Triton (Trouble on Triton) (35 page)

Nobody’s quite known what was going on since the retaliation this afternoon. And then with Mad Mike outside—well, he seems to be gone now. But we didn’t know whether he’d done something to interfere with our channel reception or whether it was just part of the general confusion. With gale-force winds going on and off, nobody wanted to go out anyway, especially with the kids.” Freddie and Flossie were the only one-parent family at Serpant’s House; but at a sexually specified co-op, straight or gay, you would expect a few more. Also, of course, this was a woman’s co-op. And, as a public-channel survey had once put it: As long as women bore 70 percent of the children, you couldn’t be surprised that nearly 60 percent of the one-parent families had a woman at their head.

As they were leaving the building (one of Audri’s boys had glommed onto Lawrence, along with another kid Bron had never seen) Bron asked: “Who
was
that Mad Mike character?”

Audri glanced around, checking, then said, confidentially: “He used to live with John—” She nodded toward a woman, in something flimsy, cream-colored and diaphanous, who, till now, he’d just assumed was one of the older children.

“She had two children by him. He’s some sort of very eccentric craftsman, but what kind I don’t know.”

“Why didn’t you let him in?”

Audri humphed. “The last three times she did, as soon as he got her alone, he beat her up; then sat her down for the next hour and explained why it was all her fault he’d done it. Really, John’s sweet, but she’s
not
very bright. We were trying to get through to the e-girls, but communication was out both in and out of the place.”

“Oh,” Bron said. “Yeah ... well. I guess, maybe because they were his children—”

Audri humphed again. “This sudden revitalization of interest only started a year back when he became a Christian. He apparently wasn’t very interested in them back when she was having them, or in the two years right after.” Audri scanned the group as it turned the corner. “I mean, if he wants kids of his own, there are ten ways he can go about getting them—here, that is. And at least twenty-five over in the u-1.”

Bron followed the herd of women around the corner. “I
thought
he might have been a Christian.”

They were heading back toward the Plaza of Light. “From some of the expressions he used.” He looked up at the unfamiliar and unsettling night. “You know, they’re almost as much trouble as the Jews?”

Audri said: “Hev, come on, you kids. Stop horsing around.
This way.
Where
did
he go, anyway? He usually hangs around a good deal longer when he decides to make a nuisance of himself. He was getting to be quite a neighborhood character.”

“Oh,” Bron said, feeling uncomfortable again. “Well, he saw Lawrence and me and then he ... went away.”

Audri glanced at him. “You scared him off? You
get
a vote of thanks for that! Character or not, he was getting to be a pain.”

A child came up to ask Audri about something Bron didn’t understand, to which she returned a (to Bron) incomprehensible answer, while Bron wondered when he would tell Audri of Mad Mike’s fate. No matter how uncomfortable it made him, he
had
to do that.

Audri said: “It was downright heroic of you to come around and give us a hand like this. We were all pretty scared. Some of the sounds coming in from outside—and I just don’t mean Mike’s carrying on ... Well, they weren’t the sort to encourage you to take to the streets.”

Bron was preparing to sav, Mike is probably dead, when the skv (or rather the shield) came on. The children cheered—which brought some dozen e-girls charging from the next alley: What did they think they were doing in a restricted area?

Trying as best thev could to get out of it!

Didn’t they know that there was serious gravity derangement all over this sector of the citv? Over a hundred and six people had been reported dead already!

That was
just
why they were trying to leave! Which way should thev go?

Well, actually, the sensory shield’s going on was the official signal that it was all under control again. They could go back home if thev wanted.

Which brought more cheers, and laughter from the women.

Already other people were appearing in the street.

Bron turned to sav something to Audri, only to find Lawrence at his shoulder.

“Let’s go home,” Lawrence said. “Please? Let’s go home now.”

Bron didn’t want to go back to Serpent’s House. He wanted to so back to Audri’s, and have the women give him coffee and a meal and talk and smile and laugh with him, joke about his breaking the window and make much about his coming to rescue them and his scaring off the crazy Christian. But there would be the kids. And alreadv women were—

“... at work next week!” Audri was calling across lots of heads and waving.

“Oh, yeah!” Bron waved back. “I’ll see you. At work.”

“Come on.” Lawrence said. “Please?” Bron started to sav something angrv. But it failed. “Sure.”

