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.