However, his identity could be discovered easily enough, except by the most short-sighted individuals; he was wearing a badge that bore in prominent letters the words DUNCAN MACKENZIE, TITAN. He had thought it impolite to make a fuss about the spelling. Like Malcolm, he had given up that argument years ago.
On Titan, such labels would have been completely unnecessary; here they were essential. The advance of microelectronics had relegated to history two problems that until the late twentieth century, had been virtually insoluble: At a really big party, how do you find who’s there—and how do you locate any given person? When Duncan checked in at the foyer, he found himself confronting a large board bearing hundreds of names. That at once established the guest list, or, to be more accurate, the list of guests who wished to make their presence known. He spent several minutes studying it, and picked out half a dozen possible targets. George, of course, was there; and so was Ambassador Farrell. No point in hunting up them; he saw them every day.
Against each name was a button, and a tiny lamp. When the button was pushed, the guest’s badge would emit a buzz just loud enough for him to hear, and his light would start flashing. He then had two alternatives. He could apologize to the group he was with, and start drifting toward a central rendezvous area. By the time he arrived—which could be anything from a minute to half an hour after the signal, according to the number of encounters en route—the caller might still be there; or he might have gotten fed up and moved away.
The other alternative was to press a button on the badge itself, which would cut off the signal. The light on the board would then shine with a steady glow, informing the world that the callee did not wish to be disturbed. Only the most persistent or bad-mannered inquirer would ignore this hint.
Although some hostesses thought the system too coldly mechanical, and refused to use it at any price, it was in fact deliberately imperfect. Anyone who wished to opt out could neglect to pick up his badge, and it would then be assumed that he had not put in an appearance. To aid this deception, an ample supply of false badges was available, and the protocol that went with them was well understood. If you saw a familiar face above an innocuous JOHN DOE or MARY SMITH, you investigated no further. But a JESUS CHRIST or a JULIUS CAESAR was fair game.
Duncan saw no need for anonymity. He was quite happy to meet anyone who wished to meet him, so he left his badge in the operating mode while he raided the lavish buffet, then beat a retreat to one of the smaller tables. Although he could now function in Earth’s gravity better than he would once have believed possible, he still took every opportunity of sitting down. And in this case it was essential even for Terrans, except those skillful enough to manipulate three plates and one glass with two hands.
He had been one of the early arrivals—this was a folly he never succeeded in curing during his whole stay on Earth—and by the time he had finished nibbling at unknown delicacies, the hall was comfortably full. He decided to start circulating among the other guests, lest he be identified for what he was—a lost and lonely outsider.
He did not deliberately eavesdrop; but Makenzies had unusually good hearing, and Terrans—at least party-going Terrans—seemed anxious to spread information as widely as possible. Like a free electron wandering through a semiconductor, Duncan drifted from one group to another, occasionally exchanging a few words of greeting, but never getting involved for more than a couple of minutes. He was quite content to be a passive observer, and ninety percent of the conversations he overheard were meaningless or boring. But not all...
I loathe parties like this, don’t you?
It’s supposed to be the only set of genuine antique inflatable furniture in the world. Of course, they won’t let you sit on it.
I’m so sorry. But it will wash out easily.
—buying at one fifty and selling at one eighty. Would you believe that grown men once spent their entire lives doing that sort of thing?
—no music worth listening to since the late twentieth century... Make it early twenty-first.
Sorry—I don’t know who’s throwing this party, either.
Did El Greco come before Modigliani? I just can’t believe it.
Bill’s ambition is to be shot dead a the age of two hundred by a jealous wife.
How the Revolution going? If you need any more money from the Ways and Means Committee, let me know.
Food should come in pills, the way God intended.
Anyone in the room she’s not slept with?
Well, maybe that statue of Zeus.
French is not a dead language. At least five million people still speak it—or at least read it.
I’m getting up a petition to save the Lunar wilderness areas.
I thought it was the Van Allen Belt.
Oh, that was last year.
At one point, Duncan’s badge started to hum gently. For a moment he was taken by surprise; he had quite forgotten that it was part of a paging system. He looked around for the rendezvous point, which he had not even bothered to check. Eventually he spotted a discreet little banner bearing the notice L-S HERE, PLEASE. Needless to say it was on the far side of the room, and it took him a good five minutes to plow through the crowd.
Half a dozen complete strangers were waiting hopefully under the banner. He scanned their faces in vain, looking for some sign of recognition. But when he got within name-reading range, one of the group broke away and approached him with outstretched hands.
“Mr. Makenzie—how good of you to come! I’ll take only a few minutes of your time.”
From bitter experience, Duncan had learned that this was one of Terra’s great understatements. He looked cautiously at the speaker to sum him up and to guess his business. What he saw was reasonably reassuring: a very neat, goateed little man wearing a traditional Chinese/Indian shervani, tightly buttoned up at the neck. He did not look like a bore or a fanatic; but they seldom did.
“That’s all right, Mr.—er—Mandel’stahm. What can I do for you?”
“I’d intended to contact you—it was pure luck, seeing your name on the list—I knew there could be only one Makenzie—what does the D stand for—Donald, Douglas, David—”
“Duncan.”
“Ah, yes. Let’s move over to that seat—it’ll be quieter—besides, I love Winslow Homer’s Fair Wind, even though the technique is so crude—you can almost smell the fish sliding around in the boat—why, what a coincidence—it’s exactly four hundred years old! Don’t you think coincidences are fascinating? I’ve been collecting them all my life.”
“I’ve never thought about it,” replied Duncan, already feeling a little breathless. He was afraid that if he listened much longer to Mr. Mandel’stahm, he too would start to talk in jerks. What did the man want? For that matter, was there any way of discovering the intentions of a person whose flow of speech seemed to be triggered by random impulses?