“Hey,” Sam said, softly. His hands slid across her back, held her.
“Sam ...” she said. “Take me out of here. Take me to another world ... anywhere ... I don’t care. I don’t even know if I can move on my own anymore ...”
One arm firmed across her back. One arm loosened. Sam said (and she heard his voice rumbling somewhere inside the great shape of him, as the smile retreated down inside): “Seems like I’m always taking you from some place or another ... Come on, we’ll have a stroll,” and tugged her shoulder, his arm still tight around her, bringing her with him through the crowd. She thought once to look around for Prynn. But they were already through a door, onto a dark ramp between high walls. “Just remember,” Sam went on, “the last world I took you to didn’t turn out such a hot idea, before you go asking me again. I mean, you never know where you’ll end up with old Sam—”
The ramp turned, and emptied them at the edge of a dim arena, with odd shapes set out here and there, and a glittering ceiling, here only seven or eight feet high, brushing the heads of some of the taller men and women strolling below the orange and blue light; at other places it rose up three or four stories: this was the bar’s “run,” where those who wanted to could move about, could wander over some sort of obstacle course in pursuit of their pleasure, could be pursued, or just walk.
“Sam, I’m sorry ... I didn’t mean to ...” Sam squeezed her shoulder affectionately. “Sometimes it can be a pretty rough trip from there to here. I know. I made it myself. How’re you freezing in?”
“I’m ...” Bron let a breath go, felt her back muscles, that had tightened almost to a cramp, relax a little. “Well, I ... guess you would understand ...”
A man ahead glanced back twice, then turned off around an immense sculptural shape, under red light, then was beyond it into shadow. “Some of it,” Sam said.
A woman, hands thrust deep in her pockets, walked into the darkness after him (Bron saw one bare elbow bend as a hand came out of her pocket, with three gold rings bright as steam-boat coals in the red light; then she was into darkness too). And they were past, too far, to see.
“Have you ever been in one of these places during off-hours?” Bron asked.
“Who hasn’t?”
“They’re so sad when nobody’s using them.”
“So’s an all-night cafeteria at the first-slot credit level.” (Which were the social-service food places where, despite your credit level, you had to be served.) “There’s one two blocks from here that gives as good—or almost as good—service in food as this place does in sex.”
They passed a snaking bench where a number of women (and a scant handful of men) were seated. A man walking past hesitated, glanced, then sat near one of the women who, as if her motion were the completion of his, got up and walked away, to turn, seconds later, around the end of another bench where those seated were mostly men: her pace slowed, and she began surveying the seated figures as, moments before, the man who had prompted her to move had surveyed the figures on the bench where she had been. Here and there was the sound of faint laughter, or faint converse. Most, however, were silent.
“Around and around and around we go,” Sam said, and added his soft bass rumble to the drifting voices.
Coming toward them, hand in hand, wearing only a complex metallic vest and briefs, a woman laughed, and a man, naked except for a jeweled domino, pushed up on his forehead now, smiled.
The couple parted around Sam and Bron; the laughter drifted off behind them. “And suddenly,” Sam said, “for them, it’s all worth it.” He glanced back, added his own laughter again. People on the bench smiled.
Bron tried not to look away; and failed.
“Didn’t somebody advise you to stay away from places like this till after you got a little better acclimated?” Sam asked. “Bad counseling. It’s like going into a four-wall jai-alai tournament a week after you’ve had a broken leg set. I mean, even if you were the greatest player in the world before, it still can be a bit depressing.”
“It’s been six months since I ... I had my leg set. My counselor’s been telling me it’s well past time I got in there and gave it a try.”
“Oh.” Sam’s arm had loosened around her shoulder. “I see.”
The desperation had started again. “Sam, please. Lei me come live with you and your family. I wouldn’t be much bother. You’ve known me as a friend for almost a year; I’ll take the chance on your getting to know me as a lover.”
