Triton (Trouble on Triton) (30 page)

“beach” named after him; but this story had taken place on Iapetus, not Callisto—and “... when obviously it wasn’t going
to
work out, and I had spent two weeks—at least!—without being straight one minute, you’d think it was his
religion]
—really, it was like walking around with your skull all soft and your meninges stripped away and every impulse from every sensation in the Solar System detonating your entire brain—you understand, the sex had been absolutely great as far as / was concerned. But the physical thing just wasn’t him (he was one of your mystic types)—well, there was nothing for me to do but ... leave. Because I loved him absolutely more than anything else in the world. I slept the last night in the same room with him, on a blanket on the floor. Once I tried to rape him, I believe. He said fuck off. So I did, and later he said I could
hold
him if it would make me feel better, and I realized that I
didn’t
want that. So I said, thanks, no. Brunnhilde on her bed of flame could not have burned more than I! (He said I was too intense—!) I lay there, all night, on the floor beside him, completely alone with myself, waiting for a dawn I was perfectly
sure
would never come.

“And that morning, he
hugged
me; and then he took me to the shuttle. And he gave me a notebook—the cover was blue plastic with the most amazing designs running through. And I was so happy I almost died. And kept writing him letters till he wrote me back—you see, one of my friends had said: ‘You know, you’ve destroyed his life. He’s never met anyone like you before, who thought he was that important!’ And that was years ago. I just got a letter from him last week; he calls me one of the people he
loves]
You see ... ? If you
really
love someone, and it’s obvious that it’s impossible, you’ll
do

that.
Even
that. You see?” He had no idea what
that
was, either. While he listened, he found himself again remembering the occurrences back in the earthie cell. Whatever
had
that actually been about?

Would the Spike have any suggestions? He longed to interrupt her monologue to ask. But Sam had said the subject was verboten ... a matter of life, death, and would bo so forever. Still, it made him feel rather romantic ... if he could just suppress the frustration. And somehow, she was back in what seemed like the
middle
of the story, explaining that, you see, he had been older than the other students, that she didn’t even like children as a rule, though one had to make an exception for Charo—who was nineteen—because Charo was, in many ways, exceptional. Then there was something about a lot of pictures taken on an ice-ledge, naked, in the skimmer with the Catherine of Cleves
Book of Hours

—who, he wondered, was Catherine of Cleves, and where did the ice-ledge get into the whole thing?

Really, he
was
trying to follow. But during the last moments of her recounting, he’d noticed, just to her left, another group passing below, their majordomo leading them along on the paths and ramps toward their secluded table.

As he watched the four men and three women walking, Bron suddenly frowned, sat slightly forward.

“Do you know,” he said “—excuse me—but do you know that out of all the customers I’ve seen here, there isn’t
one
wearing shoes!”

The Spike frowned too. “Oh ... Well, yes. That’s the one concession Windy made to fashion, when he came here with Charo. In fact, just before I left, he reminded me to take mine off, in case this
was
where we
were going
—but really ...” Suddenly she giggled, drawing her own feet back under her chair (In his boots, Bron’s own toes began to tingle)—“they
are
terribly informal here. Windy said bare feet are ... well, encouraged—to enjoy the grass—but they really don’t
care
what you wear!”

“Oh.” Bron settled back; the majordomo came to flamb6 the bananas Foster—one red-gowned waiter pushed up a burning brazier, another a cart on which were the fruit, the brandies, the iced
crime
brulei.
The various courses had actually been served by these high-coiffed and scarlet-gowned women. (They had women as waiters, too! And in a place like this!) During his first months on Triton, Bron had gotten used to people in positions of authority frequently of an unexpected sex. But people in positions of service were something else.

Butter frothed in the copper skillet. The domo ran his paring knife around a ring of orange rind, of lemon peel: in with the praline, the sugar; then the deft stripping of the white bananas, peel already baked black; and, after a sprinkling of brandies and a tilting of the pan, a
whoooshl
of flame.

“You see,” the majordomo said, laughing, tilting the pan. “Madame ends up with fire, water, earth, and air nevertheless!”

