Triton by Samuel R. Delany

Author:Samuel R. Delany [Delany, Samuel R.]
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Science fiction, Fiction - Science Fiction, Science Fiction - General
ISBN: 9780553229790
Publisher: Bantam Books
Published: 2010-03-06T19:30:00+00:00

GOVERNMENT FACSIMILE

In the lefthand corner it said: “Gene Trimbell (the Spike)” but instead of an identity number beneath it (which would contain her mail-routing code, wherever she was in the Solar System), there was an old-fashioned return address:

Lahesh, Mongolia 49-000-Bl-pz

Asia, Earth.

Bron picked up his card and crossed the lobby, mistily mosaicked with ornate light-shapes from the colored glass wall across from him. He went out the arch, onto the Plaza, found a bench and sat. Across from him sat two very nervous-looking women (one of whom was naked). The Plaza, as usual at this time in the afternoon, was almost deserted. He opened the envelope by small pinches, unfolded the letter (stamped across the top, in the same pink: GOVERNMENT FACSIMILE). He recognized the erratically punctuated, ill-capitalized print of a first draft from a voice-scripter. Given the badly-aligned, heavily serifed type, it was probably a very old voice-scripter, too. Leaning forward on his knees, he read:

Bron, and then I guess you better put a colon no a dash—the world is a small place italicize is. And moons are even smaller. Running into you like that out here made me realize how italics small. In a small world when you get that unpleasant choice of being blunt or well mannered, after you’ve tried manners and that doesn’t seem to work I guess you have to be blunt period bluntly comma I don’t want to have an affair with you semicolon I don’t even particularly want to be your friend period paragraph. If it were seven o’clock in the evening instead of two in the morning I would just sign it there and send it but it is two o’clock in the morning with real moonlight coming over the Lahesh mountains and doing marvelous things to the rain that’s been falling against the window for the last three minutes dash wouldn’t you know, it just stopped dash and real crickets somewhere in the eaves dash a time that lends itself to hopefully quiet and presumably rational explanations semicolon and perhaps the illusion that, however painful initially, those explanations might help.

What do I want to explain?

That I don’t like the type of person you are. Or that the type of person I am won’t like you. Or just: I italics don’t. Do I have the colon in there? Yes.

And it isn’t all that altruistic, by any means. I’m angry—at the Universe for producing a person like you—and T v/ant to rake up coals. I want them to burn. What frustrates me is that—and it became apparent tonight—is that you do italics adhere to some kind of code of good manners, proper behavior, or the right thing to do, and yet you are so emotionally lazy that you are incapable of implementing the only valid reason that any such code ever came about: to put people at ease, to make them feel better, to promote social communion. If you ever achieve that, it’s only to the credit of whoever designed the behavior code a hundred years back.

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