hard for a Parental to talk to a Hard One; even though she was quite young, she knew that much. Hard Ones talked only to Rationals.
She was quite frightened and she wisped away but not before she had heard her Parental say, “I take good care of her, Hard-sir.”
Could the Hard One have inquired about her? About her queerness, perhaps. But her Parental had not been apologetic. Even to the Hard One, he had spoken of his concern for her. Dua felt an obscure pride.
But now he was leaving and suddenly all the independence that Dua had been looking forward to lost its fine shape and hardened into the pointed crag of loneliness. She said, “But why must you pass on?”
“I must, little mid-dear.”
He must. She knew that. Everyone, sooner or later, must. The day would come when she would have to sigh and say, “I must.”
“But what makes you know when you have to pass on. If you can choose your time, why don’t you choose a different time and stay longer?”
He said, “Your left-father has decided. The triad must do as he says.”
“Why must you do what he says?” She hardly ever saw her left-father or her mid-mother. They didn’t count any more. Only her right-father, her Parental, her daddy, who stood there squat and flat-surfaced. He wasn’t all smooth-curved like a Rational or shuddery uneven like an Emotional, and she could always tell what he was going to say. Almost always.
She was sure he would say, “I can’t explain to a little Emotional.”
He said it.
Dua said in a burst of woe, “I’ll miss you. I know you think I pay you no attention, and that I don’t like you for always telling me not to do things. But I would rather not like you for telling me not to do things, than not have you around to tell me not to do things.”
And Daddy just stood there. There was no way he could handle an outburst like that except to come closer and pinch out a hand. It cost him a visible effort, but he held it out trembling and its outlines were ever so slightly soft.
Dua said, “Oh, Daddy,” and let her own hand flow about it so that his looked misty and shimmery through her substance; but she was careful not to touch it for that would have embarrassed him so.
Then he withdrew it and left her hand enclosing nothing and he said, “Remember the Hard Ones, Dua. They will help you. I—I will go now.”
He went and she never saw him again.
Now she sat there, remembering in the sunset, and rebelliously aware that pretty soon Tritt would grow petulant over her absence and nag Odeen.
And then Odeen might lecture her on her duties.
She didn’t care.
1b
Odeen was moderately aware that Dua was off on the surface. Without really thinking about it, he could judge her direction and even something of her distance. If he had stopped to think of it, he might have felt displeasure, for this inter-awareness sense had been steadily deadening for a long time now and, without really being certain why, he had a sense of gathering fulfillment about it. It was the way things were supposed to be; the sign of the continuing development of the body with age.
Tritt’s inter-awareness sense did not decrease, but it shifted more and more toward the children. That was clearly the line of useful development, but then the role of the Parental was a simple one, in a manner of speaking, however important. The Rational was far more complex and Odeen took a bleak satisfaction in that thought.
Of course, it was Dua who was the real puzzle. She was so unlike all the other Emotionals. That puzzled and frustrated Tritt and reduced him to even more pronounced inarticulacy. It puzzled and frustrated Odeen at times, too, but he was also aware of Dua’s infinite capacity to induce satisfaction with life and it did not seem likely that one was independent of the other. The occasional exasperation she produced was a small price to pay for the intense happiness.
And maybe Dua’s odd way of life was part of what ought to be, too. The Hard Ones seemed interested in her and ordinarily they paid attention only to Rationals. He felt pride in that; so much the better for the triad that even the Emotional was worth attention.
Things were as they were supposed to be. That was bedrock, and it was what he wanted most to feel,