Triton (Trouble on Triton) (26 page)

“What
are
you doing here, anyway?” she asked.

“Oh, I ...” Confusion rose as he remembered Sam’s injunction. “Well, I’m here ... with Sam.” More diggers came down the steps.

“What’s Sam here for?”

“Well, he’s ... I ...” He was oppressed with the thousand secrets he was not even sure he held, revelation of any of which might send worlds and moons toppling together in some disasterous, cosmic pinball. “Well, Sam’s sort of ...” What could he say about Sam that would not return them to the forbidden subject? Sam is a friend? A woman who’s had a sex change? A liaison executive in the Outer Satellite Intelligence Department—

“—with the government?” the Spike suggested. “Well, then, I won’t go prying around anymore into that! Every time you ask a question on this world—about anything—there’s always someone at your elbow to point out politely that, really, for your own good, you’d rather not know. There’s even part of Brian’s work that’s apparently not supposed to pollute delicate little moonie minds. And from what I can gather, it’s nothing more insidious than that, a million years ago,
all this
was under the edge of an inland sea. I like my first supposition better—that you followed me across the Solar System because you simply couldn’t bare to be without me. That’s certainly more flattering than that you’re an official agent sent to keep tabs. The nicest one, of course, is just that it really
is
a coincidence. I’ll accept that.”

Bron walked beside her, his head huge with phantom data, smiling and unhappy. “Well, whether it’s a billion to one or one to a billion, I’m glad we met.”

The Spike nodded. “I guess I am too. It
is
nice to see a familiar face. How long have you been here?”

“Here? Just since last night. On Earth? I guess a few days. It’s not ... well, a very friendly place.”

She hunched her shoulders. “You’ve noticed? They all seem to be trying so hard. To be friendly, I mean. But they just can’t seem to figure out how.” She sighed. “Or maybe it’s just that, coming from where we do, we recognize and respond to different emblems of friendship. Do you think that could be it?” But she was talking about something different from what he meant: black and red uniforms, furnitureless cells, small machines with fangs ...

“Perhaps,” he said.

“We’ve been here two days. We leave in a few days for Mars. Will I run into you there, perhaps?”

“I ...” He frowned. “I don’t think we’re going to Mars.”

“Oh. You’re from Bellona originally, aren’t you?”

He nodded.

“What a shame. You could have shown us around for an evening—though the clear areas are as out of the way on Mars as they are here. We probably won’t be allowed within seven leagues of Bellona, or any place like it.”

“Bellona’s the only place on Mars I really know,” he said. “When I was growing up, I don’t think I got out of it more than a dozen times.”

She mumbled something conciliatory.

“But Mars is friendlier than Earth. At least it was when I left.”

“That’s understandable. I mean, even if the government’s closer to Earth’s, the texture of life, just day to day, would have to be closer to life on the Satellites. The whole ratio, and type, of girl-made object to landscape must be nearer to what it is out on the moons.” She laughed. “With all that
space
they have here getting in between people every time you turn around—you’re going to be in for a small adventure when you try and find your friend again, by the way—I guess it’s understandable why people don’t know how to relate to other people here. Well, Earth’s the place we all came from. Remember that. Remember that, I keep telling myself. Remember that. A few times, at home, I’ve met earthies, even become pretty friendly with a few, especially before the war: they always struck me as a little strange. But I racked it up to the fact that they were in a strange and unfamiliar place. I think the oddest thing I’ve noticed, in the two days I’ve been here, is that they’re
all
so much
like
all the earthies I’ve known before! They pick up an object, and somehow they never seem to really
touch
it. They say something, and their words never completely wrap around their ideas. Do you know what I mean?”

He mumbled back appropriate m’s.

The Spike laughed. “I suppose this isn’t the best way to promote interplanetary understanding and good will, is it? Maybe if everything comes out of the sea and the ground and the air as easily as it’s supposed to here you just don’t ever really
have
to think. How do you like life under an open sky? Do you feel you’ve come home, returned at last to the old racial spawning grounds? Or are you as anxious to get home as I am?”

“I guess I am pretty anxious.” They turned a corner. “When will you be returning?”

