There!
Balance, he thought; a-symmetry, and coherence. All the ideals of fashion bowed to, yet none groveled at.
And it was ten to nine.
He pulled on the chosen clothes, hurried downstairs, out the door, into the deep-blue evening, and down the street’s stone steps (fringe a waterfall of light), thinking: Don’t think in urban units. Don’t. There aren’t anyl
First he hoped to arrive a minute or two before she came out; then that she would be already there so he would not have to wait.
As he rounded the corner of the People’s Co-Oper-ative, the yellow door opened; three people came out. Two were diggers. The person they said good-bye to, who waved after them, and who now leaned against the door jamb to wait, in something sleeveless and ankle-length and black, her short hair silver now as Bron’s (or rather Sam’s) sleeve fringe, was the Spike.
The diggers passed. One smiled. Bron nodded. The Spike, still leaning, with folded arms, called: “Hello! That’s timing for you!” and laughed. Smoothly. On one forearm, she wore a silvery gauntlet, damasked with intricate symbols. As he approached, she stood up, held out her hands.
Left arm a-dangle with silver, he took her hands in his, and chuckled. “How good to see you again!”—feeling for a moment that he was twenty and she was thirty and this were some assignation on another world.
“I hope,” she said, “that we’re not going anyplace where I’ll need my shoes ... ? If we are, I’ll dash up and get some—”
“We are going someplace where someone as stunning as you may wear—” There was a ritual completion to the line:—anything you can afford, including my heart on your sleeve. But he was not twenty: this was here, this was now—“anything you like.” Their hands joined in a fourway knot. “Actually, I had a little place in mind about seventy-five miles to the north of here—the Swan’s Crawl” He smiled. “No, don’t laugh. That’s just Capitalist China for you. It wasn’t very long-lived, so we have to be tolerant.”
She wasn’t laughing though; she was beaming. “You know—I had the slightest precognition that we just might be heading there.” She leaned toward him con-spiratorially. “I’m afraid I don’t have any money, though. And wouldn’t know what to do with it if I did. I’ve never been near anyplace that ever used it. Windy and Charo went the first night we came—I was busy with company matters—and though I’ve got plenty of credit, I’m afraid they used up the quota of scrip for the three of us.”
He thought fondly: You’d make a lousy whore: that’s the line you use afterwards. But she probably meant it, which made him, momentarily, even more fond. “The evening’s on me—Sam, actually. He’s government. Money? He’s got a limitless supply, and he’s invited us to enjoy ourselves.”
“How very nice of him! Why isn’t he coming with us?”
“Hates the stuff himself.” Bron turned, took her arm. They started down the street. “Won’t touch it. When he’s on the old racial spawning grounds, it’s all rocks and grass and stars for him.”
“I see ...”
“You haven’t been there before, have you?” He halted. “I’ll be honest, it’s my first time ...”
“No, I haven’t. And Windy and Charo were tantaliz-ingly vague in their descriptions.”
“I see ...” He frowned at her silvered hair. “How did you know where we’d be going, though?”
Her laugh (and she started him walking again by the gentlest pressure on their joined arms—as if he were twenty and she from another world) was silvery as her hair. “When you’re in Outer Mongolia, even in this day and age, I suspect they’re just not that many places to go.”
A whispering, which, for seconds, had been on the edge of consciousness, suddenly centered his attention.
Bron looked up.
Something dark crossed the paler dark between the roofs and, humming even louder, returned to hover, then to settle, across the road.
It was sleek, unwinged, about the size of the vehicle he and Sam had ridden in for the last leg of their journey here.
The side opened—let down like a drawbridge on heavy, polished chain, its purple padding held with six-inch purple poms.
“Why,” the Spike exclaimed, “that must be for us! How did thev ever find us, I wonder?”
“I believe it is for us.”—but, with a pressure just firmer than that with which she had started him walking, he held her back from bolting forward. “Someone once told me they worked by sense of smell, but I’ve never reallv understood it. How did your performance go tonight?” Nonchalantly, he maintained their ambling pace. “Was this evening’s fortunate audience appreciative? I gather you’ve been working prettv hard on this one, both from what you said and what Windy—”
At which point the Spike whispered: “Oh—!” because four footmen had come out to stand at the four corners of the lowered platform—four naked, gilded, rather attractive young ... women? Bron felt a moment of disorientation: on Mars, the footmen would have been male, usually themselves prostitutes (or one-time prostitutes), there for the delectation of the ladies paying the bill. But male prostitution was illegal on Earth. The women probably were prostitutes, or had been at one time or another; and were there for his delectation ... Well, yes, he thought, he was, officially, paying—which did not upset him in itself. But the reversal of roles was odd. After all, it was the Spike’s delectation he was concerned with this evening. And,
Charo aside, she had made it clear her lesbian leanings were rather intellectual. He said: “I’d be interested to know what you thought of Earth audiences now that you’ve had another performance.”
“Well, I ...” They reached the platform. “Urn ... good evening!” she blurted to the woman beside her, who smiled, nodded.
Bron smiled too, thinking: She’s talking to them! Which again (he realized, as a whole part of his youth flickered and faded) would be all right if she were paying and had known the young ... lady on a previous occasion ...
They walked across the plush ramp, entered the chamber with its red and coppery cushions, its viewing windows, its several plush hangings, its scarlet-draped walls.
As he guided the Spike to one of the couches, she turned to him. “Isn’t there someplace where you can find out what it all costs?”
Which made him laugh out loud. “Certainly,” he said. “If you’d really like to know.” Again, that youthful moment returned—the client who had first taken him to such a place; his own demand for the same importunate information. “Let me see—sit down. There ....” He sat beside her, on her left, took the arm of the couch and tugged. Nothing. (Is everything on this planet backward? he wondered.) “Excuse me ...” He reached across her, tugged the arm on her right. It came up, revealing on its underside, in a neatly-glassed frame, a card printed in terribly small type, headed: Explication de Tarif.
“You can find out there,” he explained, “about the salary of everyone we will have anything to do with this evening, either in person or by their services, the cost of all the objects we shall see or use, or that are used for us, the cost of their upkeep, and how the prices we shall be charged are computed—I wouldn’t be surprised, considering this is Earth, if it even went into the taxes.”
“Ohhhh ...” she breathed, turning in the comfortable seat to read.
The ramp was hauling closed. The footmen, inside now, took their places.
He looked at her shoulders, hunched in concentration. He suppressed the next chuckle. There was nothing to do: for the duration she simply must be the prostitute, and he must play the client. She was the young, inexperienced hustler, committing all the vulgarities and gaucheries natural to the situation. He must be charmed, be indulgent, assured in his own knowledge of the proper. Otherwise, he thought, I shall never get through the evening without laughing at her outright.
She was, he realized, reading the whole thing—which, frankly, was more like a diligent tourist. The real pleasure, of course, was in the amounts, and those you could get at a glance: they were printed in boldface.