To his surprise, she laughed. “Oh, how strange you are!”
“Strange?”
“So terribly solemn. So philosophical. Brooding about the rise and fall of empires on a glorious spring day like this. Standing here with the most amazing sunlight pouring down on us and telling me in those elocution-school tones of yours that empires that don’t even exist yet are already swept away and forgotten. How can something be forgotten that hasn’t yet even happened? And how can you even bother to think about anything morbid in a season like this one?” She moved closer to him, nuzzling against his side almost like a cat. “Do you know what I think, standing here right this minute looking out at the city? I think that the warmth of the sun feels wonderful and that the air is as fresh as new young wine and that the city has never seemed more sparkling or prosperous and that this is the most beautiful spring day in at least half a million years. And the last thing that’s going to cross my mind is that the weather may not hold or that the time of prosperity may not last or that great empires always crumble and are forgotten. But perhaps you and I are just different, Thimiroi. Some people are naturally gloomy, and always see the darkest side of everything, and then there are the people who couldn’t manage to be moody and broody even if their lives depended on—” She broke off suddenly. “Oh, Thimiroi, I don’t mean to offend you. You know that.”
“You haven’t offended me.” He turned to her. “What’s an elocution-school voice?”
“A trained one,” she said, smiling. “Like the voice of a radio or TV announcer. You have a marvelous voice, you know. You speak right from the center of your diaphragm, and you always pause for breath in the right places, and the tone is so rich, so perfect—a singer’s voice, really. You can sing very well, can’t you? I know you can. Later, perhaps, I could play for you, and you could sing for me, back at my place, some song of Stiino—of your own country—”
“Yes,” he said. “We could try that, yes.”
He kissed her, then, and it was a different sort of kiss from either of the two kisses of the day before, very different indeed; and as he held her his hands ran across her back, and over the nape of her neck, and down the sides of her arms, and she pressed herself close against him. Then after a long moment they moved apart again, both of them flushed and excited, and smiled, and looked at each other as though they were seeing each other for the first time.
They walked hand in hand through the park, neither of them saying anything. Small animals were everywhere, birds and odd shiny bright-colored little insects and comical four-legged grayish beasts with big shaggy tails lalloping behind them. Thimiroi was amazed by the richness of all this wildlife, and the shrubs and wildflowers dazzling with early bloom, and the huge thick-boled trees that rose so awesomely above them. What an extraordinary place this century was, he told himself: what a fantastic mixture of the still unspoiled natural world and the world of technology and industry. They had these great cities, these colossal buildings, these immense bridges—and yet, also, they still had saved room for flowers, for beetles and birds, for little furry animals with enormous tails. When the thought of the meteor, and the destruction that it would cause, crept back into his mind, he forced it furiously away. He asked Christine to tell him the names of things: this is a squirrel, she said, and this is a maple tree, and this a grasshopper. She was surprised that he knew so little about them, and asked him what kinds of insects and trees and animals they had in his own country.
“Very few,” he told her. “All our wild things went from us long ago.”
“Not even squirrels left? Grasshoppers?”
“Nothing like that,” he said. “Nothing at all. That is why we travel—to experience life in places such as this. To experience squirrels. To experience grasshoppers.”
“Of course. Everyone travels to see things different from what they have at home. But it’s hard to believe that there’s any country that’s done such ecological damage to itself that it doesn’t even have—”
“Oh, the problem is not ecological damage,” said Thimiroi. “Not as you understand the term. Our country is very beautiful, in its way, and we care for it extremely well. The problem is that it is an extremely civilized place. Too civilized, I think. We have everything under control. And one thing that we controlled, a very long time ago, is the very thing that this park is designed to provide: the world of nature, as it existed before the cities ever were.”
She stared. “Not even a squirrel.”
“Not even a squirrel, no.”
“Where is this country of yours? Did you say it was in Arabia? One of the oil kingdoms?”
“No,” he said. “Not in Arabia.”
They went onward. The afternoon’s heat was at its peak, now, and Thimiroi felt the moisture of the air clinging close against his skin, a strange and unusual sensation for him. Again they paused, after a while, to kiss, even more passionately than before.
“Come,” Christine said. “Let’s go home.”
They hurried down the hillside, taking it practically at a jog. But they slowed as the Montgomery House came into view. Thimiroi thought of inviting her to his room once again, but the thought of Laliene hovering nearby—spying on him, scowling her disapproval as he entered into the same transgression for which she had so sternly censured Kleph—displeased him. Christine reminded him, though, that she had offered to play the piano for him, and wanted him to sing for her. Gladly, eagerly, Thimiroi accepted the invitation to go with her to her house.
But as they approached it he was dismayed to see Kleph standing on the steps of a big, rambling old house just opposite Christine’s, on the uphill side of the street. She was talking to a sturdy square-shouldered man with a good-natured, open face, and she did not appear to notice Thimiroi.
Christine said, “Do you want to say hello to her?”
“Not really.”
“She’s one of your friends, isn’t she? Someone from your country?”
“She’s from my country, yes. But not exactly a friend. Just someone who’s taking the same tour I am. Is that the house where she’s staying?”
“Yes,” Christine said. “She and another woman, and a tall somber-looking man. I saw them all with you, that night at the concert hall. They’ve rented the house for the whole month. That man’s the owner, Oliver Wilson.”
“Ah.” Thimiroi drew his breath in sharply.
So that was the one. Oliver. Kleph’s twentieth-century lover. Thimiroi felt a stab of despair. Looking across the way now at Kleph, deep in conversation with this Oliver, it seemed to him suddenly that Laliene’s scorn for Kleph had not been misplaced, that it was foolish and pathetic and even a little sordid for any Traveler to indulge in such doomed and absurd romances as this. And yet he was on the verge of embarking on the same thing Kleph was doing. Was that what he really wanted? Or should he not leave such adventures to shallow, trivial people like Kleph?
Christine said, “You’re looking troubled again.”
“It’s nothing. Nothing.” Thimiroi gazed closely at her, and her warmth, her directness, her radiant joyous eyes, swept away all the sudden doubts that had come to engulf him. He had no right to condemn Kleph. And in any case what he might choose to do, or Kleph, was no concern of Laliene’s. “Come,” he said. He caught Christine lightly by the arm. “Let’s go inside.”
Just as he turned, Kleph did also, and for an instant their eyes met as they stood facing each other on opposite sides of the street. She gave him a startled look. Thimiroi smiled to her; but Kleph merely stared back intently in a curiously cold way. Then she was gone. Thimiroi shrugged.