ing. But there was none of the plastic good will that crusted a gathering at Philip’s, that you wanted to break with a sledge. Parties this side of the license-line were simply going to be more relaxed, more informal, more at ease. There was nothing you could do.

Over the next half hour he mulled over plans of asking her (whom he could just see out of the corner of his eye, but whom he could feel, tucked warmly under his arm) to abandon her life with the commune and come away with him to—what? He did want to do something for her. Finally, he contented himself with evolving a sort of sexual cadenza, a series of caresses, acts, positions, of mounting intensity, to perform with her when they should return to her room—and in a lazy moment when no one was talking to her, he turned to mouth against her ear: “Come ... let me take you.”

“What—?” she murmured.

“Come with me. Follow close. Do what I do ...” and led her into the hall.

The lovemaking was splendid—though only halfway through the list, she implored him to stop. “It’s marvelous,” she whispered. “It’s wonderful. But you’ll kill me!” He had, he realized, let his imagination run away. Minutes later, he too was exhausted. Wrapped around each other, the arms of each straining around each other’s gasped breaths, Bron waited for sleep ... floated up toward it, a bit jerkily (like that inane trapeze, rising into the dark), each gasp.

And still the disappointment—certainly they were both physically satisfied. Was it just that he hadn’t completed his scenario? Was it all some silly, essentially aesthetic flaw, some missed cue, some flubbed entrance, some inessential malfunctioning prop no one in the audience could possibly be aware of? But the audience was only one—And what had she done that he was able to see her less and less clearly, while he thought of her more and more in terms from her work, in words his own tongue had tasted first in her mouth?

He took another breath and was engulfed in sleep, immobilizing as methane ice—and woke from it two hours later, manic with energy, incredibly anxious to leave (he had to get home to change; you couldn’t wear a get-up like this to the office two days in a row), which was all right with her, she was explaining while he pulled on his gloves, put on his mask, pulled the cloak around his shoulders, because she wanted to get ready before—

But he was at the door, wishing her Good Luck on her trip. And she was still in bed, laughing her smooth laugh, and wishing him Good Luck on his.

Bron hurried through the quiet, unlicensed streets.

On the torn, rubber floor-mat of the vandalized booster booth (why had he stopped to look inside it again? He still wasn’t sure) lay pieces of paper. Already knowing what was on their undersides (the print just showed through), he picked one up, let the curtain fall and stuffed the flyer into one of his secret pockets (where, through his glove, he felt the package he’d been carrying around for Alfred all evening), entered the green-lit, scrawled-over tile, and stepped out under green (for licensed) street coordinates, onto pink, licensed pavement.

Between the high roofs the sensory shield, dark blue, blushed here and there with silver. He tried to remember what they had said on parting and found it oddly fuzzy—which was when he realized how clearly he remembered everything else, starting from the performance and ending with that moment when, entwined, they had slept.

The Spike was going. Today. So it was stupid to mull on it.

But each incident of the night, with its disappointment still intact, as well as its security, its relaxation, its almost unbearable pleasure, came back with such clarity something caught in his throat at each image. (Only smells usually returned memories to him that vividly.) Three times, on his way to the all-night Transport Station in the Plaza of Light, he stopped still on the street. And four times, as he sat, staring out of the window at Tethys’ galaxy of predawn stars, drop—

ping behind into the blue (like some flight to Neriad, and then on ...) he came near tears.

“... to bother you at this hour, but I just wanted to get you your stuff as soon as possible, while it was still on my mind, you know? In case you ... well, you’ve got it now.” Up the inch-wide door-crack ran a flesh colored ribbon. At the top of it was tousled hair and a single, green, red-rimmed eye. At the bottom, after various mottlings, modelings, and creases, were thick veins and dirty toenails. “Okay.” The door clicked closed.

Bron turned in the quiet hallway, walked across to his own room, pulling off his gloves—for a moment he looked at his own, colorful, well-cared-for fingers—took off his mask, and shouldered inside.

The melancholy left after three more hour’s sleep.

The energy (and vividness) remained all the way to work, till, by three o’clock (he’d skipped lunch), when he was going over the Day Star’s preprogram specifications yet again, it hit him: P would have to intersect less than half of Not-P (as well as pieces of Q, R, and S, while cleaving T); also it must surround more than half of it; and be tangent to it at not less than seven (which had been self-evident) and not more than forty-four (which had been the bitch!) points. That was getting somewhere.

Immensely pleased, he marched to Audri’s office with his find.

“Great,” Audri said, looking up from her desk. “For a reward you get a two-week vacation.”

Bron said, “Mmmm?”

Audri leaned back and put her hands behind her head. “I said you get two weeks off, starting tomorrow.”

“I don’t under—” Suddenly he remembered some vague thing she’d said yesterday about “threatening”: “Hey, look, now! That girl got another job. I mean, I saw her, later, and she’s all right!”

Audri frowned. “What girl are you—Oh, for crying out loud, Bron! Don’t give me any of your hard-time crap.” Her hands came down on the desk. “I can’t take it today. People are being laid off all over the whole hegemony. If you’d been at lunch, you’d’ve heard!”

“Well, I didn’t want lunch,” he protested, automatically. “I wanted to work. That’s how I got the—”

She stopped him with lightly closed lids. “Look.” They opened. “You can either take a two-week vacation with eight percent reduction in credit for the duration—”

“Eight percent!”

“—or quit. Half a dozen people have. I’ve got to take ten days off myself. And, I’ve got to think of something to do with the kids.”

Although Bron liked Audri, he didn’t like her three children. When, from time to time, they came to the office, he found them precocious, presumptuous, and obdurate. She lived with them in a gay, women’s co-op (not a commune—room, food, and work arrangements were friendly but formal) in an unpretentious spiral tower a unit from Bron’s own squat, blocky building. With none of the laminated ostentation of Philip’s mul-tisexed, on-the-Ring dwelling, nor the insistently tatty quaintness of a u-1 sector domicile, it was the most comfortable home he had visited on Tethys. All three visits, in fact had left him strangely relaxed and, strangely, depressed—but it had taken him three visits to realize they were two reactions.

Bron swallowed (and forgot) his next protest.

“We don’t have to get hysterical yet, I suppose,” Audri said. “It’s only eight percent—this time. And just for two weeks. They want to make everything look like its working at full capacity, only that people just all happen to be off doing something else.”