“Isn’t it odd,” the Spike said, her statement oddly tangent to Bron’s thoughts, “you can’t tell whether it’s endless or enclosed—the whole space, I mean.”
Bron looked over another rail, where the torrents crashed. Above, was the moon. “I think ...” he said (she turned to look too), “it’s endless.”
“Oh, I didn’t even see that!” Her arm brushed his as she stepped around him to the rope. “Why it’s—”
“Look,” he said, not meaning the scenery. She looked back at him. “I think, convenience or no, I must pay them now—if only for the theater.” And before she could comment, or protest, he went back to the purple platform.
Bron stopped before the nearest, gold-skinned footman, his hand on his purse. “You served us that last drink, didn’t you?—and it was certainly a marvelous one, considering my thirst and the exhausting day I’ve had till now. Whatever it says on the menu ... ten, eleven? Twelve ♦ .. ?” (It had said eight-fifty.) He fingered into the drawn, leather neck—“Well, your smile alone made it worth half again that much.”—and pulled out two bills, the top one the twenty he’d expected. “Do you want it—?”
The footman’s gilded lids widened.
“Do you ... ?”
Separating the twenty off from the other bill (which was a thirty), Bron stepped up on the platform, held the bill high overhead. “Here it is, then—jump for it! Jump!”
The footman hesitated a moment, bit at her golden, lower lip, eyes still up, then leaped, grabbing Bron’s shoulder.
He let go of the bill. While it fluttered, he shrugged off her hand and stepped toward the next footman, the next bill in his fingers. “But you, my dear—” He felt ridiculous engaging in such banter, however formalized, with women—“you provided the first one, the one that relieved the parching thirst we arrived with. That alone triples the price! Here, my energetic one—” He held the note down beside his knee. “Do you want it? There it is. Crawl for it! Crawl ... !” He let the bill flutter to the ground, and turned again, as the woman dove after it. “And you two—” He pulled out two more bills, one in each hand—“don’t think I’ve forgotten the services you rendered. Yet ... somehow though I remember, I cannot quite distinguish them. Here is a twenty and a thirty. You may fight over which one of you deserves which.” He tossed the two bills up in the air, and stepped over one of the women who was already down on her knees, scrabbHng after one of the others. Behind him, he heard the second two start to go at it.
Bron stepped from the platform (cries; scufrlings; more cries behind him) and walked toward the Snike. She stood with palms pressed together at her chin, eyes wide, mouth opened—suddenly she bent with laughter.
Bron glanced back to where, on the pommed purple, the four footmen scuffled, laughing and pummeling one another.
“That’s ...” the Spike began, but broke up again. “That’s marvelous!”
Bron took her arm and turned her along the walkway.
Still laughing, she craned back to look. “If it wasn’t so perfect in itself, I’d use it in a production!” Her eyes came back to his. “I’d never have thought money could still do that ... ?”
“Well, considering the mythology behind it, and its rarity—”
The Spike laughed again. “I suppose so, but—”
“I spent a spell as a footman myself, once,” Bron said, which wasn’t exactly untrue: he had once shared a room in Bellona with two other prostitutes who had; and had even been offered a job ... something’d come up, though. “It gets to you.”
“That’s really incredible!” The Spike shook her head. Tm surprised they don’t tear it to pieces!”
“Oh, you learn,” Bron said. “And of course, like all of this, it’s all basically just a kind of ... well, Annie-show.” He gestured toward the rocks, the sky, the falls, which ran under the transparent section of path they walked over (moss, froth, and clear swirls of green passed beneath his black boots and her bare feet) toward fanning columns of green glass that were the Craw’s entrance.
The Spike rubbed a finger on her gauntlet. “This—if you look closely—has logarithmic scales. The middle band turns, so you can use it as a sort of slide rule.” She laughed. “From what I’ve always heard, you needed a computer to figure almost anything to do with money. But I guess somebody used to it gets by on pure flamboyance.”
Bron laughed now. “Well, it helps to know what you’re doing. It is dangerous. It’s addictive, no question. But I think the Satellites’ making it illegal is going too far. And you just couldn’t set up anything on this scale in the u-1.” The columns, seventy or eighty of them he could see, rose perhaps a hundred feet. “Besides, I doubt it would even catch on. We’re—you’re just the wrong temperament out there ... I mean, I like living in a voluntaristic society. With money, though, I suppose getting your hands on a bit once or twice a year is enough.”
“Oh, certainly ...” The Spike folded her arms, glanced back between them again. Bron put his arm round her shoulder.
He glanced back too.
The ramp had closed; the footmen were gone.
There were other walkways, other craft, other people ambling among the rocks.
Another footman, breasts and hips and hair dull bronze, stood beside what looked like a green ego-booster booth, curtained with multi-colored sequins. Bron pressed a small bill into the dull bronze palm. “Please ... ?”
She turned, drew the curtain. The interior was white enamel. The man who stepped out wore the traditional black suit with black silk lapels, black cummerbund, and small black bow at the collar of his white, white shirt. “Good evening, Mr Helstrom.” He stepped forward, smiled, nodded—“Good evening, ma’am.”—smiled, nodded to the Spike, who, somewhat taken aback, said:
“Uh ... hello!”
“How nice to see you tonight. We’re delighted that you decided to drop by this evening. Let’s all just go this way—” They were already walking together among the first fanning pillars of marbled green—“and we’ll see what we can do about finding you a table. What mood are you in tonight ... water? fire? earth? air? ... perhaps some combination? Which would you prefer?”
Bron turned, smiled at the Spike. “Your choice—?”
“Oh, well, I ... I mean, I don’t know what ... well, could we have all four? Or would that be ... ?” She looked questioningly at Bron.
“One could ...” The majordomo smiled.
“But I think,” Bron said, “it might be a bit distracting.” (She was charming ... All four? Really!) “We’ll settle for earth, air, and water; and leave fire for another time.” He looked at the Spike. “Does that suit you ... ?”
“Oh, certainly,” she said, quickly.
“Very well, then. Just come this way.”
And they were beyond the columns. The domo, though pleasant, Bron decided, was getting away with only the bare necessities. Those little extras of personality and elan that individualized the job, the evening, the experience (“. , . that you can never pay for but, nevertheless, you do” as one rather witty client of his had once put it) were missing. Of course, they were something you got by revisiting such a place frequently—not by being a tourist. But Bron was sure he looked used to such places; and the Spike’s evident newness to the whole thing should have elicited some more humane reaction. They certainly looked like they might come back.
“Just up here.”
The domo led them onto the grass ... Yes, they were inside. But the ceiling, something bright and black and multilayered and interleaved, was very far away.
“Excuse me ... this way, sir.”
“Uh?” Bron looked down. “Of course.” It was, very simply, Bron realized, that he did not like the man.
“This grass ... !” the Spike exclaimed. “It feels so wonderful to walk on!” She ran a few steps up the slope, turned and, with an ecstatic shrug, beamed back at them.
Bron smiled, and noticed that the domo’s professional smile had softened a little. Which damped Bron’s own a bit.
“We roll it once a day and trim it twice a week,” the majordomo said. “It’s nice when someone notices and actually bothers to comment.”