The Spike beamed with wide eyes and clasped hands. “It’s quite a production.”

With his heels pressed tight together beneath his chair, Bron spooned among the tiny flames that now chased one another around his dessert plate and began
to eat
the most entrancing confection he had ever tasted, while the sweat rose again on his neck and back. What was
so
awful (the Spike was now blithely chatting to the black-clad domo and one of the scarlet-gowned waiters—of course ‘waitress’ was the word, but it seemed so out of place in a place like this—who were evidently amused by whatever it was she was saying), was that
they
knew exactly (for a second he searched the domo’s and the waiters’

faces for some sign, look, or gesture to confirm their knowledge; but no confirmation was needed: It was obvious from the entire situation’s play and interplay. Bron sank back into his chair), exactly what they were: That she was new to all this, which they found delightful; and that he was someone who, on another world, had probably been taken to some similar establishment a dozen-odd times under dubious circumstances but that he had not been near such a place for at least fifteen years. Miserably, he spooned up the tongue-staggering sweet.

There were cheeses to taper off. There was coffee. There were brandies. From somewhere he dredged up a reaction to the Spike’s resumption of her story about the affair with her student. What she had been telling him was important to her, he realized. Probably very important. But it
had
been unclear. And, what’s more, dull. There comes a point, Bron decided, where for your own safety you have to take that amount of dull for the same as dumb. Which, he found himself thinking, applied to most of the Universe.

“Do
you see?” she asked. “Do you
see?”

He said: “I think I do,” sincerely as he could manage.

She sighed, disbelieving.

He sighed back. After all,
she
was the actor.

She said: “I
hope
so.”

The bill was immense. But, true to his claim, Sam had given him enough to cover it several times over.

“I can see there won’t be any dishwashing for you tonight,” the woman waiter now attending the major-domo said cheerfully, as Bron counted out the money. Which the Spike didn’t understand. So Bron had to explain the woman’s hoary joke.

As they wandered down the grassy slope (“Can’t we take a long way?” the Spike exclaimed; the majordomo bowed: “But of course.”) the falls splashed the rocks to their left. To their right, at a stone-walled fire, an—

other scarlet-gowned waiter turned a spit where a carcass hissed and spat and glistened. The Spike peered, sniffed. “When I think of all the things we
didn’t
try—”

The majordomo said: “You must bring madame back again, sir.”

“But we won’t
he
here long enough!” she cried. “We’re leaving Earth in ... well, much too soon!”

“Ah, that
is
sad.”

Bron wished the domo would just lead them out. He considered giving him an absurdly small, final tip. At the edge of the great, fanning columns he gave him an absurdly large one.
(“Thank
you, sir!”) The Spike had apparently thought the whole, excruciating evening wonderful. But hadn’t that been the point?

Bron was very drunk, and very depressed. For one moment—he had stumbled at the edge of the purple ramp—he thought (But this
was
his territory) he might cry.

He didn’t.

It was a quiet trip back.

The single footman who accompanied them sat silent at her little table.

The Spike said it was wonderful to be so relaxed. And suggested they land just outside the town.

“Really,” the footman said, smiling at Bron’s final gratuity, “that isn’t necessary. You’ve been
more
than generous!”

“Oh, take it,” Bron said.

“Yes, do!” the Spike insisted. “Please! It’s so much fun!”

Again they walked down the ramp.

Dawn?

No; near-full moonlight.

The shuttle rose, dragging its shadow across the great bite in the road from the diggings.

“You know—” The Spike’s arms were folded: she kicked at her hem as they walked—“there’s something I’ve been trying to work into one of mv productions since I got here ... I saw it happen the first day I arrived. That was right at the tail-end of some packaged-holiday company’s three-day tour, and the place was
crawling
with earthie tourists—be glad you missed them! Some of the kids on the dig had gotten together right there, by the road, and started working on a rock. I mean, it was just an old piece of rock, but the tourists didn’t know that—they were always out there, m droves, watching. The kids were going at it with brushes, shellac, tape measures, and making sketches and taking photographs: you would have thought it was the Rosetta Stone or something. Anyway, the kids kept this up till they had a circle of twenty-five or thirty people standing around gawking and whispering. Then, on signal, everybody stepped very decorously back, and one of the tougher young ladies came forward and, with a single blow of the pickax, shattered it!

