Heading for the Pits tomorrow. The rest of us are going slumming. Want to come along?"
"I don't know." I'd tried the O clubs. They were filled with dreary staff types. Their atmosphere was both boring and stultifying. There's nothing deadlier than a congregation of conscientious bureaucrats.
"We're going a different place. Private club. Climber people and guests only. The real front-line warriors." His smile was sarcastic. "Give you a chance to meet our astrogator, West-hause. Just turned up. Good man, but he talks too much."
"Why not?" I had yet to meet any Climber people but those with whom I was traveling. The others might be less taciturn.
"Called the Pregnant Dragon, for reasons lost in the trackless deserts of time." He grinned at my raised eyebrow. "Don't wear your best. Sometimes it gets rowdy."
Something came up which demanded the Commander's attention, so we arrived late. But not late enough. I should've stayed behind.
That night witnessed the destruction of a hundred cherished cities in my land of illusions.
The Dragon was up near the surface, in an old subbasement. I heard it long before I saw it, and when I saw it, I asked, "This's an Officers' Club?" ,
"Climber people only," Westhause said, grinning. "Down people couldn't handle it."
Four hundred people had packed themselves into a space that had served two hundred before the war.
Odors hit me like a surprise fist in the face. Alcohol. Vomit. Tobacco. Urine. Drugs. All backed by mind-shattering noise. The customers had to shout to make themselves heard over the efforts of an abominable local band. Civilian waiters and waitresses cursed their ways through the press, getting groped by both sexes. I guess the tips made up for the indignities. Climber people had nothing else to do with their pay.
Athwart the doorway, lying like some fallen angel seduced by the sins of Gomorrah, was a full Commander wearing Muslim Chaplain's insignia. Smiling, he snored in a pool of vomit. Nobody seemed inclined to move or clean him. Conforming to custom, we stepped over his inert form. Not a meter beyond, two male officers were playing kissy-face huggy-bear. I'm afraid I gasped.
I mean, it does go on, but right inside the front door of the 0 club?
The Commander grunted, "Hang on to your nuts. There's more fun to come." He halted two steps inside, ignoring the lovers. Fists on hips, he stared about as though springing a surprise inspection. Having glimpsed what was going on, I expected an explosion.
He threw back his head and cut loose with a great jackass bray of laughter.
And Yanevich bellowed, "Make a hole for the best goddamned Climber in the Fleet, you yellow-assed scum."
The cacophony declined maybe one decibel. People looked us over. Some waved. Some shouted. Some moved toward us. Friends, I supposed.
A tiny china doll, ethereally beautiful in makeup which exaggerated her aristocratic Manchu features, slid beneath our elbows as lithely as a weasel. A meter away she paused and, eyes sparkling, mimicked the Commander's stance.
"You're fucking full of shit, Steve," she shouted at Yanevich. "Ninety-two A's the best, and you fucking well know it."
Yanevich lunged like a bear in rut. "Shit. I didn't know you guys were in."
"Come down off your goddamned mountain once in a while, graverobber." She laughed and wriggled as he mauled her. "Can you still get it up, Donkey Dick? Or did it fall off out there in the ruins?
We just got in. I could use an all-night hosing."
"We're headed out, Little Bits. Tell you what. You have any doubts, I'll stick a wad of gum on the end. You let me know when you're chewing."
I was too startled to be disgusted. A mouth like that on an Academy man?
For no sane reason whatsoever, it being none of my concern, the woman told me, "This crud has got the longest hanger I ever saw." She licked her lips. "Nice. But maybe I'll want a little variety tonight."
"Sorry." I thought she was propositioning me. I didn't want to trample Yanevich's territory.
"Variety? Mao, I'd end up chasing crabs through my beard the whole patrol." He winked at me, oblivious to my pallor and rictus of a smile. I found the girl more baffling than he. She couldn't be more than twenty. He asked, "You learn to move your ass yet?"
"No thanks to you." She told me, "This crud got my cherry.
Caught me in a weak moment, way back my first night in after my first patrol. Pounded away all night, and never did tell me I was supposed to do anything besides lie there."
Surely I turned from pale ivory to infrared. Bradley was equally appalled. "Maybe they're putting us on, sir." This assault on the sensibilities had forced him to retreat into the ancient and trusted fastnesses of military ritual.
"I don't think so."
"I guess not." I thought he would lose his supper.
"I think we're seeing Climber people in their feral state, Mr. Bradley. I suspect the news people have misinformed us." I grinned at my own sarcasm.
"Yes sir." He was developing an advanced case of culture shock.
The Commander seized my elbow. "Over here. I see some seats." We marched through a fusillade of derisive remarks about our ship and squadron. Other officers, apparently from our squadron, made room for us at their table. I gutted out a barrage of introductions, doubting I'd remember anyone in the morning. Bradley suffered it with glazed eyes and limp hand.
Reality had come stampeding through the mists of myth and propaganda and had trampled us both with all the delicacy of a mastodon treading on a gnat's toe. We couldn't acknowledge it. Not till something more personal drove the lesson home.
Yanevich disappeared with his friend. I didn't understand. He didn't seem the type. He had changed at the door.
Eat, drink, and be merry?
Westhause vanished, too, before I got to learn much more than his name. Then Bradley, eyes still glazed, was spirited away by a matronly Staff Captain. "What the fuck is she doing here?" someone muttered, then plopped her face into the spilled beer on the table before her, muttering that the Dragon was a private preserve.
"Ah, let h go," someone replied. "He wasn't going to do us any good."
I withdrew into myself, drank some, and rolled the camera behind my eyes. When in shock, record. I remained only vaguely aware that the Commander was sitting out the squadron's diminution. Like me, he was a seated statue with folded arms. I tried to remember "Ozymandias." I came up with some lines about rose red cities and then couldn't decide if I had the right piece. Why "Ozymandias," anyway? I couldn't remember that, either. Must have been a reason, though. I ordered another drink.
He was observing, too, our silent, gallant Ship's Commander. Back when, that had always been his excuse for not partaking of our clique's conversational buffet.
It grew late. The mob thinned considerably. I shipped a bigger cargo than I thought. The room began to rock a little, and I to wonder if our friends upstairs had a drop on tonight. The Commander touched my elbow gently. "Eh?" At the moment that was the most intelligent thing I could say.
"Somebody you might remember." He nodded toward a tall, lean blonde doing a slow strip atop a nearby table.
I stared through misty eyes. At first I only wondered about her age. She looked older than most of the women.
"Got her own ship," the Commander said.
Fascination and horror, lust and loathing, gusted through my sodden soul. I recognized her.
She looked so old!
Sharon Parker. The Virgin Goddess. The Bitch Queen of Academy Battalion Tango Romeo. How I'd loved and lusted after her at a tender seventeen. How many nights had I lain with my good right hand and imagined those creamy thighs clamping me?
The memories were embarrassing. I'd been so much a fool that I'd declared my undying passion....
She'd been as cold and remote as the dark side of Old Earth's moon. She'd teased, taunted, promised forever afterward, and never had delivered. For me or anyone else, as far as I knew.