“Really?” Her tone was indubitably flirtatious.
“Yes. You were about so long.” He held his hands not very far apart.
“Could I talk yet?”
“You said waa, and a few other things.”
“Did I wake up everybody in the dom like Cheben’s baby?” she inquired, with a broad, gleeful smile.
“Of course.”
“When did I learn how to really talk?”
“At about one half year old,” said Takver, “and you have never shut up since. Where’s the hat. Sadikiki?”
“At school. I hate the hat I wear!” she informed Shevek.
They walked the child through the windy streets to the learning-center dormitory and took her into the lobby. It was a little, shabby place too, but brightened by children’s paintings, several fine brass model engines, and a litter of toy houses and painted wooden people. Sadik kissed her mother good night, then turned to Shevek and put up her arms; he stooped to her; she kissed him matter-of-factly but firmly, and said, “Good night!” She went off with the night attendant, yawning. They heard her voice, the attendant’s mild hushing.
“She’s beautiful, Takver. Beautiful, intelligent, sturdy.”
“She’s spoiled, I’m afraid.”
“No, no. You’ve done well, fantastically well — in such a time—”
“It hasn’t been so bad here, not the way it was in the south,” she said, looking up into his face as they left the dormitory. “Children were fed, here. Not very well, but enough. A. community here can grow food. If nothing else there’s the scrub holum. You can gather wild holum seeds and pound them for meal. Nobody starved here. But I did spoil Sadik. I nursed her till she was three, of course, why not when there was nothing good to wean her to! But they disapproved, at the research station at Rolny. They wanted me to put her in the nursery there full time. They said I was being propertarian about the child and not contributing full strength to the social effort in the crisis. They were right, really. But they were so righteous. None of them understood about being lonely. They were all groupers, no characters. It was the women who nagged me about nursing. Real body profiteers. I stuck it out there because the food was good — trying out the algaes to see if they were palatable, sometimes you got quite a lot over standard rations, even if it did taste like glue — until they could replace me with somebody who fitted in better. Then I went to Fresh Start for about ten decads. That was whiter, two years ago, that long time the mail didn’t get through, when things were so bad where you were. At Fresh Start I saw this posting listed, and came here. Sadik stayed with me in the dom till this autumn. I still miss her. The room’s so silent.”
“Isn’t there a roommate?”
“Sherut, she’s very nice, but she works night shift at the hospital. It was time Sadik went, it’s good for her living with the other children. She was getting shy. She was very good about going there, very stoical. Little children are stoical. They cry over bumps, but they take the big things as they come, they don’t whine like so many adults.”
They walked along side by side. The autumn stars had come out, incredible in number and brilliance, twinkling and almost blinking because of the dust stirred up by the earthquake and the wind, so that the whole sky seemed to tremble, a shaking of diamond chips, a scintillation of sunlight on a black sea. Under that uneasy splendor the hills were dark and solid, the roofs hard-edged, the light of the street lamps mild.
“Four years ago,” Shevek said. “It was four years ago that I came back to Abbenay, from that place in South-rising — what was it called? — Red Springs. It was a night like this, windy, the stars. I ran, I ran all the way from Plains Street to the domicile. And you weren’t there, you’d gone. Four years!”
“The moment I left Abbenay I knew I’d been a fool to go. Famine or no famine. I should have refused the posting.”
“It wouldn’t have made much difference. Sabul was waiting to tell me I was through at the Institute.”
“If I’d been there, you wouldn’t have gone down to the Dust.”
“Maybe not, but we mightn’t have kept postings together. For a while ft seemed as if nothing could bold together, didn’t it? The towns in Southwest — there weren’t any children left in them. There still aren’t They sent them north, into regions where there was local food, or a chance of it. And they stayed to keep the mines and mills going. It’s a wonder we pulled through, all of us, isn’t it?… But by damn, I will do my own work for a while now!”
She took his arm. He stopped short, as if her touch had electrocuted him on the spot. She shook him, smiling. “You didn’t eat, did you?”
“No. Oh Takver, I have been sick for you, sick for you!”
They came .together, holding on to each other fiercely, in the dark street between the lamps, under the stars. They broke apart as suddenly, and Shevek backed up against the nearest wall. “I’d better eat something,” he said, and Takver said, “Yes, or you’ll fall flat on your facel Come on.” They went a block to the commons, the largest building in Chakar. Regular dinner was over, but the cooks were eating, and provided the traveler a bowl of stew and all the bread he wanted. They all sat at the table nearest the kitchen. The other tables had already been cleaned and set for next morning. The big room was cavernous, the ceiling rising into shadow, the far end obscure except where a bowl or cup winked on a dark table, catching the light. The cooks and servers were a quiet crew, tired after the day’s work; they ate fast, not talking much, not paying much attention to Takver and the stranger. One after another they finished and got up to take their dishes to the washers in the kitchen. One old woman said as she got up, “don’t hurry, ammari, they’ve got an hour’s washing yet to do.” She had a grim face and looked dour, not maternal, not benevolent; but she spoke with compassion, with the charity of equals. She could do nothing for them but say, “Don’t hurry,” and look at them for a moment with the look of brotherly love.
They could do no more for her, and little more for each other.
They went back to Domicile Eight, Room 3, and there their long desire was fulfilled. They did not even light the lamp; they both liked making love in darkness. The first time they both came as Shevek came into her, the second time they struggled and cried out in a rage of joy, prolonging their climax as if delaying the moment of death, the third time they were both half asleep, and circled about the center of infinite pleasure, about each other’s being, like planets circling blindly, quietly, in the flood of sunlight, about the common center of gravity, swinging, circling endlessly.
Takver woke at dawn. She leaned on her elbow and looked across Shevek at the grey square of the window, and then at him. He lay on his back, breathing so quietly that his chest scarcely moved, his face thrown back a little, remote and stern in the thin light We came, Takver thought, from a great distance to each other. We have always done so. Over great distances, over years, over abysses of chance. It is because he comes from so far away that nothing can separate us. Nothing, no distances, no years, can be greater than the distance that’s already between us, the distance of our sex, the difference of our being, our minds; that gap, that abyss which we bridge with a look, with a touch, with a word, the easiest thing in the world. Look how far away he is, asleep. Look how far away he is, he always is. But he comes back, he comes back, he comes back…
Takver put in notice of departure at the hospital in Chakar, but stayed till they could replace her in the laboratory. She worked her eight-hour shift — in the third quarter of the year 168 many people were still on the long work shifts of emergency postings, for though the drought had broken in the winter of 167, the economy had by no means returned to normal yet. “Long post and short commons” was still the rule for people in skilled’ work, but the food was now adequate to the day’s work, which had not been true a year ago and two years ago.