"You must not worry, Miss Jeter. I will see to it that youall get home. But I can't promise that my reflexes won't betrayme again, so I advise you to stay as far away from me as you can."
"I ... will ..." The tremble in her voice embarrassedher. "I can forgive your refusal to offer me the Exemption. I do not wish you to feel guilty or ashamed about it."
Her eyes were suddenly fever dry, and her voice steadied. "Ihave done nothing wrong to be forgiven for."
"You cannot comprehend the wrong that you have done, andso for you it isn't wrong. That is the only kind of wrong thatI forgive."
"Then don't forgive me, because I do comprehend. Your 'right'demands prostitution, and I reject that as 'wrong'."
He sighed and shivered suddenly as if from a chill, clenchinghis teeth momentarily. "So do I, Miss Jeter. Utterly. I could gain nothing from such a person, and so could not be attractedto one."
"You must mean something different by it than I, then."
He drew himself together and took one step toward Alamain. "Possible,but I doubt it. And now," he said raising his voice towardthe donor, "Valyu! Come, we must see that they are makingcamp. We can't go any farther today. You and I must do somerecruiting among the donors."
Livya went about the business of making camp mechanically. Sheand her mother chose a spot against the giant fallen tree trunkbetween two of the large, lower branches which they shared withseveral other families they always camped near. While the menwent out hunting dinner, she helped the women spread their porta-tentsusing the tree trunk as one side of the tent and anchoring thecorners of the flat sheeting with small boulders.
The porta-tent was a thin film of shiny material on one side,black on the other. Powered by a small selyn battery, the sheetingwas a very efficient heat pump. In the desert where they hadcrashed, the self cooling tents had saved their lives day afterday. Here they used the heat at night.
Now, Livya wondered if Yone would be able to recharge the selynbatteries for them. The accident with the tree had suddenly drivenhome to her just how vitally dependent they were on the channelwhile before it had just been a phrase said by rote. Their firestrikers were selyn powered – how could they even make a cookingfire without the strikers? And most of their cutting tools, thereally useful ones, were selyn-powered vibro-blades. The handtools took hours to cut down a little tree, and once she had takena turn using the hand machete to hack a way through the underbrush. They couldn't survive without repowering their tools.
Livya had become the fire-specialist among these families, learningquickly which woods would burn best and how to design a safe fireplace. As she worked that afternoon beside the majestic tree trunk,she found a renewed awe at the size of the thing, and the incrediblehardness of the wood which wouldn't burn. The trunk itself wasmore than thirty feet in diameter and some of the branches weremore than six feet thick. She couldn't calculate how much selynit had cost to deflect its fall, but she reached a kind of numbastonishment that such a feat could be done.
The tree had stood with its roots on the bank of a stream. Undercutby recent floods, the bank had given way and the tree had falleninto the forest. The campers used the stream for water and evencaught a few fish, while they grumbled about how they were goingto cross it.
As the hunters returned and the women began dressing the carcassesand digging up roots to make soup, the leaders gathered for mutteredconferences at the tent of K. Martin Flick, their elected spokesmanto the Tecton which consisted here among the refugees only ofYone and Valyu Alamain. There was much coming and going of grimfaces past Livya's fire, and the air of crisis did not escapeher.
Yone's tent had been set up, as always, a little apart from themain group. This time, it was on the opposite side of a ratherlarge boulder, using the rock face as one wall, spreading overa convenient limb of a tree, and anchored on the forest floorwith heavy branches. The side-flaps were tied down for privacy,and all afternoon, a trickle of Gen volunteers had been goingto and from his tent, donating selyn. But the grim faces toldher quite plainly, it wasn't enough.
Eventually, word came down the line that they would have to dowithout heat for their tents this night. "Conserve whatyou have left, and pray your batteries don't leak. Light firesfrom your neighbor's when possible, and conserve your vibro-blades,too."
When her mother heard that they would sleep cold this night andfor the foreseeable future, she was indignant. "We can'tget along without heat! You'll catch your death, Livya. Theycan't do this to us!"
"They? They! What do you mean, 'they'? That man,"Livya said, waving the firestriker wand toward Yone's tent, "savedyour life today, and nearly died for it. But he didn't use onebit of your selyn to do it."
Evelyn Jeter recoiled. "You don't talk to your mother inthat tone of voice! You have to respect your mother. Remember,it's your welfare I'm looking out for."
"How can I respect someone who can't even stick to a subjectfor two sentences?"
"And I suppose criminals and weaselly Simes are respectable! Standing around in public talking to such riffraff as if theywere worth listening to, and they don't even make sense. Thenyou turn around and won't even speak civilly to your own mother!"
"Riffraff! That ... that ..." she pointed a shakingfinger in the direction of Yone's tent "... that 'riffraff'talks better sense than you ever did. Why can't you see truthwhen it happens before your eyes? You're wrong about their tentaclesbeing slimy, and you're probably wrong about everything else too!"
"You don't contradict your –"
"I don't, facts do. That man saved us all from getting crushedtoday. That's a fact. He refused to let himself take advantageof me. That's a fact. He's the only thing that stands betweenus and death. That's a fact. And you refuse to donate even atiny dribble of selyn to run your own tent's heating unit. That'sa fact.
"Right now, Mother, it seems to me that you're the riffraffaround here, and everybody thinks I'm just like you. I'm so ashamed!"
Mrs. Jeter gathered herself up into her most self-righteous stanceand pointed, "Go to the tent and get to bed. You'll getno supper tonight. Think what you've said about your own mother,and tomorrow you'll apologize on your knees. You're almost awoman, and you're going to learn respect if it kills me."
"With you as a teacher, I haven't got a chance!"
"Go!" Their screaming had attracted the embarrassedstares of half a dozen people, but none would intervene.
For one tense moment, Livya teetered on the brink of total defiance,but her own feelings were so confused that she didn't know whereelse she wanted to be except huddled in her own sleeping bag whereshe could fight her way through the whirlwinds that seethed inher. She would not refuse herself what she wanted simply to defyher mother, and so she fled to her sleeping bag. At first, whilethe camp was having supper, she surrendered to gales of tearsthat seemed to feed on themselves. Eventually, she cried herselfinto a feverish slumber.
When she woke, the deep silence of late night was on the camp,her mother asleep beside her. In the clarity of emotional exhaustion,she realized that her anger at her mother had stemmed from herneed to make her mother earn the 'respect' she demanded and Livyaherself so desperately wanted to give. She had never found anyoneshe could really admire. Except, maybe, Yone Farris.