Anybody winning?” Sam came down the narrow, iron steps, slapping the bannister with a broad, black hand. It rang across the common room.
Half a dozen men sitting about in reading cubicles, tape niches, or discussion corners looked up, smiled. Three called out greetings.
“Hey there ... !” Sam nodded back to the others and swung around the newel. He had a large, magnificent body which he always wore (rather pretentiously, Bron thought) naked. “How’ve you been going along since I left?” He came over to stand at the table’s edge and, with black fists on narrow, black hips, gazed down over the arrayed pieces.
Bron hated Sam.
At least, of the three people in the co-op he considered, from time to time, his friends, Sam was the one who annoyed him most.
“He’s getting pretty good,” Lawrence said. “Bron’s got quite a feel for vlet, I think. You’ll have to try some to catch up with him from where you were last time.”
“I’m still not in the same league with Lawrence there.” Bron had once actually traced the development of his dislike. Sam was handsome, expansive, friendly with everyone (including Bron), even though his work kept him away eleven days out of every two weeks. All that bluster and backslapping?
Just a standard, annoying type, Bron had decided; but it was mitigated somewhat because, after all, Sam
was
just your average hail-fellow-well-met, trying to get along (and, besides, he
was
friendly to Bron). About a month and a half later—revelation came slowly because Sam was away so much—Bron began to realize Sam was
not
so average. Under all that joviality, there was a rather amazing mind. Bron had already noticed, from time to time, that Sam had a great deal of exact information about a range of subjects which, with each new example of it, had grown, imperceptibly, astonishing. Then once, when Bron had been absently complaining about one of the more tricky metalogical programs at work, Sam had made a rather quiet, rather brilliant suggestion. (Well, no—Bron reminded himself; it
wasn’t
brilliant. But it was damned clever.) Bron had asked: Was Sam at one time into metalogics? Sam had explained: No, but he had known that Bron was, so a few weeks back he’d picked up a couple of tapes on the subject, a few books; and he’d found a programmed
text
in General Info that he’d flipped through a few frames of. That’s all. Bron did
not
like that. But then, Sam was just a good-looking, friendly, intelligent guy doing his bit as some overworked salesman/consultant that took him racketing back and forth from Tethys to Lux on Titan to Lux on Iapetus to Callisto Port, or even to the seedy hotels and dormitories clustering on the cheaper sides of the city centers of Bellona, Port Luna, and Rio. Bron had once even
asked
Sam what he did; the answer, with a sad smile and a shaking head, had been: “I troubleshoot after some really
low-grade
crap.” Sam, Bron had decided, was as oppressed by the system as anyone else. Bron had been saying something of the sort to Lawrence when Lawrence had explained that “oppressed by the system” was just not Sam at all: Sam was
the
head of the Political Liason Department between the Outer Satellite Diplomatic Corps and Outer Satellite Intelligence; and had all the privileges (and training) of both: he had governmental immunity in practically every political dominion of the inhabited Solar System. Far from being “oppressed” by the system, Sam had about as much power as a person could have, in anything short of an elected position. Indeed, he had a good deal more power than any number of elected officials; it came home the next time Sam did: some outmoded zoning regulations had been plaguing the co-op and three others near them for more than a year (the mixed-sex co-ops, in which three-sevenths of the population lived, tended to get more reasonable treatment, someone had grumbled; someone else had grumbled that wasn’t true), and the construction for the laying of some new private-channel cable suddenly brought the zoning plan to the fore. Threatened with eviction again? But Sam, apparently, had walked into some office, asked to see three files, and instructed them to throw away half the contents of one of them; and there went the contradictory parts of the zoning regulations. As Lawrence said, “It would have taken the rest of us a year of petitions, injunctions, trials and what-all to get those zoning codes—that were illegal anyway—straightened out.” Bron didn’t like
that
either. But even if Sam was jovial, handsome, brilliant, and powerful, Sam was
still
living in a nonspecified co-op (nonspecified as to sexual preferences: there was a gay male co-op on the corner; a straight one three blocks away; yes, just over two fifths of the population lived in mixed co-ops, male/female/straight/gay, and there were
three
of those ranged elegantly one street beyond that, and a heterosexual woman’s co-op just behind them). If Sam had any strong sexual identifications, straight or gay, there would have been a dozen coops delighted to have him. The fact that Sam chose to live in an all-male nonspecific probably meant that, underneath the friendliness, the intelligence, the power, he was probably rotten with neurosis; behind him would be a string of shattered communal attempts and failed sexualizationships—like most men in their thirties who would choose such a place to live.
