Part 2 (1/2)

”I need more privacy than this,” I said, and got up. Piet got up too, and followed me as I walked to the floater. It was parked outside the repellent field, so we got in and shut the door quickly to keep most of the bugs outside.

”Okay,” he said when we'd both sat down, ”let's have it.”

”I want you to marry Jenoor and me. You're the senior member-the leader and magistrate in this community. If you say we're married, we are.”

”You've talked to Jenoor about this?”

”No. I wanted to get your agreement first.”

”How old is she?” he asked.

”You know how old she is. She's sixteen. And a half.”

”What's the legal marriageable age for a girl on Evdash?”

”Eighteen. Seventeen with a parent's consent. What's the legal age in the Federation? The Empire?”

”Eighteen. Sixteen with a parent's consent.”

”Or a guardian's?” I asked.

”Or a guardian's.”

”So there's no natural law that says eighteen. Only legal arbitraries that some past legislatures pa.s.sed.”

”Not all laws make sense,” he replied. ”But they're the stuff of civilization. Unless a law is actually destructive and can't be changed, it ought to be obeyed. Decent laws, even if they seem a bit foolish, are what keep a society from coming apart.”

His words surprised me. I hadn't expected them from someone who'd been a rebel most of his life. I could see what he meant though, even if I felt sure it didn't apply in this case. I sat there waiting for something to come to me that would convince him, but all I could think of was how I'd felt when Jenoor and I had gotten ash.o.r.e that afternoon, safe from the sea, and I'd lain there with my arms around her. It had felt like my heart was in my throat, and I'd wanted to keep her safe forever. Among other things.

Piet was the one who broke the silence. ”All right. So let's say I'm her guardian now; I guess I am. Give me a reason it's all right for you two to get married.”

”Okay,” I answered slowly. ”First let's a.s.sume she's willing; that she wants to. Evdash is part of the Empire now, so legally, sixteen should be old enough, if we consider you her guardian and you give your permission. And next, we're outside the law, so we can't go to some courthouse and ask them to marry us. We couldn't if we were thirty, so age isn't the issue. Only whether she wants to and whether you're willing.”

”Why not wait?” he said. ”You're not the kind who lets his gonads rule his life.”

There was no denying that s.e.x was part of it, but only part, though I suppose it added a lot of the urgency to it. And like I said, I felt protective of her. But I also felt fond, and-I just wanted to be with her as her husband. I didn't really have the language to describe it.

It also occurred to me that now Piet's questions were more to make sure I'd thought it through myself.

That probably meant he'd say yes. ”Why not wait?” I said, answering his question. ”Because in two weeks there's a good chance we'll all be dead. And we could have had two weeks together by then.”

Piet turned the door handle. ”Ask her,” he said. ”I hope she tells you yes. Five to one she does.”

We shook hands on it and got out. When I'd closed the door, we walked together through near night the twenty yards to camp. I almost went over to her hammock right then to ask her, but I didn't, Hers was between Deneen's and Tarel's-they were only about six or eight yards apart-and I wanted my proposal to be private.

Sometime in the middle of the night it rained again. Not a downpour like we'd had that afternoon, but a pretty good rain that chased us all out of our hammocks and into the shelter. So of course we had to bunk down on the bare ground-not the most comfortable sleeping, especially with Bubba smelling like a wet can id He read my thought and chuckled, a sound so human you'd have to hear it to believe it.

In the morning we could cut vegetation and pile it in the shelter for beds. The repellent fields would keep it from getting full of insects and other arthropods. But the hammocks, which were made of fine-mesh netting, were cooler and generally more comfortable than piles of weeds would be. So the best solution seemed to be to keep on sleeping in the hammocks and only take shelter as needed-hopefully not often. I couldn't see any practical way of slinging hammocks inside the shelter.

Maybe, I told myself, we'd been too quick to leave our hammocks. We didn't wear much to sleep in anyway, and as long as the rain wasn't too cold .. . And the hammocks were made of ”Skin-Soft”

synthetic, so they didn't soak up water.

Which brought to my mind the matter of privacy if Jenoor agreed to marry me. We had a second repellent field, so we could have our hammocks away from the others, but they were too small and unstable for double occupancy. And as for separate shelter if needed .. . This definitely seemed to be the rainy season. The best possibility seemed to be the floater, if we moved it a little farther away. The floater would get around the problem of hammock stability, too. At the very beginning, Piet had said no one would sleep in the floater because everyone couldn't, not comfortably, and he wasn't going to give anyone, including himself, special privileges. Besides, hammocks were cooler.

But Jenoor and I would be married. If she said yes. And he'd treat that as a different situation, I was sure.

I went back to sleep feeling pretty cheerful, considering our long range prospects. The next morning had a good feel to it. It even smelled good-not dusty any longer, but fresh-and I was glad the rainy season had arrived. We all had a hand-foot workout and then Deneen and Tarel went fis.h.i.+ng. Piet sat on a log stool-we'd sawed five blocks from a log to use for seats-and began working on a new carving. He was the best of us all at turning a piece of wood into something artistic. It would have been my day to keep the still supplied with salt water, except that now we had rainwater-all of it we needed.

It was Jenoor's day to collect jon ga fruits, beat them thoroughly with a hammer, and put them to soak, to soften for tomorrow's breakfast. The way to pick jon ga fruits is to take a pole with a heavy survival knife lashed to it and find some you can reach from the ground or from some branch you could climb on.

Then, with the pole and knife, you saw or hack at their tough stems till they drop off. She had picked up the pole and her old plaited packsack and was leaving camp when I fell in beside her.

Bubba had fallen in on her other side. Not all right, Bubba, I thought to him. He knew what I had in mind. This isn't going to be easy for me. If you have to eavesdrop, do it from somewhere out of sight, okay?

He flashed me a quick grin and veered off casually to explore some interesting smell. As if there was any spot or critter on Lizard Island that he hadn't examined a dozen times already.

”Okay if I walk along with you?” I asked Jenoor.

She smiled sideways at me. ”Sure. Glad to have you.”

”I've got something in particular I want to talk to you about.”

”All right.” She looked interested, and something more. I really didn't know what to say next, or rather, how to say it. Will you marry me would make sense of course, but it seemed kind of abrupt and inelegant.

”What I want to say is-it's a question.” I stepped in front of her.

”Jenoor, will you marry me?”

So much for elegance.

She looked at me seriously, not turning her eyes down shyly or anything like that. ”Of course I will, Larn.

I've been hoping you'd ask one day. I can't imagine marrying anyone else; I haven't since the first week Tarel and I came to live with your family.”

”You mean it!” I said. It seemed a wonder. ”You really mean it!” I stepped back from her and looked around for something to sit on; my knees felt a little weak. But there wasn't anything handy.

”Who'll marry us?” she asked.

”I asked Piet if he would, last night when he and I went to the floater. He's the one we look up to here- sort of the magistrate of Lizard Island. He questioned me about it pretty closely, and then he said he would, right here on the island, if you agreed. He even said he hoped you'd say yes. And I've already solved the problem of privacy.”

It suddenly occurred to me I was talking too much, too fast, and I stopped.

She answered slowly. ”Of course. The extra repellent field and the floater. Piet would let us use the floater, under the circ.u.mstances.”

I nodded.