Lawrence raised his chin. “Really, you’re succeeding in making her sound like someone in whom I could not have the least interest—and certainly not in her scurrilous correspondence.”
Bron relocked his hands between his knees. “Well, that’s the type she is. Anyway, there we were, at the restaurant. It had been really rough on me, with the arrest and the interrogation. And I just felt I needed something—not sex; something more than that, some sort of ... I don’t know: support, friendship, warmth, compassion—though, believe me, once she got the slightest inkling I did want something more than sex, she decided sex was out as well. From then on it was just a big flat nothing. I mean, I couldn’t talk about what had happened to me, what I’d been through; it was just too dangerous. But she didn’t even have a clue that anything was even wrong. There was just no understanding at all ... They don’t understand. They can’t understand. Men just have to go through it alone.”
“You were saying something about bravery?” Lawrence hefted the case again.
“Well, yeah. I mean I don’t want to make a big thing of it; but, well, when I wanted to come back here, to check out you, and Audri and the kids, first I
had to break through an enforcement cordon. It wasn’t really that hard; I just mixed in with a crowd of the Poor Children of the Avestal Light and Changing Secret Name. Years ago I used to attend their instruction, so I could fake a mantra—well enough to got by, anyway. And I got through like that. I’m not saying it took a lot of ingenuity; but it took some. And in a time of social crisis, somebody’s got to have that kind of ingenuity, if just to protect the species, the women, the children—yes, even the aged. And that ingenuity comes out of the aloneness, that particular male aloneness. It’s not even conscious. I mean I wasn’t even trying that hard. But in time of crisis, some things just have to be done. Sometimes it’s keeping your mouth shut, or not doing something you want to that’ll endanger others. Sometimes it’s doing something you wouldn’t do normally, like breaking through an enforcement cordon, or a window, or even through somebody’s really dumb ideas.” Bron laughed. “I’m just trying to imagine that crazed bitch I was out to dinner with, with all that stuff about this lover or that—they included the two she had at the present—keeping her mouth shut about anything] A matter of life or death? That wouldn’t have stopped her! Or picking her way through the debris in the street out there. She’d have to spend a day deciding whether or not she had on the proper hiking clothes. Oh, I’m not saying women can’t be courageous. But it’s a different sort of—Well, I just guess women, or people with large female components to their personalities, are too social to have that necessary aloneness to act outside society. But as long as we have social crisis—whether they’re man-made ones like this war, or even natural ones like an ice-quake—despite what it says in the ice-operas, v/e need that particularly male aloneness, if only for the ingenuity it breeds, so that the rest of the species can survive. I suppose, in one sense, women are society. I mean, they Teptoduce it, don’t they? Or seventy percent of ft, today, anyway. Not that I begrudge them what, like you say, in the last hundred and seventy-five years they’ve been given—”
The vlet case slipped from Lawrence’s hands, crashed to the floor, and fell open. Two of the side drawers flew out, scattering over the rug cards, dice, and red and green figures.
Bron stood up.
Lawrence, with a small cry, fell to his knees, muttering, “Oh, really ...” and, “For crying out ...”, and went scrabbling after the pieces, looking more and more upset.
“Hey,” Bron said, after a moment, “don’t get so .. • Here, I’ll help you get—”
“You’re a fool,” Lawrence said, suddenly and hoarsely. “And I’m tired. I’m tired of it, that’s all there is. I’m tired.”
“Huh?”
Lawrence clacked two dice back in place, reached for a third—
“Hey ...” Bron heard the hostility in the clack and tried to retrace what he’d said to that point where it had been generated. “Oh, hey; when I said faggots didn’t understand, I was just being—I don’t know: bitchy. Look, whatever you like to screw or get screwed by, you’re still a man. You’ve been alone. After all, you live in this place, don’t you? You did just as much as I did to make sure Audri and the kids were all right. I mean it was really your idea to—”
Lawrence sat back; pale, wrinkled hands dragged against dark, wrinkled genitals. “You’re a fool! You’re a foolf You’re a fool! You’re going to talk to me about bravery?” One hand snapped up and pointed out the door. “There’s your bravery. There’s your ingenuity. Right across the hall, in Alfred’s room—no, they haven’t cleaned them out yet. The people who did that to them, busily doing what must be done for the survival of the species, and so efficientlv! Without the loss of a single soldier. On either side.” Lawrence’s hand fell back to the floor among the pieces. “What I came in here to tell you in the first nlace ...” Lawrence took a breath, let it go. His shoulders fell. “The war is over. They just announced it over the public channels. Apparently, we’ve won it—whatever that means. Lux on Iapetus has no survivors. Five million people—all dead. Sabotage was completely effective there. They lost all gravity and atmosphere. Loss of life was under eight percent on Europa and Callisto. G-City’s figures from Ganymede aren’t in yet, which may be good or bad. Triton, the last in, apparently got off lightest. On the other hand, we’ve charred eighteen percent of Earth’s land-surface area. Eighty-two hours after Triton joined the war, all stops were pulled out by both sides. Mars officially surrendered, with casualties under a million, mostly in smaller urban Holds outside Bel-lona.” Lawrence picked up a red Witch, looked at it, let it drop from his fingers into his palm, let his fist fall again to the floor. “There’s apparently no official communication from Earth, but we’re taking that as surrender: Everybody who could do it officially is dead. They’re already showing aerial pictures of some of the sections we hit: mostlv in North and South Africa, Central America, and East Asia. Though they tried to stay away from major population centers, they estimate that sixty to seventy-five percent of the Earth’s population is either dead already or—as they so quaintly put it—will be dead within the next seventy-two hours. Because of the resultant ‘confusion’—they called it.” Lawrence shook his head. “Confusion ... ! Bravery in time of crisis!” He looked at Bron. “I was horn in South Africa. I didn’t like it. I left it. I had no intention of going back. But that doesn’t give them the right to go and just burn it all up! Oh, I know one isn’t supposed to talk about embarrassing things like where one comes from. I sound like some political crazy over in the u-1, talking about my origins. They still don’t have the right!” He leaned forward and swiped about at scattered pieces. “They still don’t ... ! Seventy-five percent! You were just on Earth ... Didn’t you, sometime, somewhere, meet one—just one person there that you liked, that you had some feeling for—negative or positive, it doesn’t matter. The chances are now three out of four that that person, in the next seventy-two hours, win die. In the confusion. And when they have died, they will be just as dead as those two children across the hall—No, don’t bother with these! I can get them myself. You go across the hall and just check how dead they are!”