It didn’t happen and that worked entirely too well.
“Ariadne, for God’s sake,” Reedeth said to the beauinvariably flawless image in the comweb screen. “I need to get high, or drunk, or something, and I’d rather not do it alone.”
For an instant he thought she was simply going to snap at him and cut the connection. However, she sighed and leaned back in her chair. “You seem to have spent all day moaning, and I guess it’s too much to expect you to stop before your manic-depressive cycle shifts out of its present phase. So what am I supposed to do-provide unofficial therapy?”
There was a taut bitter silence. Finally Reedeth said in a completely changed tone, “Here’s an interesting psychological problem for you-or maybe it’s socioloto be more precise. When did friends go out of fashion?”
“Well, if all you want to do is talk nonsense-”
“Nonsense hell. How many friends have you got, Ariadne? I mean friends, that you know won’t mind when you want to talk about your problems, who may even be able to help with advice, or a loan, or whatever.”
“I don’t have that kind of problem,” Ariadne shrugged.
“I believe in being an individual and in looking after myself. If I couldn’t, I doubt if I’d have the arrogance to try and help other people to achieve the same success in their own lives. But I have lots of friends, so many I couldn’t list them-so many I’ve never managed to have them all to the same party!”
“Those aren’t friends,” Reedeth said doggedly. “I have them, too: I guess I recognize five or six hundred people, recall them well enough to ask the right quesabout their families and their jobs. But. Hell, let me take an illustration of what I mean. This girl Lyla Clay, that I finally managed to turn loose after what seemed like an eternity of struggling through red tape-”
A flicker of interest appeared on Ariadne’s face. “Oh, you got her straightened out?”
“More or less. I’ll tell you in a moment. Let me finish what I started to say. Her mackero was killed last night-murdered. He didn’t live long enough to say why someone went for him. It was just purposeless. But there it is: he died and she went into shock. Luckily she has her own doctor, someone I know who charges reasonable rates and takes his poorer patients seriously, so-Hell, now I’m interrupting myself!”
He drew a deep breath. Ariadne said during it, “Why do they call it’red tape’? Do they use special red-backed tape for confidential official recordings, or something?”
“Oh, for God’s sake, woman! Ask your desketary! I don’t know and I don’t care! This is important, what I’m trying to explain!”
“So get to the point a bit faster,” she said crossly. “I’m exhausted.”
“Think I’m not? Give me a straight answer to this then: out of all the hundreds of people you know, who do you care about enough to go into severe shock when you lose them?”
There was a long pause. Eventually Ariadne said with a strained expression, “Well, my parents, obviously, and my brother Wilfred, and-”
“I said friends, not relatives. People you’ve selected for yourself out of all the available millions since you came of age and went out into the world on your own.”
“I.” Ariadne shook her fair head, her face eloof the conflict between shame and honesty. “I don’t know if there’s anyone. You know, I don’t think I ever considered the point before.”
“So why not?”
Recovering a little, Ariadne said tartly, “Doesn’t your friend Conroy have views on that?”
“You mean his argument that the total sum of emoengagement of a modern individual is as rich as Romeo and Juliet’s, but it’s divided up among a far greater number of people so it appears to be very casual? Oh, I think he’s damned right. It’s the difference bea room-light and a laser beam. You can have just as much wattage in the system, but because it’s not so concentrated it does much less damage. And I think that’s great-it may have been okay to have one tranexperience in days when one could only exto live to be twenty-something anyway before catchthe plague, but now that we live the better part of a century on the average it seems a shame to burn ourselves out. But-” He clawed furiously at his beard. “Damn, I’m taking the craziest long way around to get to what I want to say! What I’m talking about is a loss, not a gain. People still do have troubles, people still do need advice and help and all the rest of it.”