Drawn by the sound of music, she wandered into a medium-sized tent and gratefully sat down on one of many long benches. In the front, a line of Titanides sang under the direction of a man in a black coat. It seemed to be yet another show, but for the lack of a ticket-taker. Whatever it was, it felt good to get off her feet.
Someone tapped her shoulder. She turned and saw another man in black. Behind him stood a Titanide wearing steel-rimmed glasses.
"Excuse me, would you please put this on?" He was offering her a white shirt. He had a friendly smile, and so did the Titanide.
"What for?" Robin asked.
"It's customary in here," the man said apologetically. "We believe it improper to uncover ourselves." Robin saw the Titanide was wearing a shirt: the first time she had seen one cover his or her breasts.
She shrugged into it, willing to humor screwy beliefs if she could sit and listen to the lovely music. "What kind of place is this anyway?"
The man sat beside her and grinned wryly.
"Well you may ask," he sighed. "Sometimes it tests the faith of the most devout. We're here to bring the Word to the outer planets. Titanides have souls just as humans do. We've been here twelve years now. Services are well-attended; we've performed a few marriages, a few baptisms." He grimaced and looked toward the group in front. "But I think when all is said and done, our flock comes here for the choir practices."
"Not true, Brother Daniel," the Titanide said, in English. "I believe-in-godthefather-maker-of-heav'n'earth-and-in-jesuscrise-hisonly-sonourlord - "
"Christians!" Robin yelped. She leaped to her feet, making the two-fingered protective sign with one hand, holding Nasu out with the other, and began to back away, her heart pounding. She did not stop running until the church was lost in the dust.
She had been in a church! It was her one big fear, the one bogey from her childhood about which she had no doubts. Christians were the very root and branch of the peckish power structure. Once in their hands, a merry pagan would be injected with drugs and subjected to hideous physical and mental tortures. There could be no escape, no hope. Their terrible rites would soon warp one's mind beyond all hope of redemption; then the convert would be infected with a nameless disease that rotted the womb. She would be forced to bear children in pain to the end of her days.
Gaean cuisine was interesting. Robin found a place that smelled good and ordered something called a Bigmac. It seemed to be mostly carbohydrates wrapped around ground grease. It was delicious. She ate every bite, feeling reckless.
While she was mopping up mustard with her fingers, she became aware that a woman at the next table was watching her. She watched back for a while, then smiled.
"I was admiring your paint job," the woman said, getting up to slide in next to Robin. She had scented her body and wore a carefully artless collection of thin scarves that just happened to cover most of her breasts and all of her groin. Her face looked fortyish until Robin realized the lines and shadows were cosmetics intended to make her look older.
"It's not paint," Robin said.
"It's... ." Real wrinkles appeared on her brow. "What is it then? Some new process? I'm fascinated."
"An old process, actually. Tattooing. You use a needle to drive ink into the skin."
"That sounds painful."
Robin shrugged. It was painful, but there was no labra in talking about it. You cried and screamed when it was happening, and never mentioned it again.
"My name's Trini, by the way. How do you take it off?"
"I'm Robin, may the holy flow unite us. You don't take it off. Tattooing is forever. Oh, you can edit a little, but the pattern is there to stay."
"How ... what I mean is, isn't that rather inflexible? I like to get a three- or four-day skin job as much as the next person, but I get tired of it."
Robin shrugged again, getting bored. She had thought this woman wanted to make love, but it appeared she didn't.
"You don't rush into it, of course." She craned her neck to see the wall menu, wondering if she had room for something called sauerkraut.
"It doesn't seem to hurt the complexion," Trini said as she lightly ran her fingertips over the coil of snake that looped Robin's breast. Her hand dropped and came to rest on Robin's thigh.
Robin looked at the hand, annoyed that she could not read this peckish woman's signals. The face was no help, either, when she looked there. Trini seemed to have made a study of being casual. Well, she thought, it never hurts to try. She had to reach up to put her arm over the bigger woman's shoulder. She kissed her on the lips. When she pulled away, Trini was smiling.
"So what is it you do?" Robin leaned forward to take the reefer from Trini, then settled back on her elbows again. They were reclining side by side, facing each other. Trini's disheveled mop of hair was backlighted by the open window of her room.
"I'm a prostitute."
"What's that?"
Trini rolled onto her side, doubled up with laughter. Robin giggled with her for a while but subsided long before Trini did.
"Where the hell have you been? Don't answer that, I know, cooped up in that big tin can in the sky. You really don't know?"
"I wouldn't have asked if I did." Robin was annoyed again, not liking to feel ignorant. Her gaze, looking for a place to light, settled on Trini's calf. She stroked it absently. Trini shaved her legs, for no reason that Robin could see, and left the hair on her arms alone. Robin shaved anywhere she had a tattoo, which was her left arm and right leg, part of her pubic area, and a wide circle around her left ear.
"I'm sorry. It's called the oldest profession. I provide sexual pleasure for money."
"You sell your body?"
Trini laughed. "Why do you say that? I sell a service. I'm a skilled worker with a college degree."
Robin sat up straight. "Now I remember. You're a whore."
"Not anymore. I free-lance."
Robin confessed she did not get it. She had heard of the concept of sex for money but was having difficulty integrating it with her still-hazy concepts of economics. There was supposed to be a slave-master in the picture somewhere, selling the bodies of the women he owned to men less rich than he.
"I think we have a semantic problem. You say "whore" and "prostitute" like they're the same thing. They used to be, I guess. You can work through an agency or out of a house, and that's being a whore. Or you can be on your own, and that's a courtesan. On Earth, of course. Here, there's no laws, so it's every woman for herself."
Robin tried to make sense of it but had no luck. It did not fit with what she knew of peckish society that Trini should keep the money she made. That would imply her body was her own property, and of course, it wasn't, in men's eyes. She was sure there was a logical contradiction in what Trini had said but was too tired to worry about it just then. One thing seemed clear, though.
"How much do I owe you, then?"
Trini's eyes widened. "You think ... oh, no, Robin. This I do for myself. Making love to men is my job, what I do for a living. I make love to women because I like them. I'm a lesbian." Trini looked slightly defensive for the first time. "I think I know what you're thinking. Why would a woman who doesn't like men make a living having sex with them? It gets a little-"
"No, I wasn't thinking that at all. That first thing you said is about the only thing you've said that makes sense. I understand that perfectly and see that you're ashamed of your peckish enslavement. But whats a lesbian?"