Triton (Trouble on Triton) (22 page)

“There’s no turning back now,” someone said solemnly.

“I hope the swimming pool cover is on tight,” someone else said (and everyone chuckled). “I’d hate to have to take a swim too early.”

Bron settled against the padding. Something began to roar—rather far away—on his right; then something else—much closer—on his left. There were only two blue numbers now, amidst a full field of red: and they were flickering oddly, which made him suspect they were broken. Someone said: “I don’t think those blue numbers are right ...”

Someone else said: “Sam, I told you, you should have gotten a government cabin. The government’s never wrong.”

People chuckled again.

Then the building tops and the girders were gone. And the stars were moving. The cabin lurched.

“Whoopsy-daisy!” someone called.

People laughed again.

Down had suddenly and disconcertingly established
itself in some
direction near his feet. Bron felt himself slip on the pad. The stars jerked to the side on the panoramic window; a moment later they were wiped away by landscape, moving too fast for Bron to tell if they were ten meters or ten—
therel A
web of lights and more lights swept by: Tethys itself. Every one
Oooooed
again. They were at least ten kilometers up.

Stars
now. Now landscape ... but moving more slowly—at least forty. When the pitted horizon passed again, Bron could make out a distant curve. Then the cabin rocked grandly backward ... or rather, “down” reestablished itself under the floor.

The screen, its two, broken, blue numbers still flickering (all the others were out now), folded into the ceiling.

Was it the drug—or that he hadn’t gotten enough of one of the several drugs, or too much of another? ... he stayed on his couch for quite a while, gazing at the circling stars. Ancient Earth men had tried to pick out pictures on those blue-white points. He tried to superimpose her face; but neither the stars, nor his memory, stayed still enough.

When he finally got up, people were already walking around. On the upper level, at the top of the stairs, the pool-cover had retracted. A few people were already paddling about. Light fixtures, bar, sculptures, and tables were once more out; and a trap had opened up with steps down into the cabin’s free-fall section: a drum as big as this one just “below” it, with “real” (that is, only when accelerating) gravity (“Guests are requested not to take liquids from one level to the other,” said the sign on the stand beside the ladder, in whose white plastic rings already stood four or five unfinished drinks.) Completing his circuit of the pool, Bron walked back down the carpeted steps, with a drink now, as three people came up, laughing hysterically about something inane.

His acceleration couch turned out to contain endless interlocked and interleaved cabinets, compartments, and crannies, which a bony, garrulous redhead, almost short enough to be a midget, took great delight in demonstrating to him. It was a bed, of course; just pull that handle there and a soundproof privacy-bubble—well,
almost
soundproof—will swing over the whole thing. You can have it opaque or clear with that switch there. And that’s a timer, preadjusted to help you rearrange your sleeping schedule over the ninety-hour trip so that you won’t suffer too hugely from space-lag—though
nobody
ever follows it on a junket like this, anyway. There’s your reader, though the selections in the file drawer—mark my word—will be monumentally uninspiring. I woulnd’t even look through it, unless you just want a good snicker. (Though I once found one just jammed with twentieth-century science fiction—ever read any? Fascinating stuff!) Swing that half of the sleeping-pad up and you’ll find a place for ablutions; that half, for defecation. And under there—just a second;
there
you go!—is your luggage. Which Bron had packed, at Sam’s suggestion, in a small, plastic bag. Sam had said don’t take much; they’d all be pretty informal. But, wandering around the cabin, catching an occasional glimpse into the other luggage compartments when one or another guest was hunting around for some personal effect, he saw that at least three people had brought huge numbers of sacks, packages, bags, practically overflowing their couches. It made him feel slightly apprehensive at first. But as the hours went on, no one seemed about to dress.

He spent a lot of time “down” in the dimly-lit free-fall chamber, looking through the window there at the stars.

“Hey,” Sam called through the trap to him, sometime during the second day out. “Come up here a minute. You have to see this.”

Bron unsnapped the lounge net he’d been floating in, pushed off toward the ladder, pulled up, emerged into the weighted chamber—an odd experience, having your head, then your shoulders, then your arms and chest go all heavy (like getting out of the swimming pool, only
very
different; he’d compared them a couple of times on this trip, just see)—and came up by the pool.

