love you Konstantin-man, you and you friend.”
Wife. The hisa had never figured out husband and wife. “Come in,” he bade her,
touched by such a gesture. Her eyes lit with pleasure. Downers were discouraged
even from the vicinity of the Operations dome. It was very rare that one was
invited inside. He walked down the wooden steps, wiped his boots on the matting,
held the door for her and waited for her to adjust her own breather from about
her neck before he opened the inner seal.
A few working humans looked up, stared, some frowning at the presence, went back
to their jobs. A number of the techs had offices in the dome, divided off by low
wicker screens; the area he shared with Miliko was farthest back, where the only
solid wall in the great dome afforded him and Miliko private residential space,
a ten-foot section with a woven mat floor, sleeping quarters and office at once.
He opened that door beside the lockers and Satin followed him in, staring about
her as if she could not absorb the half of what she saw. Not used to roofs, he
thought, imagining how great a change it was going to be for a Downer suddenly
shipped to station. No winds, no sun, only steel about, poor Satin.
“Well,” Miliko exclaimed, looking up from the spread of charts on their bed.
“Love you,” Satin said, and came with absolute confidence, embraced Miliko,
hugged her cheek-to-cheek around the obstacle of the breather.
“You’re going away,” said Miliko.
“Go to you home,” she said. “See Bennett home.” She hesitated, folded hands
diffidently behind her, bobbed a little, looking from one to the other of them.
“Love Bennett-man. See he home. Fill up eyes he home. Make warm, warm we eyes.”
Sometimes Downer talk made little sense; sometimes meanings shot through the
babble with astonishing clarity. Emilio gazed on her with somewhat of guilt,
that for as long as they had dealt with Downers, there was none of them who
could manage more than a few of the chattering Downer words. Bennett had been
best at it.
The hisa loved gifts. He thought of one, on the shelf by the bed, a shell he had
found by the riverside. He got it and gave it to her and her dark eyes shone.
She flung her arms about him.
“Love you,” she announced.
“Love you too, Satin,” he told her. And he put his arms about her shoulders,
walked her out through the outer offices to the lock, set her through. Beyond
the plastic she opened the outer door, took her mask off and grinned at him,
waved her hand.
“I go work,” she told him. The shuttle was due. A human worker would not have
been working on the day he was leaving assignment; but Satin headed away with a
slam of the flimsy door and anxious enthusiasm, as if at this late date
someone’s mind could be changed.
Or perhaps it was unfair to attach to her any human motives. Perhaps it was joy,
or gratitude. Downers understood no wages; gifts, they said.
Bennett Jacint had understood them. The Downers tended that grave. Laid shells
there, perfect ones, skins, set up the strange knobby sculptures that meant
something important to them.
He turned, walked back through the operations center, to his own quarters and
Miliko. He took off his jacket, hung it on the peg, breather still about his
neck, an ornament they all wore from the time clothing went on in the morning
till it went off at night.
“Got the weather report from station,” Miliko said. “We’re going to catch it
again in a day or so after the next one hits us. There’s a big storm brewing out
to sea.”
He swore; so much for hopes of spring. She made a place for him among the charts
on the bed and he sat down and looked at the damages she had red-penciled, flood
areas station was able to show them, down the long chains of beads which were
the camps they had established, along unpaved, hand-hacked roads.
“Oh, it’s going to get worse,” Miliko said, showing him the topographical chart.