“On one level,” the Spike said, her voice projecting an expression of seriousness as intricate as the former^ projected smile, “everything you say makes perfect sense. On another, very profound one, I do not understand a single word. Really, I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone like you before; and I’ve known a few. Your recounting of everything, from Philip to Miriamne—his women? her men? In fact you didn’t even say the sec—
ond one; I wonder if that’s significant?—just sounds like a vision from another world!”
“I am from another world—a world you’re at war with. And yes, we did things differently there.”
“A world I hope very much we’re not at war with.”
“All right, a world we’re not at war with yet. Do you think my inability to hold on to the fine points is just another example of my Martian confusion?”
“I think your confusion hurts other people.”
He scowled behind the mask. “Then people like me should be exterminated!”
Her masked eyes glittered. “That would be a solution; I thought we were discounting those from the start.”
He kept scowling and was silent.
After a few more steps, the Spike said: “So, now that you know all about me, what will you do with this precious information?”
“Huh? Oh, just because I’ve been carrying on about myself? Well, we’re in the unlicensed sector, aren’t we—”
“I would have called it complaining about your subordinates and bragging about your boss, but never mind.”
“But I do know all about you,” he said. “At least, a lot—you’re the brat of nine, Ganymede ice-farmers; probably as healthy and wholesome an upbringing as you could get in Philip’s crowd—”
“Oh, more wholesome in some ways. Far more neurotic, I’m sure, in others—in my terms.”
“—and now you’re living the romantic life as a theatrical producer in the swinging, unlicensed sector of the big city, where you’ve gained fame and, if not fortune, at least a government endowment. What else is there to know?”
The white, plumed skull let a single syllable of laughter, almost a bark (he found it intensely ugly): a string of smooth ones followed it. “Well, you know at least one other thing about me.”
“What?”
“I have fair tolerance as a listener. Tell me, do you think people who spend time, for whatever reason, in the Goebels, run to a particular personality type? I ask, because I must admit I find, here and there, similarities between your personality and Fred’s. Oh, nothing specific, but just a general approach to life.”
“I don’t think I’m flattered.”
“Oh, but of course! You must know everything about Fred too ... I mean I don’t think it has anything to do with prostitution itself. He wasn’t one. And anyway, neither of you is the least like Windy. He was—but then, like you said, Earth is a different matter.”
“You just don’t understand.” Bron sighed. “Help me. Take me. Make me whole.”
“I’d have to learn something about you first.” Her gaze was all white satin and sequins. “And I pay you the compliment of assuming I haven’t even begun.”
“I bet you think you could—what did you say?—sit down and map out how I’m managing to inflict a good deal of the hurt on myself.”
“Your presumptions about what I think are so monumental as to be touching.” Still holding his hand, she moved ahead. Suddenly, she looked back, and whispered: “Let me help you! Let me take you! Let me make you whole!”
“Huh?”
She raised a gloved forefinger against the veils before her lips. “Come with me. Follow close. Do what I do. Exactly. But on no account speak!”
“What do you ... ?”
But she shhhhed him again, released his hand, and, in waves of white, darted down the steps beside them.
In waves of black, he followed her.
She crossed a cindery stretch and, immediately, hurried up a badly repaired stairway between walls scarcely wide enough for his shoulders.
She stopped at the top.
He stopped behind her. One sequin lapping the edge of his right eye-hole deviled his vision with scarlet glitter.
And her white plumes and satin headpiece had gone flickering red, brighter than any faulty coordinate sign could dye them.
Beyond the alley entrance, half a dozen people—
among them the little girl he’d seen in the Spike’s room last night, also the massive and mastectomized Dian—carried above their shoulders scarlet torches, a-hiss and a-drizzle with sparks. Windy, on a large contraption like a rodent’s exercise wheel, bells fixed on his wrists and ankles, rotated head down, head up, head down: A target was painted around his belly button, rings of ted, blue, and yellow extending far as circling nipples and knees. The guitar started. As though it were a signal, two men began unrolling an immense carpet across the ground—another muraclass="underline" this one of some ancient fair with archaic costumes, barkers, and revelers.
Verbal disorientation, he thought, listening to the surreal catalogue of the lyrics: the melody was minor, this time rhythmic, more chant than song.
Who (Bron gazed about the spectators clapping to the intense, insistent rhythm) was the audience this time?
“Here!” the Spike whispered, picking up a pole leaning against the wall, thrust another into Bron’s gloves and, carrying hers high, ran out over the spread carnival, into the circle of torchbearers (who fell back for her) waving her pole over her head.
Bron ran out behind her, waving his.
From the corner of his eye, he saw that Windy had left the wheel and was turning slow cartwheels (his fingernails and toenails were iridescent and multihued) through the milling torchbearers.
The top of the Spike’s pole had erupted in blue sparks. He looked up: his own was a crackle of gold.
Then, beyond gold, he saw the trapeze arc down toward them. (Just how high was the ceiling here?) Two figures rode it. One was the woman, now in an ordinary cutaway street sack, who, when he’d last seen her, had worn mirrors on her toes. The other was younger, taller, with dark hair (they dropped within six feet of the glittering pole tops, then swung off and up); her features, from somewhere in Earth’s Oceana, were set in astonishment as she craned back, rising away in the dark.
... and came swinging back, trouser cuffs and hair whipping. The singing changed key and timbre.
First he thought the song was breaking into polyphony. But everyone was just going off on their own.
Above, the two women swung.
The music was complete cacophony.
The Spike raised her pole high and swirled it, with fluttering sleeves, in a wide circle (he raised his own, swung it; he was sweating inside his head-mask), then suddenly hurled it to the ground (his own pole clattered down a moment later). Immediately, the singers silenced.