“And, without a word, they all went off to do other, more important things, leaving a bunch of very confused tourists.” The Spike laughed. “Now that’s
real
theater! Makes you wonder what we’re wasting our time on.” At the rope, she looked at him. “But then, how could we present the same thing? Actors playing at being archeological students playing at being actors—? No, it’s one whirligig too many.” She smiled, held out a hand. “Come. Wander with me a while among the ruins.” She stepped over the rope. He did too.

Dirt rolled from his boots, ten feet down into some brick-lined, lustral basin.

“A scar on the earth,” she said, “stripped down to show scars older still. I haven’t been walking in here since the first morning. I really wanted to take a look at it once more before we left.” She led him down a steep, crumbly slope. Sheets of polyethylene were pegged across the ground. Makeshift steps were shored up with board. “I love old things,” she said, “old ruins, old restaurants, old people.”

“We don’t
get
too many of any of them out where we live, do we?”

“But we’re here,” she objected. “On Earth. In Mongolia.”

He stepped over a pile of boards. “I think I could enjoy this world, if we just got rid of the earthies.”

“On a moonlight night like this—” She ran a thumb over the dirt wall beside them—“you should be able to think of something more original to
say
—”
and
frowned. She ran her thumb back.

More dirt sifted down.

“... what’s this?” She tugged at something in the wall, peered at it, tugged again. He said: “Shouldn’t you leave that for ... ?”

But was she scraping dirt and gravel loose with her fingers, tugging with her other hand. “I wonder what it could—” It came out in a shower of small stones (He saw them fall across her bare toes, saw her toes flex on the earth) leaving a niche larger than he expected for what she held: A verdigrised metal disk, about three inches across.

Bron, beside her, touched it with a finger: “It looks like some sort of ... astrolabe.”

“A what?”

“Yes, that part there, with all the cutouts; that’s the rhet. And that little plug in the middle is called the horse. Turn it over.”

She did.

“And those are ... I guess date scales.”

She held it up in the moonlight. “What’s it for—?” She tugged at part on the back, that, gratingly turned. “I’d better not force it.”

“It’s a combination star-map, calendar, surveying instrument, slide rule, and general all-purpose everything.”

“Why, it must be millions of years old!”

Bron scowled. “No ...”

“Thousands?”

“More likely two or three hundred.”

“Brian said it was very alkaline soil here.” The Spike turned the instrument, its delicate inscriptions caked with green rime. “Metal will keep for—well, an awfully long time. I once heard Brian say—” She looked up at the mounds and heaps around—“that sometime in the past all this was mountain and crag and rock ... I’ve got an idea—!” She handed Bron the disk and began to work her gauntlet down over her hand.

“This is a sort of all-purpose everything too, in the slide-rule/calendar line. I’m going to make a trade. Where did you learn all about ... what did you call it?”

“Astrolabes?”

“Did you have them on Mars when you were a kid?”

“No, I just ... I don’t know. Shouldn’t you—?”

The gauntlet, with its calibrated rings, just fit the niche. She packed three handfuls of dirt after it.

“That doesn’t look very—”

“I should hope not!” She glanced back. “It wouldn’t be any fun if they didn’t find it.” She reached down, picked up a trowel leaning on a pail by his foot, and poked a few stones further in. “There—” She turned back to him. The trowel clattered into the pail—“now come with me ...” Once more she led him among the excavations. There was a conversation, far more complicated than the little labyrinth they wandered, in which she explained both that she’d had a marvelous time but that, no (when he put his arm around her shoulder), she wouldn’t go to bed with him that night; apparently she meant it, too, which made him angry at first, then guilty, and then just confused—she kept evoking motivations he couldn’t quite follow. He tried getting physical twice, but the second time (when he was really horny), she elbowed him in the ribs, hard, and left.