Carlos nodded, and saved it. The computer silently sorted the notes and compressed the megabytes of data for transmission to Geographic in the morning. From there, it would be broadcast to Earth. Ten years later the data would arrive, for the edification and entertainment of the home worlds.
Once again the chill touched her, and she started to stand.
Carlos turned from the console and faced her. "I know, chiquita," he said. "Writing letters, sending messages, knowing that no one who ever knew me, ever touched me, will see them. No one to care. Strangers seeing pictures of strangers, and no one to care." Suddenly he was terribly close to her. His breath was warm, and smelled of coffee. "There used to be someone to care, you see? Someone who saw something beside the jokes, but I let her down."
Sylvia reached up to touch his face, to run her hand over the stubble on his chin. Her nerves jumped at the contact.
To love, honor, and obey. To cleave only unto...
"Anyone but Cadmann—"
Oh, God, it's been so long, so damned long.
"I care, Carlos."
He looked at her hard, with the beginning of something like tears in his eyes. Then his mouth became a fine line, and he said, "I don't know about this. Will you still respect me mañana?"
"You idiot. I don't respect you now."
"Fair enough." He leaned forward that last few inches, and she backed away as his lips touched hers, then pressed against him, crushed her lips against him. Unfettered at last, all of the repressed feelings of the past months burned their way to the surface.
They stepped away from each other. Carlos squeezed her shoulders once, then turned off the equipment and the lights. He latched the door behind them, and together they set off through the fog for the warmth of his house. Within a few steps, the communications shack had joined the rest of the camp in the mist.
It seemed that there was nothing in the world but the two of them, doing the best they could do to find a path through the dark and the cold.
"I always wondered what your bed was like." Sylvia giggled.
"You had but to ask," Carlos said gravely. "Move a bit, will you? Your lovely bosoms are squashing me."
Sylvia razzed him, and rolled off enough for Carlos to reach the bedstand. He felt among the empty beerskins for a full pouch, ah-hahed, and handed one to her.
The bed in question was a shell suspended like a hammock above the ground. Every attempt to extricate herself was a hazard, every movement during a delirious hour of lovemaking was enough to have both of them giggling like naughty children.
They swung there in a slight stupor induced by beer and afterglow.
She gave the pouch back to him and then snatched it away, dribbling foam over his chest and then kissing it off. He wrestled her to the bottom again, and she felt the heat flare in his body, triggering an immediate reply in her own. She wrapped her arms around him, then pulled the blankets over both their heads.
Later, much later, it seemed, Sylvia and Carlos had exhausted the heat. They lay holding each other.
Is this what we really craved? Not the blaze, but the gentle warmth afterward, the peace you can only share with one who has walked the fire with you?
She played with the tight, dark curls of hair on his chest. "How did you end up at another star, Carlos? Not the stuff we all said back on Earth at the group-compatibility workshops."
"Great, weren't they? Jesucristo, the lies that were told that month."
"We all wanted to come pretty bad. Nobody was going to say anything to queer their chances."
"The truth." He sighed. With her face against his chest, she felt, more than heard, his heartbeat. It was strong, and slowing now. He had been as hungry for her as she had been for him. Or for someone.
God, this wasn't the time for thoughts like that. She shunted them back into her head and enjoyed the glow.
"How did I get here? Well, in therapy, you might remember when I said I'd been called back from Beijing where I was doing research on the T'ang Dynasty."
"You say that as if it isn't true."
"Oh, it's true all right. I had another reason for being in Asia for six years."
"Some almond-eyed lovely. I'd wager."
"You lose."
"Ooh. Guess what the stakes were. Claim your prize, you terrible man."
"Insatiable woman. Let me catch my breath. Where was I?" He ran his finger slowly down her back, then kissed her as softly and sincerely as she had ever been kissed in her life. "Oh, yes. Why was I in Beijing?" He laughed. "My family estate is in Patagonia, Argentina. We have fairly extensive holdings, actually. We raised shorthorn and Hereford, and Corriedale sheep. Very old family."
"Your whimsy certainly isn't high Spanish."
"Hell, half the time we spoke English. My mother was Canadian. I picked up colloquial Spanish in Mexico, in prep school and college. There was this little problem back home with a young lady. Her eyes, were, I recall, almond. The vegetable analogy unfortunately extended to her tummy, which was beginning to look like a casaba."
She felt a cold flash. "And you left—"
"No," he said quietly. "I didn't really love her, but I would have done the honorable thing. My father got there first, with checkbook in hand. She was poor, you see, and Papa wasn't having any of it. She went to visit untraceable cousins in Santiago del Estero, and I went north."
She relaxed again. "Where you stayed out of trouble, I hope."
"Hardly. I seem to have this talent."
"Mmmm. I've noticed."
"I was nothing but an embarrassment to my family. I can laugh about it now, but I really made a mess of things. I drank and gambled and wenched, and had the bad grace to stay in the top ten percent of my class. My father bought me out of one fix after another. Finally I got the royal invitation to get the hell off the continent. Live in Asia, drawing generous funds from the Bank of Hong Kong, or live penniless in the Americas. Being sensible, I opted for the mysterious East."
"A remittance man."
"Exactly. Want to know something?"
"What?"
"I'm half sure that my father bribed someone to get me my berth on
Geographic. I don't think China was far enough away."
"Not a chance. You earned every mile. Your father must have been an interesting man."
"Aristocrat to the hilt. Used to retell Grandfather's war stories with relish. It was ‘when the peons revolted' this, and ‘in the fall of 1998' that, and firing squads and torched villages, and Indians dragged out of the jungle by their necks. He had holos of stacks of heads..."
He fell silent, and she didn't disturb his trance. At last he emerged. "To him it was all ‘us' and ‘them.' We had the land, they wanted it. As simple as that. I told him I hated that life, that I'd never be a part of it. And here I am. Watching the herds." Carlos chuckled darkly. "And fighting the natives, for that matter. Enough of that. How about some more of this?"
Sylvia looked to the clock on the wall. It was three in the morning.
"No. I think that I had better go."
"When will... oh, nuts. Chula mia, it sounds ridiculous, I mean, it's hard to have someone here that I care about, and not know when I'll be able to be with her again."
"I don't know yet. I'm just glad we had tonight."
"As am I. Take care, chiquita."
She kissed him again and then rolled carefully out of the hammock. She took a thorough shower, then slipped her clothes back on and left. Carlos was already asleep.
The fog had cleared some. Morning was still hours away, but she felt lighter, and warmer. Most importantly, she knew that she could face Terry with a clear conscience. What had happened between her and Carlos had nothing to do with her marriage, or her love for Terry.