On the point of spluttering protest, Bron made room on the couch for the jovial, brilliant, powerful—should he just get up and leave? But Sam asked something about his meld strategy and, when Bron explained, gave a complimentary whistle. At least Bron thought it was complimentary.
They played. Tides turned. So did the score. By the time they adjourned for the evening (elementary players, Lawrence had explained, shouldn’t even hope to play a game to completion for the first six months), Bron and Sam were pounding each other’s shoulders and laughing and congratulating themselves and turning to congratulate Lawrence and, of course, they would all get together tomorrow evening and take up where they’d left off.
As Bron walked down the corridor toward his room, he decided warmly that the trouncing he had given the old pirate, even if it had taken Sam’s help to do it, had made the evening worth it.
At his door, he stopped, frowned toward the door opposite.
He hadn’t even asked Sam how Alfred was. Should he knock now and find out? A sudden memory of one of the few things like a personal conversation he’d ever had with Alfred returned: once Alfred had actually taken Bron to a restaurant (recommended by Flossie, who had had it recommended to him by a friend of Freddie’s) which turned out to cater almost entirely to well-heeled (and rather somber) nine—to thirteen-year-olds. (The younger ones were simply swathed in fur!) Only a handful of adolescents even near Alfred’s age were present, and they all seemed to be overlooking the place with patent good will and palpable nostalgia. Bron was the single adult there. During dinner Bron had been rambling on about something or other when Alfred leaned across the table and hissed, “But I don’t want relationships! I don’t want friendships! I want sex—sometimes. That’s what I’m doing at Serpent’s House. Now get off my back!” Two sexually unidentifiable children, hands locked protectively around their after-dinner coffee bulbs, turned away small, bald, brown faces to muffle smiles in their luxuriant collars. Yet he still considered Alfred his friend, because Alfred, like all his others, had come to him, still came to him, asking that he do this, or could he lend him that, or would he mail this coupon to that advertiser, or this letter of protest about what some other had sent him, pick up this or that on the way home, or where should he throw that out and, yeah, sure you can have it if you want it. With varying amounts of belligerence, Bron complied to these requests (to keep peace, he told himself at first), only to discover that, in his compliance, he valued the relationship—friendship, he corrected himself (because he was thirty-seven, not seventeen). I suppose, Bron thought, standing in the hall, I understand him, which has something to do with it. I certainly understand him better than I understand Lawrence. Or Sam. (Or that woman ... ? Again her face returned to him, turning in delightful laughter.) He turned to his door.
As far as knocking on Alfred’s? If Alfred wasn’t all right, Bron understood him enough to know that he wouldn’t want to be caught at it. And if he was, he wouldn’t want to be disturbed in it. (If he’s all right, Bron thought, he’s probably sleeping. That’s what I’d do with my all-right time if I had as little of it as that poor kid.) Bron pushed open his own door and stepped into a dimly lighted room, with an oval bed (that could expand to hold three: despite Alfred’s secretiveness, there was nothing in the co-op house rules that said you couldn’t ball as many people as you liked as long as you did it in your own room), a reader, a microfiche file drawer, a television screen and two dials below it for the seventy-six public channels and his three private ones, two windows (one real, which looked out on the alley behind the building, the other a changeable, holographic diarama: blue curtains were drawn across both), clothes drawers, sink drawers, and toilet drawers in the wall, plastic collars here and there on the blue rug from which, at the push of a switch in the control drawer, inflatable chairs would balloon.
It was a room like Alfred’s room, like Lawrence’s, like Sam’s, indeed like some dozen others he had lived in on one world and three moons; a comforting room; a room like ten thousand times ten thousand others.
At four twenty-seven in the morning, Bron woke suddenly, wondering why. After five minutes in the dark, an idea occurred—though he was not sure if it was the idea that had startled him from sleep. He got up, went out into the hall, and down to the console room.
