We sat in the cafe and sipped Valley coffee while waiting for our cakes to arrive. Charles said little at first, his nerves evident. He smiled broadly at my own few words, eager to be accommodating.
Tiring rapidly of this verbjam, I leaned forward. “Why did you come to Shinktown?” I asked.
“Bored and lonely. I’ve been up to my neck in Bell Continuum topoi. You… don’t know what this is, I presume.”
“No,” I said.
“Well, it’s fascinating. It could be important someday, but right now it’s on the fringe. Why did you come?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. For company, I suppose.” I realized, with some concern, that this was my way of being coquettish. My mother would have called it bitchy, and she knew me well enough.
“Looking for a good dance partner? I’m probably not your best choice.”
I waved that off. “Do you remember what Sean Dickinson said?”
He grimaced. “I’d like to forget.”
“What was wrong with him?”
“I’m not much of a student of human nature.” Charles examined his tiny cup. The cakes arrived and Charles slapped palm on the arbeiter. “My treat,” he said. “I’m old-fashioned.”
I let that pass as well. “I think he was monstrous,” I said.
“I’m not sure I’d go that far.”
My lips wrapped around the word again, savoring it. “Monstrous. A political monster.”
“He really stung you, didn’t he? Remember, he was hurt.”
“I’ve tried to understand the whole situation, why we didn’t accomplish anything. Why I was willing to follow Sean and Gretyl almost anywhere…”
“Follow them? Or the cause?”
“I believed — believe in the cause, but I was following them” I said. “I’m trying to understand why.”
“They seemed to know what they were doing.”
We talked for an hour, going in circles, getting no closer to understanding what had happened to us. Charles seemed to accept it as a youthful escapade, but I’d never allowed myself the luxury of such japes. Failure gave me a deep sensation of guilt, of time wasted and opportunities missed.
When we finished our cakes, it seemed natural that we should go someplace quiet and continue talking. Charles suggested the quad. I shook my head and explained that I thought it looked like an insula. Charles was not a student of history. I said, “An insula. An apartment building in ancient Rome .”
“The city?” Charles asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “The city.”
His next suggestion, preceded by a moment of perplexed reflection, was that we should go to his room. “I could order tea or wine.”
“I’ve had enough of both,” I said. “Can we get some mineral water?”
“Probably,” Charles said. “Durrey sits on a pretty fine aquifer. This whole area lies on pre-Tharsis karst.”
We took a small cab to the opposite arc, hotels and temp quarters for Shinktown’s real source of income, the students.
I don’t remember anticipating much of anything as we entered Charles’s room. There was nothing distinguished about the decor — inexpensive, clean, maintained by arbeiters, with no nano fixtures; pleasant shades of beige, soft green, and gray. The bed could hold only one person comfortably. I sat on the bed’s corner. It occurred to me suddenly that by going this far, Charles might expect something more. We hadn’t even kissed yet, however, and the agreement had been that we come here to talk.
Still, I wondered how I would react if Charles made a move.
“I’ll order the water,” he said. He took two steps beside the desk, unsure whether to seat himself on the swing-out chair or the edge of the bed beside me. “Gassed or plain?”
“Plain,” I said.
He set his slate on the desk port and placed an order. “They’re slow. Should take about five minutes. Old arbeiters,” he said.
“Creaky,” I said.
He smiled, sat on the chair, and looked around. “Not much luxury,” he said. “Can’t afford more.” The one chair, a small net and com desk, single drop-down bed with its thin blanket, vapor bag behind a narrow door, sink and toilet folded into the wall behind a curtain — all squeezed into three meters by four.
I casually wondered how many people had had sex in this room, and under what circumstances.
“We could spend years trying to figure out Sean and Gretyl,” Charles said. “I don’t want you to think I’ve forgotten what happened.”
“Oh, no,” I said.
“But I’ve got too much else to ponder, really.” He used the word in a kind of self-parody, to deflate the burden it might carry. “I can’t worry about the mistakes we made.”
“Did we make mistakes?” I asked. I smoothed some wrinkles in the thin blanket.
“I think so.”
“What mistakes?” I led him on, angry again but hiding it.
Charles finally pulled out the chair and sat with his elbows on his knees, hands clasped in front of him. “We should choose our leaders more carefully,” he said.
“Do you think Sean was a bad leader?”
“You said he was ‘monstrous,’ ” Charles reminded me.
“Things went wrong for all of us,” I said. “If they had gone better, everything might have turned out differently.”
“You mean, if Connor and Dauble hadn’t hung themselves, we might have provided the noose.”
“It seems likely.”
“I suppose that’s what Sean and Gretyl were trying to do,” Charles said.
“All of us,” I added.
“Right. But what would we have done after that? What did Sean really want to accomplish?”
“In the long ran?” I asked.
“Right,” Charles said. He was revealing a capacity I hadn’t seen before. I was curious to see how far this new depth extended. “I think they wanted anarchy.”
I frowned abruptly.
He looked at me and his face stiffened. “But I didn’t really — ”
“Why would they want anarchy?”
“Sean wants to be a leader. But he can never be a consensus leader.”
“Why not?”
“He has the appeal of a LitVid image,” Charles said. How could he not see how much he was irritating me? I felt a perversity again; I wanted him to anger me, so I could deny him what he had come here to gain, that is, my favors.
“Shallow?”
“I’m sorry, this is upsetting you,” Charles said softly, kneading his hands. “I know you liked Sean. It makes me… I didn’t want to bring you here to — ”
The door chimed. Charles opened it and an arbeiter entered, carrying a bottle of Durrey Region Prime Drinking Water, Mineral. Charles handed me a glass and sat again.
“I really don’t want to talk politics,” he said. “I’m not very good at it.”
“We came here to talk about what went wrong,” I persisted. “I’m curious to hear you out.”
“You disagree with me.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But I want to hear what you have to say.”
Charles’s misery became obvious in the set of his jaw, drawn in defensively toward his neck, and the way he clenched his hands. “All right,” he said. I could sense him giving up, assuming I was out of his reach, and that added to my irritation. Such presumption!
“What kind of leader would Sean be?”
“A tyrant,” Charles said softly. “Not a very good one. I don’t think he has what it takes. Not enough charm at the right time, and he can’t keep his feelings under control.”
My anger evaporated. It was the strangest feeling; I agreed with Charles. That was the monstrousness I was trying to understand.