In the middle of the night, Victoria came to my cabin. My first awareness was of the sound of the door closing, and as I opened my eyes I saw her as a tall shape standing beside the bed.
“Wha — ?”
“Ssh. It’s me.”
“What do you want?” I reached out to find the light-switch, but her hand came across and took my wrist.
“Don’t turn on the light.”
She sat down on the edge of the bed, and I sat up.
“I’m sorry, Helward. That’s all I’ve come to say.”
“O.K.”
She laughed. “You’re still asleep, aren’t you?”
“Not sure. Might be.”
She leaned forward, and I felt her hands press lightly against my chest and then move up until they were behind my neck. She kissed me.
“Don’t say anything,” she said. “I’m just very sorry.”
We kissed again, and her hands moved until her arms were tight around me.
“You wear a night-shirt in bed.”
“What else?”
“Take it off.”
She stood up suddenly, and I heard her undoing the coat she was wearing. When she sat down again, much closer, she was naked. I fumbled with my night-shirt, getting it caught as it came over my head. Victoria pulled back the covers, and squeezed in beside me.
“You came down here like that?” I said.
“There’s no one about.” Her face was very close to mine. We kissed again, and as I pulled away my head banged against the cabin wall. Victoria cuddled up close to me, pressing her body against mine. Suddenly she laughed loudly.
“Christ! Shut up!”
“What’s up?” she said.
“Someone will hear.”
“They’re all asleep.”
“They won’t be if you keep laughing.”
“I said don’t talk.” She kissed me again.
In spite of the fact that my body was already responding eagerly to her, I was stricken with alarm. We were making too much noise. The walls in the crèche were thin, and I knew from long experience that sounds transmitted readily. With her laughter and our voices, the fact that of necessity we were squeezed in the bunk against the wall, I was certain we’d awaken the whole crèche. I pushed her away and told her this.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said.
“It does.”
I flung back the bed-covers, and scrambled over her. I turned on the light. Victoria shielded her eyes against the glare, and I tossed her coat to her.
“Come on… we’ll go to your room.”
“No.”
“Yes.” I was pulling on my uniform.
“Don’t put that on,” she said. “It smells.”
“Does it?”
“Abominably.”
She sat up and as she did so I stared at her, admiring the neatness of her naked body. She pulled the coat around her shoulders, then got out of the bed.
“O.K.,” she said. “But let’s be quick.”
We left my cabin and let ourselves out of the crèche. We hurried along the corridors. As Victoria had said, this late at night there was no one about, and the corridor lights were dimmed. In a few minutes we had reached her room. I closed the door, and bolted it. Victoria sat down on the bed, holding her coat around her.
I took off my uniform and climbed into the bed.
“Come on, Victoria.”
“I don’t feel like it now.”
“Oh, Christ… why not?”
“We should have stayed where we were,” she said.
“Do you want to go back?”
“Of course not.”
“Get in with me,” I said. “Don’t sit there.”
“O.K.”
She undid her coat and dropped it on the floor, then climbed in beside me. We put our arms around each other, and kissed for a moment, but I knew what she meant. The desire had left me as rapidly as it had come. After a while we just lay there in silence. The sensation of being in bed with her was pleasant, but although I was aware of the sensuality of it nothing happened.
Eventually, I said: “Why did you come to see me?”
“I told you.”
“Was that all… that you were sorry?”
“I think so.”
“I nearly came to see you,” I said. “I’ve done something I shouldn’t. I’m frightened.”
“What was it?”
“I told you… I told you I had been made to swear something. You were right, the guilds impose secrecy on their members. When I became an apprentice I had to take an oath, and part of it was that I had to swear I would not reveal the existence of the oath. I broke it by telling you.”
“Does it matter?”
“The penalty is death.”
“But why should they ever find out?”
“If…”
Victoria said: “If I say anything, you mean. Why should I?”
“I’m not sure. But the way you were talking today, the resentment at not being allowed to lead your own life… I felt sure you would use it against me.”
“Until just now it meant nothing to me. I wouldn’t use it. Anyway, why should a wife betray her husband?”
“You still want to marry me?”
“Yes.”
“Even though it was arranged for us?”
“It’s a good arrangement,” she said, and held me tighter for a few moments. “Don’t you feel the same?”
“Yes.”
A few minutes later, Victoria said: “Will you tell me what goes on outside the city?”
“I can’t.”
“Because of the oath?”
“Yes.”
“But you’re already in breach of it. What could matter now?”
“There’s nothing to tell anyway,” I said. “I’ve spent ten days doing a lot of physical work, and I’m not sure why.”
“What kind of physical work?”
“Victoria… don’t question me about it.”
“Well tell me about the sun. Why is no one in the city allowed to see it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is there something wrong with it?”
“I don’t think so…”
Victoria was asking me questions I should have asked myself, but hadn’t. In the welter of new experiences, there had been hardly time to register the meaning of anything I’d seen, let alone query it. Confronted with these questions — quite aside from whether or not I should answer them — I found myself demanding the answers. Was there indeed something wrong with the sun that could endanger the city? Should this be kept secret if so? But I had seen the sun, and…
“There’s nothing wrong with it,” I said. “But it doesn’t look the same shape as I’d thought.”
“It’s a sphere.”
“No it’s not. Or at least it doesn’t look like one.”
“Well?”
“I shouldn’t tell you, I’m sure.”
“You can’t leave it like that,” she said.
“I don’t think it’s important.”
“I do.”
“O.K.” I had already said too much, but what could I do? “You can’t see it properly during the day, because it’s so bright. But at sunrise or sunset you can see it for a few minutes. I think it’s disk-shaped. But it’s more than that, and I don’t know the words to describe it. In the centre of the disk, top and bottom, there’s a kind of shaft.”
“Part of the sun?”
“Yes. A bit like a spinning-top. But it’s difficult to see clearly because it’s so bright even at those times. The other night, I was outside and the sky was clear. There’s a moon, and that’s the same shape. But I couldn’t see that clearly either, because it was in phase.”
“Are you sure of this?”
“It’s what I’ve seen.”
“But it’s not what we we were taught.”
“I know,” I said. “But that’s how it is.”
I said no more. Victoria asked more questions but I pushed them aside, pleading that I did not know the answers. She tried to draw me further on the work I was doing, but somehow I managed to keep my silence. Instead, I asked her questions about herself and soon we had moved away from what was for me a dangerous subject. It could not be buried forever, but I needed time to think. Some time later we made love, and shortly afterwards we fell asleep.