Dancers in the Afterglow (2 page)

They watch for what seems the longest time, until the afterglow has all but disappeared.

It only lasts a few brief minutes, she thinks. How lucky we were to have caught it.

Now it's the awkward time, he thinks, the growing blackness bringing back the deep emptiness and fear in his own soul. Now what? Do I sit here with her all night? Should I make a move? Will she walk away if I make a move? Oh, God! I don't know what to do, and she seems to be waiting for something. Here it is again!

At first she doesn't sense his unease; then, for a moment, she can't figure it out, and begins to feel let down. Am I this bad? she thinks for the hundredth time. Even here in the dark? Is he thinking of a nice way to drop me like most of them do?

Finally she snuggles up to him; the wind begins to make the wet clothing feel clammy and irritating. He accepts her, puts his arm around her, and she leans into him.

"Do you have a room near here?" she whispers in her best voice.

He nods, excitement rising in him at the question, but wary lest he lose the moment too soon.

"Just up the 'walk. A short walk from here."

"Ocean view?" she asks.

He nods, although it's too dark now to see. "Oh, yes."

He gets up, offers his hand, and she pulls herself to her feet. He puts his arm around her, and they walk to his hotel.

Both feel conspicuous and guilty in the hotel lobby, and both look a mess, but this is nothing new to the hotel personnel, who hardly notice. They board the lift capsule, which is mercifully vacant, and he says "Ten," and the thing shoots up to that floor in eleven seconds.

He is still nervous, still sure this evening must go sour, and he has trouble unlocking the door. Finally it opens, and as they enter the soft lighting comes on.

It is a typical Ondine beachfront room; one wall is transparent, looking out at the ocean but seeing only darkness now; a desk, a small table, a couple of padded chairs, and a huge round bed.

"Can you make the windows so we can feel the sea breeze and hear the ocean?" she almost whispers. "I've got to get the sand off."

He chuckles, and sets the window. The field dissolves, leaving an apparent wall-sized opening into space. The sea breeze and salt smell comes through, and the crashing of the waves mixes with the human circus that will go on until all hours of the night. He feels nervous at this setting, even though he knows that the same energy field that creates the window is still really there, preventing anyone from actually falling out or, as he'd considered more than once, jumping.

There is the rush of a waterspray from the bathroom.

"Turn the lights out completely," she calls from inside. He does, and finds that there's still the faintest light reflected from boardwalk to air.

He undresses himself, the sand irritating him. He senses more than hears her emerge from the bathroom, since the rear of the room is very dark. He goes into the bathroom, wipes himself off, and returns to her.

She is standing in front of the window wall. He can see her, faintly, in the light-glow. She is nude, as is he.

She hears him, and turns slightly. He goes up to her, and puts his arm around her.

Finally, they walk over to the bed. The night air coming in now is slightly chilly, and their skin feels cold to the touch of the other.

He is sex-starved, ravenous. She is mechanical; there is no feeling, it's all take and no give. She is satisfied in a few minutes; he is just getting warmed up. She is not used to this sort of man, and she is puzzled and concerned, feeling guilty, as if she did something wrong. She lets him keep at it, but it's no good, her moment has come and gone, and she slowly, sadly lets him know it.

She apologizes softly, but it is he who feels guilty, and somewhat sad. He will not press. The moments were enough. For a brief time, "I" was "we" and that was more than he'd experienced in a long, long tune.

It's
still
"we," he thinks, arm loosely around her. Until tomorrow, anyway. There's another human being with me until tomorrow.

And, for now, that's enough.

At 2640 hours Ondine time the lights on the boardwalk at Lamarine went out for good. They were together, asleep, and did not notice it.

No one shut off the night, or the breeze, or the roaring sea.

Antiphony

GENJI DIMORDA WAS A LITTLE MAN, NOT SO MUCH IN
stature as in personality. A tall, very thin, ordinary-looking fellow with a reedy voice and halting manner. Only when performing his duties could he rise above his mousy manner and be a somebody.

Genji was a press agent.

Untalented and unnoticed himself, he sought what recognition and pride he could by basking in the acclaim of others more fortunate than himself. He straddled a reversed chair, contemplating the person who made him something greater than he was.

Moira Sabila had just come in from swimming, or pretending to swim, anyway. All she really did was walk to the pool and attract people like honey attracts flies: tall, perfectly proportioned, with hip-length fiery-red hair and enormous blue eyes. Some people, rich people, paid large sums to have themselves made over to look like Moira, but didn't have to; she was born to it.

"Can I brush your hair?" Genji asked, almost shyly.

She smiled a wicked little smile of extreme satisfaction. She knew the power she commanded over Genji and the legions like him, and she reveled in it even as she had contempt for them. Poor little pitiful grubs like Genji, who never had sex they didn't have to pay for, who walked unnoticed by the thousands along the boardwalk—they existed, she was sure, to pay homage to her.

His touch was gentle, worshipful as it should be, and she enjoyed the expression on his face reflected in her mirror, knowing that, had the image been a picture, no one would have noticed him in it

Genji himself was a bundle of uncontrolled emotion. He loved her, loved her passionately, and would cheerfully have jumped out the window of the penthouse should she command and the safety devices allow.

She doesn't know what it is to be alone, to be lonely, he thought, more with envy than with bitterness. Even the ugly women, they could get men, get laid when they wanted to. But not Genji.

He'd thought on it often, this unfairness. The fact that men seemed to need sex and human company more than women—at least the ones he knew. He'd once toyed with the idea of having a sex change, but that wouldn't help. He liked being a man, and he loved women.

But women never liked him. They never seemed to consider Genji's feelings and problems, particularly when, like Moira, they couldn't even comprehend a problem like his.

