Triton (Trouble on Triton) (27 page)

“Oh,” Bron said. “Well ... thanks.” He looked for a pocket or purse again, again remembered he had none. “Eh ... Where do we go to pick up the transport?”

“Don’t worry,” Sam smiled slightly. “They pick you up.”

“Ah-ha!” Bron said, and felt knowing—“It’s
that
kind of place—” because there were no such places in the satellites.

“Elegant,” Sam repeated, putting his eyes back down to the reader. Click-click-click. “Hope you enjoy yourself.” Click.

In the room, Bron sat on the bed and wondered what to do till nine o’clock. Minutes into his wonder-ings, the landlady came in, carrying a tray on which was a tall glass filled with something orange, a straw, and leaves.

“You are going to the
Craw
this evening, with a friend? It is very nice there. You will enjoy it. The reservations have all been made. Worry about nothing more. If you, or your friend, wish to go in period dress, just let me know ... ? Many people enjoy that.”

“Oh,” Bron said. “Sure ...” with a dozen memories returning from his Bellona youth (as the landlady retired): He knew exactly the dress for an expensive, male prostitute, going to a similar, money-establishment on Mars. Certainly
not
period (the precredit period when money was in use) dress. That marked you immediately as one of those appalling tourists who visited such a place once, twice, maybe three times in their lives, who moved through leaving gentle smiles and snide chuckles. You went in period dress if you owned your own and were known by the establishment; anything else consigned you to that category of velvet contempt for those who did things Not Done. Also, the Spike didn’t
know
where they were going. Her own dress was likely to be something modern and informal. On the other hand, he didn’t want to go looking like one of those oblivious yokels who wander into such places with no sense that they were, indeed, in a historical institution. No matter how inappropriate the Spike’s dress, if his own, unthinkingly, merely emphasized it, even if she were not offended, she would certainly
not
be impressed.

And this was Earth—
not
Mars. His experience of such places was not only from another world: it was from fifteen years in the past. But, he found himself thinking, the essence of such places
was
anachromism. Even if styles themselves changed in such establishments, the structure of stylistic deployment remained constant. In fact, an elderly woman client (with silver eyelids and cutaway veils, who had once taken him to such a place, where she herself had been going for twenty years) had once said to him as much in Bel-lona. (Her veils and lids recalled, her name and face somehow escaped ...) With such ponderings and reveries, he occupied the rest of the morning: His own clothes, he decided, the ones he had brought, would provide his outfit, whatever he wore. He drank his drink, went out into the garden, looking for Sam—who was gone.

He went back into his room. Well, his own clothes and Sam’s; he was sure Sam wouldn’t mind. And he
had
gone looking for him to ask.

During the afternoon he spent at least two hours sitting in the garden trying forceably to relax. Each time, the landlady appeared with a drink. He’d assumed it contained some drug or other—caffeine, alcohol, sugar? But, from all effects, it was metabolically neutral. (Vaguely he remembered something about an Earth law preventing the administration of drugs of any sort without prior and complicated announcement and consent.) By eight he had laid out his clothing:

One silver sleeve with floor-length fringe (Sam had two in his bag, but
only
a prostitue would go to such a place so flamboyantly symmetrical: two would have been all right for breakfast, barely acceptable at lunch. But supper—?) and a silver harness (his own) rather like a Tethys e-girl’s, and the silver briefs that matched it: a black waist-pouch (Sam’s) for the money. No pouch at all (implying secret pockets) would have marked him (again) as a prostitute. His own pouch, with its inset mirrors and flashing lights, in such a situation would have identified him as a prostitute’s client. He agonized over the footwear for half an hour, till suddenly he had a brilliant idea: First his own, soft, black boots—then he rummaged Sam’s makeup kit out of the bottom of Sam’s bag and, with the plastic lacquer, carefully painted his gold eyebrow (occasionally stopping to brush at the shaggy real one with his thumb) black. He had the lacquer-remover out, sure that he would have to redo it half a dozen times; he had never done it before (at least not in black) and was sure he would get paint all over his face. Crane and squint as he would at the magnifying mirror, however, he had done, with three strokes, a perfect job. There!

