Alongside Night(31)
As Grand Tours went, this one began slowly …
The second floor had the elevator at one end, the commissary at the other, and a number of function rooms in between on each side.
The commissary was a combination cafeteria-bar with about a dozen middle-aged men and women eating, drinking, and socializing, with empty tables for another hundred or so. At one end of the commissary was a selection of food and a bursar (not a cashier; payment was by photo-badge credit), with pricing in terms he did not recognize. This caused Elliot to wonder how much of a bill his visit to Aurora was already running up; the place had the look of an expensive private club, and the high security no doubt shot up costs even further. He also speculated that the main reason Mr. Gross had not accompanied him was that Aurora was too expensive to visit except on major business.
The recreation rooms were slightly more lively, though Elliot’s first impression was that the inhabitants of Aurora looked more like a Chamber of Commerce convention—well, maybe Jaycees—than a revolutionary cabal.
In Recreation Room One were several table-tennis matches in progress, a number of bystanders watching and waiting to play off the winners. Also in use here were pool and billiard tables, a dart game, and several electronic playmates. Elliot spotted Dr. Taylor and his poker game in Two, a room devoted to gambling—betting also on the roulette wheel, blackjack, one-arm bandits, and even contract bridge. Recreation Room Four was simulation gaming, everything from simple games such as Diplomacy and Stratego, to full-106
Alongside Night
scale interstellar war-gaming and Dungeons and Dragons. In one corner, a couple had the audacity to play checkers. Several rows of slightly younger Aurorans were watching a videodisc on a communal wallscreen; the film they were watching was Fahrenheit 451, a scene showing the old librarian and her books being consumed by flames …
Aurora’s library had a fair collection of books, videodiscs, and holosonic music cassettes. Book titles included Human Action by Ludwig von Mises, Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, Counter-Economics by Samuel Edward Konkin III, The Prob- ability Broach by L. Neil Smith, Power and Market by Murray N. Rothbard, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein, Anarquía by Brad Linaweaver and J. Kent Hastings, Kings of the High Frontier by Victor Koman, and Wiemar, 1923
by Martin Vreeland. Videodiscs ran the gamut from Horsefeathers, Bananas, and The Great Dictator, to The Fifth Element, The X-Files, and NaZion. Musical recordings followed no detectable pattern. A poetry reading was in session in Recreation Room Three, a lounge. A man in his late forties—brown-haired, mustached, with a golden “Sons of Liberty” medallion around his neck—
was sitting on the carpet with half a dozen lovely young women in a circle around him. “It was twenty-five years ago,” the poet said, “when this was a fantasy. Nobody really believed it would happen. But I knew.”
He closed his eyes and recited from memory:
“Alongside night
Parallel day
By fearful flight
In garish gray
Will dawn alight
And not decay
Alongside night?”
Alongside Night
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The fourth floor seemed deserted. Elliot found no one in the gymnasium, sun room, or Jacuzzi whirlpool, and was about to leave when he stepped for a second into the swimming pool area and saw a woman swimming underwater.
She was slender and lithe, long black hair flowing behind her, and was nude.
Elliot decided that this called for some of the discretion Mr. Harper had mentioned, but he could not take his eyes from her, then it was too late. She broke water and spotted him. Looking at her as she stood still—arms akimbo, bare breasts above water level—Elliot could see that she was much closer to his own age then he at first had thought, though her development could have indicated elsewise a woman in her twenties. She was the only person of his age he had seen in the complex. They stared at each other for several heartbeats, then she spoke.
“You’re staring at me,” she said. She spoke with a mildly Southern accent.
Elliot blushed. “Uh—sorry. I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to be up here.”
She did not make any attempt to move or otherwise to conceal herself. “Nobody’s stopping you from swimming,” she said.
“It’s just that it’s rude to stare.”
“You caught me by surprise. But I’d better leave if I’m making you uncomfortable.” Elliot turned to go.
“No, don’t—”
Elliot turned back, his pulse skipping a beat.
“I was finished anyway. The pool’s all yours.”
She climbed out of the water, grabbed a towel from a deck chair, and without draping it over herself calmly walked through a door into what Elliot presumed was a locker room. Elliot considered stripping down for a swim himself, wargamed the idea of waiting for her to try apologizing again, 108