Nikka: “No, it’s deeper than that.”
Nigel: “To borrow a phrase, what’s that bloody mean?”
Nikka: “It means I don’t like being treated like an old shoe.”
Carlotta: “You’re aren’t tuned in here.”
Nikka: “Three-way relationships are hard, but each member must give as much of themselves as—”
Nigel: “Sounds like a flamin’ sociology textbook.”
Carlotta: “Empathize.”
Nigel: “I am. I really am.”
Nikka: “You sit around, reading the astrophysical updates, but I never hear you as an ordinary man anymore.”
Nigel: “There’s the possibility that I’m not.”
Carlotta: “Don’t go all stiff on us again.”
Nigel: “Am I imagining this, or have we gone from Carlotta to me?”
Carlotta: “Maybe it’s the same problem.”
Nikka: “No, it’s not. We all help each other. But Nigel has been burrowing into these neuro-anthropological matrix studies of his and, and shutting the world out.”
Nigel: “Admittedly.”
Carlotta: “Not so fast. My feeling is that you two are revolving around each other so much that I can’t get in edgewise.”
Nikka: “I admit that I’ve been concerned with him. Perhaps less easy to, to reach, for you. But he is getting more distant from me. And from you.”
Carlotta: “Sometimes I think it’s just a tactic.”
Nigel: “Winning through withdrawal?”
Carlotta: “Not exactly, but—”
Nigel: “Then what? I’m a renegade, I’ve admitted that. And I sop up great gouts of time plugging away at my obsessions. But they’re my obsessions. Haven’t I buggering well earned the right to—”
Nikka: “Not in this relationship, you haven’t. You’ve got to participate.”
Carlotta: “Look, I think you ought to consider what you’re doing with, or doing to Nikka. She isn’t the same person now that she was when we left Earthside. She doesn’t respond to people, to me, the way she did then and I think it’s—”
Nikka turned to Carlotta. “Why don’t you just do what you want? What you really feel, instead of echoing and reacting to us, to me, to—”
Nigel said slowly, “Yes, I should think—”
“And you—!” Nikka cried. “We’re supposed to tiptoe softly around you while you’re muttering deep thoughts about who knows what!”
Carlotta began, “Look—”
Nikka whirled to her. “We each have to have our own lives. Don’t you see that? Three-sided things are harder. They only work if one pair is no more important than the other.”
Carlotta said, “But you and Nigel are more important than you and me, or Nigel and me.”
Nigel: “Give it time.” Though he didn’t really feel that way.
Nikka sighed. She said quietly to Carlotta, “Do what you really want. That’s the answer. It’s the only way you’ll be happy.”
Nigel nodded, a bit dazed. The storm of the two women had washed over him suddenly and he was not sure what it meant. “And I, in turn, shall try not to withdraw so much,” he said formally. He was damned if he could see how, though.
He was doing therapy when Bob came by, sweating from running.
“Still gettin’ inna box, uh?” Bob asked. He thumped the gray metal. “This’s the neurotiming one?”
“Right.” Nigel grimaced. “Not my favorite. Sends prickly feelings up your nerves, like chilled mice running toward your heart.”
Bob shuddered. “Me, I stay away from this stuff.”
“Do, yes.”
“Ever’ time I have to come in for some med work I feel like I’m puttin’ my balls in a grinder. Somethin’ goes wrong—poof.”
“No choices left for me. Afraid I won’t be working for you again. In fact, I was surprised when you let me onto the throat-scraping team.”
Bob leaned against the massive cabinet and mopped sweat from his face, grimacing. “Wasn’t me. Ted overrode my judgment. Wish I haddna let him.”
