“No. You’re a type like the rest of us.”

“—or maybe the government’s just—” Bron turned up his hands and shrugged—“wrong again ... ?” He meant it be annoying.

But Sam was apparently finished with being annoyed. He laughed out loud. “Maybe—” and began to place the screens.

“Hello, Alfred.” Lawrence’s voice came loudly and cheerfully from the middle of the room.

Bron and Sam looked up.

Across the commons, Alfred hurried toward the balcony stairs.

“I said, ‘Hello, Alfred,’” Lawrence (who had apparently been on his way to join the game) repeated. One wrinkled fist rested on his parchment-pale hip.

Alfred, at the steps’ foot, a hand on the banister, twisted around. On his black suspender straps large, red letters sagged, behind and before. “Urn ...” he said. “Oh ... Ummm ...” He half-nodded, then darted up, ‘Q’ scarlet between his shoulder blades.

Lawrence came over. “The horrible thing is, he’s improving. I’ve been going through this every day now for—what is it? Four months? If you speak to him twice, now, loudly and distinctly, he’ll actually look at you. Pauses even. Sometimes even grunts a little. And the general behavior syndrome is no longer that of complete inarticulate terror. The first thirty times, by count, he just pointed his nose straight ahead and ran faster. At this rate, I estimate, he may reach the state of acceptable human animal—not outstanding, mind you: just acceptable—in, oh, perhaps two hundred and fifty years.” Lawrence came around the table, regarding the board. “Even with regeneration treatments, he won’t last that long. Mmm ... I see there’s a war on.”

Bron sat back. “Why don’t you just lay off him ... leave him alone.”

Lawrence grunted and sat next to Sam, who moved over for him. “Sam and I are the best friends either of you two ambient social disaster areas ever had. By the way, when are you going to break down and fuck me?”

“Do you proposition Alfred in the same, warmhearted, friendly manner, from time to time?”

“Heaven forbid!” Lawrence turned a switch; the grid flickered over the board. “That’s at least three hundred years off. / may not last that long!” which cracked Sam up, though Bron didn’t think it was so funny. Lawrence pulled at the wrinkled folds under his chin, then reached out and adjusted two Queens. “I think those were there, actually. Otherwise, the two of you seem to have done pretty well. All right, now—Get away from me! Get away—!” That was to Sam, who was still laughing. “You’re both playing against me now—don’t think by sidling up like that you’ll get any advantages.” Bron found himself remembering the Spike’s comment on political homosexuals ... Sam changed his seat.

Lawrence picked up the pack and dealt. “With all the girls Alfred is constantly sneaking into his room—and why he feels he has to sneak, / shall never know—he should give up that ridiculous computer course his social worker’s had him training at for the last two months—I mean, he doesn’t like it and won’t finish it—and go to Earth, or someplace where it’s legal, and become a prostitute.” Lawrence nodded knowingly toward Bron. “Doing it on an accepted basis for a while might be exactly what he needs, don’t you think?”

It was the first Bron had heard of the computer course, which was annoying. On the other hand, there were some things about Alfred Lawrence didn’t know (if Lawrence thought Alfred could possibly go professional), which pleased him. Annoyance conflicting with pleasure produced a noncommittal grunt.

“You know,” Sam said, fanning the cards, “you are a patronizing bastard, Lawrence.”

Which increased Bron’s pleasure.

“I guess Mars is the only place where it is legal on the scale he’d need,” Lawrence went on, oblivious. “And of course he can’t go to Mars or Earth or anywhere like that, because of the war.”

Bron looked at their joint hand, reached over and reversed two of the cards.

Sam said: “Lawrence, I have to make an official trip to Earth; I’m leaving tomorrow. Do you want to come along? It’s on government credit: you’d have to share my cabin.”

“Lord!” Lawrence protested. “You mean be shut up in the same five-by-five with you while we fell into the sun, with the hope that a very small ocean on a very small world just happened to be in the way? No, thank you! I’d be crawling the walls!”

Sam shrugged and glanced at Bron. “You want to come?”

“Not with you.” Bron was thinking about work, actually—when, with a sting, he remembered that, for the next two weeks, he didn’t have any work. A trip away from this whole, mean, depressing moon? What better way to wipe her out of mind. “You could always take Alfred.” He wished Sam would ask again.

“Ha!” Sam said, without humor. “Let Lawrence work on him for another two hundred and fifty years. No ... the experience would be good for the kid. But I’ve got an entourage quota this trip—and there is the rest of the party coming along to consider. I need somebody fairly presentable, who can be at least vaguely sociable; and can also entertain themselves if they have to. You two, yes. Alfred, I’m afraid—” Sam shook his head.

“Why don’t you go, Bron?” Lawrence asked.

“Why don’t you?” Bron asked back, trying to sound sociable; it had a vaguely sullen ring.

“Me? Cooped up together with that body?” Lawrence studied the board. “It’s bad enough just trying to keep my self-control watching it loll around here in the commons. No; masochism no longer interests me, I’m afraid.”

“Well, it’s not—” (Sam had separated three cards out, apparently having decided on the first meld)—“as if I were born with it.”

“No, you go with him, Bron,” Lawrence said. “I’m just too old for hopping around the Solar System. And in time of plague to boot.”

“If I go, who’ll play your silly game?”

“Lawrence can teach Alfred,” Sam said.

“Perish the thought ... there’s as much chance of my teaching Alfred vlet as there is of Sam’s taking him to Earth. I think our objections are about the same.”

“We’ll be leaving tomorrow morning,” Sam said. “We’ll be back in twelve days. You’ll still have a couple of days back here to do nothing in, before you have to get back to work at—”

“How did you—?”

“Hey!” Lawrence said. “You don’t have to knock the board onto the floor!” He reset two pieces that Bron, starting, had overturned.

Sam, still looking at the cards, had that mocking smile, “Sometimes the government’s right.” His glance flicked up. “You coming?”

“Oh, all right.” Bron reached over and pulled out the four-car4 meld in the high Flames Sam had overlooked; which, for the first half hour of play, at any rate, gave them a decided advantage—before Lawrence, by adroit manipulation of all the gods and astral powers, regained his customary edge.

It was as if someone suddenly turned off the sensory shield.

To the left, jagged methane faces made scenery wild as that of some thousand ice-operas.

To the right the gritty rubble, which made ninety-six percent of Triton one of the dullest landscapes in the Solar System, stretched to the horizon.

They sped between, inside the clear conveyer tunnel. London Point dragged away behind. Sharp stars pierced the black.

Settled in his seat, with the two curved canopies of clear plastic over them (the stationary one of the car, and the tunnel above rushing backward at one hundred seventy-five kilometers an hour), Bron turned to the left (Sam was also sitting there), thought about ice-farmers, and asked: “I still wonder why you decided to take me.”

“To get you off my back,” Sam said affably. “Maybe it’ll lead you to some political argument that seriously challenges my own position. Right now, though, yours is so immature there’s nothing I can say to you, except make polite noises—however much those noises might sound to you like ideas. This way you’ll have a chance to see just the tiniest fraction of the government close up and check out what it’s doing. The government usually is right. In my experience that ‘usually’ is ninety-nine percent with lots more nines after the decimal point. I don’t know: maybe seeing a bit of the real thing will waylay your fears and shut you up. Or it may send you off screaming. Scream or silence, either’ll be more informed. Personally, with you, I’ll find either a relief.”