"You've led a sheltered life, Q.M."
"What do you mean?"
She turned, and looked angry for the first time.
"I mean you sound as if incontinence was the absolute worst thing you'd ever heard of in your life."
"Well, what is it, then? No big thing?"
"It certainly isn't to that woman. For most people with her problem, it means catheters and feces bags. Or diapers. Like my grandfather wore for the last five years of his life. The operations she's had to fix it, and the hardware, implanted and external... well, it's damn expensive, Q.M. You can't afford it on the money grandfather was getting from the State, and Conglomerate health plans won't pay for it, either."
"Oh, so that's it. Just because she's rich and can afford the best treatment, her problems don't amount to anything. Just how would you like to—"
"Wait a minute, hold on..." She was looking at him with an expression that would not hold still, changing from sympathy to disgust. "I don't want to fight with you. I know it wouldn't be pleasant to have my neck broken, even if I was a trillionaire." She paused, and seemed to be choosing her words carefully.
"I'm bothered by something here," she said, at last. "I'm not even sure what it is. I'm concerned about you, for one thing. I still think it's a mistake to get involved with her. I like you. I don't want to see you hurt."
Cooper suddenly remembered his resolve of the night before, as she lay sleeping at his side. It confused him terribly. Just what did he feel for Anna-Louise? After the things Galloway had told him about love and the lies of the Transer commercials, he didn't know what to think. It was pitiful, when he thought about it, that he was as old as he was and hadn't the vaguest notion what love might be, that he had actually assumed the place to find it, when the time came, was on trans-tapes. It made him angry.
"What are you talking about, hurt?" he retorted. "She's not dangerous. I'll admit she lost control there for a moment, and she's strong, but—"
"Oh, help!" Anna-Louise moaned. "What am I supposed to do with these emotionally stunted smoggies who think nothing is real unless they've been told by somebody on the—"
"Smoggies? You called me a racist when—"
"Okay, I'm sorry." He complained some more but she just shook her head and wouldn't listen and he eventually sputtered to a stop.
"Finished? Okay. I'm getting crazy here. I've only got one more month before I go back home. And I do find most Earthlings—is that a neutral enough term for you?—I find them weird. You're not so bad, most of the time, except you don't seem to have much notion about what life is for. You like to screw and you like to swim. Even that is twice as much purpose as most sm—, Terrans seem to have."
"You... you're going?"
"Surprise!" Her tone dripped sarcasm.
"But why didn't you tell me?"
"You never asked. You never asked about a lot of things. I don't think you ever realized I might like to tell you about my life, or that it might be any different from yours."
"You're wrong. I sensed a difference."
She raised an eyebrow and seemed about to say something, but changed her mind. She rubbed her forehead, then took a deep, decisive breath.
"I'm almost sorry to hear that. But I'm afraid it's too late to start over. I'm moving out." And she began packing.
Cooper tried to argue with her but it did no good. She assured him she wasn't leaving because she was jealous; she even seemed amused that he thought that might be the reason. And she also claimed she was not going to move in with Yuri Feldman. She intended to live her last month in the Bubble alone.
"I'm going back to Luna to do what I planned to do all along," she said, tying the drawstring of her duffel bag. "I'm going to the police academy. I've saved enough now to put me through."
"Police?" Cooper could not have been more astonished if she had said she intended to fly to Mars by flapping her arms.
"You had no inkling, right? Well, why should you? You don't notice other people much unless you're screwing them. I'm not saying that's your fault; you've been trained to be that way. Haven't you ever wondered what I was doing here? It isn't the working conditions that drew me. I despise this place and all the people who come to visit. I don't even like water very much, and I hate that monstrous obscenity they call the Bubble."
Cooper was beyond shock. He had never imagined anyone could exist who would not be drawn by the magic of the Bubble.
"Then why? Why work here, and why do you hate it?"
"I hate it because people are starving in Pennsylvania," she said, mystifying him completely. "And I work here, God help me, because the pay is good, which you may not have noticed since you grew up comfortable. I would have said rich, but by now I know what real rich is. I grew up poor, Q.M.
Another little detail you never bothered to learn. I've worked hard for everything, including the chance to come here to this disgusting pimp-city to provide a safety service for rich degenerates, because BCE pays in good, hard GWA Dollars. You probably never noticed, but Luna is having serious economic troubles because it's caught between a couple of your corporation-states... ah, forget it. Why worry your cute little head with things like that?"
She went to the door, opened it, then turned to look at him.
"Honestly, Q.M., I don't dislike you. I think I feel sorry for you. Sorry enough that I'm going to say once more you'd better watch out for Galloway. If you mess around with her right now, you're going to get hurt."
"I still don't understand how."
She sighed, and turned away.
"Then there's nothing more I can say. I'll see you around."
Megan Galloway had the Mississippi Suite, the best in the hotel. She didn't come to the door when Cooper knocked, but just buzzed him in.
She was sitting tailor-fashion on the bed, wearing a loose nightgown and a pair of wire-rimmed glasses and looking at a small box in front of her. The bed resembled a sternwheeler, with smoke and sparks shooting from the bedposts, and was larger than his entire room and bath. She put her glasses at the end of her nose and peered over them.
"Something I can do for you?"
He came around until he could see the box, which had a picture flickering dimly on one side of it.
"What's that?"
"Old-timey television," she said. "Honey West, circa 1965, American Broadcasting Company.
Starring Anne Francis, John Ericson, and Irene Hervey, Friday nights at 2100. Spin-off from Burke's Law, died 1966. What's up?"
"What's wrong with the depth?"
"They didn't have it." She removed her glasses and began to chew absently on one rubber tip. "How are you doing?"
"I'm surprised to see you wear glasses."
"When you've had as many operations as I have, you skip the ones you think you can do without.
Why is it I sense you're having a hard time saying whatever it is you came here to say?"
"Would you like to go for a swim?"
"Pool's closed. Weekly filtering, or something like that."
"I know. Best possible time to go for a swim."
She frowned. "But I was told no one is admitted during the filtering."
"Yeah. It's illegal. Isn't everything that's fun?"
The Bubble was closed one hour in every twenty-four for accelerated filtering. At one time the place had been open all day, with filtration constantly operating, but then a client got past the three safety systems, where he was aerated, churned, irradiated, centrifuged, and eventually forced through a series of very fine screens. Most of him was still in the water in one form or another, and his legend had produced the station's first ghost.
But long before the Filtered Phantom first sloshed down the corridors the system had been changed.
The filters never shut down completely, but while people were in the pool they were operated at slow speed. Once a day they were turned to full power.