slightly, irritated, draws back one corner of his mouth. T hat’s louder
than shouting ‘Get Lost!’ at a Geishaboy. We always understand, and
we always head out fast; the smallest hesitation can call up embarrassment or aggression. I don’t even slow a single tiptoe. It can be savage if you don’t pay attention, total attention, down here.
Funny thing is, the other one (the one who shouldn’t be called
Slatecoat, though there’s a lot of spaceman’s grey in his face) just
laughs. Then he takes the black punch’s shoulder and whispers — there
are a hundred ways of whispering too, and this one is close . . . Then
they both look back at me, and the black nods and the cork speaks.
Damnedest thing! I can’t tell which one he is, Slatecoat or non-
Slatecoat, even watching the lips! That is literally impossible. I should
be able to tell any two voices apart, and yet — and these two come from
94
Norman Talbot
the biggest maintained-distinction races we’ve got. And black-cork
distinctions are about as easy as anything outside Japanese.
All he says is, A room, Geisha. No, not with you, just the room. A
good private room. You know how it is.’ Then they laugh, the black
just a little bark and the other more. And I still don’t know which is
Slatecoat. The one who uses black syntax a bit is Slatecoat, of course,
but that doesn’t mean the black body, not necessarily. A lot of punches,
especially naive-looking shy ones like these, are corky and speak black,
and a few the other way. With Judies, even more the other way. Let’s
say they’ve been on Far-Out service a long circuit, together all the
while. Yes, they’ve got to know each other so well they echo each other,
pitch and pace and the works. Neat little explanation for a nanosecond
of thought.
But it doesn’t need their laughter to tell me they haven’t ‘gone
together’ that way, or not much and not recently. Why do they want
me to think they’re flittermice?
‘I am most happy for you, gentlemen.’ Note the courteous, non-
prurient style that any good Geishaboy uses. Customers don’t deserve
it, but they get it anyway. The Force sets high standards too: no matter
what they give us, we hand back courtesy. ‘The Filigree Room is free
at the moment, and the Bridal Suite.’
‘Now I think the Filigree Room sounds really absolutely darling!’
The cork puts on a lousy imitation of oldfashioned queen-talk that
went with cabinboys. ‘Don’t you, darling?’
The maybe-Slatecoat glares at him, and he whispers again. Now
any Geishaboy can lipread from ten miles out on the darkside, so I
know what he says, but I don’t understand it. ‘You wanted it private.
If the cops can’t keep it that way, who can?’
Irony. Crims? Not exactly. And how did he pick me? Not all
Geishaboys are straight, and very few are cops. He says no when I ask
if they want any equipment, yes to refreshment. It’s the black punch
pays. All the time I’m making their bed, setting up the bug system, I
keep thinking about their identical voices. I also keep thinking about
that name. Slatecoat. Slate-coat . . . And while I show them in and
close their door and tune in to listen to them taking out all my bugs —
good thing they’re waterproof. And while I tune in to the bed-frame.
The one receiver too big to notice.
I give up, and I’ve even started to phone Vera, in the Rose Room,
when finally the name hooks itself to the Beowulf Expedition. So I
phone Vera anyway: looks like I might need some help from a sex-judy
officer. These punches aren’t really onto homo-san, that’s for sure.
After the B eow ulf expedition
95
II
Vera does most of the bulletin recall: I’ve got to keep my mind on the
mattress-talk between Commodore Slatecoat and X.
PANMARINE NEWSFLASH 19, for 12.22.36at 11.30 hours: the body
of Admiral Use Beowulf much-decorated leader of the so-called Beoivulf
Expedition, has been found in the Leprosarium of the vast American Express
Hospitalfor Incurables in Greater Dacca. Admiral Beowulf has been missing
from her Palm Beach villa since May, and an extensive search had provedfruitless. It now appears she had been working undetected among the nuns of the Hospital for some months under the name of Sister Least. Cause of death,
pulmonary infection.
Right. Salutary shock for the fashionable silvertails. And all that stuff
about ‘twin sons to oppose will,’ and so on; she probably left her money
to the hospital. They’re bubbling the kif.
‘God! Your idiom wearies me!’
‘You don’t like the way I talk. O.K., I’m not crazy about your idiom
either. Things I could really do without, starred item.’
Wish they’d use each other’s names every so often, the way
Australians do.
‘How’s it been?’
‘How is it with you?’
‘C ’mon, Slatecoat, don’t stall.’
Slatecoat. . . Got it. PANMARINE NEWSFLASH 11, for 22.28.36, at
07.20 hours. Commodore Theodore Slatecoat is instructed to report immediately to Flagship Windi-Woppa, Port Stephens Basin, in connection with the Taafa Omi Enquiry. Any other member of the 24-HAR-370 Expedition
(commonly known as the Beowulf Expedition) who can help the Enquiry in
any way
