Sunset.
She had seen that artificial food that once; a glowing sphere of light, like a tiny Sun, in a special cavern set up by the Hard Ones. She could taste its bitterness yet.
Would they improve it? Would they make it taste better? Even delicious? And would she have to eat it then and fill herself with it till the full sensation gave her an almost uncontrollable desire to melt.
She feared that self-generating desire. It was different when the desire came through the hectic combined stimulation of left-ling and right-ling. It was the self-generation that meant she would be ripe to bring about the initiation of a little-mid. And—and she didn’t want to!
It was a long time before she would admit the truth to herself. She didn’t want to initiate an Emotional! It was after the three children were all born that the time would inevitably come to pass on, and she didn’t want to. She remembered the day her Parental had left her forever, and it was never going to be like that for her. Of that she was fiercely determined.
The other Emotionals didn’t care because they were too empty to think about it, but she was different. She was queer Dua, the Left-Em; that was what they had called her; and she would be different. As long as she didn’t have that third child, she would not pass on; she would continue to live.
So she wasn’t going to have that third child. Never. Never!
But how was she going to stave it off? And how would she keep Odeen from finding out? What if Odeen found out?
2b
Odeen waited for Tritt to do something. He was reasonably sure that Tritt would not actually go up to the surface after Dua. It would mean leaving the children and that was always hard for Tritt to do. Tritt waited, without speaking for a while, and when he left, it was in the direction of the children’s alcove.
Odeen was almost glad when Tritt left. Not quite, of course, for Tritt had been angry and withdrawn so that interpersonal contact had weakened and the barrier of displeasure had arisen. Odeen could not help but be melancholy at that. It was like the slowing of the lifepulse.
He sometimes wondered if Tritt felt it, too.… No, that was unfair. Tritt had the special relationship with the children.
And as for Dua, who could tell what Dua felt? Who could tell what any Emotional felt? They were so different they made left and right seem alike in everything but mind. But even allowing for the erratic way of Emotionals, who could tell what Dua—especially Dua—felt?
That was why Odeen managed to be almost glad when Tritt left, for Dua was the question. The delay in initiating the third child was indeed becoming too long and Dua was growing less amenable to persuasion, not more. There was a growing restlessness in Odeen himself, that he could not quite identify, and it was something he would have to discuss with Losten.
He made his way down to the Hard-caverns, hastening his movements into a continuous flow that was not nearly as undignified as the oddly exciting mixture of wavering and rushing that marked the Emotional curve-along, or as amusing as the stolid weight-shift of the Parental—
(He had the keen thought-image of Tritt clumping in pursuit of the baby-Rational, who, of course, was almost as slippery, at his age, as an Emotional, and of Dua having to block the baby and bring him back, and of Tritt cluckingly undecided whether to shake the small life-object or enfold him with his substance. From the start, Tritt could thin himself more effectively for the babies than for Odeen and when Odeen rallied him about that, Tritt answered gravely, for of course he had no humor about such things, “Ah, but the children need it more.”)
Odeen was selfishly pleased with his own flow and thought it graceful and impressive. He had mentioned that once to Losten, to whom as his Hard-teacher, he confessed everything, and Losten had said, “But don’t you think an Emotional or a Parental feels the same about his own flow-pattern. If each of you think differently and act differently, ought you not to be pleased differently? A triad doesn’t preclude individuality, you know.”
Odeen wasn’t sure he understood about individuality. Did that mean being alone? A Hard One was alone, of course. There were no triads among them. How did they stand it?
Odeen had still been quite young when the matter had come up.