Flatlander - Larry Niven [110]
“I want someone to talk me out of it.”
He thought it over. Then, “Taffy wouldn’t try. But she’ll want to hold your hand when it’s over, I think. I’ll tell her. Maybe she can get some time early tomorrow. Shall I let you know?”
“Futz!”
“Witness is unresponsive. Does it help if I tell you I sympathize? I’ll get drunk with you if she’s not free.”
“I may need that. Chiron, phone off. Chiron, phone, call two-seven-one-one.” Futz. I was going to have to go through with it.
I found a cop outside her door. He took my retina prints and checked them with the city computer. He grinned down at me and started to say something, looked again, and changed his mind. He said instead, “You look like they’re about to break you up.”
“It feels like they already did.”
He let me past.
It was party time. Naomi wore floating luminous transparencies, blue with flashes of scarlet. The butterfly fluttering on her eyelids had iridescent blue wings. She smiled and ushered me in, and for a moment I forgot why I was here. Then her eyes flicked to the clock, and mine followed. 1810, city time.
0628, city time. Early morning. Two orange hemispheres looked me in the eye as I emerged. I looked up. The cop guarding Naomi’s door had been replaced by Laura Drury.
I asked, “How long has she got?”
“Half an hour.”
Futz, I already knew that. The landscape within my skull was blanketed in fog. Later I remembered the chill in Drury’s voice. I was in no shape to notice then.
I said, “I hate to let her sleep, and I hate to wake her up. What do I do?”
“I don’t know her. If she went to sleep happy; let her sleep.”
“Happy?” I shook my head. She hadn’t been happy. Should I wake her? No. I said, “I want to thank you for calling. It was kind.”
“That’s all right.”
I considered telling Laura that she’d better get her phone fixed or stop mumbling the commands. I was almost that woozy. Tell a lunie she’d exposed her nakedness to a flatlander? Not me. I waved and turned away and staggered to the elevators.
At the ground floor level I decided I wanted to be alone. I aimed myself toward my room. I changed my mind before I got there.
Taffy studied me for a moment. Then she pulled me in, worked my rumpled clothes off, got me facedown on the bed, poured oil on me, and started a massage. When she felt some of the tension leaving me, she spoke. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“Um. I don’t think so.”
“What do you want? Coffee? Sleep?”
“More massage,” I said. “She was the perfect hostess.”
“It was her last chance.”
“It was reminiscence time. She wanted to cover a ten-year gap in one night. We did a lot of talking.”
She said nothing.
“Taffy? Do you want to have children?”
Her hands stopped, then resumed kneading my calf muscle and Achilles tendon. “Some day.”
“With me?”
“What brought this on?”
“Naomi. Chris Penzler. They both waited too long. I wouldn’t want to wait too long.”
She said, “Pregnant women don’t make good surgeons. They turn clumsy. I’d have to drop my career for six or seven months. I’d want to think about that.”
“Right.”
“And I’d want to finish my tour here.”
“Right.”
“I’d want to get married. A fifteen-year contract. I wouldn’t want to raise a child alone.”
In my fatigue-doped state I hadn’t thought that far. Fifteen years! Still— “Sounds reasonable. How many birthrights do you have?”
“Just the two.”
“Good. Me, too. Why don’t we use them both? More efficient.”
She kissed the small of my back, then went back to working the bones and joints of my feet. She asked, “What did she say that got you so worked up about children?”
I tried to remember …
Naomi fluttered around the bar in a cloud of blue and scarlet transparencies. She made navy grogs in huge balloon glasses with constricted rims. I gathered we weren’t expected to stay sober. She asked, “What have you been doing for ten years?”
I