Being around Moira constantly was torture; he was a piece of furniture to her, a servant who was more thing than person, and every day her coldness and indifference to him inflicted new emotional scars on him.

But she was all he had; more than most have. She was famous; a promo model known to billions on many worlds. She was rich. She was beautiful.

Deep in his mind he dreamed of her becoming one day the greatest personality in the Combine. The salary of a press agent for such a star would more than pay to remake him into Adonis.

"That was a great party at the casino," he said casually to her as he started to massage her neck and shoulders. Actually, it had been a terrible party; he always hated parties. There is nothing so horribly lonely as being in a merrymaking crowd of which you were an observer rather than a participant

She nodded. "Juda always throws such marvelous affairs. Everybody who was anybody was there. I wish we could have stayed."

He stopped the massage and shrugged. "You know we have to shoot at dawn. This is a big account—Red Star Lines will have your beautiful face and figure on wallscreens on every known planet. And they're shelling out a real bundle for the privilege."

She sighed. "I know, I know. But it's such a
bore."
She got up and studied her nude body clinically in the mirror, posing first this way, then that. Genji was almost overcome; he always was, although he knew he'd have to be content as usual with what he was getting.

"Good night, Genji," she said softly, almost kindly, and got into one of the beds.

Slowly he turned, waved his hand over the sensor dropping the light to
Off,
and made his way to his own bed.

"Good night, Moira," was all he could ever manage.

Sten Rolvag downed the last of his whiskey and chomped on his fat cigar. His chunky, muscular body turned in its bar chair to survey the scene, and he absentmindedly wiped a little spilled liquor from his magnificent blond beard.

Tanned, face lined, he needed only a horned helmet to become the image of the legendary Vikings of old Earth. In fact, he was a professional hunting guide, and had been since his retirement from the marines a good ten years before.

He sighed, presented his account card for processing to the little slot before him in the bar. The slot swallowed the card, then popped it halfway back up for him to take back. As with all purchases large and small, the drink was paid for with the little card that allowed the payment machinery to deduct its price from his account.

He glanced at his watch. It was much too late, he realized. The watch read 2513. In just under five hours he was due to lead a small party back into the bush. It might be an interesting group, too, he thought. Four women, going in for some gar-fish trophies in the Kouisco Lakes district, and maybe an antelope or two. Six days. Six thousand units, which he could use. And maybe a little wilderness fun.

He'd met them earlier, of course. Neither attractive nor ugly, just ordinary-looking women; an accountant, a lawyer, and two engineers. Typical career people, all from the same company, out to take a break from four walls and office routine. They looked like the type who lived their jobs, he thought. Probably haven't had any fun since last vacation. And probably a little sick of their stuffy, bureaucratic coworkers.

Rolvag knew he appeared to be an eccentric character, somewhat swashbuckling and romantic. He worked hard at that image, and after so long he had it down to a fine art.

The night air of Lamarine went through him, made him more awake than ever.

Damn!
he thought in disgust.
I'll never get to sleep tonight. Too much noise, too many lights, too many people.

He accepted it; Lamarine always affected him this way. It was uncomfortable, oppressive, gaudy. He wouldn't be happy until he was back, back out in the bush, back with the peace of nature.

Or so he told himself.

In all the years of cultivating his romantic image, he had come to believe it himself.

He passed an automated news vendor and noticed the little red light flashing repeatedly, telling all prospective customers that something important had just happened.

He stopped, put his card in the slot, and punched
Printout
instead of
Voicebox.
Printouts were cheaper, but so few people knew how to read, or needed to, these days.

The box whirred, and a paper dropped into a slot below. His card popped back out, and he pocketed it, then reached down and unfolded the surprisingly slim up-to-date edition, printed just for him a few moments before.

He moved over to the light from a nearby amusement ride and squinted at the page.

MACHISTS MOVE ON ONDINE IN SURPRISE ATTACK, the headline read. He frowned, a coldness growing inside him, and read the story.

Combine Military Command reported this morning that surprisingly strong Machist forces launched a concentrated attack far outside normal battle lines and sites, at a point near Ondine. Combine Command assured the
Star
that, despite some initial losses due to the surprise and intensity of the attack, units were being rushed in to reinforce the stricken area, and that there was no danger that Ondine would be overrun.

He looked at the little diagram, and his heart sank. As an old military man, he knew unmitigated bullshit when he read it. Ondine was lightly defended—it was forty light-years behind the lines, had no important resources, no war role, and sparse population, so was hardly a likely area for an attack. And hardly an area the navy would put much in to protect, either, he thought sourly. Particularly since the forty light-years between Ondine and the front contained no habitable planets, nothing at all.

He tossed the paper into a waste-reclamation can and headed for a phone booth a few meters away on the boardwalk. Nervously, he slipped in his account card and spoke a number into the transceiver. There was a click, then a buzz, and he had his connection.

He sweated as the tone continued, continued much longer than it should have.

"C'mon, Fally, be there," he whispered under his breath. "Answer your goddamn phone!"

Finally there was a second click, and a petite soprano voice said, "Shore Patrol, Captain Falsitti's office."

"I need to talk to the captain," Rolvag told her. "Tell him it's Sten Rolvag."

The woman on the other end was apologetic, but also slightly nervous and disoriented. "I'm sorry, sir, but there's nobody here."

"Then give me the duty officer," he told her.

Her voice almost trembled. "Sir, I mean
nobody's
here. I'm just a private. I was on leave, heard the news, and tried to find out what was going on. It's deserted here, sir. There's nobody at all on the base."

Rolvag felt his stomach turn. He knew what the lonely private was just starting to dare think.

Of course the ships would be gone—what dinky little tubs there were, anyway. But not everybody. Not the SP's, the headquarters command. Not the secretaries, and clerks, and phone operators.