feel for what they’re saying, even without understanding, especially after we’ve melted. Just sometimes, though. Getting feels like that is really an Emotional trick, except even if an Emotional does it, she can never make real sense out of what she’s feeling. You might, though.”
Dua demurred. “I’d be afraid to. They might not like it.”
“Oh, go on. I’m curious. See if you can tell what they’re talking about.”
“Shall I? Really?”
“Go ahead. If they catch you and are annoyed, I’ll say I made you do it.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
Feeling rather fluttery, Dua let herself reach out to the Hard Ones, and adopted the total passivity that allowed the influx of feelings.
She said, “Excitement! They’re excited. Someone new.”
Odeen said, “Maybe that’s Estwald.”
It was the first time Dua had heard the name. She said, “That’s funny.”
“What’s funny?”
“I have the feeling of a big sun. A really big sun.”
Odeen looked thoughtful. “They might be talking about that.”
“But how can that be?”
It was just at that time that the Hard Ones spied them. They approached in a friendly manner and greeted them in Soft-One fashion of speech. Dua was horribly embarrassed and wondered if they knew she had been sensing them. If they did, though, they said nothing.
(Odeen told her afterward that it was quite rare to come upon Hard Ones talking among themselves in their own fashion. They always deferred to the Soft Ones and seemed always to suspend their own work when Soft Ones were there. “They like us so much,” said Odeen. “They are very kind.”)
Once in awhile he would take her down to the Hard-caverns—usually when Tritt was entirely wrapped up in the children. Nor did Odeen go out of his way to tell Tritt that he had taken Dua down. It was sure to evoke some response to the effect that Odeen’s coddling simply encouraged Dua’s reluctance to sun herself and just made the melting that much more ineffective.… It was hard to talk to Tritt for more than five minutes without melting coming into the conversation.
She had even come down alone once or twice. It had always frightened her a little to do so, though the Hard Ones she met were always friendly, always “very kind,” as Odeen said. But they did not seem to take her seriously. They were pleased, but somehow amused—she could feel that definitely—when she asked questions. And when they answered it was in a simple way that carried no information. “Just a machine, Dua,” they would say. “Odeen might be able to tell you.”
She wondered if she had met Estwald. She never quite dared ask the names of the Hard Ones she met (except Losten, to whom Odeen had introduced her, and of whom she heard a great deal). Sometimes it seemed to her that this Hard One or that might be he. Odeen talked about him with great awe and with some resentment.
She gathered that he was too engaged in work of the deepest importance to be in the caverns accessible to the Soft Ones.
She pieced together what Odeen told her, and, little by little, discovered that the world needed food badly. Odeen hardly ever called it “food.” He said “energy” instead, and said it was the Hard-One word for it.
The Sun was fading and dying but Estwald had discovered how to find energy far away, far beyond the Sun, far beyond the seven stars that shone in the dark, night-sky. (Odeen said the seven stars were seven suns that were very distant, and that there were many other stars that were even more distant and were too dim to be seen. Tritt had heard him say that and had asked of what use it was for stars to exist if they couldn’t be seen and he didn’t believe a word of it. Odeen had said, “Now, Tritt,” in a patient way. Dua had been about to say something very like that which Tritt had said, but changed her mind after that.)
It looked, now, as though there would be plenty of energy forever; plenty of food—at least as soon as Estwald and the other Hard Ones learned to make the new energy taste right.
It had only been a few days ago when she had said to Odeen, “Do you remember, long ago, when you took me to the Hard-caverns and I sensed the Hard Ones and said I caught the feeling of a big sun.”
Odeen looked puzzled for a moment. “I’m not sure. But go ahead, Dua. What about it?”