“Bron ... ?” she said, turning fully to face him. Then: “That is you behind that mask ... ? Tethys is a small city! Fred here—” (Fred turned too; the chain necklaces hung down the grimed, overmuscled chest with its sunken, central pit.) “—and I were just talking about you, would you believe?”
The nails visible on Fred’s black-ringed and fouled fingers were quick-bitten. How, Bron wondered, could you bring yourself to bite them if your hands were that filthy—for which answer Fred raised one hand and began to gnaw absently, his visible, bloodshot eye blinking.
“Fred was just saying to me that he’d lived for a while on Mars. And on Earth too. You even spent some time on Luna, weren’t you saying?” (Fred gnawed on, regarding Bron from under shaggy brows and over blackened knuckles.) “Fred was saying he knew the Goebels—wasn’t that what you said the red-light district in Bellona was called, Fred? Fred was telling me what your gold eyebrow meant: That’s really amazing!—Well ... not only is it a small city. It’s a small universe!”
Fred gnawed. Fred blinked.
And Bron thought: The things people will do to their bodies. Just as those outsized muscles were conscientiously clinic-grown (No profession in light-gravity labor gave you those ballooning thighs and biceps, those shoulders, that stomach, with all heads evenly ridged), so the filth, the scars, the sores, the boils that speckled the grimed arms and hips were from conscientious neglect.
And no one had genitals that size, other than by disease or (surgical) design.
The Spike said: “... it really is odd, just standing here, talking about you and suddenly there you are, right behind—” Then Fred, still gnawing, suddenly stepped forward (behind the mask, Bron flinched), crossed in front of the Spike, and started down the walkway: a gentle thud of footsteps, a jangling of chains.
Bron said: “Your friend isn’t very communicative.”
“It’s his sect,” the Spike said. “He was telling me the Beasts are having quite a bit of trouble, recently. They’ve just reformed, you know, from an older sect that dissolved; and now it looked like they may dissolve again. Dian—do you remember her; she’s in our company—used to belong to the Beasts. She dropped out from them last month. Perhaps I’m biased, but I do believe she’s happier with us. The whole problem, I suppose, is that any time some piece of communication strikes poor Fred, or any of the remaining Beasts, for that matter, as possibly meaningful—or is it meaningless? It’s been explained to me a dozen times and I still can’t get it right—anyway, his religious convictions say he has to either stop it or—barring that—refuse to be a party to it. You can imagine how difficult this must make ecumenical decisions during a religious council. Shall we take a walk ... ?” She held out her hand, then frowned. “Or am I being presumptuous presuming you came to see mel”
“I ... came to see you.”
“Well, thank you.” Her hand closed on his. “Then come.”
They walked by the railing.
He asked: “Was Fred part of your theater piece too? That whole, opening gambit when you first froze me in—” which was ice farmer slang that had passed, by way of the ice opera, into general use: but, a moment out, as he recalled her origin, it seemed an affectation, and he wished the phrase back.
“Ah ... !” She smiled at him. “And who’s to say where life ceases and theater begins—”
“Come on,” he said roughly, his own hesitation gone before her mild mocking.
So she said: “Fred?” And shrugged. “Before that afternoon, I’d never seen him before in my life.”
“Then why were you talking to him here?”
“Well, because ...” She led him down some steps. “—he was there. And I mean, since he’d punched me in the jaw once, and at that most delicate moment in the production, when initial contact with the audience is being established, I thought that might stand in place of a formal introduction. Apparently, he’d observed some of our pieces already—he told me he liked them, too. I was trying to discover how he fit that in with the mission laid on him by his sect. That led, of course, into Bestial politics, and thence into his life story ... you know how it goes. I’d known something about it before from Dian, so I could make some intelligent comments; that naturally prejudiced him toward me; we started talking. As you might imagine, people with such commitments aren’t the most socially sought-after individuals. I think he misses civilized conversation. I really found him quite an astute fellow. The metaphysical trouble with Fred’s position, of course, is that communication involves minimum two people—more or less. Now,” as they reached the ground, “two people may be talking, intensely, eloquently, or anywhere in between. But at any point, what’s meaningful for one of them may become empty chatter for the other. Or the situation may reverse. Or the two situations may overlap. And all of these may happen a dozen times in any given five minutes.”
“Poor Fred,” Bron said dryly. (They turned into a narrow alleyway. The red street sign slid its miniaturized letters, dots, and dashes across her corneas watching him.) “Well, I’m glad he wasn’t part of the whole circus.”
“And I, as they say, am glad you’re glad. I was thinking about asking him if he wanted to join the company. You have to admit he’s colorful. And his performance, when I picked you up, certainly added a certain je ne sals quoi. If his sect does go bust, it would be tragic to let all that dedication just drift away! If I could only determine what his position was vis-a-vis theatrical communication itself—does he think it’s meaningful or not? Whenever he—or Dian—talks about it, they get terribly abstract. Perhaps I just better wait until he’s out of it. And you can tell he could use the job, just by looking at him.” Bron was about to release her hand, but suddenly she smiled at him. “And what brings you here, interrupting my theoretical reveries on your person and personality with, as it were, the real thing?”
He wanted to say:
I came to tell you that no matter what that crazed lesbian says, I am not responsible for her losing her job—no matter what kind of louse she thinks I am! “I came to find out about you, who you were and what you were.”
The Spike smiled up from under lowered brows. “All masked and veiled and swathed about in shadowy cerements? That’s romantic!” They entered an even narrower alley—were, he realized, actually inside. “Just a moment—” She stopped in front of what was, he recognized, her co-op room door—“and we’ll see what I can come up with to aid you in your quest. Out in a minute,” and she was gone inside: the door clicked closed.
Over the next six minutes, Bron listened to drawers sliding, cupboard doors clacking—something overturned; a man’s voice (Windy’s?) protested gruffly; a guitar tinkled; the same man laughed; more drawers; then her own voice saying in the midst of a giggle (that made him sway back from the door, then touch it, then let his gloved fingers fall again, still moving), “Come on now, come on! Cut it out! Cut it out now—don’t spoil my entrance ... !” Then silence for a dozen breaths.
The door opened; she slipped out; the door clicked to behind.
She wore white gloves.
She wore white boots.
Her long skirt and high-necked bodice were white. Full white sleeves draped her wrists. She reached up and pulled the white cloak around her shoulders. Its paler than ivory folds swept around.
Over her head was a full-head mask: white veils hung below the eyes; the icy globe was a-glitter with white sequins. White plumes rose above it, as from some albino peacock.
“Now—” The veil fluttered with her breath—“we can roam the labyrinths of honesty and deceit, searching out the illusive centers of our being by a detailed examination of the shift and glitter of our own, protean surfaces—” She turned back to the door and called:
“Don’t worry, I’ll be back in time for the performance.”
A girl’s muffled voice: “You better be!”
The white mask turned to him, with a mumbled, “—really ... !” A settling breath, and veils settled. “Now, proofed in light and light’s absence, we can begin our wonderings—” Her gloved fingers fell from her white-scarved throat, came toward his.