Triton (Trouble on Triton) (15 page)

His cheeks were warm. He blinked, growing furious with the discomfort. While he’d been talking to her, he’d been trying to recall exactly
why
he’d wanted her gone. But she’d thrown him off with that incredible suggestion that it was because she hadn’t responded to his advances! Sometime yesterday—and, yes, it
was
before the Spike had related that stupid and insulting crack about his being a louse—he’d come to the decision. And, as a decision made, he’d stored it. Coming into the office that morning, in a swirl of black, he had gone straight to Audri’s office and laid it out. Audri had said: “Oh ... well, all right.”

He’d gone to his own cubicle, gone to work; and had been feeling rather good until minutes ago ... It had
been
a logical decision. Still, for the life of him, he could not reconstruct the logic,
or
metalogic, that had generated it.

He thought: If you reach a conclusion validly, you don’t store all the work notes and doodles you’ve amassed on the way. Those are
just
the things conclusions are there to dispense with! (He crumpled a piece of paper that, looking at its gray, graphed corner sticking from the black-gloved knot, he realized he probably
would
need again.) She doesn’t like me and I don’t like her. You can’t work in an atmosphere like that.
That’s
logical!

He put the graphpaper down, pulled off one glove and, with a plastic graph template, began to clean his thumbnail. A bad adolescent nail-biter, he had, at the advent of his ephebic profession, finally broken the habit. But all his nails were now wider edge-to-edge than from cuticle to crown; which still looked a little odd. He didn’t like his hands and, with certain drugs, avoided looking at them at all. Well, today at least, his nails were filed, lacquered, and of even length.

For practical purposes, they looked ordinary enough.

He put the glove back on, pulled his cloak around his left shoulder, then his right and, at last able to use both hands, adjusted the head-mask.

His cheeks were still warm. On both, he knew, would be mottled, red blotches, just beginning to fade.

In the cafeteria, he was sitting at a just-plain-eating booth, pinching at the folds of a half-collapsed coffee bulb, when, glancing up, he saw Audri with her tray. “Hi, there,” she said and slid in across from him. “Ah ... !” She put her head, half masked on the left (clean and bright as a silver egg with an eye), against the padded back. “This has been a day!”

Bron grunted.

“My feelings exactly!” Silver covered the left side of Audri’s neck, her shoulder, one breast, down (below the tabletop now) over one hip, in a tight plastic skin that would have been quite svelte on anyone with less corners than Audri.

Bron reached up, lifted off his head covering, placed it on the wooden (an artificial cellular fiber indistinguishable from wood on any but micro graphic level) table, and looked at the puddle of dark veils, the shaded eye-holes, the black sequins that damasked the whole basketball-like affair. “Sorry about that transfer this morning. I hope she didn’t give you as much trouble about it as she gave me.”

Audri shrugged. “Yeah ... well, you know—I told her you weren’t the type to change your mind about something like that. It
has
happened before. She sighed, picked up something long and dark and sprinkled with nuts, looked at it disapprovingly. “She said that there might be extenuating circumstances, though, and she wanted to talk to you. I tried to suggest as politely as possible that she might as well not bother. But, finally, I couldn’t very well say no. I felt sorry for her, you know? She’s been shuttled all over the whole hegemony and it really wasn’t her fault. It’s just the general confusion.”

Bron grunted again. “I didn’t know this would be her last chance. It never occurred to me she was going to be out of a job entirely.”

Audri grunted back. “That’s why I asked you to see if you couldn’t do
something
with her when I brought her in.”

“Oh. Well, yeah ...”
Had
Audri made some special request of him about the girl? Bron frowned. He certainly didn’t remember it.

Audri sighed. “I held the green slip back until she’d come from talking with you about it—”

Bron looked up from the crumpled bulb. “You mean it
wasn’t
final?” He let the frown deepen.
“I’d
thought the whole thing was already a closed matter ... If I’d known that, maybe I would have ...” No, he wasn’t
really
lying. It hadn’t occurred to him that the slip had
not
been sent. “She should have told me.”

“Well—” Audri took a bite of the nut bar—“it’s sent now. Besides, everything’s so messed up right through here anyway with the situation between us and the worlds, I’m surprised we’re still here at all. Our accounts are all
over
the moons—even Luna. And what’s going to happen there? Everybody knows that they’re going to be a lot of people out of work soon, and nobody knows who. Who even knows what you and I’ll be doing in six months ...” She nodded knowingly. Then said: “Don’t worry, I’m not threatening you.”