Balance, he thought; a-symmetry, and coherence. All the ideals of fashion bowed to, yet none groveled at.

And it was ten to nine.

He pulled on the chosen clothes, hurried downstairs, out the door, into the deep-blue evening, and down the street’s stone steps (fringe a waterfall of light), thinking: Don’t think in urban units. Don’t. There
aren’t
anyl

First he hoped to arrive a minute or two before she came out; then that she would be already there so he would not have to wait.

As he rounded the corner of the People’s Co-Oper-ative, the yellow door opened; three people came out. Two were diggers. The person they said good-bye to, who waved after them, and who now leaned against the door jamb to wait, in something sleeveless and ankle-length and black, her short hair silver now as Bron’s (or rather Sam’s) sleeve fringe, was the Spike.

The diggers passed. One smiled. Bron nodded. The Spike, still leaning, with folded arms, called:

“Hello! That’s timing for you!” and laughed. Smoothly. On one forearm, she wore a silvery gauntlet, damasked with intricate symbols. As he approached, she stood up, held out her hands. Left arm a-dangle with silver, he took her hands in his, and chuckled. “How good to see you again!”—feeling for a moment that he was twenty and she was thirty and this were some assignation on another world.

“I hope,” she said, “that we’re not going anyplace where I’ll need my shoes ... ? If we are, I’ll dash up and get some—”

“We are going someplace where someone as stunning as you may wear—” There was a ritual completion to the line:—
anything you can afford, including my heart on your sleeve.
But he was not twenty: this was here, this was now—“anything you like.” Their hands joined in a fourway knot.

“Actually, I had a little place in mind about seventy-five miles to
the north
of here—the
Swan’s Crawl”

He smiled. “No, don’t laugh. That’s just Capitalist China for you. It wasn’t very long-lived, so we have to be tolerant.”

She wasn’t laughing though; she was beaming. “You know—I had the
slightest
precognition that we just might be heading there.” She leaned toward him con-spiratorially. “I’m afraid I don’t have any money, though. And wouldn’t know what to do with it if I did. I’ve never been near anyplace that ever used it. Windy and Charo went the first night we came—I was busy with company matters—and though I’ve got plenty of credit, I’m afraid they used up the quota of scrip for the three of us.”

He thought fondly: You’d make a lousy whore: that’s the line you use afterwards. But she probably meant it, which made him, momentarily, even more fond. “The evening’s on me—Sam, actually. He’s government. Money? He’s got a limitless supply, and he’s invited us to enjoy ourselves.”

“How very nice of him! Why isn’t he coming with us?”

“Hates the stuff himself.” Bron turned, took her arm. They started down the street. “Won’t touch it. When he’s on the old racial spawning grounds, it’s all rocks and grass and stars for him.”

“I see ...”

“You haven’t been there before, have you?” He halted. “I’ll be honest, it’s
my
first time ...”

“No, I haven’t. And Windy and Charo were tantaliz-ingly vague in their descriptions.”

“I
see
...” He frowned at her silvered hair. “How did you know where we’d be going, though?”

Her laugh (and she started him walking again by the gentlest pressure on their joined arms—as if he were twenty and she from another world) was silvery as her hair. “When you’re in Outer Mongolia, even in this day and age, I suspect they’re just not that many places to go.”

A whispering, which, for seconds, had been on the edge of consciousness, suddenly centered his attention.

Bron looked up.

Something dark crossed the paler dark between the roofs and, humming even louder, returned to hover, then to settle, across the road.

It was sleek, unwinged, about the size of the vehicle he and Sam had ridden in for the last leg of their journey here.

The side opened—let down like a drawbridge on heavy, polished chain, its purple padding held with six-inch purple poms.

“Why,” the Spike exclaimed, “that must be for us! How did thev ever find us, I wonder?”

