He heard, with the corners of his consciousness, the kitchen door open and close and the sound of Amanda's footfalls come down the corridor to the living room, enter, and stop suddenly.
"Hal?" Her different, unsure voice erected the hairs on the back of his neck. "Is that you - Hal?"
He was on his feet, turned about and standing over her, where she had backed against the wall next to the entrance, before he realized he had moved.
He towered over her. He had never before been this aware of his size, in relation to hers; and it seemed to him she had grown smaller, shrunk back against the wall as she was. But he could see nothing to terrify her. They were alone. Their faces stared at each other in the half-light, across a few inches of distance; and his soul turned over in him to see her so frightened.
Gently, he took hold of her shoulders; and was shocked to discover how small the bones and flesh of them felt, wrapped and enclosed by his own large hands. Gently, still holding her, sliding his hands about her shoulders, he stepped aside and behind her, urging her from the wall to one of the chairs facing the unlit fireplace.
"No," she said, closing her eyes as she reached the chair, pulling away from him and seating herself. He sank down into a chair half-facing hers, and stared at her. His own eyes, adjusted to the dimness, saw the paleness of her face.
"It's all right…" she said, after a long moment, in a hushed, breathless voice. She opened her eyes and went on, a little numbly. "It was just for a moment there. I'd thought you'd naturally go to your room to think. He got thin in the last years, but his hair stayed black - like yours. He… sometimes forgot to light the fire; and he used to sit like that, stooped a bit. It was a shock, that's all."
He stared at her.
"Ian," he said. "You mean… Ian."
Out of all his feeling for her came a sudden understanding.
"You were in love with him." He could not have pulled his gaze from her face with all the willpower he possessed. "At his age?"
"At any age," she said. "Every woman loved Ian."
A dull knife slowly cut and churned him up inside. The reciprocal feeling for him that he believed he had sensed in her - everything he thought he had understood - all wrong. He had been only a surrogate for a man dead for years, a man old enough to be her great-grandfather.
"I was sixteen when he died," she said.
- And then he understood. To love and not be able to have, as she was growing up, would have been bad enough. To love and watch the dying would have been beyond bearing. The terrible fire of loss within him was flooded out by love for her and the urge to comfort her. He reached out, to her, starting to get up.
"No," she said, quickly. "No. No."
He dropped his arm back, the pain returning. Of course she would not want to be touched by him - particularly now. He should have known that.
They sat in silence for several minutes, he not looking at her. Then he got up, almost mechanically, and lit the fire. As the warmth and the light of the little red flames, moving out and multiplying among the pieces of firewood, began to take over and change the room, he ventured to look at her again. He saw that the color had begun to come back to her face, but the face itself still showed a rigidity from the lingering effects of her shock. She sat with her arms upon the arms of the chair, her back straight against its back.
"You did well, today," she said.
"Better than I'd hoped," he answered.
"Not just that. You did well, very, very well," she said. "I told you, carrying anything over seventy per cent of them would be a victory. You only lost four out of thirty-one people; and you didn't even really lose them. You convinced them too thoroughly, that's why they left."
"I suppose," he said. A little of the earlier feeling of relief and triumph returned for a brief second. "But I was losing them to begin with, there. And then Rourke di Facino asked that one question and it seemed to trigger off just what I wanted to tell them. Did you notice?"
"I noticed," she said.
Her brief reply did not encourage him to talk further about the explosion of competence that had come so unexpectedly upon him at the meeting. He turned away to poke the fire; and when he looked at her again, she had gotten to her feet.
"I'd better get us something to eat," she said; and waved him back as he started to get up. "No. Stay there. I'll bring it in here."
She crossed the room quickly to the table with the drinks on it, poured some of the dark whiskey into a glass and brought it back to him.
"Sit and relax," she said. "Everything's fine. I'll call Omalu and find out the situation on a ship that can get you out toward the Final Encyclopedia."
He took the glass, smiled; and drank a little from it. She smiled back, turned, and left the room. He put the glass down on the table beside him.
He had no desire for it, now. But she would notice if he did not drink at least some of it. He set himself to get it down, gradually; and had almost succeeded by the time she came in with two covered hot-dishes on a tray, which she set down on a small table between his chair and the one she had occupied earlier. The tray divided to become two trays; and she passed one over to him, with tableware and a covered dish on it.
"Thanks," he said, uncovering the dish. "It smells good."
"There's a question you're going to have to think about," she said, uncovering her own dish. "I called the spaceport at Omalu. A ship's leaving for Freiland, from which you can transfer to one headed for Earth. It leaves tomorrow at mid-day. If you don't take that, the next might be in three weeks - or more. They're not certain. But it'll be at least three weeks. Do you still want to give them a week here?"
"I see," he said, laying his fork down. She was looking at him with a face on which he could read only the concerned interest of a householder with a guest. "You're right. Perhaps I'd better be on that one, tomorrow."
"It's too bad," she said. "If you could have stayed a week, some of those you met yesterday would've had a chance to talk to you again. There was a time when finding passage out of Omalu to any of the other thirteen worlds was something you could do almost overnight. But not now."
"It's too bad, as you say," he said. "But I'd better take the ship I know is leaving."
"Yes. You're probably right." She lowered her gaze to her plate and became busy eating. "You've got interstellar credit enough for passage, of course?"
"Oh, yes," he said to her forehead. "There's no problem there…"
They ate. In spite of the newly empty feeling inside him, his appetite did not let him down; and the soporific effect of the good-sized meal on top of the tensions of the day dulled his emotions and made him realize how tired he was. They talked for a little while about the next day's plans.
"I think some of those who were there today may want to have a last word with you," she said. "I'll phone around and see. We could get to the spaceport early and talk in the restaurant, there; if you don't have any objection."
"No objection, of course," he said. "But maybe I should be the one to call them?"
"No," she said. "Get some sleep. I'll be up for a few hours yet, anyway, with things I've got to do."
"All right," he said. "Thank you."
"It's no trouble."
Shortly, he went to bed; and in the darkness of his room escaped at last into the cave of sleep.
He slept heavily. He was roused by Amanda calling him on the house phone circuit; and he looked up from his pillow to see her face in the screen.
"Breakfast in twenty minutes," she said. "We'd better get going."
"Right," he said, half-awake.
The kitchen was bright with the first full light of morning as he came into it and took a seat at the table. Thick soup and chunks of brown bread were already waiting for him. She sat down with him.