REVOLT IN 2100 By ROBERT A. HEINLEIN

I found myself quoting: ‘How fair and how pleasant art thou, 0 love, for delights!

‘This thy stature is like to a palm tree, and thy breasts to clusters of grapes.’

Then I broke off, ashamed, remembering that the Song of Songs which is Solomon’s was a chaste and holy allegory having nothing to do with such things.

I sat down on the sand and tried to compose my soul. After a while I felt better and my heart stopped pounding so hard. When they all came swimming back with Zeb in the lead, racing Miriam, I even managed to throw them a smile. It no longer seemed quite so terrible and as long as they stayed in the water the women were not shockingly exposed. Perhaps evil was truly in the eyes of the beholder-in which case the idea was to keep it out of mine.

Zeb called out, ‘Ready to be relieved?’

I answered firmly, ‘No. Go ahead and have your fun.’

‘Okay.’ He turned like a dolphin and started back the other way. Miriam followed him. Maggie came in to where it was shallow, rested her finger tips on the bottom, and held facing me, with just her head and her ivory shoulders out of the inky water, while her waist-length mane of hair floated around her.

‘Poor John,’ she said softly. ‘I’ll come out and spell you.’

‘Oh, no, really!’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Quite sure.’

‘All right.’ She turned, flipped herself over, and started after the others. For one ghostly, magic instant she was partly out of the water.

Maggie came back to my end of the cavern about ten minutes later. ‘I’m cold,’ she said briefly, climbed out and strode quickly to the protection of the boulder. Somehow she was not naked, but merely unclothed, like Mother Eve. There is a difference-Miriam had been naked.

With Maggie out of the water and neither one of us speaking I noticed for the first time that there was no other sound. Now there is nothing so quiet as a cave; anywhere else at all there is noise, but the complete zero decibel which obtains underground if one holds still and says nothing is very different.

The point is that I should have been able to hear Zeb and Miriam swimming. Swimming need not be noisy but it can’t be as quiet as a cave. I sat up suddenly and started forward-then stopped with equal suddenness as I did not want to invade Maggie’s dressing room, which another dozen steps would have accomplished.

But I was really worried and did not know what to do. Throw a line? Where? Peel down and search for them? If necessary. I called out softly, ‘Maggie!’

‘What is it, John?’

‘Maggie, I’m worried.’

She came at once from behind the rock. She had already pulled on her trousers, but held her towel so that it covered her from the waist up; I had the impression she had been drying her hair. ‘Why, John?’

‘Keep very quiet and listen.’

She did so. ‘I don’t hear anything.’

‘That’s just it. We should. I could hear you all swimming even when you were down at the far end, out of my sight. Now there isn’t a sound, not a splash. Do you suppose they possibly could both have hit their heads on the bottom at the same time?’

‘Oh. Stop worrying, John. They’re all right.’

‘But I am worried.’

‘They’re just resting, I’m sure. There is another little beach down there, about half as big as this. That’s where they are. I climbed up on it with them, then I came back. I was cold.’

I made up my mind, realizing that I had let my modesty hold me back from my plain duty. ‘Turn your back. No, go behind the boulder-I want to undress.’

‘What? I tell you it’s not necessary.’ She did not budge.

I opened my mouth to shout. Before I got it out Maggie had a hand over my mouth, which caused her towel to be disarranged and flustered us both. ‘Oh, heavens!’ she said sharply. ‘Keep your big mouth shut.’ She turned suddenly and flipped the towel; when she turned back she had it about her like a stole, covering her front well enough, I suppose, without the need to hold it.

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