an open window. The big domicile, two hundred rooms, was astir, alive quietly all around them; as their existence entered into its existence so did its existence enter into theirs, as part of a whole. Presently Sadik slipped off her father’s knees and sat on the platform beside him, dose to him. Her dark hair was rumpled and tangled, hanging around her face.
“I didn’t want to tell you, because . . .” Her voice sounded thin and small. “But it just keeps getting worse. They make each other meaner.”
“Then you won’t go back there,” Shevek said. He put his arm around her, but she resisted, sitting straight.
“If I go and talk to them—” said Takver.
“It’s no use. They feel as they feel.”
“But what is this we’re up against?” Takver asked with bewilderment.
Shevek did not answer. He kept his arm around Sadik, and she yielded at last, leaning her head against his arm with a weary heaviness. “There are other learning centers,” he said at last, without much certainty.
Takver stood up. She clearly could not sit still and wanted to do something, to act. But there was not much to do. “Let me braid your hair, Sadik,” she said in a subdued voice.
She brushed and braided the child’s hair; they set the screen across the room, and tucked Sadik in beside the sleeping baby. Sadik was near tears again saying good night, but within half an hour they heard by her breathing that she was asleep.
Shevek had settled down at the head of their bed platform with a notebook and the slate he used for calculating.
“I paged that manuscript today,” Takver said.
“What did it come to?”
“Forty-one pages. With the supplement.”
He nodded. Takver got up, looked over the screen at the two sleeping children, returned, and sat down on the edge of the platform.
“I knew there was something wrong. But she didn’t say anything. She never has, she’s stoical. It didn’t occur to me it was this. I thought it was just our problem, it didn’t occur to me they’d take it out on children.” She spoke softly and bitterly. “It grows, it keeps growing . . . . Will another school be any different?”
“I don’t know. If she spends much time with us, probably not.”
“You certainly aren’t suggesting—”
“No, I’m not. I’m stating a fact, only. If we choose to give the child the intensity of individual love, we can’t spare her what comes with that, the risk of pain. Pain from us, and through us.”
“It isn’t fair she should be tormented for what we do. She’s so good, and good-natured, she’s like clear water—” Takver stopped, strangled by a brief rush of tears, wiped her eyes, set her lips.
“It isn’t what we do. It’s what I do.” He put his notebook down. “You’ve been suffering for it too.”
“I don’t care what they think.”
“At work?”
“I can take another posting.”
“Not here, not in your own field.”
“Well, do you want me to go somewhere else? The Sorruba fishery labs at Peace-and-Plenty would take me on. But where does that leave you?” She looked at him angrily. “Here, I suppose?”
“I could come with you. Skovan and the others are coming along in Iotic, they’ll be able to handle the radio, and that’s my main practical function in the Syndicate now. I can do physics as well in Peace-and-Plenty as I can here. But unless I drop right out of the Syndicate of Initiative, that doesn’t solve the problem, does it? I’m the problem. I’m the one who makes trouble.”
“Would they care about that, in a little place like Peace-and-Plenty?”
“I’m afraid they might.”
“Shev, how much of this hatred have you run up against? Have you been keeping quiet, like Sadik?”
“And like you. Well, at times. When I went to Concord, last summer, it was a little worse than I told you. Rock-throwing, and a good-sized fight. The students who asked me to come had to fight for me. They did, too, but I got out quick; I was putting them in danger. Well, students want some danger. And after all we’ve asked for a fight, we’ve deliberately roused people. And there are plenty on our side. But now . . . but I’m beginning to wonder if I’m not imperiling you and the children, Tak. By staying with you.”
“Of course you’re not in danger yourself,” she said savagely.
“I’ve asked for it. But it didn’t occur to me they’d extend their tribal resentment to you. I don’t feel the same about your danger as I do about