“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 alclass="underline" “Hey, did you see Miriamne later, yesterday? I mean you didn’t go meet her somewhere after work ... ?”
Audri’s eyes came back to his from somewhere behind him. “No. Why? I never saw her before Personnel sent her down yesterday morning.”
“Oh, because for a moment I ...” Bron frowned; suddenly he picked up the veiled and sequined head—
covering and put it on. With the thought had come the sudden recollection of exactly when (in the gray, canyon-like alley leading to u-1!) and why (that fanciful, unfounded relation between Miriamne and the Spike!) he had decided on Miriamne’s transfer. Now it seemed ridiculous, cruel (he did like Audri), and self-centered. If he could have, he would have kept her on now. But the green slip—“I don’t suppose she’s still ...” His voice was hollowed by the dark shell.
“Mmmm?” Audri said, sipping; his own bubble rattled loudly, collapsed completely. If the thought had been a world, the one that came with it, circling it like a satellite, was: Miriamne was the Spike’s friend. Some version of all this would in all likelihood get back to her. What would she think? “Audri?” he asked.
“Yeah?”
“What am I like? I mean, what do you think of me ... ? If you had to describe me to somebody else, how would vou do it?”
“Honest?”
He nodded.
“I’d say you were a very ordinary—or special, depending on how you look at it—combination of well-intentioned and emotionally lazy, perhaps a little too self-centered for some people’s liking. But you also have an awful lot of talent at your job. Maybe the rest are just the necessary personality bugs that go along.”
“Would you say I was a louse ... but maybe a louse who was—never mind. Just a louse.”
Audri laughed. “Oh, perhaps an off-Thursdays—or on every second Tuesday of the month—some version of that thought flickers through my addled brain—”
“Yeah.” Bron nodded. “You know, that’s the third time in three days someone’s called me that.”
“A louse?” Audri raised one multicolored eyebrow (and lowered one silver one). “Well, Ym certainly not one of the ones who did—”
“You mean Philip, sometime earlier today, he ... ?”
Both Audri’s eyebrows lowered now. “No, doll. You did—just now.”
“Oh,” Bron said. “Well, yeah.”
Back in his office, Bron sat and ruminated and flung more collapsed coffee bulbs into the corner heap.
They don’t understand, he thought; then thought it over. Philip and Audri and Sam and Miriamne and Lawrence—even Danny (whom he remembered) and Marny (whom he remembered with some affection) didn’t understand. And Alfred probably understood least of all—though from another point of view, Alfred probably understood the best; that is, Alfred certainly didn’t understand him—Bron—but Alfred certainly understood by first-hand experience the feeling of having nobody understand you; and—Bron could allow himself the self-flagellation—in a way Alfred’s particular type of nonthinking was probably pretty close to his own. Yes, Alfred understood by experience, even if he had no articulate awareness of that experience as a possible point of agony for any other human being but himself. And didn’t (Bron was still thinking, five minutes after closing as he walked, with rustling sleeves and cloak, out of the lobby and onto the Plaza) Alfred’s complete refusal to offer anyone else any interpretation—speculative, appeasing, damning, or helpful—of their own psychological state represent a kind of respect, or at least a behavior that was indistinguishable from it? Alfred just assumed (but then, didn’t everybody assume, till you gave them cause to do otherwise) that you knew what you were about .. •
Miriamne!
And Alfred’s drawn, adolescent face was blotted out He’d wanted to start an affair with her! She was his type. And now his own, involved, counterespionage against himself had lost her a job. His own responses that he should have used as flexible parameters he had taken as rigid, fixed perimeters.
Miriamne!
Of course she didn’t understand either.
Poor Miriamne!
How could she know the how or the why behind any of what had happened to her?
Suffering the wound of having wounded, he thought:
Help me. He made his way through the crowded Plaza. The upper edge of the eyeholes completely cut away the sensory shield with a darkness complete as the u-l’s roof. Swathed and black, he made his way across the bustling concourse, thinking: Somebody help me ...
Just like Alfred (he thought), alone in his room, his nosebleed already diagnosed, Sam and the others gone, wishing desperately, now that the catastrophe had abated, that someone, anyone, would stop by and say hello.