So, politicly, he let it hang. “You know, last night, after the shield went off and you had your nosebleed, I almost knocked on your door to say hello, but I figured you—”
“I wish you had,” Alfred said. “Oh, man, I wish you had! I was all alone, no girl with me, no nothing—and suddenly I thought I was gonna die and my ears nearly popped and my nose started bleeding and I could hear things falling over in the other rooms—they cut the damn gravity!” Alfred took a breath. “They got me back together, you know—that big nigger who’s always tellin’ everybody what to do and why? But I couldn’t go to sleep for the rest of the night. I wish somebody had come in to see me. I really do.” Alfred’s green eyes came back to Bron’s. “You gonna pick up that ointment for me, huh?” They held all the old suspicion, the old mistrust. “Okay ... Good.” Then Alfred stood, turned (where the black suspenders crossed between his pimply shoulder blades, there was a red plastic Q. Bron thought: Q?) and walked away.
Understanding? Only slightly guilty, Bron asked himself: Where is it? And got no answer. I call it friendship, but it’s simpler than that. He uses me and I let him. Lord knows I’d prefer to spend any hour in either Lawrence’s or the big nigger’s company. Still ... is it just a bond between two, hung-up heterosexual males? He’s hung up in performance (and the hang-ups he has with it honestly make less sense to me than the propensities of a Lawrence, a Miriamne!)—And what am / hung up in ... ?
At any rate, Bron wished either Sam or Lawrence would come down into the commons room, with or without vlet.
For work next morning he wore clothes.
Lots of them.
All black.
He finished going through the Day Star-minus folder, closed it, put it back in the bottom drawer, and decided it would just have to wait for another week before he could bother writing up a coherency validation.
He was looking over a diptych of multiple-state evaluation programs which, for the life of him, he could not figure out in which of three directions the modular context was supposed to function, when Miriamne rapped on the jamb of the open door. “May I talk to you a minute?”
Bron sat back, pulled his cloak around him. “Certainly.”
She stopped, just inside the doorway, looking uncomfortable, looked at the bulletin board, looked at the desk corner. “Audri told me you’d asked for me to be transferred to another department.”
With a black-gloved forefinger, Bron pushed the mask higher on his nose; it had slipped a bit, which was fine for reading but not for talking t» i people standing up when you were sitting down. As he put his gloved palms on the gray graphpapen shingling his desk, it slipped again; which meant he would have to conduct this interview—he felt the clutch of embarrassment high in his chest (or low in his throat) and swallowed at it—with her head cut off by his eye-hole’s upper edge, muzzily, at the nose. “That’s right. After a little thought, I just decided it was silly, with your training—cybralogs, or whatever—to waste your time and ... well, my time too.”
“Mmmm,” she said. “And there I thought I was catching on pretty fast for someone who didn’t know her way around at all.”
“Oh,” he said, “really, that isn’t the point—”
“I’m afraid what the point is, is that I’m out of a job.”
“Mmmm?” he asked, not sure what she meant. “Well, you mustn’t worry. They’ll find you a place eventually—it may take another day or two. But chances are it’ll be closer to your field.”
She shook her head. “I’ve been through five departments already. I’ve been transferred in each case. The Personnel receptionist told me, somewhat icily, this morning—that they—whoever ‘they’ are—just didn’t have work for me in my own field and that since they’ve tried me in three related fields and—in two others where my aptitudes were high—one of those was this one—they would simply have to class me as unemployable.”
“Oh, well, now—that is a little silly. I mean, in a company like this, with someone like you—But then, the whole last couple of months have seen a lot of confusion slipping by—” He brought his boots together beneath the desk, parted his gloves a little more. “Why did the other departments transfer you?”
“They had their reasons.” She looked at the desk corner, the other desk corner, at his face.
Bron lowered his head (which completely cut off hers), raised his gloved fingers, meshed them, put his chin on his clothed-over knuckles—the dark veiling along the mask’s bottom pulled back against his lips—“Well, I have my reasons too.”
She said, “Mmmm,” again, in a different tone; and had laid one brown finger on the edge of the office console and was sort of pivoting her hand around on its chrome nail—a nervousness he found incredibly annoying.
I had to transfer her, he thought. (His own hands, nervously, were back on the desk.) I couldn’t possibly expect to work in the same eight-by-eight space all day with someone who, from major proclivities to minor ticks, make me, however irrationally, that uncomfortable.
She said: “I was just wondering if it had anything to do with that nonsense yesterday.”
Bron raised a questioning eyebrow. But of course she couldn’t see it behind the full-head mask. “How do you mean?”
“Well, all day long you were leaving your hands around on various desks and tabletops with your fingers in the age-old socially acceptable position—rather like now ...”
He looked down. “Oh ...” He closed his hands on the graphpaper; that was one of the unfortunate habits that was left over from his youthful profession; sometimes he signaled without even knowing it.
“—and I wasn’t being too responsive. I just thought you’d pick up on it Half the time, I thought you actually had. But then, we didn’t get it really straightened out till we were halfway home. And T made that crack to the Spike—she told me she’d told you, when I got back, all terribly apologetic. I guess theater people aren’t really known for their discretion.” Her hand dropped to her side. “What I said was pretty much joking.”
He laughed, leaned forward. The tunic pulled uncomfortably across his back. Cape folds, falling, whispered to the floor.
“And so was I. I hope you didn’t take any of that seriously—I didn’t.”
Her smile was worried. “Well ... I just thought I’d ask.”
“I’m glad you did. I’d feel terrible if you left thinking it was because of a silly remark like that. Really, I may—what was it?—be ‘... a louse who’s trying ...’ but, honestly, I’m not a monster. If it makes you feel better, I’d decided to ask for your transfer before any of that even happened.” He felt sorry for her, suddenly, through the annoyance of embarrassment. “Look, be honest with yourself. There I was, pawing all over you yesterday—T mean, I didn’t realize you weren’t interested. But that’s just the type I am. I find you very attractive. You certainly couldn’t have been looking forward to working with me all that much, with my carrying on like that—”
“You don’t mean,” she said, and even without her face he could tell she was frowning, “that you had me transferred because I wasn’t interested in you sexually ... ? I’ll be honest. That hadn’t even occurred to me!”