Dua demurred. “I’d be afraid to. They might not like it.”
“Oh, go on. I’m curious. See if you can tell what they’re talking about.”
“Shall I? Really?”
“Go ahead. If they catch you and are annoyed, I’ll say I made you do it.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
Feeling rather fluttery, Dua let herself reach out to the Hard Ones, and adopted the total passivity that allowed the influx of feelings.
She said, “Excitement! They’re excited. Someone new.”
Odeen said, “Maybe that’s Estwald.”
It was the first time Dua had heard the name. She said, “That’s funny.”
“What’s funny?”
“I have the feeling of a big sun. A really big sun.”
Odeen looked thoughtful. “They might be talking about that.”
“But how can that be?”
It was just at that time that the Hard Ones spied them. They approached in a friendly manner and greeted them in Soft-One fashion of speech. Dua was horribly embarrassed and wondered if they knew she had been sensing them. If they did, though, they said nothing.
(Odeen told her afterward that it was quite rare to come upon Hard Ones talking among themselves in their own fashion. They always deferred to the Soft Ones and seemed always to suspend their own work when Soft Ones were there. “They like us so much,” said Odeen. “They are very kind.”)
Once in awhile he would take her down to the Hard-caverns—usually when Tritt was entirely wrapped up in the children. Nor did Odeen go out of his way to tell Tritt that he had taken Dua down. It was sure to evoke some response to the effect that Odeen’s coddling simply encouraged Dua’s reluctance to sun herself and just made the melting that much more ineffective. ... It was hard to talk to Tritt for more than five minutes without melting coming into the conversation.
She had even come down alone once or twice. It had always frightened her a little to do so, though the Hard Ones she met were always friendly, always “very kind,” as Odeen said. But they did not seem to take her seriously. They were pleased, but somehow amused—she could feel that definitely—when she asked questions. And when they answered it was in a simple way that carried no information. “Just a machine, Dua,” they would say. “Odeen might be able to tell you.”
She wondered if she had met Estwald. She never quite dared ask the names of the Hard Ones she met (except Losten, to whom Odeen had introduced her, and of whom she heard a great deal). Sometimes it seemed to her that this Hard One or that might be he. Odeen talked about him with great awe and with some resentment.
She gathered that he was too engaged in work of the deepest importance to be in the caverns accessible to the Soft Ones.
She pieced together what Odeen told her and, little by little, discovered that the world needed food badly. Odeen hardly ever called it “food.” He said “energy” instead, and said it was the Hard-One word for it.
The Sun was fading and dying but Estwald had discovered how to find energy far away, far beyond the Sun, far beyond the seven stars that shone in the dark, night-sky. (Odeen said the seven stars were seven suns that were very distant, and that there were many other stars that were even more distant and were too dim to be seen. Tritt had heard him say that and had asked of what use it was for stars to exist if they couldn’t be seen and he didn’t believe a word of it. Odeen had said, “Now, Tritt,” in a patient way. Dua had been about to say something very like that which Tritt had said, but changed her mind after that.)
It looked, now, as, though there would be plenty of energy forever; plenty of food—at least as soon as Estwald and the other Hard Ones learned to make the new energy taste right.
It had only been a few days ago when she had said to Odeen, “Do you remember, long ago, when you took me to the Hard-caverns and I sensed the Hard Ones and said I caught the feeling of a big sun?”
Odeen looked puzzled for a moment. “I’m not sure. But go ahead, Dua. What about it?”
“I’ve been thinking. Is the big Sun the source of the new energy?”
Odeen had said, happily, “That’s good, Dua. It’s not quite right, but that’s such good intuition for an Emotional.”
And now Dua had been moving slowly, rather moodily, during all this time of reveries. Without particularly noting the passage of either time or space she found herself in the Hard-caverns and was just beginning to wonder if she had really delayed all she safely could and whether she might not turn home now and face the inevitable annoyance of Tritt when—almost as though the thought of Tritt had brought it about—she sensed Tritt.
The sensation was so strong that there was only one confused moment in which she had thought that somehow she was picking up his feelings far away in the home cavern. No! He was here, down in the Hard-caverns with her.
But what could he be doing here? Was he pursuing her? Was he going to quarrel with her here? Was he foolishly going to appeal to the Hard Ones? Dua didn’t think she could endure that—
And then the feeling of cold horror left her and was replaced by astonishment. Tritt was not thinking of her at all. He had to be unaware of her presence. All she could sense about him was an overwhelming feeling of some sort of determination, mixed with fear and apprehension at something he would do.
Dua might have penetrated farther and found out something, at least, about what it was he had done, and why, but nothing was further from her thoughts. Since Tritt didn’t know she was in the vicinity, she wanted to make sure of only one thing—that he continued not to know.
She did, then, almost in pure reflex, something that a moment before she would have sworn she would never dream of doing under any circumstances.
Perhaps it was (she later thought) because of her idle reminiscences of that little-girl talk with Doral, or her memories of her own experiments with rock-rubbing. (There was a complicated adult word for it but she found that word infinitely more embarrassing than the one all the children had used.)
In any case, without quite knowing what she was doing or, for a short while afterward, what she had done, she simply flowed hastily into the nearest wall.
Into it! Every bit of her!
The horror of what she had done was mitigated by the perfect manner in which it accomplished its purpose. Tritt passed by within almost touching distance and remained completely unaware that at one point he might have reached out and touched his mid-ling.
By that time, Dua had no room to wonder what Tritt might be doing in the Hard-caverns if he had not come in pursuit of her.
She forgot Tritt completely.
What filled her instead was1 pure astonishment at her position. Even in childhood she had never melted completely into rock or met anyone who admitted she had (though there were invariably tales of someone else who had). Certainly no adult Emotional ever had or could. Dua. was unusually rarefied even for an Emotional (Odeen was fond of telling her that) and her avoidance of food accentuated this (as Tritt often said).
What she had just done indicated the extent of her rarefaction more than any amount of right-ling scolding and for a moment she was ashamed and sorry for Tritt.
And then she was swept by a deeper shame. What if she were caught? She, an adult—
If a Hard One passed and lingered— She could not possibly bring herself to emerge if anyone were watching but how long could she stay within and what if they discovered her in the rock?
And even as she thought that, she sensed the Hard Ones and then—somehow—realized they were far away.
She paused, strove to calm herself. The rock, permeating and surrounding her, lent a land of grayness to her perception but didn’t dim it. Instead, she sensed more sharply. She could still sense Tritt in his steady motion downward as sharply as though he were by her side, and she could sense the Hard Ones though they were a cavern complex away. She saw the Hard Ones, every single one of them, each in his place, and could sense their vibratory speech to the fullest detail, and even catch bits of what they were saying.