“I heard you the first time, sweetheart,” Sam said. “If you ask me again, I’ll have to give you a clear, firm, unambiguous answer. And that would only hurt your feelings. So do yourself a favor and cut it out.”
“You won’t ...” and felt her feelings rend as if knives turned in her liver. “Oh, why, Sam?”
“My women would never hear of it. We trade off, see, bringing the next sweet young thing into my harem. I choose one, they choose one. It’s their turn this week.”
“Sam, you’re playing with me!”
“That’s all you leave open ... You do remember where my commune was?—No, you don’t. That’s good. Because when you first spoke to me, I thought that was your idea of a joke.”
“Oh, you don’t ... you can’t—”
“Sweetheart, you’re reasoning from the converse. The sad truth is that I could—but I won’t. It’s that hard and that nasty. I’m your friend, but I’m not that good a friend, right now, tonight. The only advice I can give you is that even if it’s hard where you are now—and I know it can be—you’re still changing, still moving. Eventually, even from here, you’ll get to somewhere else. I know that too. Now come here—” and did not wait, but pulled her to him; and, in his arm’s, she felt herself start to cry, could not cry, felt herself start to scream, but could not do that either, felt herself start to collapse. But that was just silly. So she held onto him, thinking: Sam ... ! Sam ... !
An age later, Sam released her and, with his hands on her shoulders, moved her away. “All right. You’re on your own, lady. Sam’s just too big and black and lazy for all this rambling around. I’m going back downstairs, where it’s crowded. I’m out to get laid tonight. And I happen to be one of those guys who makes out better in the crush.” He smiled, patted her shoulder, turned. And was gone.
I can’t move, she thought. But moved, walking fairly normally, to one of the single seats cut into the side of a large, ceramic free-form.
Sam, she thought again; and again; then again; till the word became mysterious, alien, ominous, a single-syllable mantra. Then: ... Sam—? Somehow, on this hundredth, or hundred-thousandth repetition, it suddenly cleared her mind.
Why had she been approaching Sam?
Sam was no more a man than she was a ... No. She had to stop that thought; it could lead nowhere. Still, again, she had been about to sacrifice all her ideals, her entire plan, just for an ... emotional whim! Yet, while it had been happening, it had seemed those ideals were just what she had been pursuing ...
Sam?
That was ridiculous as the embarrassment and anger she had subjected herself to with that theater woman! Think! she thought: At one point there had been something she had thought she could do better than other women—because she had been a man, known firsthand a man’s strengths, a man’s needs. So she had become a woman to do it. But the doing, as she had once suspected and now knew, was preeminently a matter of being; and being had turned out to be, more and more, specifically a matter of not doing. And from the restrictions, subterranean and powerful forces seemed to have run wild in her that, as a result, threatened to corrupt everything she did want to do. In her work at the hegemony, in her friendships—with Lawrence, with Prynn—the force was apathy, tangible and inexorable as the ice-cascade crashing down the slope at the climax of an ice-opera. Then, whenever she reached a situation even near one in which her womanhood was at stake, all that had been surpressed welled up in such a torrent she could not tell desperation from resentment, desire from need, making her
blurt stupidities and nonsense instead of what, a moment before ot a moment later, she would have known was rational response.