Left over on the screen, from the last person to use it, were two lists. (Usually it was something from Freddie’s, or Flossie’s, home-study course.) Absently
Bron ran his eye down the one on the right: after half a dozen entries, he realized he was reading down names of former Presidents of Mars. His eye caught at Brian Sanders, the second of Mars’s two (out of twenty-four male) women presidents. It was under Brian Sanders, the old firebrand and roaring-girl, that, fifty years ago, male prostitution had been made legal in Bellona; also, ran the story, she had single-handedly driven the term “man-made” from most languages of Earth (where her speeches had of course been televised) and Mars, by insistantly referring to all objects of war, as well as most creations of Earth culture, as “boy-made.”
The list on the left (male and female names mixed equally and at random) was—it was obvious just from the groupings into seven—names of the various governing boards of the Outer Satellite Federation. Yes, the last group were the ones in power now, during the War Alliance: their names were all over the public channels. (Male and female names out here, of course, didn’t mean too much. Anyone might have just about any name—like Freddie and Flossie—especially among second, third, and fourth generation citizens.) Bron wondered what political bet or argument the information had been summoned up to resolve; and, without even sitting, cleared the current program. A medical program was still set underneath it—but it wasn’t Alfred’s.
Bron punched out General Information.
He was expecting ten minutes of cross-reference and general General Info run-around when he dialed “The Spike: actress (occupation)”—how would you file information on someone like that? The screen flickered for a second, then blinked out:
“The Spike—working name of Gene Trimbell, producer, director, playwright, actress, general manager of a shifting personnel theatrical commune, which see. Confirm? : : biographical : : critical : : descriptive : : public record9’
Bron frowned. He certainly wasn’t interested in her biography. He pressed Biography anyway.
“Biography withheld on request.”
That made him smile.
He knew what she looked like:
“Description” wasn’t necessary.
He pressed Critical and the screen filled with print: “The Spike is the working name of Gene Trimbell, by common concensus the most striking of the young playwright/director/producers to emerge at the beginning of the current decade, many of whom were associated with the Circle (which see) at Lux on Iapetus. She attracted early attention with her stunning productions of such classics as Britannicus, The Great God Brown, Vatzlav, and A.C./D.C, as well as a one-woman videotape production of Les Paravents, in which she took all ninety-eight roles. While still in her early twenties, she directed the now legendary (and still controversial) twenty-nine-hour opera cycle by George Otuola, Eridani (which see), that involved coordinating over three hundred actors, dancers, singers, two eagles, a camel, and the hundred-foot, flaming geyser of the title role. If her directorial work in traditional forms has tended toward the ambitious and monumental, her own creative pieces are characterized by great compression and brevity. She is, today, most widely known for her work in micro-theater, for which she formed her own fluid company three years ago. Frequently, her brief, elliptical, and intense works have been compared to the music of the twentieth-century composer Webern. Elsewhere, another critic has said: ‘Her works do not so much begin and end; rather, they suddenly push familiar objects, emotions, and actions, for often as little as a minute or less, into dazzling, surreal luminescence, by means of a consortment of music, movement, speech, lights, drugs, dance, and decor.’ Her articles on the theater (collec
ted under the title Primal Scenes and represented as a series of exhaustive readings of the now famous epigraph from Lacan which heads each piece: The narration, in fact, doubles the drama with a commentary without which no mise en scene would be possible. Let us say that the action would remain, properly speaking, invisible from the pit—aside from the fact that the dialogue would be expressly and by dramatic necessity devoid of whatever meaning it might have for an audience:—in other words, nothing of the drama could be grasped, neither seen nor heard, without, dare we say, the twilighting which the narration in each scene casts on the point of view that one of the actors had while performing it?’), have given many people the impression that she is a very cerebral worker; yet the emotional power of her own work is what the most recent leg of her reputation stands on. Even so, many young actors and playwrights (most of whom have, admittedly, never seen, or seen little of, her work) have taken the Scenes as something of a manifesto, and her influence on the current and living art of drama has been compared with that of Maria Irene Fornes, Antonin Artaud, Malina, or Col-ton. Despite this, her company remains small, her performances intimate—though seldom confined in a formal theatrical space. Her pieces have been performed throughout the Satellites, dazzling many a passer-by who, a moment before, did not even know of their existence.”
