr-click!
As per request.
Just what you’ve always wanted. So perfect you keep buying more of them, trying variations. Pleasure units. Use and discard.
&
nbsp; “American Concubine, good morning!” Nymphetron, Inc. “Fille de Joie, salut, cherie!” Brutes, Unlimited. “Hello, handsome, here’s my card. I’m with the Adventuress Group.” The Wantons of the World, Ltd. “Fantasy Man, of New York and Paris.” Black Stud, Chicago. “Let us cater your next affair . . .” Dial-A-Stud, ask for our catalogue of certified service men. “Perhaps you saw our ad on the telly . . .”
At the Redplanet Inn you took your chances. Paramour, Inc. was a few million miles away. The Oscar Wilde Society hadn’t been heard of here. Nymphomania was a word, not a corporation. Johann thrust a mug of something bitter and alcoholic into my hand. He had his arm around a cheerful woman named Bettina, and they were laughing. Synthetic Martian panels ringed the main room, holding in the noise. The new arrivals were being toasted, especially the flush-faced women.
Hundreds of drama tapes had reconstructed the Inn, usually larger and gaudier than it was. Top vidstars portrayed the golden-hearted whores, with blossoming breasts and costumes of rich fabrics. Laser shootouts had cut the room to ribbons in a dozen adventures. Michael Tackett and Gregory Battle had faced down the heavies here. Margo Masters and Lila Fellini had leaned against various versions of the big bar, cut from a single slab of ruby-rock and polished to a high sheen. It was déjà-vu, multiplied and overlaid.
I was halfway through my second drink of local top-pop when Nova came in. I heard the shouts before I saw her, and she let someone lift her to his shoulders only to be able to find me.
There was fire in her eyes.
“Wheaten just died,” she said. That had to be the redhead. “A good man gone because you had to play hero.”
“I—”
She turned and pushed through the crowd. A few heard, and I got some black looks. Johann put down his mug carefully. Without looking at me he asked about it and I told the story as objectively as I could.
He sighed and took a deep draft of the beer. “He asked for it. He changed a lot since Nova left. He’s been on Nikolai’s team for over two years and they’re a mean bunch. Damned near got thrown out of the Union because of the Planeta Rojo mine affair. Rough, but not nasty too often.” He paused and I felt his eyes on me. “All by yourself, huh?”
I felt foolish. I had never thought of myself as a fighter, a rough-house killer of men. I had studied with Shigeta for exercise and a feeling of confidence. I had never really thought I would ever use it, despite an alley fight in Montevideo’s Canelones sector and one in the
“Instant Slums” of the sprawling, shoddy Rangoon archotological complex of three million starving Indians.
But there I had been Brian Thorne. One helicab fare and I was dining with the governor or telling about the affair as an amusing anecdote in the Bolivar Tower’s penthouse.
Here I was Diego Braddock, Publitex outsider, clean-boot intruder, and someone associated with Nova.
Or was I? Was it boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl?
I didn’t ask for those brain-mushed goons to clutch at Nova. She couldn’t have handled it—except by relaxing and enjoying it—despite her newfound earthside savoir-faire.
Pelf came out of the crowd and leered at me and melted away. Why couldn’t it have been Pelf who had the glommy hands?
“That’s quite a cargo you brought with you,” Johann said.
“Looks more like you plan to open up a business here than pound out copy.”
“I thought they might be needed. Or wanted.”
“Oh, the girls will kiss your left tube for the shimmercloth! That’s for certain. But you must think we’re millionaires out here. That herd of frozen cows you have there will cost a fortune to house and feed. Lucky for you that Casey’s Lolium italicum has been working out.”
No luck, just Brian Thorne’s intelligence service feeding him information about almost everything on Mars, including Dr. Lorraine Casey’s transplanted mutated grass, used for holding down the sand and highly suitable for cattle feed.
“If someone here can adapt the beasties to this air pressure,” I said.
“Oh, Doc Hoffman has been working on that with those piglets of his.”
Ralph E. Hoffman, Ph. D., University of California at Davis. See attached bio and time schedule. Return soonest to Red Dossier file.
“Seems to me you are coming out here at about the right time,”
admitted Johann. He took another gulp of beer. “Things are sort of coming together. I took care with those seedlings of yours. Those farmers over at Burroughs will pay plenty for first crack at those.”
Marta Dolores Farms, Silva & FitzGerald, Deimos Fecundity,
Geoponics,
Promised
Land,
Inc.,
Burroughs.