Bron sighed. And after thev had walked through two and a half units: “This has been some vacation!”

The Spike’s (nonfacsimile) letter was waiting for him on his table.

In his clean room (the cupboard door was still open, but he was too tired to close it), he sat on his bed and reread it. Then he read it once more. Halfway through he realized he wasn’t even hearing it in the Spike’s voice, but in the voice of the woman at Audri’s co-op who had been calling instructions to the other women. He started again, this time hearing the accusations in the electronically strained tone of the hegemony’s Personnel receptionist. He read it once more, finally in the voice of the e-girl who’d been hallooing that he could not pass the cordon, and whom he’d tricked by joining the mumblers.

“Hey,” Lawrence said, shouldering through the door, once more naked, carrying his cracked vlet case in both hands. “I’ve found almost
all
the pieces! Only four of them got stepped on, and I’m sure I can get another astral board from—”

“Lawrence?” Bron looked up from the black—and gold-edged flimsy. “Lawrence, you know, he was right?”

“This isn’t
too
bad, is it?” Lawrence ran a yellowish nail over the cracked inlay. “There used to be a marvelous craftsman over in the unlicensed sector who specialized in games. I’m sure she could fix this one good as new—if her place is still up. The public channels were saying that the u-1 got hit the hardest. But then, isn’t that typical?”

“Lawrence he was right.”

“Who?” Lawrence looked up.

“That Christian—the one we saw out in front of Audri’s co-op. Mad Mike.”

“Right about what?”

“About women.” Bron suddenly crumpled the letter between cupped hands. “They don’t understand.”

“You mean thev don’t understand
youl
Some of us, my dear, get along smashingly with women. Even me, from time to time. No misunderstandings at all: just pure sympathy and sympatico riffht down the line. Of course with me
it
doesn’t last. But does it ever, all the time, with anvone?”

“They don’t understand about
men
—Not vou, Lawrence. I mean ordinary, heterosexual men. They can’t. It’s just a logical impossibility. I’m a logician and I know.”

Lawrence laughed. “Mv
dear
boy! I have observed you intimately now for six months, and vou are a sweet
and familiar
creature—alas, far more familiar than six months should make vou. Let me tell vou a secret. There
is
a difference between men and women, a little, tiny one that. I’m afraid, has probablv made most of your adult life miserable and will probably continue to make it so till you die. The difference is simnly that women have only really been treated, by that bizarre,

Derkheimian abstraction, ‘society,’ as human beings for the last—oh, say sixty-five years; and then, really, only on the moons; whereas men have had the luxury of such treatment for the last four thousand. The result of this historical anomaly is simply that, on a statistical basis, women are just a little less willing to put up with certain kinds of shit than men—simply because the concept of a certain kind of shit-free Universe is, in that equally bizarre Jungian abstraction, the female ‘collective unconscious,’ too new and too precious.” Lawrence’s brows knitted; he frowned at Bron’s knotted fists. “Why, I
bet
that’s a letter from a lady—I confess, when I was checking for corpses, I had a peek in here and saw the name and the return address. Your problem, you see, is that essentially you are a logical pervert, looking for a woman with a mutually compatible logical perversion. The fact is, the mutual perversion you are looking for is very, very rare—if not nonexistent. You’re looking for someone who can enjoy a certain sort of logical masochism. If it were
just
sexual, you’d have no trouble finding a partner at all—as your worldly experience no doubt has already informed you. Hang them from the ceiling, burn their nipples with matches, stick pins in their buttocks and cane them bloody! There’re gaggles of women, just as there are gaggles of men, who would be delighted to have a six-foot, blond iceberg like you around to play such games with. You can get a list of the places they frequent just by dialing Information. But, though she is a religious fanatic like Mad Mike, who believes
that
the children of her bodv are one with the objects of her hand, or a sociopath like poor Alfred, who doesn’t quite have a model for anyone, correct or incorrect; be she nun or nymphomaniac, a loud political pamphleteer running around in the u-1 sector, or a pillar of society living elegantly on the Ring, or anywhere in between, or any combination, the one thing she

