XII

Dunyasha Bernadetteson (the most brilliant mind in the world, b. A.C.344, d.

A.C..426) heard of this unfortunate young person and immediately pronounced the following shchasniy, or cryptic one-word saying: "Power!"

XIII

We persevered, reading magazines and covering the neighbors' activities in the discreetest way possible, and Janet-who didn't believe us to be fully human- kept her affections to herself. She got used to Laur's standing by the door every time we went out in the evening with a stubborn look on her face as if she were going to fling herself across the door with her arms spread out, movie style. But Laur controlled herself. Janet went out on a few arranged dates with local men but awe silenced them; she learned nothing of the usual way such things were done. She went to a high school basketball game (for the boys) and a Fashion Fair (for the girls). There was a Science Fair, whose misconceptions she enjoyed mightily. Like oil around water, the community parted to let us through.

Laura Rose came up to Miss Evason one night as the latter sat reading alone in the living room; it was February and the soft snow clung to the outside of the picture window. Picture windows in Anytown do not evaporate snow in the wintertime as windows do on Whileaway. Laur watched us standoffishly for a while, then came into the circle of fantasy and lamplight. She stood there, twisting her class ring around her finger. Then she said: "What have you learned from all that reading?"

"Nothing," said Janet. The soundless blows of the snowflakes against the glass.

Laur sat down at Janet's feet ("Shall I tell you something?") and explained an old fantasy of hers, snow and forests and knights and lovelorn maidens. She said that to anyone in love the house would instantly seem submarine, not a house on Earth but a house on Titan under the ammonia snow. "I'm in love," she said, reviving that old story about the mythical man at school.

"Tell me about Whileaway," she added. Janet put down her magazine. Indirection is so new to Miss Evason that for a moment she doesn't understand; what Laur has said is: Tell me about your wife. Janet was pleased. She had traced Laur's scheme not as concealment but as a kind of elaborate frivolity; now she fell silent. The little girl sat tailor-fashion on the living room rug, watching us.

"Well, tell me," said Laura Rose.

Her features are delicate, not particularly marked; she has a slightly indecently milky skin and lots of freckles. Knobby knuckles.

"She's called Vittoria," said Janet-how crude, once said!-and there goes something in Laura Rose's heart, like the blows of something light but perpetually shocking: oh! oh! oh! She reddened and said something very faintly, something I lip-read but didn't hear. Then she put her hand on Janet's knee, a hot, moist hand with its square fingers and stubby nails, a hand of tremendous youthful presence, and said something else, still inaudible.

Leave! (I told my compatriot)

First of all, it's wrong.

Second of all, it's wrong.

Third of all, it's wrong.

"Oh my goodness," said Janet slowly, as she does sometimes, this being her favorite saying after, "You are kidding me."

(Performing the difficult mental trick of trying on somebody else's taboos.)

"Now then," she said, "now then, now then." The little girl looked up. She is in the middle of something terribly distressing, something that will make her wring her hands, will make her cry. As a large Irish setter once bounded into my room and spent half the day unconsciously banging a piece of furniture with his tail; so something awful has got into Laura Rose and is giving her electric shocks, terrifying blows, right across the heart. Janet took her by the shoulders and it got worse. There is this business of the narcissism of love, the fourth-dimensional curve that takes you out into the other who is the whole world, which is really a twist back into yourself, only a different self. Laur was weeping with despair. Janet pulled her up on to her lap-Janet's lap-as if she had been a baby; everyone knows that if you start them young they'll be perverted forever and everyone knows that nothing in the world is worse than making love to someone a generation younger than yourself. Poor Laura, defeated by both of us, her back bent, glazed and stupefied under the weight of a double taboo.

Don't, Janet.

Don't, Janet.

Don't exploit. That little girl's sinister wisdom.

Snow still blew across the side of the house; the walls shook, muffled.

Something was wrong with the television set, or with the distance control, or perhaps some defective appliance somewhere in suburban Anytown sent out uncontrolled signals that no television set could resist; for it turned itself on and gave us a television salad: Maureen trying unsuccessfully to slap John Wayne, a pretty girl with a drowned voice holding up a vaginal deodorant spray can, a house falling off the side of a mountain. Laur groaned aloud and hid her face against Janet's shoulder. Janet-I-held her, her odor flooding my skin, cold woman, grinning at my own desire because we are still trying to be good.

Whileawayans, as has been said, love big asses. "I love you, I love you," said Laur, and Janet rocked her, and Laur-not wishing to be taken for a child-bent Miss Evason's head fiercely back against the chair and kissed her on the mouth.

Oh my goodness.

Janet's rid of me. I sprang away and hung by one claw from the window curtain.

Janet picked Laur up and deposited her on the floor, holding her tight through all the hysterics; she nuzzled Laur's ear and slipped off her own shoes. Laur came up out of it and threw the distance control at the television set, for the actress had been telling you to disinfect the little-mouse "most girl part" and the set went dead.

"Never-don't-I can't-leave me!" wailed Laur. Better to cry. Businesslike Janet unfastened her shirt, her belt, and her blue jeans and gripped her about the hips, on the theory that nothing calms hysterics so fast.

"Oh!" said Laura Rose, astounded. This is the perfect time for her to change her mind. Her breathing grew quieter. Soberly she put her arms around Janet and leaned on Janet. She sighed.

"I want to get out of my damned clothes," said Janet, voice unaccountably breaking in the middle.

"Do you love me?"

Dearest, I can't because you are too young; and some day soon you'll look at me and my skin will be dead and dry, and being more romantically inclined than a Whileawayan, you'll find me quite disgusting: but until then I'll do my best to conceal from you how very fond I am of you. There is also lust and I hope you understand me when I say I'm about to die; and I think we should go to a safer place where we can die in comfort, for example my room which has a lock on the door, because I don't want to be panting away on the rug when your parents walk in. On Whileaway it wouldn't matter and you wouldn't have parents at your age, but here-or so I'm told-things are as they are.

"What a strange and lovely way you have of putting it," Law said. They climbed the stairs, Laur worrying a bit at her trailing pants. She bent down (framed in the doorway) to rub her ankles. She's going to laugh in a minute and look at us from between her legs. She straightened up with a shy smile.

"Tell me something," she said in a hoarse, difficult whisper, averting her gaze.

"Yes, child? Yes, dear?"

"What do we do now?"