She was thirteen, intrigued by the changes in her body, by the process of becoming a woman. Her school was a fine one, congenial in every respect, located in an exclusive downlevel habitat, and her life was perfect. She would never be one of those awkward adolescents, unsure of her worth.
She paused at the corridor junction, and admired herself in the mirror that covered the wall there. Her body paint was just the right shade of spring green, and her gowner had skillfully accented the swell of her new breasts with a soft russet shadow. Her pale hair, twisted into an elaborate love knot, spiraled down her back. On her feet were silver-scaled slippers, with delicate red garnet buttons.
"Perfect, just perfect," she said in honest delight. She performed a graceful half-pirouette, and was startled to see an older boy watching her with solemn approval.
He immediately turned and walked purposefully away — to her puzzlement and annoyance.
She sniffed and went on, somewhat subdued.
Time slipped and skidded her into the next day. She was talking with her friend Loyaluiz. "I turned around, and he just pretended he hadn't been ogling me. What a geekly loon."
Loyaluiz, Arriangel's current best friend, was a plain girl. Were it not for her esthetically conservative parents, she would have already had herself scuplted into Arriangel's twin. But she compensated for her ordinary looks with a lively character and quick intelligence, so that she had almost as many friends and admirers as Arriangel.
"Who was he?' Loyaluiz asked.
"I don't know."
"What'd he look like?"
Arriangel considered. "A few years older than us. Not tall. Darkskinned, with straight black hair. Good features, probably, if he smiled."
“His clothes?"
"I didn't notice what he was wearing."
Loyaluiz smiled secretively. "You never notice; you're too rich. But I bet his clothes were a bit shabby. I think you're talking about Garso-Yao, this season's poverty project." Every year the school gave a scholarship to a deserving child from one of Dilvermoon's many Howlytowns. A few of these went on to distinguished careers; most returned to the dark corridors.
Arriangel was immediately interested. She had never had a poor admirer; in fact, she didn't know any poor people. What would it be like to have a poor lover? The year before, when she had first shown an interest in the subject, her demifather had retained an expensive and exclusive sexual-education service for her. The attractive young men and women the service had sent to her home had pleased her, but their detached skills had begun to pall. Was it true that poor people made love with an exciting degree of crudity? Were their simple pleasures the stronger for their simplicity? But... perhaps Garso-Yao was not her admirer — why had he left so precipitately?
"Did I frighten him away?" she wondered aloud.
Loyaluiz laughed. "Maybe. Or maybe he just doesn't have time for you. I hear he's a serious prole. Studies all the time. Full of determination. You know."
"I guess... "
Time whirled her ahead a week.
In the sensorium she found Garso-Yao taking the datasoak. It was late; they were almost alone in the vast, low-ceilinged room. Only a few cubicles showed lights, indicating the presence of other dutiful students. She stood beside his cubicle, looking in at him. He reclined in the datasoak's couch. His eyes were closed, his expression far away, soft with some vicarious emotion. She wondered where he was, what he was seeing. His mouth was well shaped, and behind his lips gleamed strong teeth, very white. She slipped into the cubicle and touched him, running her fingers along the sharp curves of the cheekbones that lay under the dark, taut skin. There was something unbearably intimate about this contact, enhanced in some mysterious way by his unconscious acceptance.
She raised her eyes and peeked over the cubicle partition. No one moved in the hall. The proctor was gone from her glass booth at the far end; probably gone to fetch a cup of stim against the long hours remaining on her shift.
Garso-Yao wore a white shirt, open at the throat. His chest was almost grotesquely deep, as though his ancestors had come to Dilvermoon from some thin-air world. She slipped her hands under the shirt, touched his collarbones, embedded in flat bands of muscle.
She took another glance about the hall, then shrugged off her blouse, she straddled Garso-Yao, heart thumping, amused and frightened by her own daring, and unpeeled the contact strip that sealed his shirt. She had no clear idea of what she intended to do; she functioned in a state of thoughtless impulse, a familiar and comfortable mode.
What now? She really didn't want to wake him; she wanted only to add a bit of substance to her unformed fantasies. She leaned forward and lay her breasts against his chest, her head in the hollow of his shoulder.
He had a faint, slightly sweaty smell, not at all offensive. She closed ¦ her eyes and rested more of her weight against him.
Memfis watched from her eyes, until she closed them. Then he s directed the probe to simulate a detached viewpoint, which he raised until, the two of them just filled the screen, her slender, pale body outlined by his darkness. Here he paused for a moment. He resumed the pullback, continued to raise the simulated viewpoint, and eventually Arriangel and Garso-Yao were just a shadowy dot in the geometric maze of the ; sensorium, the only two who shared a cubicle in all that vast, empty space.
"Nice shot," said Tafilis, the usual sneer embedded in his voice.
Memfis ignored him. Arriangel had given him this image; but it was his talent to see how the significance of the moment could be made clear to those who might someday experience this love... or as clear as it could be to those who could not love. Tafilis was one of these unfortunates, but • he was a good hater.
"Memfis," said Tafilis, "she's only a child, and a remarkably callow one at that. Why bother with so immature an experience? What can it ripen into, but some sort of pathetic puppy love?"
"You have your area of expertise; I have mine," Memfis said, without turning from the screen. He manipulated the probe's slate, and the scene in the sensorium faded away.
"Yes, of course," said Tafilis, undisturbed. He got up and went away.
ON A parallel sensory track, Arriangel felt Garso-Yao stir as he emerged from the datasoak. She knew an instant's dismay; she hadn't meant to lie against him for such a long time. She raised her head so that she could see his face clearly.
Before she could pull away, his eyelids fluttered and he woke. His eyes glowed with an unfocused shine; then they cleared, and he realized he wasn't alone. He tried to jerk back, and at the same time, his arms clamped her tight, in some sort of defensive reflex. She couldn't breathe.
They both lay motionless for a long moment. He looked up at her, and his arms gradually released her. She didn't pull back; she stared into his eyes, allowed herself to soften against him. His dark face flushed slightly.
She imagined herself in his place — how the heat of her small breasts would feel to him, the pressure of her knees gripping his hips. What was he thinking?
His eyes — which at first had seemed like hard black stones, unknowable — changed. Something loosened; a lock fell open. His arms t ightened around her again.
Arriangel felt a new sort of exhilaration. "Yes," she said. "But not here."
Memfis keyed Arriangel's timeline forward a week. She stood in the public room of her suite, naked and beautifully rumpled with lovemaking, arms folded truculently. Garso-Yao hesitated by the door, looking uncomfortable.
Memfis panned the detached viewpoint over the luxurious furnishings and elaborate toys that filled the room. He softened the focus, so that the appointments softened into a flowing abstraction of rich colors and jeweled lights.