Shevek looked at Takver; she returned the look. She had aged more than four years. She had never had very good teeth, and now had lost two, just back of the upper eye-teeth, so that the gaps showed when she smiled. Her skin i no longer had the fine taut surface of youth, and her hair, pulled back neatly, was dull.

Shevek saw clearly that Takver had lost her young grace, and looked a plain, tired woman near the middle of her life. He saw this more clearly than anyone else could have seen it. He saw everything about Takver in a way that no one else could have seen it, from the standpoint of years of intimacy and years of longing. He saw her as she was.

Their eyes met.

“How — how’s it been going here?” he asked, reddening all at once and obviously speaking at random. She felt the palpable wave, the outrush of his desire. She also flushed slightly, and smiled. She said in her husky voice, “Oh, same as when we talked on the phone.”

“That was six decads ago!”

“Things go along pretty much the same here.

“It’s very beautiful here — the hills.” He saw in Takver’s eyes the darkness of the mountain valleys. The acuteness of his sexual desire grew abruptly, so that he was dizzy for a moment, then he got over the crisis temporarily and tried to command his erection to subside. “Do you think you’ll want to stay here?” he said.

“I don’t care,” she said, in her strange, dark, husky voice.

“Your nose is still dribbling,” Sadik remarked, keenly, but without emotional bias.

“Be glad that’s all,” Shevek said. Takver said, “Hush, Sadik, don’t egoize!” Both the adults laughed. Sadik continued to study Shevek.

“I do like the town, Shev. The people are nice — all characters. But the work isn’t much. It’s just lab work in the hospital. The shortage of technicians is just about over, I could leave soon without leaving them in the lurch. I’d like to go back to Abbenay, if you were thinking of that. Have you got a reposting?”

“Didn’t ask for one and haven’t checked. I’ve been on the road for a decad.”

“What were you doing on the road?”

“Traveling on it, Sadik.”

“He was coming from half across the world, from the south, from the deserts, to come to us,” Takver said. The child smiled, settled herself more comfortably on her lap, and yawned.

“Have you eaten, Shev? Are you worn out? I must get this child to bed, we were just thinking of leaving when you knocked.”

“She sleeps in the dormitory already?”

“Since the beginning of this quarter,”

“I was four already,” Sadik stated.

“You say, I am four already,” said Takver, dumping her off gently in order to get her coat from the closet Sadik stood up, in profile to Shevek; she was extremely conscious of him, and directed her remarks towards him. “But I was four, now I’m more than four.”

“A temporalist, like the father!”

“You can’t be four and more than four at the same time, can you?” the child asked, sensing approbation, and now speaking directly to Shevek.

“Oh, yes, easily. And you can be four and nearly five at the same time, too.” Sitting on the low platform, he could hold his head on a level with the child’s so that she did not have to look up at him. “But I’d forgotten that you were nearly five, you see. When I last saw you you were hardly more than nothing.”

“Really?” Her tone was indubitably flirtatious.

“Yes. You were about so long.” He held his hands not very far apart.

“Could I talk yet?”

“You said waa, and a few other things.”

“Did I wake up everybody in the dom like Cheben’s baby?” she inquired, with a broad, gleeful smile.

“Of course.”

“When did I learn how to really talk?”

“At about one half year old,” said Takver, “and you have never shut up since. Where’s the hat. Sadikiki?”

“At school. I hate the hat I wear!” she informed Shevek.

They walked the child through the windy streets to the learning-center dormitory and took her into the lobby. It was a little, shabby place too, but brightened by children’s paintings, several fine brass model engines, and a litter of toy houses and painted wooden people. Sadik kissed her mother good night, then turned to Shevek and put up her arms; he stooped to her; she kissed him matter-of-factly but firmly, and said, “Good night!” She went off with the night attendant, yawning. They heard her voice, the attendant’s mild hushing.

“She’s beautiful, Takver. Beautiful, intelligent, sturdy.”

“She’s spoiled, I’m afraid.”

“No, no. You’ve done well, fantastically well — in such a time—”

“It hasn’t been so bad here, not the way it was in the south,” she said, looking up into his face as they left the dormitory. “Children were fed, here. Not very well, but enough. A. community here can grow food. If nothing else there’s the scrub holum. You can gather wild holum seeds and pound them for meal. Nobody starved here. But I did spoil Sadik. I nursed her till she was three, of course, why not when there was nothing good to wean her to! But they disapproved, at the research station at Rolny. They wanted me to put her in the nursery there full time. They said I was being propertarian about the child and not contributing full strength to the social effort in the crisis. They were right, really. But they were so righteous. None of them understood about being lonely. They were all groupers, no characters. It was the women who nagged me about nursing. Real body profiteers. I stuck it out there because the food was good — trying out the algaes to see if they were palatable, sometimes you got quite a lot over standard rations, even if it did taste like glue — until they could replace me with somebody who fitted in better. Then I went to Fresh Start for about ten decads. That was whiter, two years ago, that long time the mail didn’t get through, when things were so bad where you were. At Fresh Start I saw this posting listed, and came here. Sadik stayed with me in the dom till this autumn. I still miss her. The room’s so silent.”

“Isn’t there a roommate?”

“Sherut, she’s very nice, but she works night shift at the hospital. It was time Sadik went, it’s good for her living with the other children. She was getting shy. She was very good about going there, very stoical. Little children are stoical. They cry over bumps, but they take the big things as they come, they don’t whine like so many adults.”

They walked along side by side. The autumn stars had come out, incredible in number and brilliance, twinkling and almost blinking because of the dust stirred up by the earthquake and the wind, so that the whole sky seemed to tremble, a shaking of diamond chips, a scintillation of sunlight on a black sea. Under that uneasy splendor the hills were dark and solid, the roofs hard-edged, the light of the street lamps mild.

“Four years ago,” Shevek said. “It was four years ago that I came back to Abbenay, from that place in South-rising — what was it called? — Red Springs. It was a night like this, windy, the stars. I ran, I ran all the way from Plains Street to the domicile. And you weren’t there, you’d gone. Four years!”

“The moment I left Abbenay I knew I’d been a fool to go. Famine or no famine. I should have refused the posting.”

“It wouldn’t have made much difference. Sabul was waiting to tell me I was through at the Institute.”

“If I’d been there, you wouldn’t have gone down to the Dust.”

“Maybe not, but we mightn’t have kept postings together. For a while ft seemed as if nothing could bold together, didn’t it? The towns in Southwest — there weren’t any children left in them. There still aren’t They sent them north, into regions where there was local food, or a chance of it. And they stayed to keep the mines and mills going. It’s a wonder we pulled through, all of us, isn’t it?… But by damn, I will do my own work for a while now!”

She took his arm. He stopped short, as if her touch had electrocuted him on the spot. She shook him, smiling. “You didn’t eat, did you?”