She drew a breath. It was a comfortable, relaxed breath: He drew one too. All the tiny smells, he thought; if you like them, you probably liked life under the open sky. If you didn’t, you couldn’t. He doubted it was more complicated than that.

“Our trip to Mars,” she explained,
6iis sort of open-ended.
When push comes to shove, thev’re a good deal more liberal there, especially in things like cultural exchange. And, from reports, the audiences have slightly more catholic tastes. I admit, I’m looking forward to it.”

“I wish I were going,” he said.

They rounded another corner.

She said: “This is where we’re staying.” The building was low, large, and shoddilv whitewashed.

“The People’s Cultural Co-Operative. The diggers have most of it, but we have four rooms on the top floor.”

“You’re always getting stuck in someone’s cellar, or off in the attic.” Memories of concert halls, transport compartments, a verdigrized drain in a fouled cement floor, crystal gaming pieces on boards that were neither go nor vlet. “I still just can’t get over the coincidence, no matter how small or large it is, of—could I come in a while?” because she had stopped at the wooden door, painted yelllow and noticeably askew in its frame.

She smiled. “Really, I’ve got a lot of work to do this morning. Right after lunch I have to have interlocking part rehearsals planned out for the new work. Tt’s one of our most ambitious, and at least four seconds of it are still pretty loose.”

“I ... I ... wish I could see it!”

She smiled again. “It’s too bad you didn’t catch the last performance of the MacLow cycle last nieht. They were open to passers-by. It would be nice to do this one for you, but really it’s more or less understood as part of the conditions of our being here that we do everything we possibly can for the locals. Except for the MacLows, we haven’t even had any of the kids from the dig for audience. We’re trying to keep it to the indigenous inhabitants.”

Save the man at the shack and the woman at the guesthouse, Bron wasn’t sure he’d seen any indigenous inhabitants. “Well, I guess that’s ...” He shrugged, smiled, and felt desperate. She offered her hand. “Good-bye then. Even if I don’t see you—”

“Could
I see you again!” he blurted, taking her hand in both his. “I mean ... maybe tonight. Later, after your performance. We’ll go somewhere. We’ll ... do something! Something nice. Please. I ... I
do
want to!”

She regarded him.

The desperation he felt was heady and violent. He started to release her hand, then squeezed it harder. Movement happened behind the skin of her face.

Was it pity for him?

He hated it.

Was she searching herself?

What did she have to search for!

Was she considering things to say?

Why didn’t she just say, “yes”?

“All right,” she said. “Yes. I’ll go with you this evening. After our last performance.”

He nearly dropped her hand. Why didn’t she
just
say—

“Is that all right,” she asked, with that slight, familiar smile, “with you?”

He nodded, abruptly wondering: Where
would
they go? Back to his guesthouse? To her place?

No—he had to take her somewhere. First. And he was a hundred million kilometers from anywhere he knew.

“Meet me here,” she said. “At nine. How’s that? It should be just about half an hour after sunset, if I remember correctly.”

“Yeah,” he said.

“And we’ll go out somewhere.”

He nodded.

“Good.” She pulled her hand away, glanced at him again, hesitated: “Till nine then?” She pushed open the door. “I’ll meet you here.”

“That’s awfully nice of you ...” he remembered to say.

“Not at all,” she said. “It’ll be fun,” and closed the door.

He stood on the narrow sidewalk thinking something was very wrong.

It was not exactly an adventure finding Sam again. But in the hour and a quarter it took him, he decided that whoever had laid out the village must have
been
certifiably insane. And while there were some jobs that the certifiably insane could do quite well, and while metalogics, as Audri occasionally used to joke at him, was one, city planning was definitely not:

There
was a living establishment—the People’s Co-Op—and there, to its left, was some sort of shopping area; and around the corner from that was a small eating place. All fine. Wandering through the small streets, he found another collection of small shops: Was there an eating place around the corner to
its
right? No. Was there a living establishment—of
any
sort—to
its
left? No! He had been quite prepared to find the urban units arranged differently from those on Tethys, as Tethys’s were different from the units of Lux, or Bellona. (Indeed, Tethys employed seven different types of urban units—though for practical purposes you only had to be familiar with two of them to find anything you wanted in most of the city—and Bellona reputedlv, though only one was common, employed nine.) After half an hour it began to dawn that there
was
no arrangement to this city’s urban units. Half an hour more, and he began to wonder if this city
had
urban units. The onlv logic he could impute to the layout at all—after having walked up some streets many times and been unable to find others at all that he knew he’d passed—was that most of the shops and eating places seemed to be in one area, within three or four streets of the central square. For the rest, it was catch-as-catch-can.