The index down the side of the screen listed a double-dozen more critical pieces. He read a random three and, in the middle of a fourth, switched the console off.
He pulled the door of the room to behind him—it wouldn’t close all the way. Frowning, he turned to examine it. The lintel across the top had strained a millimeter or so from the wall. The evening’s gravity ‘wobble’? He looked at the console through the door’s now permanent crack. How could you ask General Information about ihaft
Barefoot, he padded up the hall, suddenly tired.
Climbing naked into bed, he thought: Artists ... ? Well, not quite so bad as craftsmen. Especially when they were successful. Still ... of course he would go and fixate on someone practically famous; though, in spite of Lawrence, he’d never heard of her. Depressed, and wondering if he’d ever see her again, he fell asleep.
3. Avoiding Kangaroos
Philosophers who favor propositions have said that propositions are needed because truth is intelligible only of propositions, not of sentences. An unsympathetic answer is that we can explain the truth of sentences to the propositionalist in his own terms: sentences are true whose meanings are true propositions. Any failure of intelligibility here is already his own fault.
—Willard Van Orman Quine, Philosophy of Logic
Audri, the boss he did like, put a hand on each of the cubicle’s doorjambs and, standing at all sorts of Audri-like angles, said (with an expression he didn’t like at all): “This is Miriamne—Bron, do something with her,” then left.
The young woman, who, a moment back, had been behind her (Miriamne?) was dark, frizzy-haired, intelligent looking, and sullen.
“Hi.” Bron smiled and thought: I’ll have an affair with her. It came, patly, comfortably, definitively—a great release: That should get the crazed, blonde creature with the rough, gold-nailed hands (and the smooth, slow laugh) off his mind. He’d drifted to sleep thinking about her; he’d woken up thinking about her. He’d even contemplated (but decided, finally, no) walking to work through the u-1.
Miriamne, in the doorway, was wearing the same short cape in dove-gray the Spike had worn, was bare-breasted, as the Spike had been, and, more to the point, immediately recalled a job-form he had filled out seventeen years ago: “Describe the preferred, physical type you feel most assured of your performance with.” His preferred description had been, patly: “Short, dark, small-boned, big-hipped.” And Miriamne, short, dark, small-boned, and just a hair’s breadth shy of cal-lipygous, was looking somewhere about five inches to the left, and two inches above, his right ear.
At his eyebrow? No ...
Bron rose from his chair, still smiling. She was the sort of woman he could be infinitely patient with in bed (if she needed patience), as it is often rather easier to be patient with those with whom you feel secure in your performance: he experienced a pleasant return of professional aplomb. Hopefully, he thought, she lives in a nice, friendly, mixed co-op so she doesn’t lack for conversation (conversation in sexualizationships was not his strong point). Women who accepted this he had occasionally grown quite fond of. And there was something in her expression that assured him he could never, really, care. How much better could it be? Rewarding for the body, challenging to the intellect, and no strain on the emotions. He came around, sat on the corner of his desk—interposing himself between her and whatever she was now staring at behind him—and asked: “Have you any idea what exactly they expect me to do with you?” Two weeks, he decided, at minimum—at least it’ll occupy my mind. It might even run three or four months—at maximum. Who knows, they might even eventaUy like each other.
She said, “Put me to work, I suppose,” and frowned off at the memos shingling the bulletin board.
He asked: “What exactly are you into?”
She sighed, “Cybralogs,” in a way (she was still looking at the board) that suggested she’d said it many times that morning.
Still, he smiled and, a flicker of bewilderment playing through his voice, asked: “Cybralogs ... ?” and, when she still didn’t look, asked also: “If your field is Cybralogs, why in the world did they send you to Metalogics?”
