What was she trying to do? Bron asked herself. And found the question as clearing as Sam’s name a minute before. It had to do with saving the race ... no; something to do with saving or protecting ... men? But she was a woman. Then why ... ? She stopped that thought as well. Not her thoughts, but her actions were pursuing some logical or metalogical concatenation to its end. To try and ask, much less answer, any one of those questions would pollute, destroy, shatter it into a lattice of contradictions that would crumble on expression. She knew that what she wanted was true and real and right by the act of wanting. Even if the wanting was all—
A man had stopped a few feet away, to lean on an outcrop of the ceramic. He wasn’t looking at her, but she saw the position of his hand on the green-swirled glaze. The insult of it! she thought, with sadness and desperation. Why didn’t they just come up and slap you across the mouth? Wouldn’t it have been kinder, less damaging to what she was trying to protect? And he might be the one! she went on thinking. I simply have no way to guess, to ask, to find out. If I were to respond in any way, I would never know, because even if he was, any response from me would cause him to put that side of himself away forever as far as I’m concerned, become all pretended reason and rationality. He could come here, could sit and wait, could prowl and search, as she had once sat or prowled, searching for the woman who would know, who would understand. Men could do that. She had done it when she was a man, and had found, prowling or being prowled by, five hundred, five thousand women? But she had no way to show she knew, because any indication of knowledge denied that knowledge’s existence in her. And there was no way to overcome the paradox, unless there were an infinite number of such bars, such arenas, such runs, unless she could somehow interpose an infinite distance, a million times that between Earth and Triton, between herself and him, then wait for him to cross it, carry her back over it, as easily as Sam had carried her to Mongolia and—No! No, not Sam—
Bron looked up, blinking, because the man had dropped his hand, was walking past her, was ambling off.
She watched him, tears suddenly banking her lids. The thought came, insistent as certain knowledge: What I want to do is just ... She clamped her eyes and mind against it.
Two tears spilled one cheek.
She blinked.
A feeble kaleidoscope of dim lights and massive sculptures cleared and flashed; she blinked again; it cleared, it flashed. What she knew was that she just must never come to a place like this again. Yes, he may be here, he may even be searching for her, here; but there was just no way in which, here, he could find her, she could find him. She must never come here; she must not be here now. She must get up, she must get up now, and go.
Half a dozen more men (and two women; yes, the place did have informal rules) came and stood near her, signaled or did not signal, and walked away. Hours passed—had already passed. And far less people had stopped near her during the last few. Was the rumor of her indifference being whispered to all and sundry about the place? Or—she looked up, having momentarily drifted off—were there simply fewer people?
She could see less than a dozen about the whole arena. The cleaning crew had turned on harsh lights along the far side; coils of cable dragged the gold carpet, behind the humming machines ...
Before she went home, she stopped in the all-night cafeteria two blocks away, which, while she was there, began to clean up too. Sitting in a back booth (after the little table-speaker had politely asked her to leave the front so they could mop), she drank two bulbs of coffee, the first with lots of sugar, the second black. Nobody bothered her at all.
On her desk, when she woke, was the red—and silver-edged envelope of an inter-satellite letter. The return box said D. R. Lawrence, beneath which was a twenty-two-digit number. Under that, in parentheses: Neriad. Bron frowned. Standing naked on the warming carpet—one of the balloon chairs beside her heel kept pulsing in its collar, trying to decide if it should inflate—Bron fingered open the flimsy:
Bron better put a semicolon no a comma I’ve been meaning to come see you for months italicize months but then suddenly there was all this and as you no doubt have already noticed I’m not even at the old snake pit anymore or even on Triton but on Neriad and so I thought the least I could do was write. Guess what. Twenty-year’s interest in aleotorics has paid off. Have been swept up by a traveling music commune and would you believe that all of us one night after how many hundreds of hours’ meditation and rehearsal simultaneously had a religious revelation that it was time to bring our music to others and so now we are singing for real people practically every night can you imagine with my voice but they seem to like it. Mostly I’m A-and-R man really but I’m desparately happy at it. And I think we are bringing a lot of people joy. Last night’s audience was twenty-six thousand. They went wild comma but I’m recovering nicely thank you this morning under the ministrations of a lovely friend who simply atatched himself to me right out of the audience just like that and who has just this minute brought me breakfast in bed. It’s so nice to learn at my age that there are even more complex and elegant games than vlet dash though I will warmly welcome a game with you should the music of the spheres once again suspend us in the same chord. We head off next to that nasty little moon of Pluto’s parenthesis where there aren’t even twenty-six thousand people all together but that’s religion for you I guess parenthesis and anyway this is just a note to let you know there’s life in the old boy yet as if you cared heartless beauty that you’ve become but I’m Wiffles what are you doing oh really now stop it Wiffles stop it I’m try—
ing to dictate a letter oh that tickles oh come on you dear creature I simply won’t let
That was all there was.
Smiling, she put the letter down. But there was also, wheedling at the back of the smile, regret. As she looked through the cupboard for clothes, it grew until the smile flaked away before it. She was already late anyway and still exhausted from the previous night; she closed the cupboard and decided to take the day off from work.
And the day after that, back at the hegemony, she threw herself into the three new accounts that had come in, with a vengeance. (What else was there to do while she waited?) For the next week she kept up the pace, occasionally wondering what this must be doing to her efficiency index but, at the least glimmer of pleasure, damping the thought—with more work. Work now was not for pleasure or pride or reward; all those had been abnegated. What was left was merely a frantic, nearly religious gesture of respect toward time; no more.
A week later, one morning when she had been in her office perhaps an hour, Philip paused at the door, looked in, stepped in: “Audri asked me to stop by and take a look in on you. About eight months ago you were making noises about needing an assistant—at which point, if I remember, we sent you about six in succession that, for one reason or another, were pretty poor: wrong field, wrong temperament—you name it, we sent it to you.” Philip looked at the floor, looked at Bron. “Not that we have anyone on tap now, but I was just wondering—well, Audri was wondering; but since things have loosened up around here in the past few months, if you still wanted one ... ?”
“Nope.” Bron went rummaging through a drawer for another folder—and noticed that Philip had stopped to look through the flimsys she’d left on top of the wall-console; “Don’t get those out of order please,” Bron said. She found the folder.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Philip said. And then, to Bron’s growing surprise and distress, hung around for the next quarter-hour, making the sort of pleasant small talk you couldn’t really take exception to, especially from your boss.