This
illusion lasted another month. No, one of the reasons that Sam was away for so long between visits (Sam explained one evening) was that he was part of a thriving family commune (the other fifth of the population) of five men, eight women, and nine children in Lux (on Iape-tus), the larger of the two satellite cities to bear the name.
Sam would spend a week there, three days here on Triton, and four days various other places, which is how his fortnights were divided up. At that, Bron (they were all, Bron, Sam, and Lawrence, drinking in one of the common room conversation niches) had challenged Sam (rather drunkenly): “Then what are you hanging out with a bunch of deadbeats, neurotics, mental retards, and nonaffectives like us for, six days a month? Does it make you feel superior? Do we remind you how
wonderful
you are?” (Several others in the commons had looked over; two, Bron could tell, were staunchly
not
looking.) Sam said, perfectly deadpan, “In the one-gender nonspecified co-ops, people tend to be a lot less political-minded. On the job, I’m in the middle of the Outer Satellite/Inner Worlds confusions twenty-nine hours a day. At one of your quote normal unquote co-ops, straight, gay, mixed, or single, it would be war talk all day long and I’d never have a moment’s peace.”
“You mean,” Bron had countered, “here at Serpent’s House we’re too tied up in ourselves to care
what
goes on in the rest of the universe?”
“You think so?” Sam asked, and considered: “I always thought we had a pretty good bunch of guys here.” And then, very wisely, Sam had excused himself from the argument—even Bron had to admit it was getting silly. And two hours later, Sam—in a way that didn’t seem wise or winning or ingratiating or anything unpleasant that Bron could put his finger on—stuck his head in Bron’s room, laughing, and said:
“Have you seen that thing that Lawrence has down in the commons room?” (Which Bron, indeed,
had
already seen.) “You better get down there before it explodes or takes off or something!” Sam laughed again, and went off somewhere else. On his way back to the commons, Bron had wondered, uncomfortably, if one of the reasons he disliked Sam so much wasn’t simply because Lawrence thought Sam was the Universe’s gift to humanity. (Am I
really
jealous of a seventy-four-year-old homosexual who, once a
month, gets
falling-down drunk and tries to put the make on me? he asked himself at the commons room door. No, it was easier to be friendly to Sam three days every two weeks than to entertain that idea seriously.)
What Lawrence had laid out on the green baize table was the vlet game.
Sam said: “Can you play this one with the grid—” And lowered an eyebrow at Bron—“or are you beyond that now?”
Bron said: “Well, I don’t know if—”
But Lawrence reached for one of the toggles in the card drawer. Across the landscape, pin-points of light picked out a squared pattern, thirty-three by thirty-three. “Bron could do with a few more gridded games I expect—” For advanced players (Lawrence had explained two weeks ago when Sam was last in) the grid was only used for the final scoring, to decide who had taken exactly what territory. In the actual play, however, elementary players found it helpful in judging those all-important 0’s. Bron had been contemplating suggesting that they omit it this game. But there it was; and the cities had been placed, the encampments had been deployed. The plastic Sea Serpent had been put, bobbing, into the sea. The Beast leered from its lair; Lawrence’s soldiers were set up along the river bank, his peasants in their fields, his royalty gathered behind the lines, his magicians in their caves. Bron said: “Sam, why don’t you play this one. I mean I’ve had the last two weeks to practice ...”
“No,” Sam said. “No, I want to watch. I’ve forgotten half the moves since Lawrence explained them to me anyway. Go on.” He took a meditative step backward and moved around to view the board from Bron’s side.
“Bron has been fretting over a new-found friend,” Lawrence said. “That’s why he’s being so sullen.”
“That’s just it.” Bron was annoyed at having his preoccupation labeled sullenness. “She didn’t seem very friendly to
me
at all.” He picked up the deck and shuffled, thinking: If that black bastard stands there staring over my shoulder the whole damn game—And resolved not to look up.
The hand Bron dealt himself was good. Carefully, he arranged the cards.