What was she trying to do? Bron asked herself. And found the question as clearing as Sam’s name a minute before. It had to do with saving the race ... no; something to do with saving or protecting ... men? But she was a woman. Then why ... ? She stopped that thought as well. Not her thoughts, but her actions were pursuing some logical or metalogical concatenation to its end. To try and ask, much less answer, any one of those questions would pollute, destroy, shatter it into a lattice of contradictions that would crumble on expression. She knew that what she wanted was true and real and right by the act of wanting. Even if the wanting was all—
A man had stopped a few feet away, to lean on an outcrop of the ceramic. He wasn’t looking at her, but she saw the position of his hand on the green-swirled glaze. The insult of it! she thought, with sadness and desperation. Why didn’t they just come up and slap you across the mouth? Wouldn’t it have been kinder, less damaging to what she was trying to protect? And he might be the one! she went on thinking. I simply have no way to guess, to ask, to find out. If I were to respond in any way, I would never know, because even if he was, any response from me would cause him to put that side of himself away forever as far as I’m concerned, become all pretended reason and rationality. He could come here, could sit and wait, could prowl and search, as she had once sat or prowled, searching for the woman who would know, who would understand. Men could do that. She had done it when she was a man, and had found, prowling or being prowled by, five hundred, five thousand women? But she had no way to show she knew, because any indication of knowledge denied that knowledge’s existence in her. And there was no way to overcome the paradox, unless there were an infinite number of such bars, such arenas, such runs, unless she could somehow interpose an infinite distance, a million times that between Earth and Triton, between herself and him, then wait for him to cross it, carry her back over it, as easily as Sam had carried her to Mongolia and—No! No, not Sam—
Bron looked up, blinking, because the man had dropped his hand, was walking past her, was ambling off.
She watched him, tears suddenly banking her lids. The thought came, insistent as certain knowledge: What I want to do is just ... She clamped her eyes and mind against it.
Two tears spilled one cheek.
She blinked.
A feeble kaleidoscope of dim lights and massive sculptures cleared and flashed; she blinked again; it cleared, it flashed. What she knew was that she just must never come to a place like this again. Yes, he may be here, he may even be searching for her, here; but there was just no way in which, here, he could find her, she could find him. She must never come here; she must not be here now. She must get up, she must get up now, and go.
Half a dozen more men (and two women; yes, the place did have informal rules) came and stood near her, signaled or did not signal, and walked away. Hours passed—had already passed. And far less people had stopped near her during the last few. Was the rumor of her indifference being whispered to all and sundry about the place? Or—she looked up, having momentarily drifted off—were there simply fewer people?
She could see less than a dozen about the whole arena. The cleaning crew had turned on harsh lights along the far side; coils of cable dragged the gold carpet, behind the humming machines ...
Before she went home, she stopped in the all-night cafeteria two blocks away, which, while she was there, began to clean up too. Sitting in a back booth (after the little table-speaker had politely asked her to leave the front so they could mop), she drank two bulbs of coffee, the first with lots of sugar, the second black. Nobody bothered her at all.
On her desk, when she woke, was the red—and silver-edged envelope of an inter-satellite letter. The return box said D. R. Lawrence, beneath which was a twenty-two-digit number. Under that, in parentheses: Neriad. Bron frowned. Standing naked on the warming carpet—one of the balloon chairs beside her heel kept pulsing in its collar, trying to decide if it should inflate—Bron fingered open the flimsy:
Bron better put a semicolon no a comma I’ve been meaning to come see you for months italicize months but then suddenly there was all this and as you no doubt have already noticed I’m not even at the old snake pit anymore or even on Triton but on Neriad and so I thought the least I could do was write. Guess what. Twenty-year’s interest in aleotorics has paid off. Have been swept up by a traveling music commune and would you believe that all of us one night after how many hundreds of hours’ meditation and rehearsal simultaneously had a religious revelation that it was time to bring our music to others and so now we are singing for real people practically every night can you imagine with my voice but they seem to like it. Mostly I’m A-and-R man really but I’m desparately happy at it. And I think we are bringing a lot of people joy. Last night’s audience was twenty-six thousand. They went wild comma but I’m recovering nicely thank you this morning under the ministrations of a lovely friend who simply atatched himself to me right out of the audience just like that and who has just this minute brought me breakfast in bed. It’s so nice to learn at my age that there are even more complex and elegant games than vlet dash though I will warmly welcome a game with you should the music of the spheres once again suspend us in the same chord. We head off next to that nasty little moon of Pluto’s parenthesis where there aren’t even twenty-six thousand people all together but that’s religion for you I guess parenthesis and anyway this is just a note to let you know there’s life in the old boy yet as if you cared heartless beauty that you’ve become but I’m Wiffles what are you doing oh really now stop it Wiffles stop it I’m try—
ing to dictate a letter oh that tickles oh come on you dear creature I simply won’t let
That was all there was.
