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The heart of L.A., his guide explained, was never burned. Two major fires driven
by the Santa Ana winds destroyed several of the suburbs but not the center. Lucky rains, both
tunes, saved it. And later, the air didn t support combustion quite so well. Besides, vegetation
returned and stayed green, after the cold years. He gave the great view his full and desolate
attention. But Miss Theeman soon distracted him. Her approach and Glenn now believed it
a curse to have the perfect genes of an Alpha-plus was physical, direct, and not subject to
long or repeated discouragement of an equally physical sort hand removing, kiss-evading,
and rejected body-rubbing.
Before sunset, they returned to ground level and donned breathing gear. That was a
relief as the helmets and suiting prevented her greedy efforts. She led him through a series of
passages and corridors, old and recent, into what he finally realized was the main floor of
Carton-Embrey, the big downtown central edifice of the most lavish department store in the
city one only in the planning stage at his cut-off tune, a term he found more useful than
death, or even long sleep, suspended animation, any other of that sort.
The gear allowed them to converse but over mikes.
He had little to say. But the cloying, pressing, intimately physical brunette kept him
partly distracted, even in this dust-laden, mined, half-dark and once-gaudy store: she talked
about sex acts. They tramped through aisles, from one department to another. Much of the
array of goods had been looted, of course, though only for practical ends, or largely that.
Gloria Theeman had started that tour with a set monologue:
The men s styles, you ll note, were of the last date quite different from 1971 and
beginning she shook dust from a male dummy to have the sexual emphasis that
increased as humanity became free. She began to ad lib, there.
He went to and through a bridal arcade and he was shocked at what brides and
bridesmaids wore in the late eighties. He briefly took charge of the direction to look at a
sports shop. Most of the weapons were missing but all the other grown-up toys from golf
clubs to hunting bows hung in their old arrangements, dust-wrapped, spider-webbed and
sombre. At the gem boutique Glenn saw, with mild amazement, that most glass cases were
unbroken and be-jeweled bracelets, expensive pendants, diamond-set phis lay untouched: no
use to the people underneath.
The way back led across an open street and Glenn looked at the vapor-streaked,
purpling sky. His eyes fixed on a moving dot and his unconscious mind followed it: a bird, a
tern, he thought without realizing how strange that doubtless was. He didn t make that
connection because his dark and ever-erotic companion took advantage of his stance, his
stillness and upward gaze, to reach under his clothes and start intimately playing with him.
He had to disengage her by force and found she was very strong. So, luckily, was he far
stronger.
Again, as on nights before, he got rid of the lady.
He claimed a headache and fatigue and she finally stopped pressing for dinner at my
place which isn t under scrutiny. She was less annoyed, even, than the other female
guides; and they, considering their efforts and apparent passion, weren t as enraged as any
woman of his era would have been at such cold rejection. People, he began to see, were
pretty bland. They showed emotion only in low levels and only in moments of high
stimulus to sexual ardor, to grief, to anything.
Again alone, he had a solitary meal, and, again, it was excellent: fresh celery and
tomatoes, among other things; a pear, an apple and cheese, for desert. Nobody troubled him
as he spent the next hours reading about the present city and, later on, naked again, he went to
bed and soon slept.
The girl who soon waked him was, perhaps, fourteen. She had golden ringlets, blue
eyes, arched brows and she had used Lysette s way of waking him only, now, he hadn t
found it necessary to feign slumber so as to gather himself, orient his mind, before pretending
to be roused.
Her youth almost sickened him and surely scared him.
She left, quickly, laughing at him in a faintly mocking way.
Afterward, wide awake, frantic in the way any man would be at such a point, Glenn
finally understood what was happening. He had been self-conscious with Leandra, the city
and its mechanics, institutions, even to a snatch of a view of the dead skyscrapers above, but
always in the company of a woman of the utmost appeal, yet, in each case, one of a different
sort. They were trying to find out his type !
[[missing from the original text& ]] and camera-furious. He had then been sent forth
to view
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THOSE WHO ARE BRAVE
Glenn would have denied that he was a complex man or, for that matter, a sensitive
one. The first would have seemed flattery, the other a weakness he would have felt he did not
have. But he would readily have confessed to a temper though it rarely took charge of him.
Now, aware of the reason for his changing female guides, rage sent him pacing the
room and even speaking in broken phrases, aloud. By sheer luck rather than owing to caution,
these blasts of self-reproach, mixed with elaborate profanity, were not at any time directed at
the establishment, the system, or its representative, Bob. What channeled his emotion was his
own obtusity in not catching on, sooner, to the purpose that had led to his present state of
extremity. He berated himself, kicked furniture, paced and muttered till, calming gradually,
he said to himself in a tone of rebuke, And if you d only said yes to the one you really
wanted, right at first !
With final, muttered, You fool! Idiot! he sat in the divan and after a moment,
selected a cigar. When it was lighted he leaned back to laugh at himself, silently.
He jumped inches when his visaphone chimed.
He had completely forgotten that his fury had been observed, every sight and sound
recorded for scientific purposes, whatever those might be. And now, his observers were
summoning him! Why? he wondered and answered himself: To explain that last act
overdetermination may be not allowed, in their view.
He strode to the visaphone as it chimed again, snatched up the sound-receiver and, as
the visual screen began to glow, snarled, Yes? Who is it? What do you want?
Then the image came in focus. It was Leandra, in her bed, tousled and evidently just
roused. She began to smile as he chopped his harsh words off and her smile changed from
amusement to a very different thing, a warm, sleepy, loving expression. Hello, Glenn, she
said. Would you like me to come over?
He couldn t answer, couldn t speak at all.
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