Astroagronomy, the Alfonso VI Hacienda, Silverberg Kibbutz, Lambardar Ranch, Canalalgae, all near Bradbury. Aragom Rancho, Herbert Farms, Pantheon Nursery, George Grange & Mineral Company, Wells. Olericulture of Mars, the People’s communes, Peteler Ranch, Polecanal.
Thank you, Huo.
“That some sort of drinkables in those stasis capsules?” Johann asked with great solemnity and a twinkle in his eye. I nodded. “I peeked at the invoices. You really have that many Raven Blacksword adventures in that tape library?”
I nodded again and with continued solemnity Johann raised his finger. “Tender of the bar, a drink of alamajara for this gentlemen from my personal bottle.” We waited in silence, even if no one else did, until the smokey purple glasses were filed, then he toasted me. “May your air never give out and your strike be a pure one.”
I tipped my glass back at him. “May the wind be at your back and the printouts never fouled.” We drank in silence and the fluid was liquid fire all the way down.
“You!”
There was a great rumbling growl and I turned to see the crowd parting. It became as silent as that place was ever going to get. Faintly I heard the sounds of lovemaking and a gasp of distant passion. Someone laughed near me, then choked it off.
Nikolai stood near the door, the front of his yellow warmsuit drenched in blood. The white steriplast was startling against his sunburnt face and dark beard. He was glaring at me.
I looked him over. He wasn’t armed as far as I could see, which made me feel slightly better. Now that he was forewarned against the mazeru, I couldn’t hope that he would fall for the same thing again. I hoped they had a good surgeon in Ares Center.
“Stomp that cleanboot, Nik!” Some partisan to my left.
“Hah! Git ’em, fancy foot! He needs it!” I was not completely alone.
“You kill Wheaten.” The gutteral statement was news to some and I felt the shift of sympathy.
Survival of self is a constant. I heard Shigeta speaking. Never do the expected unless the expected is the unexpected. I still hadn’t quite figured that one out, but then I hadn’t intended to use any of this. He came toward me suddenly, almost at a run, with a determination I found appalling. We’re supposed to be above such things, I told myself. We’re climbing to the stars, step by step. Fledgling gods in torchships. Apprentice godlets do not have barroom brawls with giant bullies whose brains are mismeshed on Eroticine.
But no one ever informed Nikolai of his latent godhood, and he knocked me into a wall of miners and tried to stomp me. I rolled aside and kicked upward, kissing his hip with my boot. I rolled again and took a glancing blow in the thigh that all but numbed me. I used a drunk in a worn crimson warmsuit to climb erect, then dodged Nikolai just in time, hitting him a jinzoo in the kidneys.
I backed quickly to get some room and when he charged again, with a frightening animal growl, I feinted a face kick and got him in the groin. As he doubled over I brought up my knee and broke his jaw. Blood, teeth, and gobbets of flesh spattered me, but he fell limply to the floor.
There was a silence, then a low roar. With all senses alert I expected someone to take up where he left off, but the roar became a cry for more beer and almajara and hands were slapping me on the back.
“Had it c
oming to him! Goddamn, boot, you sure toss a mean stomper!”
“Drinks on me, Diego. I never liked that sander anyway.”
“Wheaten, huh? Well, the Guild won’t ask much blood money for the likes of him.”
“Hey, Johann, your bunkie here’s not bad!”
“Where the hell did Nikolai get his degree, anyway? Caveman U?”
“Naw, some dinky sheepskin factory in the Urals. Sverdiosk, I think.”
“Isn’t that where Menshikov came from?”
“Now there was a Russian what am a Russian! Do you remember the time he—”
And they were off in Memory Lane. I rubbed my leg. It hurt like hell, and I was having a hard time slowing my heart down. I took two mugs of almajara and soon was feeling no pain.
That’s the way Nova found me, sprawled in a chair with a bare-breasted wench of uncertain name on my lap and a tableful of equally drunk men around me. The pile of credits I had put on the table had dwindled considerably in the last hour.
I looked up and there she was. I focused on her, then refocused, and kept trying. “Nova!” I said. The others echoed me and Banning, my big scarred buddy Banning, swept her into his lap, but she struggled free.
“Wheaten dead, Antonio with a smashed knee, and now Nikolai with a broken jaw!”
I waved my hand. Somehow it ended up on What’s-her-name’s breast. “Yup. That’s about it. Kuh, oops, ku-clean sweep, honey. Yessir. Best damn fight I ever had.” We all laughed at that, except Nova.
Patron of the Arts Page 11
