Free Absorption by David F. Weisman Page A

hairdo. She was seated, but something about the way her feet tapped to the music told Brett she wouldn’t mind a dance. Either her hair and skin appeared older than they were, or else her lively movements were another tribute to Oceanian medical technology and long Oceanian life expectancies.
    He couldn’t quite catch her musical sounding name, after asking her to repeat it once Brett decided to pretend he had heard it. It amused him to think he might be a bull in a china shop when it came to negotiations, but he was more sociable than his nominal boss. As they circled round the ballroom, Brett noticed things he had missed before. Most visitors not native to Oceania seemed to be concentrated near the center of the room, and standard English was spoken there, the English language that had been carried from Old Earth in recordings and electronic documents.
    From around the edges of the room he could pick up strange and unusual sounds, the languages that had evolved on Oceania. Somehow the contrast made Brett think of a planet alive with a secret, with the center of the room not as the heart but as the superficial skin.
    When the waltz ended the woman with the liquid name wanted to sit down to talk with some friends. He escorted her to her table and then mingled with the crowd, moving farther from the center of the room. Still determined not to think of Ariel, and to see at least a little slice of this new planet, he began to distinguish the sounds of one unfamiliar language from another. There were still voices speaking English. Many languages were spoken on Oceania, although ones descended from English predominated. It wasn’t only the language that changed as Brett crossed an invisible line into another world. Someone had set up a little buffet table (why after dinner?) with plenty of clean plates. There were foods nobody had thought to offer to the off-worlders. Brett sampled something that looked like curried chicken, but found the spice was unfamiliar as his eyes started to water.
    On the wall he was surprised to see a familiar image: Eduardo the elder freeing the pigs from the tiny pens they had been raised in their whole lives, next to the slaughterhouse. Behind him were the men with torches who had burned him to death, though traditionally they had not found him until he had freed the monkeys. Of course there were Lifists on Oceania, but it didn’t seem quite the thing for a ballroom. What other functions did this room serve?
    Brett’s ear was caught by a voice a table or so away, in easy to understand English with only a slight Oceanian lilt.
    “Everybody stop laughing. I’m not going to tell you her name, but it really did happen. Anyway, the marriage counselor says he has to charge her for the session even though her husband didn’t show up because he would have scheduled another couple. She bargains him down to seventy percent, then decides she’s had enough aggravation for the time being and heads home for a nap. When she walks into her bedroom she finds her husband screwing a girl less than half his age. For a split second she stops to think. This marriage doesn’t have anything left for her, and she’s sick of his self serving guilt mixed with smugness at his conquests, and sick of being pitied. So she keeps her voice polite.
    ‘Honey, I wish you’d told me to reschedule our appointment because the therapist said he has to charge us anyway. If you wanted me out of the house because you’re too cheap to rent a motel room I would have gone shopping.’
    “Then she tells the girl underneath him, ‘Dear, I’m sure you could do better.’”
    Brett failed to suppress his laughter in time, and so was revealed as an eavesdropper. He recognized the next voice.
    “Ariel, I think your new friend has come to see you again. He follows you around like a lost puppy.”
    Ariel waved Brett over and introduced the others at the table, perhaps an implicit apology for Michael’s rudeness. He stood behind an empty