“Come on, take a look at this.” Sam doffed a drink in
one
hand, guiding Bron’s shoulder with the other. “Come on.”

By the poolside, at one of the wall tables, sat the bony, little redhead; across from him sat an equally diminutive oriental woman with irregularly-clipped, black hair. Between them was a vlet board. It was only a quarter the size of Lawrence’s. (A small traveling version?) The landscape was simply a laminated 3-D photograph, not Lawrence’s animated holographic surface. The pieces were not carefully carved and painted but merely raised symbols on red and green plastic markers. The astral cube did not have its own stand. But Bron could see, in the deployment of the gods, the detritus of a vicious astral battle that green (the redhead’s side) had evidently won.

Five melds were already down.

The woman threw the dice and, in a rather surprising way (a rather clever one too, Bron thought as soon as the move was completed), managed to bring her Guards in from the right, just as green’s caravan crossed the forge, to pull it out of the influence of the scarlet Magician, substantially multiplied by three reflecting screens.

The redhead tossed the dice, discarded a low Flame, dispersed the screens to the corners of the board in one move (which left Bron, among the game’s half-dozen spectators, frowning) and turned to rearrange a matrix on the astral board.
That’s
clever! Bron thought. The woman would have to answer it, pulling some of her powers from the Real World, which would leave some of her strongest pieces unprotected.

The edge of the playing board, the table, and the woman’s cheek flickered with reflections off the pool.

Sam nudged Bron and grinned. “I was thinking we might challenge them to a game of doubles, you and me. But I guess they’re a little out of our league.”

The woman won the battle in three moves.

Some time later they did play a game of doubles—and were wiped off the board in twenty minutes. While

Sam was saying, “Well, we may not have won, but I bet we’ve learned something! Lawrence better watch out when we get back, hey Bron?”, Bron, smiling, nodding
{her
memory deviling him in every flicker on the mosaic ceiling above), retired down into the free-fall chamber, determined never to play that stupid game again, with anyone, on any world, or in between, in or out of any league!

He was going hundreds of millions of kilometers to forget her: he zipped himself into the lounge net and rolled himself up in the idea. The stars drifted by the darkened chamber.

“Do you want to try some of this?”

“Oh, no, I can never eat on these trips ... I have no
idea
why ...”

“You know I never mind synthetic food as long as they aren’t trying to make it taste like something
else
—algae or seaweed or something.”

“I think the reason the food is so terrible on these flights is because they expect you to drink yourself to death.”

“Did you ever think of Sam as a drinking man before? Lord, is he putting it away!”

“Well, this
is
supposed to be a political mission. He’s probably under a great deal of pressure.”

“What are we supposed to do after we get there?”

“Oh, don’t worry. The government takes care of its own—are we decelerating?”

“I think so.”

“Isn’t some light or something supposed to go on down here so that we know to get back upstairs when that happens? I’m surprised this whole cabin just doesn’t fall apart.
Nothing
seems to be working right!”

“Well, there
is
a war on.”

Over the ninety hours, Bron was on the edge of, or took part in, or overhead ninety-nine such conversations. He was in the free-fall chamber when the lights did come on. “I think that means we better go upstairs.” Around him, people were unzipping their lounge nets. “We make Earthfall in about an hour.”

“Why didn’t they come on when we were doing those turns out by the Belt?” someone asked.

“I think they only come on when we’re going to accelerate or decelerate over a certain amount.”

“Oh.”

The wall rolled closed across the window for landing (on the screen, descended once more, the two blue numbers still flickered), customary, everyone said, with atmospheric touch-downs. He was swung from side to side on his couch, bumping and thumping in a way that would really have been unsettling if he hadn’t taken his full compliment of drugs. But world landings were notoriously rough. There was some not very serious joking about whether or not they were still in the air; or in the ship for that matter, as the trundling began.

