Part 39 (2/2)

'Then why did you leave?'

'Because I couldn't keep lying to her, that we were alone.....

She isn't like me. She needs the company of her own kind.' He spoke now more to himself, and to the darkness. She was silent for a moment, her own feelings and experience submerged.

'And now?'

'That's just it. I can't bring it all up to now. It's like a great wave that just goes on and on. The voyage here. . .sweet Jesus.

And just this morning I held her close while she slept, then woke her to a sight that broke both our hearts, and opened to us the possibility of a child of our own.' Again she felt him drifting, into a world that did not even recognize her existence. 'And now all of you, a flood of strange names and faces, and emotions I don't know how to read.

It just goes on and on, with Sylviana slipping farther and farther away.'

'All waves must eventually end, Kalus. This one will, too. And when you find yourself safely landed among us?' She hesitated. 'And if the girl is no longer yours? What then?'

'I cannot even think of that. It would be the end of everything, of life itself.'

Kataya hung her head. WHY MUST IT ALWAYS BE SO?

Kalus saw this gesture of defeat and knew, for all his confusion and despair, that he had been selfish, and forgotten her. There in the stillness of night he felt her presence acutely, felt the soul inside her and knew she was as achingly alive as himself. And the feelings this knowledge aroused in him both troubled and comforted his own loneliness. He put his hand beneath her chin and raised the lovely, oval face to look at him.

'You are very beautiful, Kataya. I have chosen Sylviana, but you are a woman that a man could truly love.' She wrapped her hand about his wrist, whispered something in a strange language, then broke off and quickly walked away. He watched her go in sadness.

All this time Sylviana had watched them, unable to hear what was said, imagining the worst. Then she saw him lift her face to his, and whisper tender words which should have been hers alone.

Confused and angry, she stormed back into her room. Confused and weary, Kalus spread himself on the ground like an animal, missing them both, and staring at the stars. Confused and bitter, Kataya swore she would not let herself want him, and be hurt yet again and again.

All three slept alone, finding no shelter from the mocking night.

Chapter 40

The next day was Sunday, and the one day a week which the hard-working colonists had agreed to set aside as a respite from their labors. Those who worked the fields, those who maintained the power and water supply, those who scavenged the city for underground vaults filled with books and computer records, as well as those who performed the experiments, translations, and radio communications (never answered) which were vital to the group's morale and sense of purpose, all surrendered for this one day the businesslike security of endeavor, to think and contemplate like the first pious Jews, who had looked to the heavens and tried to understand their world.

In the hushed morning they gathered for the non-denominational service, Christian, Jew, Buddhist and atheist alike, spread about the candle-lit conference room. And it was here that Sylviana first felt the depth of loneliness and sorrow that this handful of survivors carried with them as inescapably as a damaged organ, or the memory of an amputated limb.

And she realized that all their surface carelessness and ease, all the jokes about being bored with one another, were mere facade, the necessary illusions of commonplace existence. It was clear in this small chapel of honesty, that they not only loved and respected one another, but clung to each other, and held the value of each human life high above any other aspiration.

Commander Stenmark in particular she watched, and began to wonder at this grizzled pioneer whose age was so incongruous to all around him, most of whom were under forty. And during the moment of silent prayer she had to restrain with difficulty her own emotions, as she saw the same face that could be so still and dispa.s.sionate, draw close over the fervently folded hands with tears of age, and thanks, and tired responsibility flowing like the sudden, relentless Spring. And it was with warmth and a further shock that she realized this outpouring was for her: that something, someone dear to him had been spared. She had never felt so honored.

When the service ended they moved outside, and after a light meal, spread themselves more comfortably on the gra.s.sy earth of a clear s.p.a.ce at one end of the compound, backed by a gentle rise and a single, lithe and undistorted maple. This in preparation for what remained to them the greatest pleasure (and diversion) in life. Learning.

Sylviana's story was fascinating, what they had heard of it the night before, but it was Kalus whom they longed to interrogate. For here was an anthropologist's dream: a young man who had lived among throwback Neanderthals, who had carved his existence, without medicine or steel, from the harsh realities of a world in which Man not only held no exalted place, but was on the contrary smallish and ill-equipped, as likely to be hunted as hunter. And the fact that he himself had emerged from the recessed traits of three hundred generations, to be born fully human..... They knew nothing yet of the Machine or the Visitors, only that for most of his life Kalus had possessed no spoken language, had been an outcast and object of suspicion because of his appearance and greater intelligence, had met and shared deepest communion with a young woman and fellow creature of the twenty-first century. And for now, this was more than enough.

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