“Sounds as though, all things considered, you might have been better off than I am,” Flamen said, and glanced at his watch. “Well, shall we say the same time tomorrow?”
“There’s a flag up on your comweb,” Prior said. “Aren’t you going to answer it?”
“Damn. So there is.” Flamen dropped back into his chair and pulled the fax paper out of its slot. “Ah, that doctor at the Ginsberg wanting to get in touch. I guess I’d better take it.”
“Shall we-?” Prior suggested, starting to leave the room.
“Darl, several million people are about to see Celia in a hospital oversuit, aren’t they? Want I should prewith you and Mr. Diablo around?”
“If it’s something personal, I certainly don’t want to intrude,” Diablo said, also half-rising.
“No, it’s another matter of record and I don’t much care.”
“As you like.” Diablo hesitated yet again. “While I think of it, though. Forgive me, but people do bedifferently out here and I don’t want to make any faux pas. Is your mistering me a bit of Crow Jim?”
“What?” Hand poised to punch the comweb code for the Ginsberg, Flamen looked up. “Sorry, I didn’t catch that.”
“I’ve been wondering,” Diablo said doggedly, “whether you’ve been calling me Mister Diablo all the time beI’m a knee.”
“What else would I-? Oh, now I catch. You have this’soul brother’ thing in the enclaves, don’t you? Call peoall the time by their first names?”
“Well. more or less. I mean anyone I was going to be working with regularly, at least,” Diablo qualified. “And I thought blank society was equally informal.”
“Used to be, I think. Lake in my father’s day I bewe had the same thing.” Flamen frowned, withhis hand from the comweb board. “Yes, I rehim joking about how well you had to know somebefore you found out his last name and could look him up in a directory. But I read something about this once. Of course! A piece by Xavier Conroy; I renow. He said something about the need to assert individuality and surnames being more numerous than given names. Stuck in my mind because there are several hundred thousand Matthews around nowadays but all the people named Flamen in the entire United States are relatives of mine in one way or another-just a single family. Scattered to hell and gone, of course, but if you checked the records you could tie them all together. At that I don’t suffer from one of the really common first names, either: Michael, David, John, Wil.”
“So you call people mister automatically?”
“You’d be better advised to than not. Lionel, how long was it before I started calling you by your first name?”
“After you married Celia, I guess,” Prior said. “But I didn’t mind you calling me just ‘Prior’ when we were working together before that.”
“You want to know what to call us?” Flamen said, glancing back at Diablo. “Hell, personally I don’t mind what people call me-I’m not looking for reassurance about my status. But I guess for safety’s sake, for the time being at least, you’d better stick by the formal custom: Flamen, Prior. No mister except to a third party. Okay?”
“Thanks,” Diablo nodded. “I-uh. Well, I hadn’t realized that leaving Blackbury would be so much like going to a foreign country.” His eyes roved the room. “Everything seems so strange,” he added in a burst of frankness. “I guess I swallowed the propaganda about the enclaves really still being part of the United States, just enjoying a bit more self-determination than they used to. Say, can I ask you a favor?”
“Let’s hear it.”
“Could you sort of-uh-isolate that computer which makes up reconstructions out of stock shots? It’s the kind of gadget I’ve been dreaming of all my life without realizing. I feel like a back-country boy with a banjo made of cowhide and baling wire who hears a guitar for the first time.”
Flamen exchanged a questioning glance with Prior, who resolutely refrained from offering any kind of answer.
“You want to see if you can put it through hoops too?” he said. “I guess we could arrange that, but I doubt if it can be today. I’d have to ask for someone to drop by from IBM and wire in the proper code-I was already used to similar equipment before I had this particular one installed. You could probably have a dummy delivto your apt, though, to practice on and learn the codes before tackling a full-sized machine.”