“I don’t think you can be foolish, clanfather,” she declared. “That only shows how young and foolish you are still,” Reatur said. “I was just thinking it’s a shame you’re carrying budlings. I’d like to plant them on you now.”
‘That is foolish,” Lamra agreed. Once Reatur had succeeded in planting budlings on her, her interest in mating, once so intense, disappeared. She did her best to think like a male. Altogether unsure how well she was succeeding, she said, “There are lots of other mates here.”
“I know,” Reatur said. “It wouldn’t be the same, somehow. Planting buds on you now would be like, like”-the domain master sounded like someone groping after an idea-“like mating with a friend.” He stopped in surprise. “That must be what the humans do,. with their mates who live as long as males. It would be comforting, I think, especially in bad times.”
“I suppose so,” Lamra said indifferently. But the notion Reatur had presented was so strange, she couldn’t help thinking about it. “If the humans keep me alive after my budlings drop, will I want to mate with you again?”
That seemed to surprise Reatur all over again. “I truly don’t know, Lamra. If we’re all very, very lucky, maybe we’ll find out.”
“Sometimes you just can’t tell, Pat.” Irv felt like an idiot the moment the words were out of his mouth, but he was lucky-
Pat wasn’t listening to him. She was off in that disconnected place where she had spent so much time since Frank hadn’t answered his last radio call.
His wife glanced toward him and Pat, toward Athena, toward Reatur’s castle. “I don’t think that eloc mate is ever going to drop its budlings,” Sarah said. They had checked the mate five times in the last two days. It looked ready, but it wasn’t doing anything. “I’m going over to the castle to examine Lamra again,” Sarah went on. “I just keep hoping she can hang on until we know we have some real chance of doing her some good.”
Irv shrugged. “I think I’ll head back to the ship. I’m hungry.”
“Okay.”
Sarah and Irv both paused, waiting for Pat to decide what she was going to do. She paused, too, as if rerunning a tape of the last few seconds in her head so that she could catch up with what was going on. Then she said, “I guess I’ll go back to the ship, too.”
“Make sure she eats something,” Sarah told Irv. He thought about asking her whether she was speaking as doctor or Jewish mother, but keeping his mouth shut seemed smarter. A nod couldn’t land him in trouble, but his big mouth had, many times already.
Sarah headed for the castle, pausing once to wave before she trudged on again. “Come on,” Irv said to Pat. Again there was that delayed response, but less this time than before. She followed him to Athena.
Emmett Bragg met them just inside the airlock.” ‘Bout time somebody showed up here,” he grumbled. His pistol was belted on; Irv would have bet he had been pacing the corridor. “Don’t want to leave the ship empty, and I need to go out and scout the route the Skarmer’ll be using when they finally decide to get moving again. Won’t be long now, I suspect.” “Where’s Louise?” Irv asked.
Bragg’s eyes flicked to Pat. “She’s-out,” he said. Irv thought unkind thoughts about his mouth as he remembered Louise was out because she was doing some seismographic work that would-should-have been Frank’s. Pat, luckily, didn’t make the connection.
“Don’t get too close to the Skarmer-or to Oleg Lopatin,” Irv said. “Don’t forget you’re our ride home.”
Emmett grimaced. “Don’t remind me. I know I have to be a good boy, but I don’t have to like it.” He hurried out through the airlock, not bothering to hide his impatience to be gone. Things had been dull for him since Athena landed, Irv thought; Air Force pilots were adrenaline junkies from the word go. Well, Emmett had his fix now.
Irv turned back to Pat. “Let’s see what we can find to eat.”
“All right,” she said indifferently.
The freeze-dried beef stew, Irv thought after he poured hot water into the package, tasted almost like what mother used to make, but not quite. He’d been eating it for so long that he had trouble defining the difference, but he knew it was there. Real food was one of the things he looked forward to about going home.
He rinsed the plastic tray, tossed it in the trash. Pat had only pushed her food around; hardly any of it was gone.
“Come on. Eat,” Irv said. He felt as if he were coaxing a reluctant toddler.
Pat took a couple of forkfuls, then put the package of stew down. “I don’t feel much like eating. I don’t feel much like anything.” She would not look at Irv; she kept her eyes on her hands in her lap.
“You really should, Pat. We need you-“ He hesitated. “as strong as you can be.” He hated himself for that little pause. Even more than the polite words it had been intended to replace, it called attention to what had happened.
Pat didn’t answer… For a moment, Irv thought she was disconnected from the here-and-now again. Then he saw her shoulders shaking, saw two tears splash onto the backs of her wrists before she jerked up her arms to cover her face.
She hadn’t cried before, not when Irv was there to see it and not, so far as he knew, any other time, either. “That’s right,” he urged, standing next to her. “It’ll help you feel better. It’s all right.”
“It’s not-all right.” A gasped, hitching breath broke the sentence in half. “It’s never going to be all right.”
What do I say to that, Irv wondered, especially when it’s true. Except for two of his grandparents, he had never lost anyone he loved. He knew how lucky he was. Because he was so lucky, he did not know firsthand how Pat felt, but he knew it was bad- worse now, he supposed, because she was letting what she had blocked away come out.
He bent down on one knee and put an awkward arm around her. She started to shake him off, then twisted in the chair until her head found the hollow of his shoulder. His other arm wrapped around her. Her tears were hot on the side of his neck. He held her while she cried herself out.
She looked ghastly when she finally raised her head-all the more so in the harsh blue-white glow of the fluorescent tube in the ceiling. Her blotched, wetstreaked face reminded Irv again of the toddler he had thought about a few minutes before. But the feel of her against him was like no toddler’s.
He shook his head at the distracting thought and reached out and snagged a paper towel off the tabletop. “Here,” he said. “Blow.”
Pat did, noisily, and dabbed at her eyes. “Thank you,” she said, and then again, in a different tone of voice, “Thank you.”
“It’s all right.”
He was still holding her with one arm. When he started to pull back, she clung to him. “Don’t let go, not yet, please,” she said. “I wasn’t, haven’t been able to feel anything since-“ Irv thought she was going to let that hang, but she made herself go on. “-since Frank got killed. It’s like most of me’s been stuck inside a glass specimen jar. I see things, hear things, but they don’t connect, they just bounce off the glass. This-I really know you’re here with me.”
“Okay.” That was one way of dealing with shock, Irv knew.
If nothing got through the glass, nothing could hurt.
“Give me that paper towel again, would you?” Pat wiped at her face, crumpled the towel, and threw it away. “I must look like hell.”
“Frankly, yes.”
She let out a strangled snort that might have been-Irv hoped it was-the first laugh from her since her husband died. “You always say the sweetest things, Irv.”
“I try.”
He kept his tone deliberately light, but Pat’s reply was serious. “I know. Thanks one more time.” She held on to him, too, as if afraid to stop. “So good to feel something, anything, again.”
“Good. That’s good, Pat.” Irv’s brain was handling mixed signals. Consciously, he was glad he was able to do as a friend should, able to help Pat begin to accept her loss. Through his hands, through his skin, he picked up another message. He was very much aware that for some time he had been holding a woman in his arms.