Smiling, she put the letter down. But there was also, wheedling at the back of the smile, regret. As she looked through the cupboard for clothes, it grew until the smile flaked away before it. She was already late anyway and still exhausted from the previous night; she closed the cupboard and decided to take the day off from work.
And the day after that, back at the hegemony, she threw herself into the three new accounts that had come in, with a vengeance. (What else was there to do while she waited?) For the next week she kept up the pace, occasionally wondering what this must be doing to her efficiency index but, at the least glimmer of pleasure, damping the thought—with more work. Work now was not for pleasure or pride or reward; all those had been abnegated. What was left was merely a frantic, nearly religious gesture of respect toward time; no more.
A week later, one morning when she had been in her office perhaps an hour, Philip paused at the door, looked in, stepped in: “Audri asked me to stop by and take a look in on you. About eight months ago you were making noises about needing an assistant—at which point, if I remember, we sent you about six in succession that, for one reason or another, were pretty poor: wrong field, wrong temperament—you name it, we sent it to you.” Philip looked at the floor, looked at Bron. “Not that we have anyone on tap now, but I was just wondering—well, Audri was wondering; but since things have loosened up around here in the past few months, if you still wanted one ... ?”
“Nope.” Bron went rummaging through a drawer for another folder—and noticed that Philip had stopped to look through the flimsys she’d left on top of the wall-console; “Don’t get those out of order please,” Bron said. She found the folder.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Philip said. And then, to Bron’s growing surprise and distress, hung around for the next quarter-hour, making the sort of pleasant small talk you couldn’t really take exception to, especially from your boss.
He left.
She sighed with relief.
Ten minutes before lunch he was back: “Hey, let me take you out on my credit this afternoon—no, don’t say you’ve got another appointment. I know it’s not true. Look—” Philip’s bearded smile brought back Sam’s blac
k one at the bar, a layer of it friendly, another layer of it mocking, and something that was totally Philip and wholly unpleasant, beaming through—“I know we grate on each other’s nerves from time to time. But, really, I would like to talk to you this afternoon,” which, from your boss, was another thing you didn’t refuse.
Philip took her not to the company dining room, but to a place across the Plaza where they sat in an enclosed bubble of opalescent glass, the table between them rimmed with black and gold, for all the world like an interplanetary letter-form; and over a remarkably good, if somewhat lichenous, lunch, Philip launched into endless gossipy speculations about two of the junior programmers, about Audri, about himself—his commune was thinking of moving further along the Ring, which would leave their place opened; Audri was due for a credit reslotting, and really she was much better at this job than he was and, maybe, ought to think about taking their place over, if she could find some compatible people to get a family going again and to furnish the other necessary credit levels. When was his group vacating? Well, he wasn’t really sure, but ...
Then they were leaving, Philip was still talking, and by now Bron, having become tired of her own annoyance and exhausted with pretending it wasn’t there, was morosely wondering if perhaps this wasn’t all some ineffably gentle prologue to getting fired—or at least a serious reprimand. She remembered Audri’s warning two weeks ago. In all her new zeal, she might have committed some really amazing blunder that had just come to light. Was that possible? In the general confusion of her current life, she found herself thinking she could have done anything. Well, then, she was ready—
And Philip, at her office door, was smiling, nodding, was turning to leave.
And an hour later was back, still smiling, asking if the new topoform specifications she had delivered yesterday had given her any particular problems (no), if Audri had been by (also no), if lunch had been all right (it was very nice, thank you). He only stayed five minutes this time, but seconds after he left, it suddenly struck her—and made her put both hands flat on the desk, look up, open her mouth, close it again, then drop her hands to her lap: Philip was getting ready to make a pass!
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