handball?”
Ruszek brightened. “Here’s one,” he said. Side by side, they left for the gymnasium.
Cleland started to follow but sank back down. “Wouldn’t you care to join them?” Mokoena asked.
His glance dropped. “I’d be too slow and clumsy.”
“Really? You’ve handled yourself well in some difficult places.”
He flushed. “That was … competing against nature … not people.”
“You mustn’t let jealousy eat you, Tim,” she said gently.
His head jerked up to stare at her. “What do you mean?”
“It sticks out of you like quills.” She leaned forward and took his right hand in hers. “Remember what the captain told us on our shakedown. We cannot afford hostility or bitterness or anything that will divide us.”
“I suppose we … should have made … our personal arrangements before we embarked.”
“You know that wasn’t practical. Especially when relationships are sure to change as we go.”
“You and Lajos—”
“It is friendly between us,” she said. “But it’s not binding on either one.” Her smile offered no more than kindliness, a kindliness without urgency or need to be anything other than itself.
10.
The town began as a district in a small city. Humans tend to cluster together, the more so when their way of life makes them ever more foreign to everybody else. As time passed, the district became a community in its own right. And it abided, while change swept to and fro around it like seas around a rock.
On this day, descending, Michael Shaughnessy saw it as roofs and sundomes nestled among trees. A powermast reared from their midst as if pointing at the clouds that drifted by, billowy white against blue. Otherwise grass rippled boundless. Sunflowers lifted huge yellow eyes out of its silvery green. A herd of neobison grazed some distance to the south, unafraid; only wild dogs and master-class men hunted them, not very much. Crows flocked about, black, noisy, and hopeful. Northward a long, high mound and a few broken walls were the last remembrances of Santa Verdad. Grass hid scattered slabs and shards, as it had hidden the remnants of earlier farmsteads. This region of central North America was now a vicarial preserve.
Shaughnessy set his rented vehicle down in a lot on the edge of settlement and got out. Air blew mild, full of odors the sun had baked from the soil. There was no guard, but neither was there any call for it. He walked on into town.
The street he took was immobile, with antique sidewalks. Its indurite was beginning to show the wear of feet and wheels through centuries. The trees that shaded it were younger, replaced as they grew old and died. Behind their susurrant leafage, homes stood in rows, each on its patch of lawn and garden. The houses were ancient, too, but not the same age. Most were half underground, topside curving in soft hues up to a dome: a style archaic enough. Some, though, harked further back, even to times when forms still more outmoded were enjoying revivals—a rambling ivy-grown bungalow or a peaked roof on two stories of brick, with windows and a chimney. Most displayed a token of the family who held it—a nameplate, a
mon,
an ancestral portrait, a line of calligraphy, a stone from a far planet—and the crests of ships on which members had served. Nevertheless, perhaps because they were all of modest size, perhaps because they were all in one way or another marked by time, they engendered no disharmony; they belonged together.
Not many people were about at midafternoon in this residential section. A few children sped past, a whirl of color, shouts, and laughter. A few adults walked or rode purring motorboards. Here among their own kind, they were generallyin traditional groundside garb, which ran to flamboyancy. The headbands of men glittered, their tunics were of shimmering metalloid mesh, colorful trousers banded with gold went into soft half-boots. Women’s coronets were gemmed or plumed, filmy cloaks fluttered from
Ruszek brightened. “Here’s one,” he said. Side by side, they left for the gymnasium.
Cleland started to follow but sank back down. “Wouldn’t you care to join them?” Mokoena asked.
His glance dropped. “I’d be too slow and clumsy.”
“Really? You’ve handled yourself well in some difficult places.”
He flushed. “That was … competing against nature … not people.”
“You mustn’t let jealousy eat you, Tim,” she said gently.
His head jerked up to stare at her. “What do you mean?”
“It sticks out of you like quills.” She leaned forward and took his right hand in hers. “Remember what the captain told us on our shakedown. We cannot afford hostility or bitterness or anything that will divide us.”
“I suppose we … should have made … our personal arrangements before we embarked.”
“You know that wasn’t practical. Especially when relationships are sure to change as we go.”
“You and Lajos—”
“It is friendly between us,” she said. “But it’s not binding on either one.” Her smile offered no more than kindliness, a kindliness without urgency or need to be anything other than itself.
10.
The town began as a district in a small city. Humans tend to cluster together, the more so when their way of life makes them ever more foreign to everybody else. As time passed, the district became a community in its own right. And it abided, while change swept to and fro around it like seas around a rock.
On this day, descending, Michael Shaughnessy saw it as roofs and sundomes nestled among trees. A powermast reared from their midst as if pointing at the clouds that drifted by, billowy white against blue. Otherwise grass rippled boundless. Sunflowers lifted huge yellow eyes out of its silvery green. A herd of neobison grazed some distance to the south, unafraid; only wild dogs and master-class men hunted them, not very much. Crows flocked about, black, noisy, and hopeful. Northward a long, high mound and a few broken walls were the last remembrances of Santa Verdad. Grass hid scattered slabs and shards, as it had hidden the remnants of earlier farmsteads. This region of central North America was now a vicarial preserve.
Shaughnessy set his rented vehicle down in a lot on the edge of settlement and got out. Air blew mild, full of odors the sun had baked from the soil. There was no guard, but neither was there any call for it. He walked on into town.
The street he took was immobile, with antique sidewalks. Its indurite was beginning to show the wear of feet and wheels through centuries. The trees that shaded it were younger, replaced as they grew old and died. Behind their susurrant leafage, homes stood in rows, each on its patch of lawn and garden. The houses were ancient, too, but not the same age. Most were half underground, topside curving in soft hues up to a dome: a style archaic enough. Some, though, harked further back, even to times when forms still more outmoded were enjoying revivals—a rambling ivy-grown bungalow or a peaked roof on two stories of brick, with windows and a chimney. Most displayed a token of the family who held it—a nameplate, a
mon,
an ancestral portrait, a line of calligraphy, a stone from a far planet—and the crests of ships on which members had served. Nevertheless, perhaps because they were all of modest size, perhaps because they were all in one way or another marked by time, they engendered no disharmony; they belonged together.
Not many people were about at midafternoon in this residential section. A few children sped past, a whirl of color, shouts, and laughter. A few adults walked or rode purring motorboards. Here among their own kind, they were generallyin traditional groundside garb, which ran to flamboyancy. The headbands of men glittered, their tunics were of shimmering metalloid mesh, colorful trousers banded with gold went into soft half-boots. Women’s coronets were gemmed or plumed, filmy cloaks fluttered from
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