“But you have your educated opinion which direction I’m likely to go, don’t you?”

“That’s your fmeducated guess.”

Bron watched ice-crag pull away from ice-crag, kilometers beyond Sam’s shoulder. “And the government really doesn’t mind if you take me along? Suppose I find out some confidential top-secret information?”

“The category doesn’t even exist any more,” Sam said. “Confidential is the most restricted you can get; and you can see that in any ego-booster booth.”

Bron frowned. “People have been smashing the booths,” he said, pensively. “Did the government tell you that?”

“Probably would have if I’d asked.”

Broken glass; torn rubber; his own face distorted in the bent chrome slip: the image returned, intense enough to startle: “Sam, really—why does the government want someone like me along on a trip like this?”

“They don’t want you. I want you. They just don’t mind my taking you along.”

“But—”

“Suppose you do find out something—though what that could be I don’t even know. What could you do with it? Run shrieking through the streets of Tethys, rending your flesh and rubbing ies in the wounds? I’m sure there’s a sect that’s into that already. We simply live in what the sociologists call a politically low-volatile society. And as I think I said: the political volatility of people who live in single-sex, nonspecified sexual-preference co-ops tends to be particularly low.”

“In other words, given my particular category, my general psychological type, I’ve been declared safe.”

“If you want to look at it that way. You might, however, prefer to express it a little more flatteringly to yourself: We trust most of our citizens in this day and age not to do anything too stupid.”

“Both sets of words still model the same situation,” Bron said. “Metalogics, remember? Hey, you know, before I left Mars and came to Triton to be a respectable metalogician for a giant computer hegemony, I was a male hustler in the bordellos of Bellona’s Goebels. But then I got these papers, see ... What does your government, out here where both prostitution and marriage are illegal, think about thatV

Sam pushed his soft-soled, knee-high boots out into the space between the empty seats. “Before / came to Triton, I was a rather unhappy, sallow-faced, blonde, blue-eyed (and terribly myopic) waitress at Lux on Ia-petus, with a penchant for other sallow, blonde, blue-eyed waitresses, who, as far as the young and immature me could make out then, were all just gaga over the six-foot-plus Wallunda and Katanga emigrants who had absolutely infested the neighborhood; I had this very high, very useless IQ and was working in a very uninspiring grease-trough. But then I got this operation, see—?”

Bron tried not to look shocked.

Sam raised an eyebrow, gave a small nod.

“Did you find it a satisfactory transition?” Sex changes were common enough, but since (as Bron remembered some public channeler explaining) some of the “success” of the operation might be vitiated by admission, one did not hear about specific ones frequently.

Sam gave a dark, thick-lipped leer. “Very. Of course, I was much younger then. And one’s tastes shift, if not exactly change. Still, I visit the old neighborhood ...” (Bron thought: Family man, high-powered, big, black, and handsome Sam ... ?) “The point is: the government,” Sam went on, in a perfectly reasonable tone (in which Bron now found himself listening for the lighter overtones in that security-provoking bass), “is simply not interested in my rather common sexual history or your rather peculiar one. And you had told me about your whoring days. I admit, I was surprised the first time. But shock value diminishes with repetition.”

“You hadn’t told me,’⁹ Bron said, sullenly.

Sam raised the other eyebrow. “Well ... you never asked.”

Bron suddenly didn’t feel like talking any more, unsure why. But Sam, apparently comfortable with Bron’s moody silences, settled back in his (her? No, “his.” That’s what the public channels suggested at any rate) seat and looked out the window.

They sped through the dim, glittering landscape of green ice, gray rock, and stars.

Perhaps a kilo away, Bron saw something he thought was the Space Port that Sam said wasn’t. A minute later Sam pointed out at something he said was.

“Where?” Bron couldn’t see.

“Over there. You can just catch a glimpse of the edge, right between those two whatyamacallits.”

“I still can’t tell where you’re—” at which point they plunged into covered tunnel; lights came on in the car. The engine whine intruded on Bron’s awareness by lowering pitch. They slowed. They stopped. Then it was green, pastel corridors and opulently-appointed waiting rooms that, while you had a drink and were introduced to people—the rest of Sam’s entourage—trundled quietly along invisible tracks, were hauled up unseen lifts—people laughed and glanced down at the geometrically patterned carpet when, once, the floor shook—and you were guided to the proper door by the little colored lights and the people in the party who were obviously old hands at this sort of thing. (There was no one resembling a steward around; but Bron wasn’t sure if that was “standard tourist” or just “government.”) He was enthusiastically telling someone who appeared to be enthusiastically listening about his own emigration trip to the Outer Satellites twelve years back, which “... let me tell you, was a different matter entirely. I mean, the whole three thousand of us were drugged to the gills through the whole thing: and what fa in this drink, anyway—” when he realized, in the midst of laughing, that six months ... six weeks from now, he probably would never think of any of these affable George’s and Angela’s and Aroun’s and Enid’s and Hotai’s again. I mean, he thought, it’s a political mission: nobody’s even mentioned politics! I haven’t even asked Sam what the mission fa! Is that, he wondered as they walked along another corridor (some of the group were riding smoothly on the moving strip down the corridor’s side; others ambled beside it, chatting and laughing) what Sam meant by politically low-volatile?

In one of the larger, more opulent, mobile rooms, with luxurious reclining chairs on its several, carpeted levels, there were more drinks, more music, more conversation ...

“This is all marvelous, Sam!” someone called out. “But when do we get on the ship?”

Someone else lifted their ankle to check a complex chronometer strapped there: “I believe we’ve been on it for the last two minutes and forty seconds,” which drew a group Ooooo! and more laughter.

“Take off in seventeen minutes.” Sam came down the scroll-railed steps. “This is my cabin. Just take any couch you want.”

Over the next ten minutes Bron learned that the blonde, blue-eyed woman on the couch next to Bron’s was part of Sam’s family commune, and that the tan, plump girl, going around saying, “Drugs? Drugs, everyone?” and clapping her hand to the side of the neck of anyone who smiled and nodded, was their daughter.

“You mean you really can do it without drugs?” someone asked.

“Well, Sam means for us to watch the take-off,” the blonde woman said, lying back on her couch and craning around to see the speaker. “So I’d suggest you take them—it can be a little unsettling, otherwise.”

“That’s exactly why I asked,” the other speaker said.

When the plump girl got to Bron’s couch, on an impulse he smiled and shook his head. “No, thank you ...” But her hand clapped him anyway; then she jerked it away and looked distressed:

“Oh, I’m dreadfully sorry—You said ‘No’—!”

“Urn ... that’s all right,” Bron mumbled.

“Well, maybe you didn’t get very much—” and she darted off to the next couch.

A buzzer sawed through the cabin. A lot of the more opulent things—lighting fixtures, wall sculptures, shelves, ornamental tables—folded up or down or side—