“Lawrence, please.”
Lawrence clucked out the door, ducked back. “As I said, I’ll be back in to talk to you again when you’ve slept it off.”
Which was about seven o’clock that evening. Bron woke up feeling like her insides would fall out if she stood up.
Fifteen minutes later, Lawrence came in, announcing: “We’re going to move you this evening. Now don’t complain. I’ll brook no protests. I’ve been running around all afternoon, and I’ve got a room for you in the women’s house of detention—forgive me, that’s my pet name for it—that’s Cheetah, the women’s co-op right behind us. Then I’m going to dip into my geriatric widow’s mite and take you out to a quiet, calm dinner, on my credit. Now don’t start putting up a fuss. I want you to know I have nursed three people through this operation before and you all say the craziest things under the anesthetic—though Lord knows, their reasons seemed a lot more sensible than yours. Really, it’s just like having a baby, only the baby—as one of my more articulate friends commented, when in your situation not twenty years ago—is you. You’ve got to get into walking and exercising as much as you can take as quickly as possible, or there’ll be hell to pay. Come on, up and at ’em. Lean on me if you want to.”
She didn’t want to.
But protest was as painful as compliance. And besides—she figured this out only when they were seated in a dining-booth (two other places they’d tried were closed: because of the war) behind a stained-glass partition in a restaurant Bron had never known was thirty yards from the Snake Pit’s door (but then, four-fifths of the patrons were Lawrence’s age or over, and nudity seemed to be de rigeur)—despite his age and predilections, after all, Lawrence was a man. And a real woman had to relinquish certain rights. Wasn’t that, she told herself silently, the one thing that, from her life before, she now, honestly knew?
Dinner was simple, unpretentious, and vegetarian. And, despite the soreness, with Lawrence’s gentle chatter it was pleasanter than any meal she’d had on Earth.
7. Tiresias Descending, Or Trouble On Triton
Coming across it thus again, in the light of what we had to do to render it acceptable, we see that our journey was, in its preconception, unnecessary, although its formal course, once we had set out upon it, was inevitable.
Her first minutes back at work, Bron was very nervous. She had considered the all-black outfit. But no, that would only be delaying things. The previous afternoon, she and Lawrence had gone to Lawrence’s(I) design-rental house and spent an amusing two hours during which Lawrence had had the house make up (among other things) a pair of his-and-hers breast bangles, glittering crimson with dozens of tiny mirrors on wriggly antennae. “Lawrence,” she had protested, “I’m just not the type to wear anything like this!” Lawrence had countered: “But I am, dear. At least in the privacy of my own room. They’re cunning!” She had taken hers home and put them in the cupboard as a memento of the day. Save the short gray shoulder cloak, she had rented no new clothing with her new image in mind.
Bron wore the cloak to work.
She had been in her office about an hour when Audri came by to prop herself, with one elbow, on the doorjamb. “Hey, Bron, could you ...” Audri stopped, frowned. “Bron ... ?”
“Yes?” She looked up nervously.
Audri began to grin. “You are kidding me—?”
“About what?”
Audri laughed. “And it looks good, too! Hey—” She came in—“what I wanted to get was that information about Day Star minus.” She stepped around the corner of the desk, put a folder down. “Oh, did you see that memo from the Art Department—?” which Bron finally found on the floor beside her desk. Some sculptor had arrived in the cafeteria that morning with a pile of large, thin, polished, metal plates, demanding to build a sculpture, floor to ceiling, then and there. The Art Department had sent around its memo, which included an incomprehensible statement by the artist, explaining how the plates would be moved within the sculptural space on small motors, according to an arcane series of mystical numbers. The whole was intended as some sort of war memorial. And could you please let us have a yes or no response before ten-thirty, as the artist wished to have the work completed by lunch.
“I suppose I’m feeling positively disposed to change today,” Bron told Audri, and sent the Art Department a yes on the console—though she had always felt a mild distrust of mystical art. Back at the desk, with Audri, she ran over more logical/topological specifications.
At the door, about to leave, Audri halted, looked back, grinned again, and said: “Congratulations, I guess,” winked and departed, bumping her shoulder on the jamb.
Bron smiled, relieved. But then, she’d always liked Audri.
Lunch?
She debated whether or not to go, right up to the minute. Staying away, of course, would only be putting things off. Just then, the console began to chatter and flash.
Another Art Department memo:
As the sculpture had been completed, three artists from a rival school, masked in turquoise but otherwise nudey had rushed into the cafeteria and, with flamers, destroyed the work, charring and melting the plates. The memo contained a statement from the marauders even more incomprehensible than the artist’s had been. (Basically, they seemed to be attacking the first artist’s math.) The sculptor, who was eighty-two, had suffered a psychotic episode (the memo went on) and been hospitalized, where she might well remain for several years, it appeared, from the initial diagnosis. Chances for her eventual return to art, however, were hopeful. The remains of the work would be on view through lunch, after which it would be removed to the hegemony’s museum, over the cafeteria, where it would stay on permanent exhibit. The memo closed with a flurry of apologies and was signed (typically) by Iseult, with a parenthetical note saying that Tristan dissented from the proposed suggestion and if enough alternates were put forward before closing, there would be a vote among them tomorrow.
An area of the cafeteria floor, blackened and strewn with burnt metal, was roped off. Every minute, one of the Seven Aged Sisters, in beaded green and silver, would leave her (or his) position by the cafeteria door, and come to walk, slowly, around the blistered enclosure (Bron stepped back from the taped rope to let the Sister pass), pausing every seventh step to make sacred and purifying signs, then, on completing his (or her) circuit, exchange serious words and nod dolefully with one or more of the spectators. (Just like the cafeteria of that Lux, Protyyn-recycling plant, Bron reflected Absolutely no difference at all!) Some of the statue’s motors, still working fitfully, now and then flapped a coruscated stub of aluminum around, twenty feet along the frame (which shook and clanked and tottered from floor to ceiling), while, somewhere else among the struts still standing, another metal plate tried to tug away from some twisted shape to which it had fused, the whole, charred horror attesting, perhaps more than the silvery creation intended, to the dark and terrible import of art.
Bron backed away, trying to envision the undamaged work, while others moved in to take her place at the rope. She had already decided that this lunch the meal would be a carnivorous one, and so was angling to tfce left, away from the vegetarian counter, when somebody put a hand on her shoulder.