Then the window-wall rolled back: no glass behind it now—And some of the company were visibly more relaxed, laughing and talking louder and louder: some, unaccountably, were more subdued (which included Sam); they wandered out into another, green, pastel corridor. (Bron was wondering about the Taj Mahal—but then, this
was
a political mission.)

“Do we get any scenery on this trip?” someone asked.

“I doubt it. The government doesn’t believe in scenery for moonies.”

“Ah! But
which
government?”

Over the next few days, though they went to sumptuous restaurants, took long trips in mechanical conveyances through endless, dark tunnels, even went to several symphonic concerts, and spent one afternoon at a museum in which they were apparently the only visitors (the collection was a private one; they had come up from some deep level in an escalator; at night they returned down to their separate, sumptuous rooms by different escalators), Bron had the feeling that they had not really left the Earth space-port complex. They had seen no sky. And, outside concert audiences (their party always had a private box), or other diners (their

Samuel R, Delany
tables were always grouped alone), no people—although, as the little redhead took evident delight in explaining, if you took the time they had spent on mechanical transportation and averaged it out at even a hundred fifty K’s an hour, they could be as much as two thousand kilometers from their point of arrival—quite a distance on a moon, but not so long considering they were on Earth. It was a sumptuously pleasant and totally edgeless time—indeed, its only edges were provided by those moments when he could reflect on
how
edgeless it was.

One morning (at least he thought it was morning), wondering if he could hunt up anyone else who had also overslept for a late breakfast, Bron came out of his room and was crossing between a lot of lush vegetation under a high, mirrored ceiling, when he saw Sam hurrying toward him, looking worried. And two strangers in red and black uniforms were coming toward him from where they’d apparently been waiting by a thick-trunked tree. The woman grabbed Bron’s shoulder. The man said: “You’re a moonie, aren’t you? Come on!”

And twenty feet away, Sam froze, with a perfectly shocked expression.

5. Idylls In Outer Mongolia

We may note that, in these experiments, the sign “=“ may stand for the words “is confused with.”

—G. Spencer Brown,
The Laws of Form

He started to say: “I am
a
moonie. But I doubt if I’m
the
moonie you’re—” But they led him, roughly, off through the imitation jungle.

Rusted metal showed through the door’s gray paint: the amazing lock contraption actually had a hole for a key; bright red letters spelled out exit.

They pushed through into a cement stairwell. He protested once and got a shove for it; they hurried him up. The walls and steps and banisters were grimed to an extent for which neither youth on Mars nor maturity on Triton had prepared him. More apprehensive each flight, he kept thinking: Earth is an old world ... an old, old world.

They pulled him, breathless with the climb, out on a narrow sidewalk as a good number of people hurried past (who, in the less than fifteen seconds he got to see them, must, he decided, have only three basic clothing styles the lot); only one glanced.

Above irregular building tops (he had never
seen
irregular building tops before), the air was a grainy gray-pink, like a sensory shield gone grubby (was that
sky?
With atmosphere in it ...?). A warm, foul odor drifted in the street (equally astonishing). As they pushed him to the vehicle, a surprising breeze (it was the first breeze he’d ever felt not produced by blower convections from some ventilator grate within meters)

carried with it a dozen, clashing, and unpleasant smells.

“In here!”

They opened the vehicle door and shoved him down into a seat; “sky”—colored ticking pushed from one open seam. The two uniformed strangers (some kind of e-girls) stalked around the other side, leaving him momentarily alone with clambering thoughts (I could
run\
I could run
now
...!), but the unfamiliarity of everything (and the conviction that there was some mistake) paralyzed him: then they were inside too; the doors slammed: the vehicle dropped straight down, and was caught up by, and bounced into, a subterranean stream of traffic with the jerkiest acceleration and, save for the Earth-landing, the strongest, he’d ever felt.

Ten minutes later he was yanked (“All right! I’m not trying to resist! I’m coming. I’m—”) and yanked again from the car and hauled past towering buildings and finally marched into one that might have been eighty, a hundred eighty, or eight hundred years old (the oldest extant structure in Bellona was a hundred and ten years old; in Tethys, no more than seventy-five). He had not even noticed this time if there were sky outside or not.