He wanted to say: But I’m on one of those political missions! And I have been taken prisoner, questioned, beaten, abused—
“What are you doing here, anyway?” she asked.
“Oh, I ...” Confusion rose as he remembered Sam’s injunction. “Well, I’m here ... with Sam.” More diggers came down the steps.
“What’s Sam here for?”
“Well, he’s ... I ...” He was oppressed with the thousand secrets he was not even sure he held, revelation of any of which might send worlds and moons toppling together in some disasterous, cosmic pinball. “Well, Sam’s sort of ...” What could he say about Sam that would not return them to the forbidden subject? Sam is a friend? A woman who’s had a sex change? A liaison executive in the Outer Satellite Intelligence Department—
“—with the government?” the Spike suggested. “Well, then, I won’t go prying around anymore into that! Every time you ask a question on this world—about anything—there’s always someone at your elbow to point out politely that, really, for your own good, you’d rather not know. There’s even part of Brian’s work that’s apparently not supposed to pollute delicate little moonie minds. And from what I can gather, it’s nothing more insidious than that, a million years ago, all this was under the edge of an inland sea. I like my first supposition better—that you followed me across the Solar System because you simply couldn’t bare to be without me. That’s certainly more flattering than that you’re an official agent sent to keep tabs. The nicest one, of course, is just that it really is a coincidence. I’ll accept that.”
Bron walked beside her, his head huge with phantom data, smiling and unhappy. “Well, whether it’s a billion to one or one to a billion, I’m glad we met.”
The Spike nodded. “I guess I am too. It is nice to see a familiar face. How long have you been here?”
“Here? Just since last night. On Earth? I guess a few days. It’s not ... well, a very friendly place.”
She hunched her shoulders. “You’ve noticed? They all seem to be trying so hard. To be friendly, I mean. But they just can’t seem to figure out how.” She sighed. “Or maybe it’s just that, coming from where we do, we recognize and respond to different emblems of friendship. Do you think that could be it?” But she was talking about something different from what he meant: black and red uniforms, furnitureless cells, small machines with fangs ...
“Perhaps,” he said.
“We’ve been here two days. We leave in a few days for Mars. Will I run into you there, perhaps?”
“I ...” He frowned. “I don’t think we’re going to Mars.”
“Oh. You’re from Bellona originally, aren’t you?”
He nodded.
“What a shame. You could have shown us around for an evening—though the clear areas are as out of the way on Mars as they are here. We probably won’t be allowed within seven leagues of Bellona, or any place like it.”
“Bellona’s the only place on Mars I really know,” he said. “When I was growing up, I don’t think I got out of it more than a dozen times.”
She mumbled something conciliatory.
“But Mars is friendlier than Earth. At least it was when I left.”
“That’s understandable. I mean, even if the government’s closer to Earth’s, the texture of life, just day to day, would have to be closer to life on the Satellites. The whole ratio, and type, of girl-made object to landscape must be nearer to what it is out on the moons.” She laughed. “With all that space they have here getting in between people every time you turn around—you’re going to be in for a small adventure when you try and find your friend again, by the way—I guess it’s understandable why people don’t know how to relate to other people here. Well, Earth’s the place we all came from. Remember that. Remember that, I keep telling myself. Remember that. A few times, at home, I’ve met earthies, even become pretty friendly with a few, especially before the war: they always struck me as a little strange. But I racked it up to the fact that they were in a strange and unfamiliar place. I think the oddest thing I’ve noticed, in the two days I’ve been here, is that they’re all so much like all the earthies I’ve known before! They pick up an object, and somehow they never seem to really touch it. They say something, and their words never completely wrap around their ideas. Do you know what I mean?”
He mumbled back appropriate m’s.
The Spike laughed. “I suppose this isn’t the best way to promote interplanetary understanding and good will, is it? Maybe if everything comes out of the sea and the ground and the air as easily as it’s supposed to here you just don’t ever really have to think. How do you like life under an open sky? Do you feel you’ve come home, returned at last to the old racial spawning grounds? Or are you as anxious to get home as I am?”
“I guess I am pretty anxious.” They turned a corner. “When will you be returning?”
She drew a breath. It was a comfortable, relaxed breath: He drew one too. All the tiny smells, he thought; if you like them, you probably liked life under the open sky. If you didn’t, you couldn’t. He doubted it was more complicated than that.
“Our trip to Mars,” she explained, 6iis sort of open-ended. When push comes to shove, thev’re a good deal more liberal there, especially in things like cultural exchange. And, from reports, the audiences have slightly more catholic tastes. I admit, I’m looking forward to it.”
“I wish I were going,” he said.
They rounded another corner.
She said: “This is where we’re staying.” The building was low, large, and shoddilv whitewashed. “The People’s Cultural Co-Operative. The diggers have most of it, but we have four rooms on the top floor.”
“You’re always getting stuck in someone’s cellar, or off in the attic.” Memories of concert halls, transport compartments, a verdigrized drain in a fouled cement floor, crystal gaming pieces on boards that were neither go nor vlet. “I still just can’t get over the coincidence, no matter how small or large it is, of—could I come in a while?” because she had stopped at the wooden door, painted yelllow and noticeably askew in its frame.
She smiled. “Really, I’ve got a lot of work to do this morning. Right after lunch I have to have interlocking part rehearsals planned out for the new work. Tt’s one of our most ambitious, and at least four seconds of it are still pretty loose.”
“I ... I ... wish I could see it!”
She smiled again. “It’s too bad you didn’t catch the last performance of the MacLow cycle last nieht. They were open to passers-by. It would be nice to do this one for you, but really it’s more or less understood as part of the conditions of our being here that we do everything we possibly can for the locals. Except for the MacLows, we haven’t even had any of the kids from the dig for audience. We’re trying to keep it to the indigenous inhabitants.”
Save the man at the shack and the woman at the guesthouse, Bron wasn’t sure he’d seen any indigenous inhabitants. “Well, I guess that’s ...” He shrugged, smiled, and felt desperate.
She offered her hand. “Good-bye then. Even if I don’t see you—”
“Could I see you again!” he blurted, taking her hand in both his. “I mean ... maybe tonight. Later, after your performance. We’ll go somewhere. We’ll ... do something! Something nice. Please. I ... I do want to!”
She regarded him.
The desperation he felt was heady and violent. He started to release her hand, then squeezed it harder. Movement happened behind the skin of her face.