“No, I didn’t think you were.” He smiled. “You’re not the threatening type.”

“True,” Audri said. “I’m not.”

“Hey,” Philip said above him, “when are we going to see some work on Day Star, huh? Audri sent you an assistant yesterday and you send her back today. Move over—”

“Hey, come on—!” Bron said.

Philip’s tray clattered down next to Audri’s. “Don’t worry, I don’t even
want
to sit next to you.”

Philip, today in tight pants, bare-chested (very hairy), and small, gray, shoulder cape, fell into the seat next to Audri. “Has this
ever
been a day—! Hurry up and wait; wait because I’m in a hurry.” He frowned through his curly beard. “What was wrong with her?”

“Look,” Bron said to the burly little Philip, “when are you going to get me an assistant I can
use?

This
one was into ... what was it? Cryogenics or something?” Bron
really
disliked Philip.

“Oh come on. You don’t need a trained assistant for that—” Philip’s fists (hairy as his chest) bunched on either side of his tray. “You know what I think—?” He looked down, considered, picked up something messy with his fingers, and ducked to catch it in his mouth before it fell apart—“I think he just doesn’t like dykes.” He nodded, chewing, toward Audri, sucking one finger after the other, loudly. “You know?”

“What do you mean?” Bron demanded. “I like Audri, and she’s ...” Then he felt ridiculous. By intentional tastelessness, Philip had maneuvered him into saying something unintentionally tasteless and was (no doubt) wracking up points, behind that congenial leer. Bron looked at Audri (whom he
did
like); she was twisting open the spout of a coffee bulb.

“With friends like you ...” Philip said, and nodded knowingly. “Look, we’re all at loose ends around here right now. It’s confusion from one side to the other.” Philip’s left nipple was very large. There was a bald ring around it. The hair follicles had been removed. The flesh over that pectoral was somewhat looser than that over the right. Periodically, when a new child was expected at Philip’s commune, out on the Ring, the breast would enlarge (three pills every lunch-time: two little white ones and one large red), and Philip would take off two or three days a week wet-leave. Bron had been out to the last Sovereignty Day blow-out—

“Look,” Philip said, sucking one thick finger then another (He was a head shorter than Bron), “I’m a very straightforward guy—you know that. I think it: I say it. If I say it, you know I’m not holding it against you—unless I say I am.”

“Well, I’m pretty straightforward too.” Bron ran his gloved thumb carefully over the last of the mashed lentils on his tray, put his thumb into his mouth, and pulled it, carefully, out. “At least about my emotions. I—”

One of the junior programmers, wearing a blue body-stocking with large, silver diamond-shapes, said, “Hi, Bron—” then realized a “discussion” was going on, ducked a diamond-eyed head, and hurried away.

“I didn’t like her,” Bron said. “She didn’t like me. That’s not a situation / can work in.”

“Yeah, yeah ...” Philip shoveled up more food. “The way the whole emotional atmosphere around here is getting with all this war scare, I’m surprised anybody can work, period.”

“Bron is one of your better workers, too.” Audri took another bite of the long thing with nuts. “So just get off his back, Phil.” (There were times his liking for Audri almost approached a sort of platonic love.)

“I’m off. I’m off. Hey, you’ve been at your new place practically six months now. Frozen in yet?”

“It’s okay,” Bron said. “No problems.”

