“Biography withheld on request.”

That made him smile.

He knew what she looked like:

“Description” wasn’t necessary.

He pressed Critical and the screen filled with print: “The Spike is the working name of Gene Trimbell, by common concensus the most striking of the young playwright/director/producers to emerge at the beginning of the current decade, many of whom were associated with the Circle (which see) at Lux on Iapetus. She attracted early attention with her stunning productions of such classics as Britannicus, The Great God Brown, Vatzlav, and A.C./D.C, as well as a one-woman videotape production of Les Paravents, in which she took all ninety-eight roles. While still in her early twenties, she directed the now legendary (and still controversial) twenty-nine-hour opera cycle by George Otuola, Eridani (which see), that involved coordinating over three hundred actors, dancers, singers, two eagles, a camel, and the hundred-foot, flaming geyser of the title role. If her directorial work in traditional forms has tended toward the ambitious and monumental, her own creative pieces are characterized by great compression and brevity. She is, today, most widely known for her work in micro-theater, for which she formed her own fluid company three years ago. Frequently, her brief, elliptical, and intense works have been compared to the music of the twentieth-century composer Webern. Elsewhere, another critic has said: ‘Her works do not so much begin and end; rather, they suddenly push familiar objects, emotions, and actions, for often as little as a minute or less, into dazzling, surreal luminescence, by means of a consortment of music, movement, speech, lights, drugs, dance, and decor.’ Her articles on the theater (collected under the title Primal Scenes and represented as a series of exhaustive readings of the now famous epigraph from Lacan which heads each piece: The narration, in fact, doubles the drama with a commentary without which no mise en scene would be possible. Let us say that the action would remain, properly speaking, invisible from the pit—aside from the fact that the dialogue would be expressly and by dramatic necessity devoid of whatever meaning it might have for an audience:—in other words, nothing of the drama could be grasped, neither seen nor heard, without, dare we say, the twilighting which the narration in each scene casts on the point of view that one of the actors had while performing it?’), have given many people the impression that she is a very cerebral worker; yet the emotional power of her own work is what the most recent leg of her reputation stands on. Even so, many young actors and playwrights (most of whom have, admittedly, never seen, or seen little of, her work) have taken the Scenes as something of a manifesto, and her influence on the current and living art of drama has been compared with that of Maria Irene Fornes, Antonin Artaud, Malina, or Col-ton. Despite this, her company remains small, her performances intimate—though seldom confined in a formal theatrical space. Her pieces have been performed throughout the Satellites, dazzling many a passer-by who, a moment before, did not even know of their existence.”

The index down the side of the screen listed a double-dozen more critical pieces. He read a random three and, in the middle of a fourth, switched the console off.

He pulled the door of the room to behind him—it wouldn’t close all the way. Frowning, he turned to examine it. The lintel across the top had strained a millimeter or so from the wall. The evening’s gravity ‘wobble’? He looked at the console through the door’s now permanent crack. How could you ask General Information about ihaft

Barefoot, he padded up the hall, suddenly tired.

Climbing naked into bed, he thought: Artists ... ? Well, not quite so bad as craftsmen. Especially when they were successful. Still ... of course he would go and fixate on someone practically famous; though, in spite of Lawrence, he’d never heard of her. Depressed, and wondering if he’d ever see her again, he fell asleep.

Audri, the boss he did like, put a hand on each of the cubicle’s doorjambs and, standing at all sorts of Audri-like angles, said (with an expression he didn’t like at all): “This is Miriamne—Bron, do something with her,” then left.

The young woman, who, a moment back, had been behind her (Miriamne?) was dark, frizzy-haired, intelligent looking, and sullen.

“Hi.” Bron smiled and thought: I’ll have an affair with her. It came, patly, comfortably, definitively—a great release: That should get the crazed, blonde creature with the rough, gold-nailed hands (and the smooth, slow laugh) off his mind. He’d drifted to sleep thinking about her; he’d woken up thinking about her. He’d even contemplated (but decided, finally, no) walking to work through the u-1.

Miriamne, in the doorway, was wearing the same short cape in dove-gray the Spike had worn, was bare-breasted, as the Spike had been, and, more to the point, immediately recalled a job-form he had filled out seventeen years ago: “Describe the preferred, physical type you feel most assured of your performance with.” His preferred description had been, patly: “Short, dark, small-boned, big-hipped.” And Miriamne, short, dark, small-boned, and just a hair’s breadth shy of cal-lipygous, was looking somewhere about five inches to the left, and two inches above, his right ear.

At his eyebrow? No ...

Bron rose from his chair, still smiling. She was the sort of woman he could be infinitely patient with in bed (if she needed patience), as it is often rather easier to be patient with those with whom you feel secure in your performance: he experienced a pleasant return of professional aplomb. Hopefully, he thought, she lives in a nice, friendly, mixed co-op so she doesn’t lack for conversation (conversation in sexualizationships was not his strong point). Women who accepted this he had occasionally grown quite fond of. And there was something in her expression that assured him he could never, really, care. How much better could it be? Rewarding for the body, challenging to the intellect, and no strain on the emotions. He came around, sat on the corner of his desk—interposing himself between her and whatever she was now staring at behind him—and asked: “Have you any idea what exactly they expect me to do with you?” Two weeks, he decided, at minimum—at least it’ll occupy my mind. It might even run three or four months—at maximum. Who knows, they might even eventaUy like each other.

She said, “Put me to work, I suppose,” and frowned off at the memos shingling the bulletin board.

He asked: “What exactly are you into?”

She sighed, “Cybralogs,” in a way (she was still looking at the board) that suggested she’d said it many times that morning.

Still, he smiled and, a flicker of bewilderment playing through his voice, asked: “Cybralogs ... ?” and, when she still didn’t look, asked also: “If your field is Cybralogs, why in the world did they send you to Metalogics?”

“I suspect—” Her glance caught his—“because they have five letters in common, three of them even in the same order. As all those war posters are constantly reminding us, we aren’t in the world. We’re on the last major moon of the Solar System, the only one that’s managed to stay out of the stupidest and most expensive war in history—just managed. And after last night, one wonders how long that’ll be for! Our economic outlets and inlets are so strained we’ve been leaning on the border of economic crisis for a year—and from the wrong side at that. Everyone in a position of authority is hysterical, and everyone else is pretending to be asleep: Have you known anything to function as it should in the past six months? Anything? I mean, after last night—”