Sam put down the pack, reached into the control drawer and turned a survey knob. From the side-speaker came a crack and crackle over rushing wind, followed by a mumbling as of crumbled boulders. “That’s quite a storm ... were there any sea-monsters in there? I don’t remember—”
“What do you doubt?” Bron picked up his own scarlet Beast and set it on the rocky ledge, where it lowered over at the narrow trail winding the chasm below.
“All right.” Sam sat back to watch Bron set out tiny figures. “One thing I’ve been worrying about since the last evening we all played this game—”
“—the night of the gravity cut.” Bron thought: The night of the day I met her. He picked up green pieces and set them by river, rock, and road.
“At the Department, we knew something was going to happen that night. The cut wasn’t a surprise. I guess it was pretty clear to the rest of you, too, I wasn’t surprised ... But they told us only a few people would go out to see.”
Bron glanced up: Sam was turning a transparent die between dark forefinger and thumb.
“They had it all figured—statistics, trends, tendencies, and a really bizarre predictive module called the ‘hysteria index’ all said that practically no one would want to go out to see the sky ... As far as they can tell, eighty-six percent of Tethys’ population was outside within a minute and ten seconds, one way or the other, of the cut.”
“What’s to doubt there?”
“They were wrong.” Sam got an odd expression. “I don’t suppose I have any illusions about our government’s being a particularly moral institution. Though it’s more moral than a good many others have been in the past. Nor do I think for a moment that any of the accusations in that piece of trash you were just reading—” He nodded toward the leaflet, which had fallen to the orange rug; somehow the table leg had worked onto (or the paper under) it at the corner—“are particularly exaggerated. The worst you can say is that they’re out of context. The best you can say is that they are emblems of the political context that gives them what meaning they have. But up until now—and this probably strikes you as quite naive—it never occurred to me that the government could be wrong,.. about its facts and figures, its estimates and its predictions. Up until now, when a memo came down that said people, places, incidents would converge at set times and in given ways, they did. The last memo said less than two percent of the population would go out. They’d be too scared. Over eighty percent went out. That’s more than a ninety-five percent error. You may say it wasn’t an error about anything important. But when you’re on the edge of a war, a ninety-five percent error about anything just doesn’t bolster confidence in your side. So I’ve been doubting.”
“Sam, Earth has committed major atrocities on Luna, and allied herself with Mars for the all-out economic domination of Jupiter’s and Saturn’s moons, big and little alike. Neriad has already said she’ll go with us; and Triton stands on the edge of the whole business, waiting to plunge into one of the most sense—
less and destructive conflicts in human history—we’ve been splattered with gore and filth in a hundred ways already: the night of the gravity cut may have been the most flamboyant splash—I doubt if any one of us, even you, can assess the damage compared to—”
“Well,” Sam said, one sparse eyebrow lowered, one corner of his full mouth raised, “it’s not as if anyone were using soldiers,” and let his expression break into a mocking, voiceless laugh.
“Some of your best friends are probably Jewish too,” Bron said. The cliche about soldiers had been devalued rather like (an eccentric elderly woman Bron used to visit in the u-1 had once explained to him) “law and order” had been devalued two centuries before. “So this one is all buttons and spies and sobotage, and only civilians get killed—those that aren’t thrown out of a job by the economic wangling, or don’t fall off the roof during a gravity cut—because that’s all there are.”
“You know—” Sam came forward again, to set scarlet’s caravan, one piece after the other, on the jungle trail—“one of the reasons I moved into this place was so I wouldn’t have to put up with six hours a day of political interrogation.”
Bron fished out the last cargo ship from the drawer and positioned it at the edge of the storm—immediately it began to doff and roll. “Yeah? The government told you that you had a ninety nine point nine nine nine percent chance of only finding nonpolitical types in this type co-op? Well, maybe I’m just that odd and inexplicable point oh oh oh oh oh one percent they call an individual—”
“No. You’re a type like the rest of us.”
“—or maybe the government’s just—” Bron turned up his hands and shrugged—“wrong again ... ?” He meant it be annoying.
But Sam was apparently finished with being annoyed. He laughed out loud. “Maybe—” and began to place the screens.
“Hello, Alfred.” Lawrence’s voice came loudly and cheerfully from the middle of the room.
Bron and Sam looked up.
Across the commons, Alfred hurried toward the balcony stairs.
“I said, ‘Hello, Alfred,’” Lawrence (who had apparently been on his way to join the game) repeated. One wrinkled fist rested on his parchment-pale hip.
Alfred, at the steps’ foot, a hand on the banister, twisted around. On his black suspender straps large, red letters sagged, behind and before. “Urn ...” he said. “Oh ... Ummm ...” He half-nodded, then darted up, ‘Q’ scarlet between his shoulder blades.
Lawrence came over. “The horrible thing is, he’s improving. I’ve been going through this every day now for—what is it? Four months? If you speak to him twice, now, loudly and distinctly, he’ll actually look at you. Pauses even. Sometimes even grunts a little. And the general behavior syndrome is no longer that of complete inarticulate terror. The first thirty times, by count, he just pointed his nose straight ahead and ran faster. At this rate, I estimate, he may reach the state of acceptable human animal—not outstanding, mind you: just acceptable—in, oh, perhaps two hundred and fifty years.” Lawrence came around the table, regarding the board. “Even with regeneration treatments, he won’t last that long. Mmm ... I see there’s a war on.”
Bron sat back. “Why don’t you just lay off him ... leave him alone.”
Lawrence grunted and sat next to Sam, who moved over for him. “Sam and I are the best friends either of you two ambient social disaster areas ever had. By the way, when are you going to break down and fuck me?”
“Do you proposition Alfred in the same, warmhearted, friendly manner, from time to time?”
“Heaven forbid!” Lawrence turned a switch; the grid flickered over the board. “That’s at least three hundred years off. / may not last that long!” which cracked Sam up, though Bron didn’t think it was so funny. Lawrence pulled at the wrinkled folds under his chin, then reached out and adjusted two Queens. “I think those were there, actually. Otherwise, the two of you seem to have done pretty well. All right, now—Get away from me! Get away—!” That was to Sam, who was still laughing. “You’re both playing against me now—don’t think by sidling up like that you’ll get any advantages.” Bron found himself remembering the Spike’s comment on political homosexuals ... Sam changed his seat.
Lawrence picked up the pack and dealt. “With all the girls Alfred is constantly sneaking into his room—and why he feels he has to sneak, / shall never know—he should give up that ridiculous computer course his social worker’s had him training at for the last two months—I mean, he doesn’t like it and won’t finish it—and go to Earth, or someplace where it’s legal, and become a prostitute.” Lawrence nodded knowingly toward Bron. “Doing it on an accepted basis for a while might be exactly what he needs, don’t you think?”