Bron was preparing to sav, Mike is probably dead, when the skv (or rather the shield) came on.
The children cheered—which brought some dozen e-girls charging from the next alley:
What did they think they were doing in a restricted area?
Trying as best thev could to get out of it!
Didn’t they know that there was serious gravity derangement all over this sector of the citv? Over a hundred and six people had been reported dead already!
That was just why they were trying to leave! Which way should thev go?
Well, actually, the sensory shield’s going on was the official signal that it was all under control again. They could go back home if thev wanted.
Which brought more cheers, and laughter from the women.
Already other people were appearing in the street.
Bron turned to sav something to Audri, only to find Lawrence at his shoulder.
“Let’s go home,” Lawrence said. “Please? Let’s go home now.”
Bron didn’t want to go back to Serpent’s House. He wanted to so back to Audri’s, and have the women give him coffee and a meal and talk and smile and laugh with him, joke about his breaking the window and make much about his coming to rescue them and his scaring off the crazy Christian. But there would be the kids. And alreadv women were—
“... at work next week!” Audri was calling across lots of heads and waving.
“Oh, yeah!” Bron waved back. “I’ll see you. At work.”
“Come on.” Lawrence said. “Please?” Bron started to sav something angrv. But it failed. “Sure.” Bron sighed. And after thev had walked through two and a half units: “This has been some vacation!”
The Spike’s (nonfacsimile) letter was waiting for him on his table.
In his clean room (the cupboard door was still open, but he was too tired to close it), he sat on his bed and reread it. Then he read it once more. Halfway through he realized he wasn’t even hearing it in the Spike’s voice, but in the voice of the woman at Audri’s co-op who had been calling instructions to the other women. He started again, this time hearing the accusations in the electronically strained tone of the hegemony’s Personnel receptionist. He read it once more, finally in the voice of the e-girl who’d been hallooing that he could not pass the cordon, and whom he’d tricked by joining the mumblers.
“Hey,” Lawrence said, shouldering through the door, once more naked, carrying his cracked vlet case in both hands. “I’ve found almost all the pieces! Only four of them got stepped on, and I’m sure I can get another astral board from—”
“Lawrence?” Bron looked up from the black—and gold-edged flimsy. “Lawrence, you know, he was right?”
“This isn’t too bad, is it?” Lawrence ran a yellowish nail over the cracked inlay. “There used to be a marvelous craftsman over in the unlicensed sector who specialized in games. I’m sure she could fix this one good as new—if her place is still up. The public channels were saying that the u-1 got hit the hardest. But then, isn’t that typical?”
“Lawrence he was right.”
“Who?” Lawrence looked up.
“That Christian—the one we saw out in front of Audri’s co-op. Mad Mike.”
“Right about what?”
“About women.” Bron suddenly crumpled the letter between cupped hands. “They don’t understand.”
“You mean thev don’t understand youl Some of us, my dear, get along smashingly with women. Even me, from time to time. No misunderstandings at alclass="underline" just pure sympathy and sympatico riffht down the line. Of course with me it doesn’t last. But does it ever, all the time, with anvone?”
“They don’t understand about men—Not vou, Lawrence. I mean ordinary, heterosexual men. They can’t. It’s just a logical impossibility. I’m a logician and I know.”
Lawrence laughed. “Mv dear boy! I have observed you intimately now for six months, and vou are a sweet and familiar creature—alas, far more familiar than six months should make vou. Let me tell vou a secret. There is a difference between men and women, a little, tiny one that. I’m afraid, has probablv made most of your adult life miserable and will probably continue to make it so till you die. The difference is simnly that women have only really been treated, by that bizarre,
Derkheimian abstraction, ‘society,’ as human beings for the last—oh, say sixty-five years; and then, really, only on the moons; whereas men have had the luxury of such treatment for the last four thousand. The result of this historical anomaly is simply that, on a statistical basis, women are just a little less willing to put up with certain kinds of shit than men—simply because the concept of a certain kind of shit-free Universe is, in that equally bizarre Jungian abstraction, the female ‘collective unconscious,’ too new and too precious.” Lawrence’s brows knitted; he frowned at Bron’s knotted fists. “Why, I bet that’s a letter from a lady—I confess, when I was checking for corpses, I had a peek in here and saw the name and the return address. Your problem, you see, is that essentially you are a logical pervert, looking for a woman with a mutually compatible logical perversion. The fact is, the mutual perversion you are looking for is very, very rare—if not nonexistent. You’re looking for someone who can enjoy a certain sort of logical masochism. If it were just sexual, you’d have no trouble finding a partner at all—as your worldly experience no doubt has already informed you. Hang them from the ceiling, burn their nipples with matches, stick pins in their buttocks and cane them bloody! There’re gaggles of women, just as there are gaggles of men, who would be delighted to have a six-foot, blond iceberg like you around to play such games with. You can get a list of the places they frequent just by dialing Information. But, though she is a religious fanatic like Mad Mike, who believes that the children of her bodv are one with the objects of her hand, or a sociopath like poor Alfred, who doesn’t quite have a model for anyone, correct or incorrect; be she nun or nymphomaniac, a loud political pamphleteer running around in the u-1 sector, or a pillar of society living elegantly on the Ring, or anywhere in between, or any combination, the one thing she is not going to do is put up with your hurry-up-and-wait, your do-a-little-tap-dance-while-you-stand-on-your-head, your run-around-in-circles-while-you-walk-a-straieht-line, especially when it’s out of bed and simply has no hope of pleasurable feedback. Fortunately, your particular perversion today is extremely rare. Oh, I would say maybe one man out of fifty has it—quite amazing, considering that it once was about as common as the ability to grow a beard. Just compare it to some of the other major sexual types: homosexuality, one out of five; bisexuality, three out of five; sadism and masochism, one out of nine; the varieties of fetishism, one out of eight. So you see, at one out of fifty, you really are in a difficult situation. And what makes it more difficult—even tragic—is that the corresponding perversion you’re searching for in women, thanks to that little historical anomaly, is more like one out of five thousand. Yes, I have a—believe me—platonic curiosity about both male and female victims of this deviation. Yes, I exploit the attendant loneliness of the unfulfilled by offering friendship. Psychic vampirism? Believe me, there’s as much of the blood donor about me as there is of Vlad Tepes. I don’t know anything about the woman responsible for that—” He nodded toward the crumpled letter—“other than her public reputation. But I’ve lived a long time. I can make a few speculations about her. Bron, in your terms, she simply doesn’t exist. I mean, how can she? You’re a logical sadist looking for a logical masochist. But you are a logician. If you redefine the relation between P and Not-P beyond a certain point—well, then you just aren’t talking about logic any more. All you’ve done, really, is change the subject.”