He came in the late dusk to Chakar. The sky was dark violet over the black ridges. Street lamps flared bright and lonely. Housefronts looked sketchy in the artificial light, the wilderness dark behind them. There were many empty lots, many single houses: an old town, a frontier town, isolated, scattered. A woman passing directed Shevek to Domicile Eight: “That way, brother, past the hospital, the end of the street.” The street ran into the dark under the mountainside and ended at the door of a low building. He entered and found a country-town domicile foyer that took him back to his childhood, to the places in Liberty, Drum Mountain, Wide Plains, where he and his father had lived: the dim light, the patched matting; a leaflet describing a local machinists training group, a notice of syndicate meetings, and a flyer for a performance of a play three decads ago, tacked to the announcement board; a framed amateur painting of Odo in prison over the common-room sofa; a homemade harmonium; a list of residents and a notice of hot-water hours at the town baths posted by the door.
Sherat, Takver, No. 3.
He knocked, watching the reflection of the hall light in the dark surface of the door, which did not hang quite true in its frame. A woman said, “Come in!” He opened the door.
The brighter light in the room was behind her. He could not see well enough for a moment to be sure it was Takver. She stood facing him. She reached out, as if to push him away or to take hold of him, an uncertain, unfinished gesture. He took her hand, and then they held each other, they came together and stood holding each other on the unreliable earth.
“Come in,” Takver said, “oh come in, come in.”
Shevek opened his eyes. Farther into the room, which still seemed very bright, he saw the serious, watchful face of a small child.
“Sadik, this is Shevek.”
The child went to Takver, took hold of her leg, and burst into tears.
“But don’t cry, why are you crying, little soul?”
“Why are you?” the child whispered.
“Because I’m happy! Only because I’m happy. Sit on my lap. But Shevek, Shevekl The letter from you only came yesterday. I was going to go by the telephone when I took Sadik home to sleep. You said you’d catt tonight. Not come tonight! Oh, don’t cry, Sadiki, look, I’m not any more, am I?”
“The man cried too.”
“Of course I did.”
Sadik looked at him with mistrustful curiosity. She was four years old. She had a round head, a round face, she was round, dark, furry, soft.
There was no furniture in the room but the two bed platforms. Takver bad sat down on one with Sadik on her lap, Shevek sat down on the other and stretched out his legs. He wiped his eyes with the backs of his hands, and held the knuckles out to show Sadik. “See,” he said, “they’re wet. And the nose dribbles. Do you keep a handkerchief?”
“Yes. Don’t you?”
“I did, but it got lost in a washhouse.”
“You can share the handkerchief I use,” Sadik said after a pause.
“He doesn’t know where it is,” said Takver.
Sadik got off her mother’s lap and fetched a handkerchief from a drawer in the closet. She gave it to Takver, who passed it across to Shevek. “It’s clean,” Takver said, with her large smile. Sadik watched closely while Shevek wiped his nose.
“Was there an earthquake here a little while ago?” he asked.
“It shakes all the time, you really stop noticing,” Takver said, but Sadik, delighted to dispense information, said in her high but husky voice, “Yes, there was a big one before dinner. When there’s an earthquake the windows go gliggle and the floor waves, and you ought to go into the doorway or outside.”
Shevek looked at Takver; she returned the look. She had aged more than four years. She had never had very good teeth, and now had lost two, just back of the upper eye-teeth, so that the gaps showed when she smiled. Her skin i no longer had the fine taut surface of youth, and her hair, pulled back neatly, was dull.
Shevek saw clearly that Takver had lost her young grace, and looked a plain, tired woman near the middle of her life. He saw this more clearly than anyone else could have seen it. He saw everything about Takver in a way that no one else could have seen it, from the standpoint of years of intimacy and years of longing. He saw her as she was.
Their eyes met.
“How — how’s it been going here?” he asked, reddening all at once and obviously speaking at random. She felt the palpable wave, the outrush of his desire. She also flushed slightly, and smiled. She said in her husky voice, “Oh, same as when we talked on the phone.”
“That was six decads ago!”
“Things go along pretty much the same here.
“It’s very beautiful here — the hills.” He saw in Takver’s eyes the darkness of the mountain valleys. The acuteness of his sexual desire grew abruptly, so that he was dizzy for a moment, then he got over the crisis temporarily and tried to command his erection to subside. “Do you think you’ll want to stay here?” he said.
“I don’t care,” she said, in her strange, dark, husky voice.
“Your nose is still dribbling,” Sadik remarked, keenly, but without emotional bias.
“Be glad that’s all,” Shevek said. Takver said, “Hush, Sadik, don’t egoize!” Both the adults laughed. Sadik continued to study Shevek.
“I do like the town, Shev. The people are nice — all characters. But the work isn’t much. It’s just lab work in the hospital. The shortage of technicians is just about over, I could leave soon without leaving them in the lurch. I’d like to go back to Abbenay, if you were thinking of that. Have you got a reposting?”
“Didn’t ask for one and haven’t checked. I’ve been on the road for a decad.”
“What were you doing on the road?”
“Traveling on it, Sadik.”
“He was coming from half across the world, from the south, from the deserts, to come to us,” Takver said. The child smiled, settled herself more comfortably on her lap, and yawned.
“Have you eaten, Shev? Are you worn out? I must get this child to bed, we were just thinking of leaving when you knocked.”
“She sleeps in the dormitory already?”
“Since the beginning of this quarter,”
“I was four already,” Sadik stated.
“You say, I am four already,” said Takver, dumping her off gently in order to get her coat from the closet Sadik stood up, in profile to Shevek; she was extremely conscious of him, and directed her remarks towards him. “But I was four, now I’m more than four.”
“A temporalist, like the father!”
“You can’t be four and more than four at the same time, can you?” the child asked, sensing approbation, and now speaking directly to Shevek.
“Oh, yes, easily. And you can be four and nearly five at the same time, too.” Sitting on the low platform, he could hold his head on a level with the child’s so that she did not have to look up at him. “But I’d forgotten that you were nearly five, you see. When I last saw you you were hardly more than nothing.”