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, Shevek! 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 call 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 had 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 eyeteeth, so that the gaps showed when she smiled. Her skin 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