Triton

Flossie put a glittering hand on Freddie’s shoulder: they went, sat, and stared.

Looking back at the board, Bron tried to remember what it was he had been about to answer ‘yes’—

“No—!”

Bron and Lawrence looked up.

“Here I am, ru

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 a

“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, a

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-cha

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/I

“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 wi