“I don’t even take most of them to bed. Why?”
“Well, I ... it’s just that I have difficulty, with you, sometimes, deciding what’s real and what’s theater.”
“Do you?” she asked; she sounded surprised; and intrigued. Then she laughed. “But all theater is reality. And all reality is ... theater!”
Bron grunted again, annoyed at something other than the ironic triteness. After a silent minute’s walking, he asked: “When do we get outside?”
“We are outside.”
“Huh?” He looked at the walls (a dull, doorless brown), at the ceiling; there was no ceiling. The walls went up and up and disappeared in unlicensed blackness. He brought his eyes down; ahead, red, luminous letters of the street coordinates glowed. “Oh.”
“I liked you,” she said at last, in answer to the question he’d asked over a minute ago; “What you looked like, first. Then, the way you ... well, responded to our work. I mean, we know it’s good. We’ve done that one for perhaps a dozen people so far, and all of them have liked it. But your response was so open and ... well, ‘rich’ is the way Dian—that’s our set designer—put it when we talked about it later.”
“I got talked about later?”
“Oh, we always discuss each performance afterward. That’s just part of the backstage (as it were) work the audience never sees. Presumably, however, the next audience gets the benefit. I mean, basically we’re concerned with leading people gently into a single moment of verbal and spatial disorientation—I say disorientation: what I mean, of course, is a freeing, to experience a greater order than the quotidian can provide. A moment of verbal, spatial, and spiritual energy in resolution. That’s so necessary in a world that’s as closed in as life in any satellite city must, of necessity, be. Especially—” She looked up the high, blank walls—“in someplace as claustric as the u-1 sector. Maybe wanting to be able to break out, even through art, is my ice-farm heritage working again. Yes, I spent my childhood scooting up and down plastic corridors from bubble-hut to bubble-hut, or in ice-treaders that were a lot more cramped than this. Still, the point is, those corridors and huts were transparent. And beyond them—” She took a breath—“was the sky!”
From last night, Bron remembered the disappointing stars.
“But what I was saying: You’d be surprised how many people do fight that moment of freedom, even with the drug boost, for the whole minute and forty-nine seconds the piece takes to perform! You didn’t fight it; you went with it. I liked that. We all did—then, of course, there was just something engaging about your personality: despite its rather blunt side. Most people, unless they follow the theater seriously, don’t even remember my name—I don’t even bother to tell most people; even when they ask ... you can’t imagine how surprised I was when Miriamne brought you back with her.”
They reached a wider thoroughfare; tracks curved along the far side, two red glints pointing the rails where they neared a street sign.
“You’re really in charge of the whole company?” he asked. “You write, produce, act, direct ... the whole thing?”
“I’ve even been known to sew costumes.”
“Oh.” The discomfort made him rummage through the other discomforts of the day. The most accessible was: “Do you know, all the way over here, I had the craziest notion that you and Miriamne were involved. Sexually, that is.”
“Why?”
“Guess I was projecting.” He laughed. “I live in an all-male, unspecified co-op over on the other side of the Great Divide. There’s a friend of mine there, see, who’s this perfectly crazed, seventy-four-year-old, un-regenerated character who, whenever he gets drunk, is always making futile attacks on my tired, pale bod; then he sort of revels in it when I reject him. I think it gives him some sort of masochistic solace. Actually, though, he’s a pretty great guy—In fact, why don’t we go to my place now and I’ll get old Lawrence looped and he’ll regale you with adventures from his long and checkered career? You’re the type—I mean being in the theater and all—who’d probably really enjoy him.”
“We are all—” she began. “But I said that before. I don’t think I’d necessarily like him. I have very little sympathy with political homosexuals.”
Bron laughed. “That’s what Lawrence said to me first time I met him.” Then he frowned. “Why do you call him a political homosexual?”
“I mean if, one) he isn’t happy with it and, two) he keeps going around pushing his affections on people who don’t reciprocate, I just wonder why he doesn’t do something about it? I mean not only do we live in an age of regeneration treatments; there are refixation treatments too. He can have his sexuality refixed on someone, or thing, that can get it up for him. And, as they are always saying in the brochures, the older you are, the better they work.”
“Oh, sure,” Bron said. “But I think Lawrence is just trying to prove a point.”
“Which is why I called it political. And why I don’t have much sympathy for him. Sexual point-proving is such a waste of time. Especially if you’re seventy-four. And the refixation treatments are very effective. I know. I’ve used them.”
Bron frowned over his shoulder at her. “You used to be a gay and gave it up?”
“No. But there was a very marvelous woman once who was very fond of me, spiritually and sexually, and wanted me very badly—an ‘actress of the old school,’ as she used to call herself. You know, she’d actually directed a handful of ice-operas—some of the better ones too. Anyway, I had a refixation—it takes five minutes and you’re asleep through it all. We were very happy together. And when it was over, I had another one that got me back to tall, curly-haired blonds with high cheekbones—” She cocked an eye at him. “I swear by them. Anybody who is concerned about sex-ualizationships who doesn’t take advantage of them, from pure prejudice—and it’s nothing more (Your Lawrence friend sounds like he’s from Earth.)—is a fool.”
“You are opinionated!”
She shrugged. “Only when I’m right. You can be opinionated too if you want. With your experience—” She looked, blinking—“I would imagine you should know more about refutations than I do!”
“You mean back when I was a working man—? Well, sure, some of the guys used them. I never did.” Bron shrugged. “I never had to. I don’t particularly enjoy sex with men. But, when I’ve done it, it hasn’t been difficult. So I always figured I could perform if I ever had to.”
“Ah,” the Spike said, with raised forefinger. “But re-fixation is a matter of desire, not performance. And I assure you, as one who is also a fair performer, desire is something else again. No—” She shook her head once more—“I don’t think I would really enjoy your Mr Lawrence.”
“He probably has his reasons ... which is probably why he’s living where he is—You’re a pretty cold and inhuman type,” he said, suddenly. “You think you’ve got everything figured out from the start.”
The Spike laughed. “And who is it who has called me a type three times in ten minutes? You seem to have done your bit of figuring.”
Bron grunted again: “Lawrence is always saying everyone’s a type, too.”
“It’s conceivable,” the Spike said with mock deliberation (Or was it deliberate mocking?), “that we may both be wrong. But I doubt it.” Then, suddenly: “By the Dark Ring ... !” which was an exclamation till now he had only heard in ice-operas, though he’d once expected it to litter the conversation of all Outer Satellites: he could not tell if it was heritage or affectation. “It’s five minutes to eight!” She released his hand, clutched her forehead. (With dim, yellow numerals and scrolled arms, a clock hung high above in the black.) “Do I know what I’m going to do ... ? Yes!” She faced him with wide, beating eyes, clasped his cheeks between her palms. “I’ve got to run! The company’s waiting for me. You’ve been a love, really. Good-bye!” She turned. And ran. Red pants fluttered into the dark.