Triton (Trouble on Triton) (40 page)

“Oh, this
is
much nicer,” Lawrence said, when they finally got things organized in the room. “I mean, everybody seems so much more relaxed here than back at the place I got for you.”

“As long as they don’t try to be so damned friendly,” Bron said, “and stay out of my hair, it’s got to be an improvement.”

After Lawrence left, she looked for the piece of flimsy to tape to the inside of her door. But it had gotten misplaced or dropped somewhere; at any rate, she couldn’t find it.

She had been living at the women’s co-op (the Eagle) six months now. This one had been working out well. On the fourteenth day of the nineteenth paramonth of the second year , at four o’clock N

(announced the lights around the Plaza), she considered once more, as she came out of the office lobby onto the crowded Plaza of Light, walking home—and, once more, decided against it: Just after lunch Audri had stopped her in the hall with raised finger and lowered brows: “You, I’m afraid, have been falling down in your work, Bron. No, it’s nothing serious, but I just thought I better mention it before it
got
serious. Your efficiency index blinks a little shakily on the charts. Look, we all know you’ve had a lot to adjust to—”

“Did Philip say something?” Bron had asked.

“Nope. And he won’t for at least another two weeks—which is why
I’m
mentioning it now. Look, just give it a little thought, see if there’s anything you can think of that would help you get it together. And let me know. Even if it’s something outside of work. Okay?” Audri smiled.

Back in her office cubicle, Bron had pondered. Once or twice she had consciously thought that she must be ready for her work to mean less to her than before; but that was supposed to happen only at the materialization of the proper man—though nothing like that man had come anywhere near materializing. Take stock, she’d decided. What, she wondered, would her clinic counselor say? Leave an hour early, perhaps; walk home. Only, while she’d been pondering, closing time had crept up. She would be satisfied with the usual transport and just stock-taking.

She went into the transport-station kiosk and down to the third level, which was rumored to be (fractionally) warmer and therefore (rumored to be) fractionally less crowded: the transport hissed in and, as the door slid back, a sign unrolled across it (simultaneously, inside, people stretched signs across the windows:

LUNA

ASSOCIATION

red letters blared on blue tissue.) The one across the door (orange on black on green on pink) said: Bursting through the tissue, men and women began to distribute leaflets; the first passengers behind them were coming off, shoulders and heads brushing orange shreds.

“Really,” a man, wearing several rubber-rimmed privacy disks about his head, arms, and legs, said,

“you’d think they could confine that sort of thing to the unlicensed sector. I mean, that’s why we’ve got it.”

A woman on the other side of him (apparently not with him) said testily: “Just think of it as theater.”

Bron looked. The disk the man wore around his forehead cut the woman’s profile at the nose. The man stepped from between them; Bron suddenly stopped breathing, stared.

The Spike glanced at her, frowned, started to say something, looked away, looked back, frowned again; then a politely embarrassed smile: “I’m sorry, for a moment you reminded me of a man I ...” She frowned again. “Bron ... ?”

“Hello ...” Bron said, softly, because her throat had gone dead dry; her heart knocked slow and hard enough to shake her in her sandals. “Hello, Spike ... how are ... ?”

“How are vow?” the Spike countered. “Well, this certainly—” She blinked at Bron—“is a surprise!”

There was a rising hiss of escaping air. “Oh—”
the
Spike said. “There goes my transport!”

Arriving passengers surged around them.

Bron said, suddenly: “Spike, come on! You want to get out of here and walk for a stop or two?”

The Spike was obviously considering several answers. The one she chose was: “No. I don’t want to, Bron ... Did you get the letter I wrote you—”

“Oh, yes. Yes, I did! Thank you. Really, thank you for explaining things to me.”

“I wrote it to take care of this when it happened, Bron. Because I knew it would. Oh, I don’t mean

... But really; No, I don’t want to walk a few stops with you: do you understand?”

“But I’ve changed!”

“So I’ve noticed.” Then she smiled again.

“Your letter was part of that, too.” Bron was trying to remember what exactly had
been
in the letter, other than its general crotchety tone. But that was part of her life which, day by day, had seemed less necessary to remember, easier to forget. “Please, Spike. I’m
not
the same person I was. And I ... I just feel I have to ... talk to you!”

