The transport pulled into the Plaza of Light Station.
He expected his letter to be flashed in the viewing screen above the card slot (since there was a viewing screen). Instead, a larger slot at knee-level slowly extruded the black and gold edging of a space-mail enve—
lope. He pulled it out the last inch. (Inside, something chunked] reproachfully.) Across the gray flimsy, covering one corner of his identity number, large pink letters proclaimed:
GOVERNMENT FACSIMILE
In the lefthand corner it said: “Gene Trimbell (the Spike)” but instead of an identity number beneath it (which would contain her mail-routing code, wherever she was in the Solar System), there was an old-fashioned return address:
Lahesh, Mongolia 49-000-Bl-pz
Asia, Earth.
Bron picked up his card and crossed the lobby, mistily mosaicked with ornate light-shapes from the colored glass wall across from him. He went out the arch, onto the Plaza, found a bench and sat. Across from him sat two very nervous-looking women (one of whom was naked). The Plaza, as usual at this time in the afternoon, was almost deserted. He opened the envelope by small pinches, unfolded the letter (stamped across the top, in the same pink: GOVERNMENT FACSIMILE). He recognized the erratically punctuated, ill-capitalized print of a first draft from a voice-scripter. Given the badly-aligned, heavily serifed type, it was probably a very old voice-scripter, too. Leaning forward on his knees, he read:
Bron, and then I guess you better put a colon no a dash—the world is a small place italicize is. And moons are even smaller. Running into you like that out here made me realize how italics small. In a small world when you get that unpleasant choice of being blunt or well mannered, after you’ve tried manners and that doesn’t seem to work I guess you have to be blunt period bluntly comma I don’t want to have an affair with you semicolon I don’t even particularly want to be your friend period paragraph.
If it were seven o’clock in the evening instead of two in the morning I would just sign it there and send it but it is two o’clock in the morning with real moonlight coming over the Lahesh mountains and doing marvelous things to the rain that’s been falling against the window for the last three minutes dash wouldn’t you know, it just stopped dash and real crickets somewhere in the eaves dash a time that lends itself to hopefully quiet and presumably rational explanations semicolon and perhaps the illusion that, however painful initially, those explanations might help.
What do I want to explain?
That I don’t like the type of person you are. Or that the type of person I am won’t like you. Or just: I italics don’t. Do I have the colon in there? Yes.
And it isn’t all that altruistic, by any means. I’m angry—at the Universe for producing a person like you—and T v/ant to rake up coals. I want them to burn. What frustrates me is that—and it became apparent tonight—is that you do italics adhere to some kind of code of good manners, proper behavior, or the right thing to do, and yet you are so emotionally lazy that you are incapable of implementing the only valid reason that any such code ever came about: to put people at ease, to make them feel better, to promote social communion. If you ever achieve that, it’s only to the credit of whoever designed the behavior code a hundred years back. The only way you seem to be able to criticize your own conduct parenthesis at one point I watched the thought march across your face; you aren’t very good at hiding vour feelings; and people like that simplv cannot afford to count on appearances close parenthesis that vour version of the code was ten years out of date. Which is to so monumentally miss the point I almost wanted to cry.
But again I am being hopelessly abstract.
I paragraph.
do not paragraph.
like paragraph.
you because: I was offended at your assumption that just because I was in the theater I would automatically like your homosexual friend: I was amused/ angered at your insistence in talking about yourself all the time and at your amusement-to-anger that I should ever want to talk about me. I thought your making Miriamne lose her job was horrible. She finally decided there must be mitigating circumstances. Of the three explanations I could come up with, the most generous is that you thought she was involved with me and it was some weird sort of jealousy. I won’t even explain the other two. All three make you an awful person. Yes, I did enjoy going out with you to the restaurant this evening and actually getting a chance to talk. But—the least offense, still, maybe it’s the fatal straw on the back of the camel—having to fight somebody off physically who wants to make out with you when you don’t want to is something I had a fair amount of tolerance for when I was twenty (and how many times did it happen to me then? Three? Five? Five and a half?). I’m thirty-four and I don’t now. At least not from people my own age! Yes, you are my type, which is why we got as far as we did. I’ve only met one other person in my life even vaguely like you dash not my type dash but another man from Mars and into metalogics wouldn’t you know. But that was so long ago I’d almost forgotten.
Emotionally lazy?
What’s the difference between that and emotionally injured? Emotionally crippled? Emotionally atrophied? Maybe it isn’t your fault. Maybe you weren’t cuddled enough as a baby. Maybe you simply never had people around to set an example of how to care. Maybe because you quote feel you love me unquote you feel I should take you on as a case. I’m not going to. Because there are other people, some of whom I love and some of whom I don’t, who need help too and, when I give it, it seems to accomplish something the results of which I can see. Not to mention things I need help in. In terms of the emotional energies I have, you look hopeless. You say you love me.
And yes, I have loved others and I know what it feels like: when you love someone, you want to help them in any way you can. Do you want to help me? Then just stay out of my life and leave me alone and// Hey what are you doing, huh?// Writing a letter, come on go back to sleep// How was your evening out at the Craw?// It was okay, now goodnight, please// Hey, look—why don’t you just get rid of him, just say get lost I mean: for someone you keep insisting you like so much you’ve spent more hours agonizing over all the things he’s done that tear you up than you have about your last three productions// That’s what I was just doing now go back to sleep I said// Tell him it’s over// I said that’s what I just did// Oh, hey, now, hey, I’m sorry. I didn’t um your letter there looks pretty first-drafty, I mean I’ll put it through the corrector for you if you want and// Is that damned thing still on oh for// Look I’ll run it through and you can lie down and get some sleep// No, don’t bother, I’m sending it like it is, I just don’t have the
Which was all there was.
The first paragraph had produced a sort of stunning chill. He read the rest numbly—not so much with a feeling of recognition, but as if he were reading about something he’d overheard that had happened to someone else. He finished the last paragraph wondering harder and harder whether it was Charo or Windy she was talking to (somehow it seemed important to know); then the frustration suddenly overturned. What the hell had she been saying to them about him anyway? Not to mention the rest of the company? Anger welled. The type of person he was? He knew her type! Where did she come off presuming he’d had anything personal to do with that crazed lesbian’s dismissal? Everyone was being laid off. Even him\ Didn’t she realize everything was coming apart? There was a war on! And taking offense because he’d wanted to introduce her to a guy who was probably his best friend! And fighting him off physically? Well, then, he thought: If you don’t want somebody to proposition you, make it clear in the first place! And that nonsense about “agonizing”: who did he have to agonize to? He’d been arrested; and practically tortured—practically? He had been tortured! And had he agonized to her about what had been done to him\ (That crap about not being able to hide his feelings! He’d certainly kept that to himself!) She was some dumb actress who probably hadn’t ever had a real emotion in her life!