“I believe it
is
for us.”—but, with a pressure just firmer than that with which she had started him walking, he held her back from bolting forward. “Someone once told me they worked by sense of smell, but I’ve never reallv understood it. How did your performance go tonight?” Nonchalantly, he maintained their ambling pace. “Was this evening’s fortunate audience appreciative? I gather you’ve been working prettv hard on this one, both from what you said and what Windy—”

At which point the Spike whispered: “Oh—!” because four footmen had come out to stand at the four corners of the lowered platform—four naked, gilded, rather attractive young ... women? Bron felt a moment of disorientation: on Mars, the footmen would have been male, usually themselves prostitutes (or one-time prostitutes), there for the delectation of the ladies paying the bill. But male prostitution was illegal on Earth. The women probably
were
prostitutes, or had been at one time or another; and were there for
his
delectation ... Well, yes, he thought, he
was,
officially, paying—which did not upset him in itself. But the reversal of roles was odd. After all, it was the Spike’s delectation
he
was concerned with this evening. And,

Charo aside, she had made it clear her lesbian leanings were rather intellectual. He said: “I’d be interested to know what you thought of Earth audiences now that you’ve had another performance.”

“Well, I ...” They reached the platform. “Urn ... good evening!” she blurted to the woman beside her, who smiled, nodded.

Bron smiled too, thinking: She’s
talking
to them! Which again (he realized, as a whole part of his youth flickered and faded) would be all right if
she
were paying and had known the young ... lady on a previous occasion ...

They walked across the plush ramp, entered the chamber with its red and coppery cushions, its viewing windows, its several plush hangings, its scarlet-draped walls.

As he guided the Spike to one of the couches, she turned
to
him.
“Isn’t
there someplace where you can find out what it all
costs?”

Which made him laugh out loud. “Certainly,” he said. “If you’d really like to know.” Again, that youthful moment returned—the client who had first taken him to such a place; his own demand for the same importunate information. “Let me see—sit down. There ....” He sat beside her, on her left, took the arm of the couch and tugged. Nothing. (Is everything on this planet backward? he wondered.) “Excuse me ...” He reached across her, tugged the arm on her right. It came up, revealing on its underside, in a neatly-glassed frame, a card printed in terribly small type, headed:
Explication de Tarif.

“You can find out there,” he explained, “about the salary of everyone we will have anything to do with this evening, either in person or by their services, the cost of all the objects we shall see or use, or that are used for us, the cost of their upkeep, and how the prices we shall be charged are computed—I wouldn’t be surprised, considering this is Earth, if it even went into the taxes.”

“Ohhhh ...” she breathed, turning in the comfortable seat to read.

The ramp was hauling closed. The footmen, inside now, took their places.

He looked at her shoulders, hunched in concentration. He suppressed the next chuckle. There was nothing to do: for the duration she simply must be the prostitute, and he must play the client. She was the young, inexperienced hustler, committing all the vulgarities and gaucheries natural to the situation. He must be charmed, be indulgent, assured in his own knowledge of the proper. Otherwise, he thought, I shall never get through the evening without laughing at her outright.

She was, he realized, reading the
whole
thing—which, frankly, was more like a diligent tourist. The real pleasure, of course, was in the amounts, and those you could get at a glance:
they
were printed in boldface.

The footmen, at the four corners of the chamber, sat at little tables that folded from the wall. Tables?

Sitting? That was bizarre. What, he reflected, was a footman for if he (or she) did not remain on foot?

The chamber rocked. Ripples rained the drapes. He touched the Spike’s arm. “I think we’re on our way ....”

She looked up, looked around, and laughed. They rocked, they jogged. On a view window a darkness, either clouds or mountains, moved. “This thing must date back from when they first got gravity under control!” she exclaimed. “I doubt if I’ve ever
been
in a piece of transportation as old as this before!” She put her hand on his, squeezed it.

Moments later, they locked course; the jogging stopped. On cue, one of the footmen rose, walked toward them, stepping gingerly among the cushions, stopped before them, and inclined her head: “Would you like a drink before dinner ... ?”

And in one horrifying moment, Bron realized he could not remember the name of that most expensive of drinks! What leapt to his mind was the name of that one, indeed, tastier, but cheaper—and by which one always rated clients Definitely Second Rate (far and above the most usual type) if they ordered it, or even suggested it.