The Spike hesitated; then the smile became a laugh, that had behind it, like a dozen echoes, some dozen other times she had laughed and Bron had thrilled. “Look ... I guess you have been through some changes. All right, I’ll walk you down another stop. Then we go on our ways, okay?”

As they reached the steps to the pedestrian corridor, a memory returned of another day when they had walked together, laughing, when suddenly the Spike had begun to complain that Bron was always talking about herself—Well, she
had
changed. She wondered what she might talk about to prove it. At the side of the corridor, just before the street, stood a (“Know Your Place in Society”) kaleidoscopi-cally-colored booth. “Have you ever actually
been
in one of those?”

The Spike said: “What?”

“Every once in a while I go in just to see what the government’s got on me, you know?” They passed the booth, walked on into the street, under the sensory shield’s paler swirls. “A lot of people pride themselves on never going into one at all. But then,
I’ve
always sort of prided myself on being the type who does the things no one else would be caught dead doing. I guess the last time I went into one was about a month back—or maybe six weeks. I don’t know whether they’ve done it on purpose or not; Brian—that’s my counsellor at the clinic—says it’s more or less government policy, though there have been exceptions which she thinks are just government slipups, which I sort of doubt. I mean, whether you approve of it or disapprove, the government is usually right. Anyway, they only show clips taken since my operation. Isn’t that amazing? Perhaps this is their own, bizarre way of showing that they care—”

Bron stopped, because the Spike was looking at another group of Luna-Reliefers: across the street,

“Luna Is a Moon Too!” waved on bright placards.

“You don’t see any Terra Relief around,” the Spike said, suddenly, with the same bitterness Bron had heard in her comment to the man back on the transport platform. “After all, that’s where we did the damage.”

“That’s right, you don’t,” Bron said. And then: “You must have gotten out just in time.” She frowned.

“Or were you there through it?”

“I got out,” the Spike said. “What did you want to talk about?”

“Well, I ... I guess there wasn’t anything specific but ... well I just wanted ...” And Bron realized there was nothing to say; nothing of any importance at all. “What are
you
doing, Spike? I guess the company’s going pretty well now.”

“Actually, we’re sort of in hibernation. Maybe we’ll
get
together again someday; but once the endowment ran out, we more or less disbanded.”

“Oh.”

“I’m teaching right now, in the rotation circuit for Lux.”

“University?”

“That’s right. You know the city was completely wiped out. But the University is practically a separate suburb, under a separate shield, with a separate atmosphere and separate gravity control. The sabotage was pretty well set up to pass it by. Maybe that was Earth’s way of showing they cared?”

Bron couldn’t really think of much to answer. “I

guess because you’re working for the University is why you’re out here instead of your usual haunts in the u-1.”

“Mmm,” the Spike said. “I’m doing a month of lectures on Jacque Lynn Col ton. After I finish here and on to Neriad, I’ll be going back to Io, Europa, Ganymede ...” She shrugged. “It’s the usual rotation. Somehow, though, under the University—even on the run—just isn’t the place to do creative work. At least, not for me. They’ve promised me some direction as soon as I get back. I’m working on plans for simultaneous, integrated productions of
La Vida Es Sueho, Phedra,
and
The Tyrant
—one cast for all three, all on the same stage, with both cast and audience using the new concentration drugs. The University has already used them to allow people to listen to four or five lectures at once, but nobody’s tried to use them for anything aesthetically interesting.”

“I thought ... um, macro-theater wasn’t your field?” Bron said, wondering where the information came from, or if it was even right.

The Spike laughed. “Macro-theater is just a lot of coordinated micro-theater productions done one right after another without a break.”

“Oh,” Bron said again. Three plays at once sounded too confusing even to ask about. “Are you still with Windy and what’s-her-name?”

“Charo. No, not really. Charo’s here on Triton; and we see each other, get drunk together, and reminisce about old times. She’s a pretty spectacular kid.”

“Where’s Windy?”

The Spike shrugged.

“Well—” Bron smiled—“I must admit he struck me as the roving kind.”

