But he continued to be clumsy, for he was trying to work out in his head the problem of whether or not the figures of the dance would bring them together, make them partners for an interval. If he had been confronted with the question as an abstract problem-Given: the choreographic score of the dance. Required: will unit A and unit B ever come in contact? — had it been stated thus, he could have found the answer almost intuitively, had he considered it worthy of his talents.
To attempt to solve it after the dynamics had commenced, when he himself was one of the variables, was another matter. Had he been in the second couple? Or the ninth?
He had decided that the dance would not bring them together, and was trying to figure out some way to fudge-to change positions with another male dancer-when the dance did bring them together.
He felt her finger tips in his. Then her weight was cradled against his hand as he swung her by the waist. He was dancing lightly, beautifully, ecstatically. He was outdoing himself — he could feel it.
Fortunately, she landed on top.
Because of that he could not even help her to her feet. She scrambled up and attempted to help him. He started laboriously to frame his apology in the most abjectly formal terms he could manage when he realized that she was laughing.
“Forget it,” she interrupted him. “It was fun. We’ll practice that step on the quiet. It will be a sensation.”
“Most gracious madame — ” he began again.
“The dance — ” she said. “We’ll be lost!” She slipped away through the crowd, found her place.
Monroe-Alpha was too demoralized by the incident to attempt to find his proper place. He slunk away, too concerned with his own thalamic whirlwind to worry over the gaucherie he was commiting in leaving a figure dance before the finale.
He located her again, after the dance, but she was in the midst of a group of people, all strangers to him. A dextrous young gallant could have improvised a dozen dodges on the spot whereby the lady could have been approached. He had no such talent. He wished fervently that his friend Hamilton would show up-Hamilton would know what to do. Hamilton was resourceful in such matters. People never scared him.
She was laughing about something. Two or three of the braves around her laughed too. One of them glanced his way. Damn it-were they laughing at him?
Then she looked his way. Her eyes were warm and friendly. No, she was not laughing at him. He felt for an instant that he knew her, that he had known her for a long time, and that she was inviting him, as plain as speech, to come join her. There was nothing coquettish about her gaze. Nor was it tomboyish. It was easy, honest, and entirely feminine.
He might have screwed up his courage to approach her then, had not a hand been placed on his arm. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you, young fellow.”
It was Doctor Thorgsen. Monroe-Alpha managed to stammer, “Uh…How do you fare, learned sir?”
“As usual. You aren’t busy, are you? Can we have a gab?”
Monroe-Alpha glanced back at the girl. She was no longer looking at him, was instead giving rapt attention to something one of her companions was saying. Oh well, he thought, you can’t expect a girl to regard being tumbled on a dance floor as the equivalent of a formal introduction. He would look up his hostess later and get her to introduce them. “I’m not busy,” he acknowledged. “Where shall we go?”
“Let’s find some place where we can distribute the strain equally on all parts,” Thorgsen boomed. “I’ll snag a pitcher of drinks. I see by this morning’s news that your department announces another increase in the dividend, ” he began.
“Yes,” Monroe-Alpha said, a little mystified. There was nothing startling in an increase in the productivity of the culture. The reverse would have been news; an increase was routine.
“I suppose there is an undistributed surplus?”
“Of course. There always is.” It was a truism that the principal routine activity of the Board of Policy was to find suitable means to distribute new currency made necessary by the ever-increasing productive capital investment. The simplest way was by the direct issue of debt-free credit-flat money-to the citizens directly, or indirectly in the form of a subsidized discount on retail sales. The indirect method permitted a noncoercive control against inflation of price symbols. The direct method raised wages by decreasing the incentive to work for wages. Both methods helped to insure that goods produced would be bought and consumed and thereby help to balance the books of every businessman in the hemisphere.