Triton (Trouble on Triton) Read Online Free PDF Page A

that—”
    “He sure is!” a man, squatting before the refuse can, called up. He seized the can’s rim, yanked. The can opened. The acrobat, on the other
    side,
    caught one
    half, pulled something,
    and—clank!—clash!—clunk!—the whole thing folded down into a shape the two of them lifted and carried off into an alleyway.
    The rope climber was gone: the rope end, jerking angrily, went up, and up, and up into the black—
    “I hope you didn’t mind the drugs ... ?”—and disappeared.
    She turned over her palm again with its metal circle. “It’s only the mildest psychedelic—absorbed through the skin. And there’s a built-in allergy check in case you’re—”
    “Oh, I didn’t mind,” he protested. “Cellusin, I’m quite familiar with it. I mean, I know what ...”
    She said: “It only lasts for seconds. It gives the audience better access to the aesthetic parameters around which we’re—” Her look questioned—”... working?” He nodded in answer, though not sure what the question was. The hirsute, scarred woman took hold of one of the poles edging the mural and pulled it from the wall, walking across and rolling the loose, rattling canvas with great swings.
    “Really ...” Bron said. “It was ... wonderful! I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever ...” which, because it didn’t sound like what he’d intended to say, he let trail. Behind the mural was a palimpsest of posters. The last of the canvas came away from: “Look what Earth did to their Moon! We don’t” The rest had been torn off:— want them to do it to us\ he supplied mentally, annoyed he knew it but not from where. Like lyrics of a song, he thought, running through your head, that, basically, you didn’t like. The woman dropped his hand, nodded again, turned and walked across the square, stopping to look up after the rope.
    Bron started to call, but coughed (she looked back) and completed: “—what’s your name?”
    She said, “My friends call me the Spike,” as one of the men came up, put his arm around her shoulder, and whispered something that made her laugh.
    The variety, he thought, that subsumes her face between mild doubt and joy!
    “We’ll be in this neighborhood for another day or so” (The man was walking away) “By the way, the music for our production was written by our guitarist, Charo—”
    The dark-haired girl, pulling up the cloth case around her instrument, paused, smiled at Bron, then zipped it closed.
    “The backdrop and costumes were by Dian—”
    Who was apparently the hairy woman lugging the rolled mural over her shoulder: before she turned off down the alley, she gave him a grotesque, one-eyed grin.
    “Our special effects were all devised by our tumbler, Windy—but I think he’s already getting set up at the next location. The solo voice that you first heard singing was recorded by Jon-Teshumi.”
    One of the women held up what he realized was a small playback recorder.
    “The production was coordinated by our manager, Hatti.”
    “That’s me too,” the woman with the recorder said, then hurried after the others.
    “And the entire production—” The guitarist (Charo?) spoke now, from the corner—“was conceived, written, produced, and directed by the Spike.” The guitarist grinned.
    The Spike grinned—“Thank you, again—” and, with an arm around the guitarist’s shoulder, they were around the corner.
    “It was great!” he called after them. “It was really—” He looked about the empty square, at the poster-splotched wall, at the other streets. Which way had he come? The emotion Bron had been fighting down suddenly surged. He did not shout out, No —! He lunged instead for the low archway and loped into the alley.
    He had already turned at two intersections when his mind was wrenched away from what was going through it by the shambling figure that, thirty yards ahead, crossed from corner to corner, glanced at him—the eye; the chains; the sunken chest; the high