“He’s probably dead,” the Spike said. “The whole company left Lahesh the same day you did, but Windy was going to stay behind on Earth for another six days. Windy was born on Earth, you know. He’d planned to hitchhike somewhere or other to see one of his families, and then join us later. Only the war ...” She looked about the street. “Eighty-eight percent of the population at last report ... The confusion there is still supposed to be horrible. They’ve said not to expect any reliable information from the place for at least another year. Then there’re those who say there’ll never be anything there again to have any reliable information about.”

“I saw a public-channel coverage of the cannibalism going on in both the Americas.” Bron felt welling distress. “And that was only a month ago ... ?”

The Spike took a deep breath. “So that means the chances are—what? Four out of five that he’s dead? Or, by this time, nine out of ten.”

The only response to come to Bron was a tasteless joke about the chances of Windy’s having been eaten. “Then you’re not really involved with anybody anymore—” And the distress was still growing; her heart began to knock again. What
is
this? she wondered. It certainly couldn’t be sex! Was it the terror, or the embarrassment, of death? But she’d hardly
known
Windy; and his death was a probability, not a certainty, anyway. Then, astonishing herself, Bron said: “Spike, let me come with you. All the rest is ridiculous.” She looked at the pavement. “I’ll give up everything I have, go wherever you like, do whatever you want. You’ve had women lovers. Love me. I’ll have a refixation, tonight. I want you. I love you. I didn’t even know it, but seeing you again—”

“Oh,
Bron
...” The Spike touched Bron’s shoulder.

Bron felt something inside reel about her chest, staggering at the touch. “Feeling like this ... I’ve never felt like this about ...
anyone
before. Do you believe me?”

“Yes,” the Spike said. “I do.”

“Then why can’t you—?”

“First of all, I
am
involved with someone else. Second of all, I’m touched, I’m complimented ... even now: But I’m not interested.”

“Who are you ... with ... ?” Despair built behind Bron’s face like a solid slab of metal that began to heat,
to
burn, to melt and run across her eyes. She wasn’t crying. But water rolled down one cheek. The Spike dropped her hand. “You’ve met him, actually—though you probably don’t remember ... Fred?

I believe the first time you saw him, he’d just punched me in the jaw.”

“Him
... ?” Bron looked up, blinking. “I hope he’s taken a
bath
since I ... !”

The Spike laughed. “As a matter of fact, I don’t think he has. I’m always on the verge of trouble with the University over him—another reason I’ll be glad to get out of teaching and back to work. I took him to one of my lectures .... on a chain—I had some of the students throw raw meat—he likes that. It was just for the theater. But I’m afraid most of the University types have simply never encountered anything quite like Fred before. I mean up close. They don’t know what to do with him. It’s too bad you never got a chance to talk with him—though, of course, a lot of his ideas have developed since we first met.”

“But what in the world do the two of you—?”

“Fred is into some rather strange things—sexually, that is. And no, I
haven’t
decided whether they’re really me, yet. Frankly, it’s not exactly my concept of the ideal sexualizationship but it’s the one I currently care about the most and—Look—let’s not talk about it, all right?” She looked at Bron and sighed.

“Does he want another woman?” Bron asked. “I’ll go with him. I’ll do anything he wants, as long as you’re with him too; and I can be near you, talk to you—”

“Bron, you
don’t
get the point,” the Spike said. “Whether he might want you or not has nothing to do with it. / don’t want you. Now let’s call it a day. The transport’s up there. You go on. I’ve got other things to do.”

“You don’t
believe
you’re the only person I’ve ever felt like this about?”

“I told you: I
do
believe it.”

“I’ve felt this way about you from the moment I first saw you. I’ve felt this way about you all along. I know now that I’ll always feel this way, no matter what.”

“And I happen to believe you’ll feel rather differently three minutes—if not thirty seconds—after I’ve left.”

“But I—”

“Bron, there’s a certain point in meaningless communication after which you just have to—”

Suddenly the Spike stopped, made an angry face, started to turn away, then hesitated: “Look, there’s the transport. Use it. I’m going down this way. And if you try to follow me, I’ll kick you in the balls.”