“Well then?” Leelson being reasonable.
“I keep thinking it must be boring for you.” Great Gauphin, it was boring enough for her.
“A new experience is seldom boring. Womb-birth is becoming quite rare, and rare happenings appeal to the collector’s taste. All Fastigats are collectors.”
She didn’t say what she was thinking, that the whole thing had been an accident. That she’d had second thoughts about it, but then Leelson’s mother had said—Leelson had said …
The less thought about all that the better. Still, she was peevish when Leelson seemed more fascinated by the pregnancy than he was by her. She said this, laughing at herself.
“It’s not true,” he assured her. “I am passionately fond of you, Lutha Tallstaff. You are like a dinner full of interesting textures and flavors, like a landscape full of hidden wonders. I am not ignoring you in all this.”
True. When one had a Fastigat for a lover, one could not complain of being ignored. One’s every whim was understood; one’s every mood was noted. For the most part, one’s every desire was satisfied, or thwarted, only to make the satisfaction greater when it occurred. If a Fastigat lover was not forthcoming, it was not through lack of understanding. Sometimes Lutha felt (so she told me) she was understood far too well. Sometimes she longed for argument, for passionate battle, for a sense of her own self back again. Pride kept her from showing it, that and the fear that Leelson would accommodate her. Only a fool would take on an opponent who could block every thrust before it was made.
It was easier during those early months after Leely was born, for then Leelson switched at least part of his searching intelligence from her to the child, leaving Lutha to her udderish moods and mutters while he hovered over the infantender, forehead creased, feeling his way into that little mind.
“Like a maze,” he’d said, almost dazedly. “All misty walls and dazzling spaces. Hunger or discomfort comes in like jagged blobs of black, and the minute he eliminates or burps or takes the nipple, he’s back to dazzling spaces again.”
“No faces?” she’d asked, disappointed. Babies were supposed to recognize faces. Like baby birds, back when there had been birds, recognizing the special markings of their own species. Eyes, nose, mouth: that configuration was supposed to be instinctively recognized by humans. Lutha had read about it.
“Well, I can’t feel faces,” he’d replied. “No doubt they’re there.”
Later he postulated that Leely recognized something else or more than faces. Some quality unique to each person, perhaps. Some totality.
“He’s not one of us, I’m afraid. Not a Fastigat.” Leelson had shaken his head ruefully over the four-month-old child. It was then Lutha admitted to herself what she had refused to consider before: Leelson was disappointed at not having a Fastigat son. Virtually all Fastigat sons were empaths, at least. If she’d had a daughter, it wouldn’t have mattered!
“Hardly fair,” she’d muttered, wanting to weep. “Sexist!”
He’d smiled charmingly, the way he did. Fastigats were almost always charming. “Not my fault, Lutha. I didn’t design it. It’s sex-linked, that’s all.”
“You’d think biologists—”
He hadn’t let her finish. “Well, of course our women say attempting to make female Fastigats is meaningless, because any normal woman is a sensitivity match for a male empath, any day.”
He’d made her laugh, hiding his own disappointment. Perhaps even then he’d known—or at least suspected—this disappointment wasn’t to be the only one.
Time came soon enough, of course, when suspicion was fulfilled and Leelson went away. Unforgivably away. Without announcement or preamble. One morning she had wakened to find him gone. He’d left a note, of course, if one could call five words a note. Not much after their years together.
“You must feel abandoned. Betrayed!” This from Lutha’s older sister, Yma, sector-famed, thespian absolute.
The accuracy of this made Lutha blaze hotly as she denied it. “I do not! Leelson’s and my relationship lasted a long time. Neither of us is from a contractual culture, so why would I feel betrayed!” She said it as though she meant it. In fact, she did feel betrayed and abandoned, not that she could possibly admit it to Yma. How could he? She couldn’t have left Leelson! How could he have left her?