“Poor Fred,” Bron said dryly. (They turned into a narrow alleyway. The red street sign slid its miniaturized letters, dots, and dashes across her corneas watching him.) “Well, I’m glad he wasn’t part of the whole circus.”
“And I, as they say, am glad you’re glad. I was thinking about asking him if he wanted to join the company. You have to admit he’s colorful. And his performance, when I picked you up, certainly added a certain je ne sals quoi. If his sect does go bust, it would be tragic to let all that dedication just drift away! If I could only determine what his position was vis-a-vis theatrical communication itself—does he think it’s meaningful or not? Whenever he—or Dian—talks about it, they get terribly abstract. Perhaps I just better wait until he’s out of it. And you can tell he could use the job, just by looking at him.” Bron was about to release her hand, but suddenly she smiled at him. “And what brings you here, interrupting my theoretical reveries on your person and personality with, as it were, the real thing?”
He wanted to say:
I came to tell you that no matter what that crazed lesbian says, I am not responsible for her losing her job—no matter what kind of louse she thinks I am! “I came to find out about you, who you were and what you were.”
The Spike smiled up from under lowered brows. “All masked and veiled and swathed about in shadowy cerements? That’s romantic!” They entered an even narrower alley—were, he realized, actually inside. “Just a moment—” She stopped in front of what was, he recognized, her co-op room door—“and we’ll see what I can come up with to aid you in your quest. Out in a minute,” and she was gone inside: the door clicked closed.
Over the next six minutes, Bron listened to drawers sliding, cupboard doors clacking—something overturned; a man’s voice (Windy’s?) protested gruffly; a guitar tinkled; the same man laughed; more drawers; then her own voice saying in the midst of a giggle (that made him sway back from the door, then touch it, then let his gloved fingers fall again, still moving), “Come on now, come on! Cut it out! Cut it out now—don’t spoil my entrance ... !” Then silence for a dozen breaths.
The door opened; she slipped out; the door clicked to behind.
She wore white gloves.
She wore white boots.
Her long skirt and high-necked bodice were white. Full white sleeves draped her wrists. She reached up and pulled the white cloak around her shoulders. Its paler than ivory folds swept around.
Over her head was a full-head mask: white veils hung below the eyes; the icy globe was a-glitter with white sequins. White plumes rose above it, as from some albino peacock.
“Now—” The veil fluttered with her breath—“we can roam the labyrinths of honesty and deceit, searching out the illusive centers of our being by a detailed examination of the shift and glitter of our own, protean surfaces—” She turned back to the door and called:
“Don’t worry, I’ll be back in time for the performance.”
A girl’s muffled voice: “You better be!”
The white mask turned to him, with a mumbled, “—really ... !” A settling breath, and veils settled. “Now, proofed in light and light’s absence, we can begin our wonderings—” Her gloved fingers fell from her white-scarved throat, came toward his.
He took them.
They walked along the corridor that, once more, became high, roofless street.
“Now. What do you want to know about me?”
After moments, she said: “Go on. Any way you can.”
Moments later, he said: “I’m ... not happy in the world I live in.”
“This world—” She moved a white glove across the darkness before them—“that is not a world, but a moon?”
“It’ll do. They ... they make it so easy for you—all you have to do is know what you want: no twenty-first-century-style philosophical oppression; no twentieth-century-style sexual oppression; no nineteenth-century-style economic oppression. No eighteenth-century-style—”
“There was philosophical oppression in the eighteenth century and sexual oppression in the twenty-first. And they’ve all had their share of economic oppression—”
“But we’re talking about our world. This world. The best of all possible—”
“An awful lot of people who live around here are wasting an awful lot of chalk, paint, duplicating paper, and general political energy trying to convince people that it is nowhere near the best. Bron, there’s a war on—”
“And we’re not in it—yet. Spike, there’s a lot of people around where I live—and the sky is a very different color over there—who honestly believe if the people you’re talking about would mind their own business, it would put us all a little closer to that world.”
Her grip on his hand loosened. “I live in the u-1 sector. You don’t. We won’t argue about that now.” It tightened again.
“And what I’m talking about is the same both places. If you’re gay, you find a gay co-operative; if you’re straight, you go find yourself one of the male/female co-operatives where everything is all gemiltlichkeit and community consciousness; and there’s every combination in between—”
“I’ve always thought the division we use out here of humanity into forty or fifty basic sexes, falling loosely into nine categories, four homophilic—”
“What?”
“You mean you never punched Sex on General Info when you were ten? Then you were probably the only ten-year-old who didn’t.—Oh, but if you grew up on Mars ... Homophilic means no matter who or what you like to screw, you prefer to live and have friends primarily from your own sex. The other five are heterophilic.” (Of course, he knew the terms; of course he’d punched sex; frankly, the whole theory had struck him as clever first and then totally artificial.) “I mean, when you have forty or fifty sexes, and twice as many religions, however you arrange them, you’re bound to have a place it’s fairly easy to have a giggle at. But it’s also a pretty pleasant place to live, at least on that level.”
“Sure. If you want to manacle eighteen-year-old boys to the wall and pierce their nipples with red-hot needles—”
“They better be red-hot.” From veils and glitter, her voice projected a smile too intricately mysterious to picture. “Otherwise, you might start an infection!”
“They could be ice-cold! The point is, after work, you can always drop in to the place where the eighteen-year-old boys who happen to be into that sort of thing—red-hot needles on the second floor, ice-cold ones on the third—have all gotten together in a mutually beneficial alliance where you and they, and your Labrador retriever, if she’s what it takes to get you off, can all meet one another on a footing of cooperation, mutual benefit, and respect.”
“And the kennel’s on the first floor?”
“And there’s one here in your unit, and one in mine, and probably a dozen more throughout the city. And if you’re just not satisfied with the amount or quality of eighteen-year-old boys that week, you can make an appointment to have your preferences switched. And while you are at it, if you find your own body distasteful, you can have it regenerated, dyed green or heliotrope, padded out here, slimmed down there—” Another intersection put them on another elevated walkway. “And if you’re just too jaded for any of it, you can turn to the solace of religion and let your body mortify any way it wants while you concentrate on whatever your idea of Higher Things happens to be, in the sure knowledge that when you’re tired of that, there’s a diagnostic computer waiting with soup and a snifter in the wings to put you back together. One of my bosses, at the office, he has a family commune ... out on the Ring.”