is

not

going

to

do

is

put

up

with

your

hurry-up-and-wait,

your

do-a-little-tap-dance-while-you-stand-on-your-head,

your

run-around-in-circles-while-you-walk-a-straieht-line, especially when it’s out of bed and simply has no hope of pleasurable feedback. Fortunately, your particular perversion today is extremely rare. Oh, I would say maybe one man out of fifty has it—quite amazing, considering that it once was about as common as the ability to grow a beard. Just compare it to some of the other major sexual types: homosexuality, one out of five; bisexuality, three out of five; sadism and masochism, one out of nine; the varieties of fetishism, one out of eight. So you see, at one out of
fifty,
you really are in a difficult situation. And what makes it more difficult—even tragic—is that the corresponding perversion you’re searching for in women, thanks to that little historical anomaly, is more like one out of five thousand. Yes, I have a—believe me—platonic curiosity about both male and female victims of this deviation. Yes, I exploit the attendant loneliness of the unfulfilled by offering friendship. Psychic vampirism? Believe me, there’s as much of the blood donor about me as there is of Vlad Tepes. I don’t know anything about the woman responsible for that—” He nodded toward the crumpled letter—“other than her public reputation. But I’ve lived a long time. I can make a few speculations about her. Bron, in your terms, she simply doesn’t exist. I mean, how can she? You’re a logical sadist looking for a logical masochist. But you
are
a logician. If you redefine the relation between P and Not-P beyond a certain point—well, then you just aren’t talking about logic any more. All you’ve done, really, is change the subject.”

“I’m a metalogician,” Bron said. “I define and redefine the relation between P and Not-P five hours a day, four days a week. Women don’t understand. Faggots don’t understand either.”

Lawrence hefted up the vlet case, leaned against the wall, and raised an eyebrow.
“Do
explain.”

Bron hunched his shoulders. “Look, I ...” He straightened them. “It was something to do with, I don’t know, maybe a kind of bravery—”

“Bravery is just making a big thing about doing what’s best for the largest number of people. The only problem is that the same process by which we make a big thing out of it usually blinds us to seeing the num—

ber of people as large enough to be really worthwhile—”

“If you’re just going to stand there and say stupid things intended to be clever—” Bron was angry.

“You’re angry.” Lawrence hefted the case once more. “I’m sorry. Go on.”

Bron looked at his meshed fingers, the gold-and-black edging between them. “You know, Sam’s trip to Earth was basically a political mission. You can be glad you didn’t go. During it, some of us were captured. Some of us were killed. I got off easy. I was just tortured. They held me without food. I wasn’t allowed to go to the bathroom. They stuck prongs in me. They beat me up, all the time asking the same questions again and again ... I know, it could have been worse. No bones broken; and, hell, I’m alive. But some of us ... aren’t. It wasn’t pleasant. The thing that really made it bad was that we weren’t even allowed to talk about any of it—by our side, either—to each other or to anyone else. Anything we might have said could have gotten one or all of us killed, just like that! And that’s when I ran into this—” He held up the crumpled letter, looked at his fist, let it drop—“woman. Of course, you’re right. She didn’t exist. The day after I got out, I took her out to dinner. It was so funny, sitting there in this incredibly expensive restaurant, where they still use money, that she’d wanted to go to—some friends of hers had been there already, and she was on her ear to try it out—and realize that a single word from me about any of what had just happened to me might have meant my death, or the death of a dozen others, or even hers, while all she was concerned with was that she’d bowed to the proper fashion—you’d have liked it; it’s one of those places where bare feet are
de rigeur,
but, frankly, I couldn’t be bothered—or that she was making the right impression on the waiters and the maiordomo, as a charming and naive innocent—that’s when she
wamt
prattling on about how marvelous this or that love affair had been. I mean, not that I should have been surprised. You know, I’d met her a few times before, here in Tethys. We’d even had sex a few times, casually and—well, I thought very successfullv. But fust an example: the first time I met her, I told her about you, said that she ought to meet you. She got very huffy about that; apparently she doesn’t like homosexuals. Doesn’t approve of them or something. She’s still going on about that in here—” Bron held up the letter. “Took great offence that I should think she would have anything to do with anyone who was. I mean, can you imagine? In
this
day and age—? Not that she isn’t above engaging in a little herself from time to time, and quite happily, or so she claims, when she lets her hair down. But, apparently,
thafs
different. Really, a logically consistent position is iust beyond her—though, like you, she talks about logic enough. Really, the only reason she gives for not wanting to know
you
is because I happened to mention you were gay! Take a look—” Bron held out the crumpled letter.