Lawrence rolled the dice out over the desert to begin play, bid five-royal, melded the Juggler with the Poet, discarded the three of Jewels and moved two of his cargo vessels out of the harbor into open waters.
Bron’s own throw yielded him a double six, a diamond three, with the three-eyed visage of Yildrith showing on the icosahedron. He covered Lawrence’s meld with the seven, eight, and nine of Storms, set the tiny mirrored screen, with the grinning face of Yildrith etched on it, four spaces ahead of Lawrence’s lead cargo ship, bid seven-common to cover Lawrence’s six-royal, discarded the Page of Dawn and took Lawrence’s three of Jewels with the Ace of Flames; his own caravan began the trek upriver toward the mountain pass at the Vale of K’hiri, where, due to the presence of a green Witch, all points scored there would be doubled.
Twenty minutes into the play, the red Courier was trapped between two mirrored screens (with the horned head of Zamtyl, and the many-tongued Arkrol, reflected back and forth to infinity); the scarlet Hero offered some help but was, basically, blocked with a transparent screen. On the dice a diamond two glittered amidst black ones and fives, and Lawrence was a point away from his bid; which meant an astral battle.
As they turned their attention to the three-dimensional board which dominated higher decisions (and each of the seven markers which they played there bore the frowning face of a goddess). Bron decided it was silly to sit there fuming at Sam’s standing behind him. He turned, to make some comment—
Sam was not at his shoulder.
Bron looked around.
Sam sat at one of the readers, in the niche with Freddie and Flossie, sorting through some microfiche cards. Bron sucked his teeth in disgust and turned back to Lawrence with a, “Really—”
—when the common room lamps dropped to quarter-brightness. (Lawrence’s wrinkled chin, the tips of his fingers, and the base of the green Magician he was
about to
place, glowed above the vlet board’s light.) A roaring grew overhead.
The lamps flickered once, then went out completely.
Everyone looked up. Bron heard several men stand. Across the domed skylight, dark as the room, a light streaked.
Sam was standing too, now. The room lights were still out and the lights on all the room’s readers were flickering in unison.
“What in the world—” someone who had the room next to Bron (and whose name, after six months, Bron still did not know) said.
“We’re not
in
the world—” Lawrence said, sharply even for Lawrence. As the room lights went on again, Bron realized with horror, excitement, or anticipation (he wasn’t sure which), the skylight was still black. Outside, the sensory shield was off!
“You know,” Sam said jovially—and loud enough for the others in the room to hear—“while you guys sit around playing war games, there
is
a war going on out there, that Triton is pretty close to getting involved in.” The joviality fell away; he turned from his reader and spoke out across the commons:
“There’s nothing to worry about. But we’ve had to employ major, nonbelligerent defensive action. The blackout was a powercut while energy was diverted to our major force. Those streaks across the sky were ionized vapor trails from low-flying scouting equipment—”
“Ours or theirs?” someone asked.
A few people laughed. But not many.
“Could be either,” Sam said. “The flickering here was our domestic emergency power coming in; and not quite making it—the generators need a couple of seconds to warm up. I would guess ...” Sam glanced up—“that the sensory shield will be off over the city for another three or four minutes. If anyone wants to go out and see what the sky really looks like from Tethys, now’s your chance. Probably not too many people will be out—”
Everyone (except three people in the corner), including Bron, rose and herded toward the double doors. Bron looked back among the voices growing around them. The three in the corner had changed their minds and were coming.
Coming out onto the dark roof, Bron saw that the roof beside theirs was already crowded. So was the roof across the way. As he glanced back, the service door on the roof behind them opened; dozens of women hurried out, heads back, eyes up.
Someone beside Bron said, “Lord, I’d forgotten there
were
stars!”
Around him, people craned at the night.
Neptune, visibly spherical, mottled, milky, and much duller than the striated turquoise extravaganza on the sensory shield, was fairly high. The sun, low and perhaps half a dozen times brighter than Sirius, looked about the size of the bottom of the vlet’s dice cup. (On the sensory shield it would be a pinkish glow which, though its vermilion center was tiny, sent out pulsing waves across the entire sky.) The atmosphere above Tethys was only twenty-five hundred feet thick; a highly ionized, cold-plasma field cut it off sharply, just below the shield; with the shield extinguished, the stars were as ice-bright as from some naturally airless moon.