At rehearsals, he saw a serious Maria, a perfectionist devoted to her art, a superb technician. After rehearsals and the opera itself, he saw a Maria who was a product of the alien leisure-time culture he had found on Earth—a Maria who flitted with tireless zest from one activity to another, who naturally and enthusiastically accepted the innumerable forms of entertainment offered by the Happy Time cartel.
With growing despair, Walther tried to find some activity they could share. He had always enjoyed sports, so he took her to all the attractions at the Uniport arenas. Each was a new disappointment. What was billed as a fight for the world's heavyweight title ended with a one-round decision. A basketball game was exciting—for three furiously-contested minutes. The professional tennis match consisted of each player serving four balls, which the other attempted to return.
While traveling to and from the various attractions, there were always the diversions offered on the monorail and stratoway cars. Private transportation, Walther learned after hopefully exploring this possibility, had been eliminated for the obvious reason that it was restricted in the number of recreational opportunities it permitted, and might lead to over-indulgence in sex—from the point of view of the time involved, rather than promiscuity. And while walking was not strictly illegal, those who tended to over-indulge were advised to curtail their eccentricity.
After much thought, Walther did hit upon a possibility: It was prompted by his recollection that the natural beauty of such places as the Vienna woods had not been obscured. Since Maria was not required to be at rehearsals until two in the afternoon, they could spend the morning visiting some distant beauty spots he had read or heard about back on Neustadt. Perhaps in some of these places the pace of leisure would be slowed.
Maria happily accepted his initial invitation to spend a morning in the South Sea Islands. They boarded a stratoway car immediately after breakfasting together at the hotel, and soon had exchanged chilly Uniport for languorous Tahiti.
The island village, the natives and their costumes, the wet fragrance of the jungle and the soft rippling of the surf were all as Walther had pictured them since his first reading of Stevenson's voyages to the South Seas.
However, suspecting that the Happy Time cartel had probably made its presence felt in the village itself, Walther steered Maria around it, toward a path that wound invitingly between the tall palms and growths of bread fruit trees.
Maria's hand fell easily, naturally into his own, and she pressed a little closer to him, as if awed by the unaccustomed stillness.
She smiled up at him, started to say something, but Walther put his finger over her lips and shook his head. Maria looked puzzled, then took out of her handbag a miniaturized, self-powered television set, with its own tiny coin meter. She popped in a coin, flicked the dial, and the image of an actor appeared on the screen. Walther covered it with his hand. He took the set away from her, and dropped it into the pocket of his coat. Then he pointed to her, to the shadowed trees around them—and spread his hands as if to ask what more anyone could possibly want.
He wasn't sure she understood, but he put his arm around her waist and she rested her head against his shoulder. They continued a dozen steps down the path, until it ended at a silvery lagoon. Here, she touched the radio button of her wristwatch—rented on a weekly basis—and the rhythm of a jazz band filled the tropical air.