And because she suddenly felt her heart would crack the cage of her ribs, shatter her joints gone brittle at hip, knee, and elbow, she lay her head against his neck, held on to him. Had he been a column of black metal one degree below white-heat, he would not have been harder to grasp.
“Hey,” Sam said, softly. His hands slid across her back, held her.
“Sam ...” she said. “Take me out of here. Take me to another world ... anywhere ... I don’t care. I don’t even know if I can move on my own anymore ...”
One arm firmed across her back. One arm loosened. Sam said (and she heard his voice rumbling somewhere inside the great shape of him, as the smile retreated down inside): “Seems like I’m always taking you from some place or another ... Come on, we’ll have a stroll,” and tugged her shoulder, his arm still tight around her, bringing her with him through the crowd. She thought once to look around for Prynn. But they were already through a door, onto a dark ramp between high walls. “Just remember,” Sam went on, “the last world I took you to didn’t turn out such a hot idea, before you go asking me again. I mean, you never know where you’ll end up with old Sam—”
The ramp turned, and emptied them at the edge of a dim arena, with odd shapes set out here and there, and a glittering ceiling, here only seven or eight feet high, brushing the heads of some of the taller men and women strolling below the orange and blue light; at other places it rose up three or four stories: this was the bar’s “run,” where those who wanted to could move about, could wander over some sort of obstacle course in pursuit of their pleasure, could be pursued, or just walk.
“Sam, I’m sorry ... I didn’t mean to ...” Sam squeezed her shoulder affectionately. “Sometimes it can be a pretty rough trip from there to here. I know. I made it myself. How’re you freezing in?”
“I’m ...” Bron let a breath go, felt her back muscles, that had tightened almost to a cramp, relax a little. “Well, I ... guess you would understand ...”
A man ahead glanced back twice, then turned off around an immense sculptural shape, under red light, then was beyond it into shadow. “Some of it,” Sam said.
A woman, hands thrust deep in her pockets, walked into the darkness after him (Bron saw one bare elbow bend as a hand came out of her pocket, with three gold rings bright as steam-boat coals in the red light; then she was into darkness too). And they were past, too far, to see.
“Have you ever been in one of these places during off-hours?” Bron asked.
“Who hasn’t?”
“They’re so sad when nobody’s using them.”
“So’s an all-night cafeteria at the first-slot credit level.” (Which were the social-service food places where, despite your credit level, you had to be served.) “There’s one two blocks from here that gives as good—or almost as good—service in food as this place does in sex.”
They passed a snaking bench where a number of women (and a scant handful of men) were seated. A man walking past hesitated, glanced, then sat near one of the women who, as if her motion were the completion of his, got up and walked away, to turn, seconds later, around the end of another bench where those seated were mostly men: her pace slowed, and she began surveying the seated figures as, moments before, the man who had prompted her to move had surveyed the figures on the bench where she had been. Here and there was the sound of faint laughter, or faint converse. Most, however, were silent.
“Around and around and around we go,” Sam said, and added his soft bass rumble to the drifting voices.
Coming toward them, hand in hand, wearing only a complex metallic vest and briefs, a woman laughed, and a man, naked except for a jeweled domino, pushed up on his forehead now, smiled.
The couple parted around Sam and Bron; the laughter drifted off behind them. “And suddenly,” Sam said, “for them, it’s all worth it.” He glanced back, added his own laughter again. People on the bench smiled.
Bron tried not to look away; and failed.
“Didn’t somebody advise you to stay away from places like this till after you got a little better acclimated?” Sam asked. “Bad counseling. It’s like going into a four-wall jai-alai tournament a week after you’ve had a broken leg set. I mean, even if you were the greatest player in the world before, it still can be a bit depressing.”
“It’s been six months since I ... I had my leg set. My counselor’s been telling me it’s well past time I got in there and gave it a try.”
“Oh.” Sam’s arm had loosened around her shoulder. “I see.”
The desperation had started again. “Sam, please. Lei me come live with you and your family. I wouldn’t be much bother. You’ve known me as a friend for almost a year; I’ll take the chance on your getting to know me as a lover.”
“I heard you the first time, sweetheart,” Sam said. “If you ask me again, I’ll have to give you a clear, firm, unambiguous answer. And that would only hurt your feelings. So do yourself a favor and cut it out.”
“You won’t ...” and felt her feelings rend as if knives turned in her liver. “Oh, why, Sam?”
“My women would never hear of it. We trade off, see, bringing the next sweet young thing into my harem. I choose one, they choose one. It’s their turn this week.”
“Sam, you’re playing with me!”
“That’s all you leave open ... You do remember where my commune was?—No, you don’t. That’s good. Because when you first spoke to me, I thought that was your idea of a joke.”
“Oh, you don’t ... you can’t—”
“Sweetheart, you’re reasoning from the converse. The sad truth is that I could—but I won’t. It’s that hard and that nasty. I’m your friend, but I’m not that good a friend, right now, tonight. The only advice I can give you is that even if it’s hard where you are now—and I know it can be—you’re still changing, still moving. Eventually, even from here, you’ll get to somewhere else. I know that too. Now come here—” and did not wait, but pulled her to him; and, in his arm’s, she felt herself start to cry, could not cry, felt herself start to scream, but could not do that either, felt herself start to collapse. But that was just silly. So she held onto him, thinking: Sam ... ! Sam ... !
An age later, Sam released her and, with his hands on her shoulders, moved her away. “All right. You’re on your own, lady. Sam’s just too big and black and lazy for all this rambling around. I’m going back downstairs, where it’s crowded. I’m out to get laid tonight. And I happen to be one of those guys who makes out better in the crush.” He smiled, patted her shoulder, turned. And was gone.
I can’t move, she thought. But moved, walking fairly normally, to one of the single seats cut into the side of a large, ceramic free-form.
Sam, she thought again; and again; then again; till the word became mysterious, alien, ominous, a single-syllable mantra. Then: ... Sam—? Somehow, on this hundredth, or hundred-thousandth repetition, it suddenly cleared her mind.
Why had she been approaching Sam?
Sam was no more a man than she was a ... No. She had to stop that thought; it could lead nowhere. Still, again, she had been about to sacrifice all her ideals, her entire plan, just for an ... emotional whim! Yet, while it had been happening, it had seemed those ideals were just what she had been pursuing ...
Sam?
That was ridiculous as the embarrassment and anger she had subjected herself to with that theater woman! Think! she thought: At one point there had been something she had thought she could do better than other women—because she had been a man, known firsthand a man’s strengths, a man’s needs. So she had become a woman to do it. But the doing, as she had once suspected and now knew, was preeminently a matter of being; and being had turned out to be, more and more, specifically a matter of not doing. And from the restrictions, subterranean and powerful forces seemed to have run wild in her that, as a result, threatened to corrupt everything she did want to do. In her work at the hegemony, in her friendships—with Lawrence, with Prynn—the force was apathy, tangible and inexorable as the ice-cascade crashing down the slope at the climax of an ice-opera. Then, whenever she reached a situation even near one in which her womanhood was at stake, all that had been surpressed welled up in such a torrent she could not tell desperation from resentment, desire from need, making her blurt stupidities and nonsense instead of what, a moment before ot a moment later, she would have known was rational response.