A Princess of The Linear Jungle

Termite Terrace—Merritt passed in the street dark-skinned natives of Alms-grave; almond-eyed, honey-complected expatriates of Bento; veiled men and topless women from Quercus Major; and a plethora of other exotic types, rendered so by appearance, accent, attitude, or some combination of the three.
    Given this wealth of potential comrades and lovers, representing a huge spectrum of congeniality and worldviews, Merritt initially felt that she should have no trouble finding a congenial social set. But for one reason or another—her own skittish hesitancy and vocational intensity, or the clannishness of those far from their own homes—she simply could not—at least in her first two months residence—make a dent in any of these convivial circles.
    Not being a student, she had no access to collegiate circuits, nor was she enticed by her fellow employees at the NikThek (a musty bunch, truth be told, too long immured in spider webbed archives).
    Consequently, when she sought to follow the advice of her newfound mentor, Professor Chambless, she wound up falling back on familiarity, in the form of Ransome Pivot.
    Merritt and Ransome had met late in their junior year at Jermyn Rogers, when Pivot had chanced to eat at the restaurant where Merritt waitressed, the Buenasuerte. Miscalculating the check in the favor of the handsome customer, and having him nobly point out her mistake, saving her money out of her own pauper’s pocket, made their initial connection, resulting in but one formal date, an evening at a concert by the legendary Jigsaw Five.
    Merritt felt no immediate romantic chemistry with Pivot, and so swiftly abandoned him. She soon learned that any neutrality was not mutual, as an infatuated Pivot haunted her path thereafter—in then on-threatening, addle-pated manner of some alien suitor out of Patchen’s Age of Swains . He was a pre-med student, following in the footsteps of his father, the well-known and wealthy Chamfort Pivot, and so he and Merritt shared no classroom time. But he made sure to engineer numerous encounters—right down to choosing Swazeycape’s med school as his post-graduate destination, and the Samuel Smallhorne as his transportation thereto.
    So when Merritt reluctantly but with a curious sense of anticipation sent Ransome Pivot a letter, asking if they could meet for lunch one day, she expected him to fall all over himself arranging the date. But his reply did not come for several days, and when they finally hooked up, Merritt found the doctor-in-training oddly distracted and inattentive. The cares of the world seemed to have descended on his broad shoulders, and it was all she could do to wrangle a date out of him.
    “I’d like to meet some of your new friends, Ransome. I’m sure the med school is full of bright lights just like you!”
    “Yes, of course, grand bunch of fellows. Wild parties every weekend.” Pivot examined the veins in his own wrist as if seeing them for the first time. “But look here, why don’t the two of us go out first alone? Just you and me. Maybe take in some music at a club.”
    “Well, all right, I suppose. But remember, I do need to broaden my horizons beyond the sons of Stagwitz.”
    Ransome smiled for the first time since he had shown up for lunch. “Sure, sure, we’re in the big leagues now, I know. Meet and greet, network, all that important stuff. Listen, Mer, I’ll pick you up at seven this Friday.”
    Merritt dressed in her classiest outfit for their date: stack-heeled shoes that gave her a little needed height; a black A-line skirt that helped diminish her hips; and an original Hazelgrove silk blouse in green that she had found on a sale rack back home (the price-cutting stain easily concealed under a neckerchief). Emerging from her brownstone on the arm of Ransome Pivot, she felt like a princess out of one of the semi-mythical kingdoms in the Hundred Thousand Blocks.
    When she saw that Ransome had rented their own private pedicab, she felt even more special. As the driver gracefully huffed and puffed them Uptown, Ransome chattered in a light-hearted manner.
    “Do you recall those Kynard impellers on the ship that brought us here? Someday soon you’ll see them installed in cabs. Just as quickly as the ingeniators get the battery problem licked. Weight and capacity, that’s the key. Mark my words, you can’t stop progress. Why, a couple of centuries ago, no one even knew that the Day sun broadcast power beams. It makes you wonder what