“I
thought
that’s where you’d end up feeling most at home.” In one of those heart-to-hearts Philip was always initiating without your knowing it, back when Bron used to put up with them, Philip had actually given Bron the name of Serpent’s House. “I just had a feeling you might find things easier there. I’m glad you have. Other than the Day Star business—no, I
haven’t
forgotten it—” Phil waved a thick, hairy, wet forefinger—”/ certainly don’t have any complaints about your work. Don’t worry, we’ll get you an assistant. I told Audri, gay-male and normal or straight-female su-perwoman ... to which Audri said, I’ll have you know: ‘Well, he likes
me!’”
Philip laughed. “We’ll get you one; and with the proper training. That’s the kind you can relate to—speaking of gay males ...” Philip swallowed, his hand, on its hirsute forearm, dropped below the table; the forearm moved back and forth, and the hand emerged, somewhat drier. “Marny—you remember her from my commune, Marny? Small, dark—?” The other hand came up and together they described a near callipygous shape. (From the Sovereignty Day shindig Bron remembered her very well.) Philip nudged Audri, winked at Bron. “She’s the one who’s the ice-engineer—climbing up and down the cold-faces like something out of a damn ice-opera! The last two kids she had, I was the dad. Anyway, she’s going to have another one. And you’ll never guess who by—Danny!” He turned to Audri, then to Bron. “You remember Danny ... ?” Philip frowned. (Bron remembered Danny, and with some distaste.) Philip’s frown reversed. “Anyway, this is only the second kid he’s ever had in his life—and the first in this commune.” Philip’s fist fell to the table, relaxing—like a spilled sack of potatoes. “You know how important kids can be to gay guys—I mean, most of the time they think they’re just never going to have
any,
you know? Now I don’t care about kids. I got six of my own here and—

Lord, I must have kids all over the Solar System. Let’s see, three on lo, one on Ganymede, even one back on Luna, and a couple out on Neriad—” He frowned, suddenly. “You got kids, Bron? I mean, I know about Audri’s.”

“A couple,” Bron said. Back on Mars a woman had once announced to him she intended to get pregnant by him. In the first year of his emigration, a letter had even followed him out here, with a picture of a baby—a double-chinned infant suckling at a breast much larger than he remembered it. He had been singularly unmoved. “On Earth,” Bron added finally. Conception had taken place on Mars; but the letter had come from Earth.

“Mmmm,” Philip said, with a licensed sectarian’s discomfort at mention of things too far in the past.

“I never had any on a world—anyway: I asked Danny if he was going to help nurse.” (Unlicensed sector people, Bron reflected, went on about the families they’d come from. Licensed sector people went on about the families they had. For all the latter’s commitment to the here and now, Bron sometimes found both equally objectionable.) “—I mean because Marny wants someone to switch off with. Anyway, you know what he told me? You know what he said? He’s worried about his figure!” Philip shook his head, then repeated: “Worried about his
figurel
Well, you know what that means for me.” His hand came up and made a suggestive curve before his looser pectoral; his heavily-lashed lids lowered as he regarded himself. “Two little white ones—”

“—and one big red one.” Audri laughed. “Well, congratulations to you all.”

“His figure!” Philip shook his head, smiled fondly. “I mean Danny’s part of my damn commune and I love him. I really do—but, sometimes, I wonder why.”

Bron decided to put his mask back on; but Philip suddenly pushed the red plastic button on his corner of the table.

Philip’s tray, with its smeared remains, shook, shivered, dissolved, and was sucked through the grid below:
Whooooshl
While it was
Whoooshing,
Philip rubbed his hands over the grid, first backs, then palms, and, satisfied, stood. The
Whoooosh
died. “Look, when I came over here, I figured I was interrupting a delicate situation. I thought it might need interrupting and took my chance. You know you got Audri pretty upset over getting that woman canned.” To Audri he said: “I want to talk to you about what we tell the Day Star Plus people about Day Star Minus when I have to explain to them why no metalogical reduction yet. And soon.” He turned to Bron: “And that’s an excuse for Audri to cut out on you if it gets too rough, understand? All open and aboveboard. And you—you want your chance to stomp my nuts? You get Day Star out of the way inside a month! I’ve been telling people for a week now there’s no way possible we can have it ready inside three. You finish it under that, and my face will be red all over four departments. See you both around.” He slipped from the table and lumbered (neither tall nor broad, just thick, Philip still gave the impression of lumbering everywhere) across the cafeteria. Bron looked at Audri. The hair showing on the right of her head was a riot of green, gold, purple, and orange. The visible half of her face was set, sullen, and preoccupied.

“Hey,” Bron said, “were you really that bothered because I ... ?”

“Oh,” Audri said. “Well, yeah,” which were words they used frequently with one another, sometimes phatically, sometimes not.

“Well, if you’d—” The thought came obliquely, sat a moment on his mind’s rim, threatening to fall either in or out like an absurd Humpty Dumpty; then, suddenly, it didn’t seem absurd at all: “Hey, did you see Miriamne later, yesterday? I mean you didn’t go meet her somewhere after work ... ?”