Flatlander - Larry Niven [87]
We all got off on zero level. I gathered that few lunies wanted to live on the surface. These rooms were mostly for transients. I left Penzler at his door and walked two down to my own.
2. VIEW THROUGH A WINDOW
Wherever you go in space, shirtsleeve environments tend to be cramped. My room was bigger than I expected. There was a bed, narrow but long, and a table with four collapsed chairs, and a tub. There was a phone screen, and I made for that.
Taffy wasn’t in, but she’d left a message. She wore a paper surgical coverall and sounded a bit breathless. “Gil, I can’t meet you. You’ll get in about ten minutes after I go on duty. I get off at the usual ungodly hour, in this case 0600, city time. Can you meet me for breakfast? Ten past six, in oh-fifty-three, in the north face on zero level. There’s room service. Isn’t Garner lovely?”
The picture smiled enchantingly and froze. Chiron asked, “Will there be an answer, sir?” and beeped.
I was still feeling ruffled and mean. I had to force the eager smile. “Chiron, message. Ten past six, your room. I’ll come to you by Earthlight, though hell should bar the way.” Called off the phone and lost the smile.
For getting me this chance to see Taffy again after two and a half months of separation … yeah, Garner was lovely.
Taffy and I had been roommates for three years when she got this chance to practice surgery on the moon. Exchange program. It wasn’t something she could turn down: too useful to her career and too much fun. They’d been rotating her among the lunar cities. She’d been in Hovestraydt City almost two weeks now.
She’d taken to dating a lunie GP, McCavity by name. I refuse to admit that that irritated me, but the way her schedule had messed up our first meeting did. So did the thought of the conference meeting tomorrow at nine-thirty. I’d heard angry voices at dinner. Clay and Budrys hadn’t mastered the art of walking yet, and it would affect their tempers.
And my own feet kept getting tangled.
What I needed was a soak in a hot bath.
The bathtub was strange. It was right out in the open, next to the bed, with a view of the phone screen and the picture window. It wasn’t long, but it stood four feet high, with a rim that curved inward, and the back rose six feet before curving over. The overflow drain was only halfway up. I started water running, then watched, fascinated. The water looked like it was actively trying to escape.
I tried some commands. The door lock, the closet lock, the lights all responded to my voice and the Chiron command. The water closet lock was manual.
Presently the bath was full to the overflow line. I got in carefully and stretched out. The water dipped in a meniscus around me, reluctant to wet me, until I added soap.
I played with the water, jetting it up between my hands, watching it slowly rise and slowly fall back. I stopped when I’d gotten too much on the ceiling and it was dripping back in fat globules. I was feeling a lot better. I found tiny holes under me and tried calling, “Chiron, activate spa.” Water and air bubbles churned around me, battering muscles strained by low-gravity walking.
The phone rang.
Taffy? I called, “Chiron, spa off. Answer phone.” The screen rotated to face me. It was Naomi.
In low gravity her long, soft golden hair floated around her with every motion. Her cheekbones were high in an oval face. She was made up in recent flatlander style, so that her blue eyes were patterns on the wings of a great gaudy butterfly. Her mouth was small, her face just a touch fuller than I remembered.
Her body was still athletic, tall and slender by flatlander standards. Her dress was soft blue, and it clung to her as if by static electricity. She’d changed in fourteen years, but not much … not enough.
It was unrequited love, and it had lasted half of a spring and all of summer, until the day I invested my scanty fortune to loft myself from Earth and outfit myself as an asteroid miner. The