“Oh, I can.” The man fingered a gemmed ear. “Once I spent a month on Galileo; and I was on it!” But he laughed, which seemed like an efficient enough way to halt a subject made unpleasant by the demands of that insistent, earthie ignorance.
Another earthie Bron couldn’t see laughed too:
“Different kinds of taxes. Different kinds of welfare: and both emblems of the general difference, grown up between each economy, that’s gotten us into an economic deadlock that has made for—what did they used to call it in the papers? The hottest cold war in history ... Until they broke down and just started calling it war.”
“It’s an awful war,” the girl said again. “Awful. And / think it’s wonderful that in spite of it vou can be here, with us, like this. I think it’s wonderful, your showing us your theater—I mean. MacLow, Hanson, Kaprow, McDowell, they were all from Earth. And who’s performing their work on Earth today? And I think it’s wonderful that you’re here helping us with the dig.”
Bron wondered where you got food.
Sam, apparently, had asked, because he was coming back across the room with two trays, one of which he slipped in front of Bron, with a grin, and one of which he clacked down at his own place.
Bron picked up a cup of what he thought was tea, sipped: broth. The rest of the breakfast was pieces of something that tasted halfway between meat and sponge cake ... a sort of earthie Protyyn. He took another bite and said: “Excuse me, but—?”
The Spike turned.
“... I mean I realize you’ll be busy with the company, but if you have a few minutes, perhaps T could see you ... I mean we might go for a walk. Or something. If you had time.”
She watched him, something unreadable transpiring deep in the muscles of her face. At last she said: “All right.”
He remembered to breathe.
And turned back to his tray. “Good,” he said, which sounded funny. So he said, “Thank you,” which also wasn’t quite right. So he said, “Good,” again. He had smiled through all three.
The rest of breakfast was overridden by impatience for it to be over; the conversation, all tangential to the war, closed him round like the walls of the earthie’s cell where he had spent—but I can’t tell her about that!
The thought came, sudden and shocking.
Sam said I mustn’t mention that to anyone!
Of course, that must mean her too ... especially her, if she was here on a government invitation. From then on his thoughts were even more alien and apart. What was there, then, to talk to her about, tell her about, ask her support for, her sympathy in, her opinion of?
It was the most important thing that had happened to him since he had known her; and Sam’s crazed paranoia had put it outside conversational bounds.
Wooden chair legs and bench cleats scraped the planks; diggers got up to go. Bron followed the Spike to the porch, wondering what he would say.
Sam was still inside, still talking, still eating, still explaining—just like in the co-op.
The door closed behind them. Bron said:
“I just can’t get over the coincidence: running into you like this! What are there, now? Three billion people on Earth? I mean to have just met you in Te-thys and then, on the other side of the Solar System, just on a side trip to—where are we? Mongolia! To run into you ... just like that! The chances must be billions to one!”
The Spike breathed deeply, looked around the square, at the mountains beyond the housetops, at the cloud-smeared sky that, by day, was infinitely higher than the night’s star-pocked roof.
“I mean,” he said, “it could be a million billion to one! A billion billion!”
She started down the porch steps, glanced at him. “Look, you’re supposed to be something of a mathematician.” She smiled a faint smile, with faintly furrowed brows. “With the war, there’re only a dozen—no, nine, actually—places on Earth a moonie can officially go—unless you’re on one of those inane political missions you’re always reading about in subversive flyers and never hearing mentioned on the channels. All of those nine places are as out of the way as this one, at least five hundred miles from any major population center. Our company’s part of an exchange program between warring—or, in Triton’s case, nearly warring—worlds so that all cultural contact isn’t cut off: The first place they suggested we go was a cunning little village just on the south side of Drake’s Passage—mean annual temperature minus seventeen degrees centigrade. Frankly, I doubt if more than three of the specified areas are even livable at any given time of Earth’s year. None of the nine has a population of more than fifteen hundred. And in a town of fifteen hundred, it’s hard for two strangers who come into it not to learn of each other’s presence inside of six hours! Given the fact that both of us are on Earth at the same time, and that both of us are moonies of our particular temperament and type, I’d say the chances of our running into one another were—what? Fifty-fifty? Perhaps slightly higher?”
He wanted to say: But I’m on one of those political missions! And I have been taken prisoner, questioned, beaten, abused—
“What are you doing here, anyway?” she asked.
“Oh, I ...” Confusion rose as he remembered Sam’s injunction. “Well, I’m here ... with Sam.” More diggers came down the steps.
“What’s Sam here for?”
“Well, he’s ... I ...” He was oppressed with the thousand secrets he was not even sure he held, revelation of any of which might send worlds and moons toppling together in some disasterous, cosmic pinball. “Well, Sam’s sort of ...” What could he say about Sam that would not return them to the forbidden subject? Sam is a friend? A woman who’s had a sex change? A liaison executive in the Outer Satellite Intelligence Department—
“—with the government?” the Spike suggested. “Well, then, I won’t go prying around anymore into that! Every time you ask a question on this world—about anything—there’s always someone at your elbow to point out politely that, really, for your own good, you’d rather not know. There’s even part of Brian’s work that’s apparently not supposed to pollute delicate little moonie minds. And from what I can gather, it’s nothing more insidious than that, a million years ago, all this was under the edge of an inland sea. I like my first supposition better—that you followed me across the Solar System because you simply couldn’t bare to be without me. That’s certainly more flattering than that you’re an official agent sent to keep tabs. The nicest one, of course, is just that it really is a coincidence. I’ll accept that.”
Bron walked beside her, his head huge with phantom data, smiling and unhappy. “Well, whether it’s a billion to one or one to a billion, I’m glad we met.”
The Spike nodded. “I guess I am too. It is nice to see a familiar face. How long have you been here?”
“Here? Just since last night. On Earth? I guess a few days. It’s not ... well, a very friendly place.”
She hunched her shoulders. “You’ve noticed? They all seem to be trying so hard. To be friendly, I mean. But they just can’t seem to figure out how.” She sighed. “Or maybe it’s just that, coming from where we do, we recognize and respond to different emblems of friendship. Do you think that could be it?” But she was talking about something different from what he meant: black and red uniforms, furnitureless cells, small machines with fangs ...
“Perhaps,” he said.
“We’ve been here two days. We leave in a few days for Mars. Will I run into you there, perhaps?”