His head had felt so strange at first, a whole new landscape, blindingly clear, but with sudden emptinesses to come upon as he felt his way around. Yet there’d been a coolness too, a sense of detachment, as if somehow he stood aside watching himself. He’d wondered if somebody waking from a fever delirium had felt like that, long ago, before even his own time. Then bit by bit he settled in, coming to realize not only with his awareness but with his whole identity that he was still the same old person, simply with a lot of fog and underbrush cleared away. Yes, there were gaps in his memories, but nothing that mattered too much; he could look up the records of those experiences whenever he cared to, and meanwhile everything he had kept stood sharp and vivid, his life story ready to hand.
Including enough memories of blunders to give a healthy ruefulness. He dared hope he’d be thinking and behaving better for the next few centuries.
[160] Though when could he start? He surged from his chair and paced to and fro, growling. Yep, he thought, the same old fiddle-footed Hebo. He wanted a drink. Bad idea, pouring this early in the day, but what the hell else was there to do? Oh, yes, a hike through the woods, something like that. Sensible. He was getting mighty tired of being sensible.
A light footfall brought him around on his heel. Avi had come out onto the verandah. His impatience didn’t altogether fall from him, but cheer blossomed. “Well, howdy!” he exclaimed. “Welcome back!”
“How’re you doing?” she asked. She spoke with him not only in Anglay, but in the dialect he’d grown up with.
“Lonesome,” he admitted. “Bored. Restless. Christ, but it’s good to see you!”
He strode over to embrace her. She was worth embracing, for sure, slim, chocolate dark, with luminous eyes in delicate features. A sari-like dress was exactly right for her. Her garb always was, whatever it might be.
She responded willingly, but less ardently than before. “I wish you didn’t have to flit away so much,” he said when they came up for air.
She stepped back and murmured, “That’s been more on your account than mine, dear. You’ve needed solitude.”
“Yeah, to do the drills and straighten myself out and so on and so forth. I couldn’t have managed without you, however.”
After the clinic and the machines, human companionship, consoling, heartening. Great sex, also lively talk and shared music and rambles around the countryside and—
Avi smiled. “I’ve enjoyed it.”
How much does she mean that? he wondered, not for the first time. Oh, somewhat, I suppose, otherwise why’d she bother? But with how much of her attention on it?
In his regained clarity he saw how skillfully she’d always evaded his questions about where she went and what, she did when she wasn’t here. Her flitter seemed to drift away and back [161] as lightly and meaninglessly as thistledown. Nevertheless, she was absolutely not a creature of impulse. Now and then he’d touched, barely touched, on enormous underlying self-control, before she fended him off with a word or a caress.
And seeing her stance, her gaze upon him, he understood: “You’ve got something new for me today.”
She nodded. Light shimmered slightly on the coiled midnight hair. “Yes. Haven’t you seen it coming? The verdict. Everything shows you’re whole, ready to go back and take up your own life.”
In spite of the warmth in her tone, he had a sense of impersonal kindness. Briefly he imagined stopping a minute to put a fallen fledgling back in its nest. Oh, yes, they’d charged for their services, a draft on one of his bank accounts, but very reasonable. When he’d asked what was worth their buying on yonder world, Avi had said that humans were too apt to misuse whatever they perceived as free goods.
The train-of-thought recollection gave him a moment’s chill. “Humans?” Isn’t she as human as I am? Biologically, yes—I suppose—maybe. In her head and heart—well, maybe, too; but what else is in there?
He pushed that aside. The tidings were not unexpected. “Hey, wonderful!” With even more sincerity: “I’ll miss you, though, Avi.”