“Ah ha!” the Spike said. “I think we have just gotten down to a gritty—or at least a nitty.”

He looked at her white mask sharply. “Why?”

“Your whole tone of voice changed. Your body carriage shifted. Even with your mask, you could see your head jutting forward so, and your shoulders pulled back into position—in the theater, you have to learn a lot about what the body has to say concerning the movements of the emotions—”

“Only I’m not into theater. I’m into metalogics. What about those of us who don’t know what the body has to say about the emotions? Or the paths of the comets? Put it in terms that / know!”

“Well, I’m not into metalogics. But you seem to be using some sort of logical system where, when you get near any explanation, you say: ‘By definition my problem is insoluble. Now that explanation over there would solve it. But since I’ve defined my problem as insoluble, then by definition that solution doesn’t apply.’ I mean, really, if you ... No. Wait. You want me to say what happens in your terms? Well, you hurt, for one thing. Yes, people like me can sit down and map out how you are managing to inflict a good deal of that hurt on yourself. I suspect, at your better moments, you can too—”

“In your terms they’re my better moments. In my terms they’re my worst—because that’s when the hurt seems to be the most hopeless. The rest of the time I can at least come up with a hope, however false, that things will just get better.”

“In your terms, then, you just hurt. And—” She sighed—“from time to time—I mean I know how much Miriamne wanted that job; she’s probably a good number of credit slots below you and me—you hurt other people.”

They were silent for a dozen, rustling steps.

“You were asking me before if being a prostitute had done me any harm. I was just thinking. Your friend Miriamne thought the reason I’d gotten her fired was because she hadn’t been interested when I’d made a pass at her. Well, maybe that’s one bad thing hustling did do to me. You see, the one, degrading thing that happens to you again and again and again in that kind of job is people—the men who employ you as much as the women you’re there to service—is people constantly give everything you do, just because you’re selling it, some sort of sexual motivation. When you’re in the business, you learn to live with it. But it’s the difference between them and you—you get it in jokes, you get it in tips, you get it in jobs you’re shuttled away from. And it never has anything to do with any real reason you might do anything real at all. Ask your friend Windy, he’ll tell you what I mean: when I came out here, I’d heard all about the satellites’ sexual freedom—it’s the golden myth of two worlds. When I left Mars, I promised myself that was something I’d never do to any other person, as long as I lived; it had just been done to me too many times. Well, maybe being a prostitute made me over-sensitive, but when Miriamne seriously said that, to me, this morning—that I’d gotten her canned because she wouldn’t put out—well, it just threw me! It isn’t something you find out here all that frequently, and, yes, that represents an improvement in my life. But when it is done, it doesn’t make it any more pleasant. It’s not something I could possibly do to anyone else. It’s not something I like having done to me ... As much as I dislike her, all the way over here I’ve been feeling sorry for her. But if she is the type who would do that to another person ... hell, do it to me, I wonder if I have the right to feel sorry for her ... You know?”

“On one level,” the Spike said, her voice projecting an expression of seriousness as intricate as the former^ projected smile, “everything you say makes perfect sense. On another, very profound one, I do not understand a single word. Really, I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone like you before; and I’ve known a few. Your recounting of everything, from Philip to Miriamne—his women? her men? In fact you didn’t even say the sec—

ond one; I wonder if that’s significant?—just sounds like a vision from another world!”

“I am from another world—a world you’re at war with. And yes, we did things differently there.”

“A world I hope very much we’re not at war with.”

“All right, a world we’re not at war with yet. Do you think my inability to hold on to the fine points is just another example of my Martian confusion?”

“I think your confusion hurts other people.”

He scowled behind the mask. “Then people like me should be exterminated!”

Her masked eyes glittered. “That would be a solution; I thought we were discounting those from the start.”

He kept scowling and was silent.

After a few more steps, the Spike said: “So, now that you know all about me, what will you do with this precious information?”

“Huh? Oh, just because I’ve been carrying on about myself? Well, we’re in the unlicensed sector, aren’t we—”

“I would have called it complaining about your subordinates and bragging about your boss, but never mind.”

“But I do know all about you,” he said. “At least, a lot—you’re the brat of nine, Ganymede ice-farmers; probably as healthy and wholesome an upbringing as you could get in Philip’s crowd—”

“Oh, more wholesome in some ways. Far more neurotic, I’m sure, in others—in my terms.”

“—and now you’re living the romantic life as a theatrical producer in the swinging, unlicensed sector of the big city, where you’ve gained fame and, if not fortune, at least a government endowment. What else is there to know?”

The white, plumed skull let a single syllable of laughter, almost a bark (he found it intensely ugly): a string of smooth ones followed it. “Well, you know at least one other thing about me.”

“What?”

“I have fair tolerance as a listener. Tell me, do you think people who spend time, for whatever reason, in the Goebels, run to a particular personality type? I ask, because I must admit I find, here and there, similarities between your personality and Fred’s. Oh, nothing specific, but just a general approach to life.”

“I don’t think I’m flattered.”

“Oh, but of course! You must know everything about Fred too ... I mean I don’t think it has anything to do with prostitution itself. He wasn’t one. And anyway, neither of you is the least like Windy. He was—but then, like you said, Earth is a different matter.”

“You just don’t understand.” Bron sighed. “Help me. Take me. Make me whole.”

“I’d have to learn something about you first.” Her gaze was all white satin and sequins. “And I pay you the compliment of assuming I haven’t even begun.”

“I bet you think you could—what did you say?—sit down and map out how I’m managing to inflict a good deal of the hurt on myself.”

“Your presumptions about what I think are so monumental as to be touching.” Still holding his hand, she moved ahead. Suddenly, she looked back, and whispered: “Let me help you! Let me take you! Let me make you whole!”

“Huh?”

She raised a gloved forefinger against the veils before her lips. “Come with me. Follow close. Do what I do. Exactly. But on no account speak!”

“What do you ... ?”

But she shhhhed him again, released his hand, and, in waves of white, darted down the steps beside them.

In waves of black, he followed her.

She crossed a cindery stretch and, immediately, hurried up a badly repaired stairway between walls scarcely wide enough for his shoulders.

She stopped at the top.

He stopped behind her. One sequin lapping the edge of his right eye-hole deviled his vision with scarlet glitter.

And her white plumes and satin headpiece had gone flickering red, brighter than any faulty coordinate sign could dye them.