“I suspect—” Her glance caught his—“because they have five letters in common, three of them even in the same order. As all those war posters are constantly reminding us, we aren’t in the world. We’re on the last major moon of the Solar System, the only one that’s managed to stay out of the stupidest and most expensive war in history—just managed. And after last night, one wonders how long that’ll be for! Our economic outlets and inlets are so strained we’ve been leaning on the border of economic crisis for a year—and from the wrong side at that. Everyone in a position of authority is hysterical, and everyone else is pretending to be asleep: Have you known anything to function as it should in the past six months? Anything? I mean, after last night—”
Oh, he thought, she lives in the u-1. Well, that shouldn’t be a problem; might even make things more interesting ... And blinked away blonde laughter from the dove-gray shoulders.
“Yes, that business yesterday evening. That was pretty scary, wasn’t it? A guy at the co-op I’m staying at is in the Intelligence Liaison Department. Afterward, he was trying to explain the whole thing away to a bunch of us. I don’t think anyone was convinced.” (That should show her he had some political consciousness. And now something for her ego ... ?) “Really, I know Audri has to use whoever she gets, especially right through here, but what’s the point of sending someone with your training to this department?” He twisted around on the desk corner, picked up the arc of wire from the corn-rack, put the red bead to his ear and the blue one to his lips. “Personnel ... ?” he said too gruffly; Miriamne glanced at him. “This is Bron Helstrom—” followed with the first ten of his twenty-two-digit identification number; for job purposes that was all anyone needed. “Get that down, please. I don’t want to have to repeat it. You’ve sent us along, here in Metalogics, one Miriamne—I’m not going to ask her her number: you look it up. She’s been bothered enough today already.” He glanced at Miriamne, who was looking at him now, if a bit blankly. “She’s a cybralogician and for some, bird-brained reason neither of us understands or appreciates, she’s been sent to—”
“Whom do you wish to speak to in Personnel?” the voice answered with understandable testiness.
“You will do.” (Miriamne could only hear his side of the conversation.) “This whole nonsense has grown up because responsibilities have been shuttled and shunted around for I’m sure a week or more. And I—that is, Bron Helstrom, in Metalogics—” Once more he rattled off his number: “... I’ll assume you have that now, so that you know where this complaint is comin
g from—I don’t intend to get lost in the shuffle. You’ve sent this woman into Metalogics, a department that can make full use of neither her training nor her talent. This is not the first time this has happened; it’s the sixth. That is ridiculous, a waste of everybody’s time, an interruption in everyone’s work. Now you decide who ought to know, and you go tell them—” He heard the sharply drawn-in breath, then the click of the connection broken—“and if anyone wants to know where the complaints came from—now, get it this time:” Once more he gave his name and number to the dead, red bead. “Now, think about that, pignoli-brain, before you make the next person’s life miserable by sending them to do a job they aren’t trained for. Good-bye.” He hung up, thinking: The “pignoli-brain” was for cutting him off. Still, he decided, he’d gotten his point across. He looked at Miriamne (with the ghost of belligerence playing through his smile): “Well, I guess we’ve made our point—for what little it’ll do.” He cocked his head.
The same ghost played through hers. She rubbed her neck with one finger. Her nails were short and chrome-colored. Her lips were full and brown. “I’m a cybralogist,” she said. “As far as I know, there’s no such thing as a cybralogician.”
Bron laughed. “Oh. Well, I’ll be honest with you. I’ve never even heard of a ‘cybralog.’”
“I’ve heard of metalogics ... ?”
While Bron laughed, inside the ghost momentarily became real. “Look,” he said. “I can either tell you about metalogics and, by tomorrow, we can probably have you doing something that isn’t too dull, if not useful.” He turned his hands up. “Or we can have some coffee and just ...” He shrugged—“talk about other things. I mean I know how exhausting these hurry-up-and-wait mornings can be. I had to go through my share before ending up here.”
Her smile became a short (but with that sullen ghost still playing through) laugh. “Why don’t we have the coffee and you can tell me about metalogics.”
Triton Page 6
