Triton (Trouble on Triton) by Samuel R. Delany Page A

“Hey, I’m sorry—it’s gay?”
    “Ifs not,” she said. “But / am.”
    “Oh.” Bron took a breath, his heart still mangling blood and air in his chest. “Hey, really, I wasn’t ... I mean, I didn’t know.”
    “Sure,” she said. “That’s why I thought I ought to say something. I mean, I’m just not into men in any
    way, shape, or form right now. You understand?”
    “Oh, sure, of course.”
    “And I don’t feel like getting yelled at later for leading you on, because I’m not. I’m just trying to be pleasant with somebody I have to work with who looks like a fairly pleasant guy. That’s all.”
    “Really,” he said. “I understand. Most people who live in single-sex, nonspecific co-ops aren’t into men or women that much. I know. / live in one.”
    “You got it.” She smiled. “If you want to go back to the Plaza, now, and catch your transport—?”
    “No. Honestly, I do walk home this way ... a lot of times. That’s how I met Spike—the Spike—yesterday.”
    Miriamne shrugged, walked on, but at a distance that, as they neared the arch, widened. It’s not sullen-ness, he realized suddenly: She’s as preoccupied as I am. With what? he wondered. And, heaving into his mind, oppressive as a iceberg and bright as a comet, was the Spike’s face. No (he narrowed his eyes at Miriamne, who was a step ahead), she said the Spike was just her friend: Like me and Lawrence, he thought. Then, the sudden questioning: Does she feel about the Spike the way Lawrence is always saying he feels about ... ? His eyes narrowed further at the gray-caped shoulders ahead. I’ll kill her! he thought. I’ll make her sorry she ever heard of metalogics! Miriamne, staggering, drunk, in the co-op corridor, grasping at the Spike, caught in her arms, falling down soused on the corridor floor ... He thought: I’ll—Miriamne glanced back. “You’re looking preoccupied again.”
    “Huh?” he said. “Oh. I guess I am.” He smiled: I will kill her. I’ll kill her in some slow and lingering way that will hurt amazingly and unbelievably and continuously and will seem to have no source and take years.
    But, with her own preoccupations, Miriamne looked away.
    Out of the archway, papers blew across the asphalt—a dozen printed flyers swirled their shins. One pasted itself to Miriamne’s calf. She tried to sidestep it, couldn’t, so finally bent and pulled it up. As they passed into the green light, she examined the paper. A quarter of the way through, with a wry smile, she passed it to Bron.
    So as not to look at her, he read it:

THESE THINGS ARE HAPPENING IN YOUR CITY!!!
    the broadside proclaimed in askew, headline letters.
    Smaller letters beneath announced:
    “Here are Thirteen Things your government does not want you to know.”
    Beneath that were a list of numbered paragraphs:
    1) The gravity cut that threw a blanket of terror over the entire Tethys Keep last night is not the first to rock the city. A three-sheet area in the unlicensed sector near the outer ring, that included the C and D
    wings of the Para-med Hospital Wards, was hit by a two-and-a-half minute, total gravity failure, which, while it caused only a half-pound drop in atmosphere pressure because the area was comparatively small, produced gale-force winds in the peripheral area of the u-1 whose peak force was never measured, but which, five and three-quarters minutes later, was recorded to have dropped to a hundred and thirty miles an hour! Damage figures still have not been released. There are twenty-nine people known to be dead—among them four of the seven “political” patients (inmates? prisoners?) at the C
    Annex of the Para-med. We could go into this in more detail, but there are too many other things to list. For example:
    2) We have a copy of a memo from the Liaison Department between the Diplomatic Department and Intelligence, with a 4:00 P. A. issue circulation stamp, that reads, in part: “... The crisis tonight will be brief. Most