“Forgive me that I asked,” she said low. “I’m not protesting. You’re right, she’s a fine bet to help us. But you see-no, I’m not jealous, but I might never see you again alter tonight, and she means a great deal more to you than Joelle, doesn’t she?”
“Aw, sweetheart.” He laid his pipe aside, to slide from the bench and stand holding her.
Head on his breast, fingers tight against his back, she let the words tumble forth, though she kept them soft. “Dan, dearest, understand, I know you love me. And I, after that wretched marriage of mine broke up, when I met you-Everything you’ve been says you love me. But you, your first wife, you were never happier than when you had Antonia, were you?”
“No,” he confessed around a thickness. “Except you’ve given me-”
“Hush. I’ve made it clear to you I don’t mind -enough to matter- if you wander a bit once in a while. You meet a lot of assorted people, and I don’t usually go along on your business trips to Earth, and you’re a mighty attractive bull, did I ever tell you? No, shut up, darling, let me finish. I don’t worry about Joelle. From what little you’ve said, there’s a kind of witchcraft about her -a holothete and- But you didn’t ever invent excuses to go back to her.
Caitlin, though-”
“Her either-” he tried.
“You haven’t told me she was anything but a friend and occasional playmate. Well, you haven’t told me that, openly, about anyone. You’re a private person in your way, Dan. But I’ve come to know you regardless. I’ve watched you two when she came visiting. Caitlin is quite a bit like Toni, isn’t she?”
He could only grip her to him for reply.
“You said I didn’t have to be a monogamist myself,” Lis blurted. “And maybe I won’t always.” She gulped a giggle. “What a pair of anachronisms we are, knowing what ‘monogamy’ means!
But since we got married, Dan, nobody’s been worth the trouble. And nobody will be while you’re away this trip and I don’t know if you’ll get back.”
“I will,” he vowed, “I will, to you.”
“You’ll do your damnedest, sure. Which is one blazing hell of a damnedest.” She raised her face to his. He saw tears, and felt and tasted them.
“I’m sorry,” she got forth. “I shouldn’t have mentioned Caitlin. Except. . .
give her my love, please.”
“I, I said earlier, your practical question reminded me what kind of people you are,” he stammered. “Then, uh, this- You’re flat-out unbelievably good.”
Lis disengaged, stepped back, flowed her hands from his ribs to his hips, and said far down in her throat: “Thanks, chum. Now look, this’ll be a short night-you’ll want to catch your bus when the passengers are sleepy-and we’ve got a lot of plotting to do yet. First, however. . . m-m-m-m?”
Warmth rose in him. “M-m-m-m,” he returned.
V
Three hundred kilometers east of the Hephaestian Sea, two thousand north of Eopolis, the Uplands rose. There a number of immigrants from northern Europe had settled during the past century’s inflow. Like most colonists, once it became possible to survive beyond the original town and its technological support, they tended to clump together with their own kind. Farmers, herders, lumberjacks, hunters, they lived in primitive fashion for lack of machinery; freight costs from Earth were enormous. Later, when Demetrian industry began to grow, they acquired some modern equipment-but not much, because in the meantime they bad developed ways well suited to coping with their particular country.
Moreover, most of them didn’t care to become dependent on outsiders. They or their ancestors had moved here to be free of governments, corporations, unions, and other monopolies. That spirit endured.
The folk who bore it had evolved a whole ethos. In their homes, many of them continued to speak the original languages; but given that variety, English was the common tongue, in a new dialect. Traditions blended together, mutated, or sprang spontaneously into being. For instance, at winter solstice -cold, murk, snow, in this part of the continent which humans called lonia -they celebrated Yule (not Christmas, which still went by the Terrestrial calendar) Side 19