Bron looked up, as did everyone else.
The swing’s arc dipped, backward and forward, slowing.
Someone to his left began a note. Someone to the right took up another, a third away. Others added to it; the chord grew, consonant and minor, like the waters of some alien ocean breaking about his ears. Suddenly it opened up into major—which made him catch his breath.
The swing came to an unsteady halt. The tall, young woman was clutching one of the ropes with both hands and staring down in amazement.
The chord died. Torches guttered on the ground, red, and blue, and gold, and red ...
The younger woman said: “Oh ... Oh, that was—Oh, thank you!”
The other woman on the swing said: “Thank you ...” She released her rope and, balancing there with crossed ankles, began to clap.
So did the rest of the company.
The Spike had taken off her mask and, with it tucked under one arm, bowed, white plumes doffing, among the other, raggedly-bowing performers. Bron finished his own embarrassed bow, took off his own mask. Skin, moist behind his ears and across the bridge of his nose, cooled.
“That was marvelous!” the young woman said, looking down among them. “Are you some sort of theatrical company?”
“A commune,” explained the other woman on the trapeze. “We’re working on a government endowment to do micro-theater for unique audiences. Oh, I hope you don’t mind—we used some drugs—cellusin?”
“Oh, of course not!” the young woman said, glancing back and then down again. “Really ... it was just—”
“So were you!” called up one of the men, picking up torches.
Everyone laughed.
Something tapped Bron’s ankle. He looked down. Three people were rolling up the mural. Bron stepped over it Barkers and revelers and amusement rides disappeared in the canvas bolt.
“... the song was written by our guitarist, Charo ...” (who’s guitar face flashed in Bron’s eyes as it went into its case; Charo grinned at the swingers.) “... props and murals are by Dian and Hatti, with help from our tumbler, Windy. This production was conceived, produced, and directed by our company manager, the Spike,”—who nodded, waved, and went to help Windy tear down the wheel—”... with special appearances from Tyre, Millicent, Bron, and Joey—all of whom were our audience too, at one time.”
“Oh ... !” the young woman said, and looked down at Bron and the others indicated.
Bron looked around, surprised, remembered to smile up at the swing.
“Thank you again for being our audience. We really appreciate a responsive one. That was our final performance on Triton. Shortly, our endowment will be taking us on. We’ve been on Triton eight weeks now, in which we’ve given over two hundred and twenty-five performances of ten works—three of them never performed before—to almost three hundred people—” Someone picked up the pole Bron had thrown down, took it away—“Thank you again.”
“Oh, thank youl” the tall young woman cried. “Thank you ... !” The swing began to rise into the dark, by creaks and starts, wound up on a rackety pulley. “Thank you all! I mean, I had no idea, when you just suggested that we sit down on this thing that, suddenly, we would ... Oh, it was just marvelous!”
Heads, hands, and knees, they jerked up into the shadow, away from the decimal clock, dim and distant on the dark.
The Spike, head-mask still under her arm, was talking to the woman who held the little girl now in her arms. All three were laughing loudly.
Still laughing, the Spike turned toward Bron.
He pulled off one of his gloves and tucked it under his arm with his own mask, just to do something. He was trying to think of something to say, and already the anger at not finding it was battling his initial pleasure.
“You did wonderfully! I always like to use as many new people in the performance as possible. In this kind of thing, their concentration and spontaneity lend something to it no amount of careful rehearsal can give. Oh, how marvelous!” suddenly taking his hand and looking at it (his nails, newly lacquered that morning when he’d decided on the dark attire, were, like Windy’s, multihued and iridescent): “I do love color on a man! I make Windy wear it whenever I can.” She looked down at his mask, at hers. “The only trouble with these things is that unless you break your neck, you can’t see anything more than five feet off the ground!”
“What’s this about your final performance?”
“That’s right. Next stop—” Her eyes rose to the ceiling dark—“Neriad, I believe. And after that—” She shrugged.
Bron felt it through their joined hands. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Well—you were so busy finding out about me I didn’t get a chance.” A few syllables of laughter surfaced over her smile. “Besides, / was so busy trying to figure out how to get you here in time to go on, I wasn’t really thinking about anything else. Did you enjoy it?”
“Yes.”
“I’d hate to think what you’d have said if you hadn’t! You just sounded like you were agreeing to supervise your own execution—” at which point painted arms, with iridescent multihued nails, flapped around her shoulder. Long red hair fell forward over her satin tunic; a bass voice growled from under it: “Come on, honey, let’s go make this a night to remember!”
She shrugged Windy away (Bron unclenched his teeth) with: “I remember too many nights with you already. Cut it out, huh?”
The head nuzzling in her neck came up, shook back the red hair (it was the first time he had seen it right side up for more than a second at a time: good-natured, pockmarked, scraggy-bearded) and grinned at Bron: “I’m trying to make you jealous.”
You’re succeeding, Bron didn’t say: “Look, that’s all right. I mean, your friends are probably having some sort of cast party to celebrate—” Somehow one handful of multihued nails were now hooked over Bron’s shoulder, the other still on the Spike’s:
Windy stood between them: “Look, I’ll leave you guys alone. Back at the co-op, they’ve said we can party in the commons room as late as we like.” He shook his red head. “Those women want us out of there in the worst way!”
Both hands rose and fell at once. Bron thought: That’s politic.
“See you back at the place—”
“We won’t be using the room for the whole—”
“Sweetheart,” Windy said, “even if you were, I got invites to several others.” And Windy turned and bounded off to help someone carry away what the exercise wheel had collapsed into.
The Spike’s other hand came up to take Bron’s; his eyes came back to see them, one bare with colored nails, three gloved (two in white, one in black). “Come,” she said, softly. “Let me take you ...”
Later, whenever he reviewed those first three encounters, this was the one he remembered most clearly; and was the one that, in memory, most disappointed. Exactly why he was disappointed, however, he could never say.
They did return to the co-op; she had put her arm around his shoulder, their capes had rustled together; bending toward him, as they walked through the streets, she had said: “You know I’ve been thinking about those things you were saying to me, about your boss. And everything—” (He’d wondered when she’d had time to think:) “All through the performance, actually. I just couldn’t get it out of my head. The things you seem to have confused to me seem so clear. The arrows you seem to be assuming run from B to A to me so obviously run from A to B that I tend to distrust my own perception—not of the Universe, but of what in the Universe you’re actually referring to. You seem to have confused power with protection: If you want to create a group of people, join a commune. If you want to be protected by one, go to a co-op. If you want both, nothing stops you from dividing your time between the two. You seem to have making a family down as an economic right denied you which you envy, rather than an admirable but difficult economic undertaking. Just like Mars, we have antibody birth control for both women and men that makes procreation a normal-off system. You have free access to birth pills at a hundred clinics—”