He found the street with the stone steps just by accident.

In the backvard of the guesthouse, Sam sat at a white enameled table, by his elbow a tall glass of something orange with a straw in it and green leaves sticking out the top. He was looking into a portable reader, his thumb again and again clicking the skimming lever.

“Sam, what is there to do around here at night?”

Click. “Look at the stars, smell the clear air, wander out along the wild hills and meadows.”

Click-click—

188
Samuel R.Delany
click. “That’s what I’m planning to do, anyway. If you’re stuck in the far reaches of Outer Mongolia, even in this day and age, there isn’t much
to
do, except figure out more and more interesting ways to relax.” Click-click.

“Do
with
somebody. I have to take someone out tonight.”

Click; Sam reached for his drink, missed it, got it, and maneuvered the straw into his mouth. Click-click. “The woman you went running after, after breakfast?” He put the drink back on the table (Click); the edge of the glass was just over the side.

Bron narrowed an eye, wondering if he should move it. “I said I would take her someplace exciting. Tonight.”

“I can’t think of anyplace you could—” Sam looked up, frowning. “Wait a second.” He moved the glass back on the table.

Bron breathed.

Sam dug among the rack of pockets down the side of his toga, pulled out a square sheaf of colored paper, which he opened into a rectangle.

Knowing full well what it was, Bron said: “What’s that?”

“Money,” Sam said. “Ever use it?”

“Sure.” There were quite a few places on Mars that still took it.

Sam counted through the sheaf. “There’s a place I’ve been to a couple of times when I’ve passed through here—about seventy-five miles to the north.” He flipped up more bills. “There, that should be enough to take you, your friend, and half her theater commune.” While Sam separated the bills, Bron wondered how Sam knew she was in the theater. But then, maybe he’d found out at breakfast. And Sam was saying: “It’s a restaurant—where they still take this stuff.
Some
people consider it mildly elegant. Maybe your friend would enjoy it. If nothing else, it’s a giggle.” Sam held out the bills.

“Oh.” Bron took them.

“That’ll cover it, if I remember things right. It’s quite an old place. Dates all the way back to People’s Capitalist China.”

Bron frowned. “I thought that only lasted ten years or so?”

“Six. Anyway, it’s something to take a gawk at, if you’re in the neighborhood. It’s called
Swan’s
Craw
—which I always wondered about. But that’s Capitalist China for you.”

“You say it’s seventy-five miles? I don’t remember quite how much a mile is, but I suspect it’s too far to walk.” Bron folded the bills again and wondered where to put them.

“By a bit. I’ll tell the landlady to make you a reservation. They’ll send a transport for you—you know about tipping and all that sort of thing?”

“In the circles I moved in as a youth, you picked up the etiquette of money along with your monthly checkup for arcane and sundry venereal diseases.” The bill showing was a thousand something—which he knew was as likely to be very little as it was to be a lot. “What
is
the tipping rate here?” he thought to ask. “Fifteen percent? Twenty?”

“Fifteen is what I was told the first time I went; nobody looked unhappy when I left.”

“Fine.” Bron had no pockets in this particular outfit, so he folded the money again, put it in his other hand, then transferred it back. “You weren’t planning to go there, were you? I mean, if you needed this for yourself ... ?”

“I was planning definitely
not
to go,” Sam said. “I’ve been half a dozen times before. I really
do
prefer the open rocks and grass, the night, the stars. I brought the scrip specifically to get you off my neck for at least one evening while we were here, hopefully at something you’d enjoy.”