[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

He entered the residential section, automatically drawing out his fins to make the glide down. Bands
did not do this; they rode only on magnetic lines. It seemed to him the Band way was better.
Helen was waiting for him. Her hair was arranged in a billowy red cloud that enclosed face, neck, and
shoulders artistically. She wore a translucent blue dress that complemented the hair, and elfin slippers.
She was an extremely well-formed woman, even after four and a half years of marriage, and knew it,
and knew exactly how to show her body off to advantage.
Why, then, did she look like a Monster?
Ronald landed imperfectly, just missing a cornstalk, but his wife seemed not to notice. She stepped
toward him, arms spread, smiling brilliantly, "Welcome home!"
Ronald arranged to stumble. He dropped to the ground, avoiding her embrace. Why had she dressed
up for him-and why was he nonreceptive?
"Oh!" she exclaimed. "Are you hurt?" She helped him up.
"Just a little out of phase from the Transfer," he said. "Takes a few hours to realign. You know that."
"Yes, of course," she agreed immediately. "I understand it was a rough one. Come inside; I'll make
you some tea."
Tea. A beverage. A liquid that Monsters imbibed. Bands never imbibed. "No thanks. I'll just stay out
here a moment and get organized."
Again she was agreeable. "I'll set up chairs."
"I fear I've scuffed your garden."
"It doesn't matter." She bustled about, setting up the chairs. Space was limited, here in space, so that
most furniture was temporary. A garden would not grow well under a chair; it needed access to the
scheduled rainfall and hours of admitted sunslight. Sunlight; there was only one sun, here.
So now she cared for him more than for her garden. Did absence make her calculating heart grow so
dramatically fonder? Ronald distrusted this. Helen wanted something, and planned to use attention
and sex appeal to get it.
Best to tackle the matter forthrightly. "What's on your mind?"
"Does there have to be something on my mind?" she asked archly.
"Always. I scuff your dirt, you smile. That means mischief."
She dropped the pretense. "Before you went on the last mission, our marriage was foundering on
indifference. While you were gone, I thought about that."
"Why?" He had appreciated her sendoff, but had not suffered illusion about the overall prospects.
She looked startled. "To preserve the marriage, of course. Why else?"
There was the question she hadn't answered. Why else? "If the marriage is going to founder, that is the
best time for it to do so. We can simply let the term expire and go our separate ways. We don't need to
go to heroic measures to extend an untenable relationship. That's the whole point of term marriage-to
a
a
T
T
n
n
s
s
F
F
f
f
o
o
D
D
r
r
P
P
m
m
Y
Y
e
e
Y
Y
r
r
B
B
2
2
.
.
B
B
A
A
Click here to buy
Click here to buy
w
w
m
m
w
w
o
o
w
w
c
c
.
.
.
.
A
A
Y
Y
B
B
Y
Y
B
B
r r
put a peaceful and expected sunset on mistakes. In prior centuries it was a much rougher situation."
"Ronald, I thought you wanted to extend!"
He realized it was true. She had intelligence and sex appeal, and she kept house well. One need never
realize that she had a laboratory job at which she was quite competent; she was content to play the
housewife with him. Whenever he came home, she was there, though surely this complicated her own
work schedule.
That was why he had married her, and why he had wanted to remain married to her. But her need for
him had been less than his need for her, and she had done nothing to change that situation, and he saw
now that that had gradually turned him off. He did not want to be vulnerable. Now she had
inexplicably reversed-and he was being turned off more sharply.
"As far as I know, I have done nothing to merit any change of heart by you," he said. "I haven't even
been here."
"That's it," she said. "You were away, and I had a chance to think it out. Whether I'd prefer life with
you, or without you, or with another man." She had a precise way of expressing things, without hems
and haws or stumbles or regretted misstatements, just as Cirl did.
He was still comparing Solarian to Band! Yet it was true: in this one respect, and perhaps in others, he
had fallen in with similar females. Had Cirl in fact been a surrogate for Helen: expressive, competent,
but of a sweeter disposition? "Such reevaluation is necessary at intervals," he said noncommittally.
"Certainly. We don't agree on some things, but you're not a bad sort."
"Thanks," he said with irony. He had expected a more positive assessment. "You're not bad yourself,
for a Monster."
"Monster?"
"Private image. To the species I transferred to, Solarians were Monsters." Actually, he himself had
foisted that image on them. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]