"I don't like to put him out," Viktor said politely.
"You aren't putting anyone out! No, we want you here, dear Viktor. In fact, it was Balit's idea. He'll stay in his own old room, where he's quite content. But this one, you see," Frit added with pride, "is an adult room. You'll have your own desk—you can use it as much as you like, of course. I think you'll be quite comfortable," he finished, looking around like any hostess. Then he grinned, a little embarrassed. "Well, I don't see any harm in telling you. We're going to be redecorating Balit's old room. We've ordered another baby from Nrina. She'll be a little girl—we're going to call her Ginga—and of course she won't be born for a long time yet, so Balit will be quite all right in that room."
It wasn't until Frit was long gone and Viktor had undressed and climbed into the soft, warm bed that it occurred to him that he should have said "Congratulations."
The ground shook again that night. Viktor woke, startled, to find something warm and soft near his toes. It mewed in protest when he moved.
He got up, grinning, and stroked the kitten back to sleep as he sat on the edge of his bed, thinking. Alone in the bedroom, Viktor admitted to himself that he was a little uncomfortable. He knew why.
He wasn't really easy in his mind to be moving into a house of gays.
Viktor was quite certain that he was not at all prejudiced against homosexuals. He'd known plenty of them, one time or another. He'd worked with them, shipped with them—they weren't any different than anybody else, he considered, except in that one particular way. But that way wasn't anyone's business but their own, and certainly it didn't matter in any real sense as long as you didn't get involved with them.
The trouble was, living with them seemed to be getting pretty involved.
It reassured Viktor that the household didn't seem much different than any other. Forta and Frit had their own bedroom. Balit had his; Viktor had the one Balit would graduate into. Nothing was, well, bizarre about the household. Not really. If Forta would sometimes kiss the back of Frit's neck as he passed behind his chair, and if Frit would slip an arm around Forta's waist while they stood together—well, they did love each other, didn't they?
What was most important, neither of them showed any indication at all of loving Viktor. Not that way, anyway.
The boy, Balit, almost did. He certainly acted loving, but there wasn't anything sexual about it. Balit sat next to Viktor when they ate their meals, and kept Viktor company while he fruitlessly hunted for what he never found on the information machines. It was Balit who marked which foods and drinks Viktor seemed to enjoy and made sure there were more of them at the next meal. He always seemed to be there, watching Viktor, whenever he was not asleep or at school.
"It's a kind of hero worship," Forta explained. The dancer was working at his bar, stretching those long, slim legs even longer, with one eye on the kitten waking on the floor between them. Viktor realized with surprise that Forta was being a cat. "This will work, I think," Forta said with pleasure, giving it up as the kitten curled up to drowse again. "What were we saying? Oh, yes. Please don't let Balit bother you. But the thing is that you were the one who actually carried him away for his freeing ceremony; that's a big thing for a young boy."
"He's no trouble at all," Viktor protested. "I like having him around."
"Well, it's obvious he likes you." Forta sighed. "I mean, he likes you as a person, not just because of what you did. As a matter of fact—" Forta hesitated, then smiled. "Actually, Balit wondered if he could ask you to come to his school. If you wouldn't mind. He'd like to show you off. I know it wouldn't be much fun for you, spending an hour or two with a bunch of little kids staring and asking you all kinds of questions—but you can't blame them, Viktor. You were born on Old Earth. They aren't likely to see anybody like you again."
"I'd be glad to," Viktor promised.
The school was no more than a hundred yards from Balit's home, in the middle of a grove of broad-leafed trees that hung with fruit and blossoms interchangeably. (There weren't any seasons on Moon Mary. Plants grew and bloomed when they felt like it, not when the weather changed. The weather never changed.) Red Nergal hung in the eastern sky, where it always hung in their position on Moon Mary's surface. At their distance it loomed no larger than Earth's moon, but Viktor could feel the heat from it. And in the west was one bright star. "There used to be thousands and thousands of stars," Viktor told the boy, who nodded in solemn appreciation.
"Things must have been so much nicer then," he sighed. "We go in there, Viktor. That's the door to my class."
It wasn't much of a door—Moon Mary's buildings did not have very strong walls, since they didn't need them to keep out cold or heat; it was light, pierced wood, as might have been in Earth's old tropics, and it opened to Balit's touch.
It wasn't much of a class, either—eight kids, mostly girls—and it didn't seem to be exactly a classroom. It looked rather like the guest lounge of a small motel at first, a bedroom-sized chamber with hassocks and couches strewn before a collection of child-sized teaching desks, but as Balit led Viktor in the room darkened.
"We'll have to wait a minute," Balit apologized. "They're starting a viewing. I don't know what it is, though—" And then, all around the children, a scene sprang into life, three-dimensional, seeming natural size, full color. "Oh, look, Viktor! They're doing it specially for you! They're showing Old Earth!"
If it was really Earth, it was not an Earth Viktor recognized. He seemed to be standing on a sort of traffic island in the middle of a large street, and it was by no means empty. Thousands, literally thousands, of people were riding bicycles toward him in a dense swarm that spilt in two just before they reached him, and came together again on the other side. They wore almost uniform costumes—white shirts, dark blue trousers—and they were almost all male. And Oriental. There was no sound, but to one side was a huge marble building set in a sort of park, and on the other what looked like a hotel and office buildings.
"I don't know where this is supposed to be," Viktor apologized.
Balit looked embarrassed. "But they said it was Earth," he complained. "Wait a minute." He bent to whisper to the little girl nearest him. "Yes, this is Earth, all right. It is a place called Beijing, around the year one thousand nine hundred sixty, old style."
"I was never in Beijing," Viktor said. "And anyway—" He stopped there. What was the use of telling these children that they were not off by a mere few thousand miles, but by several centuries? He settled for, "It's very nice, though. But can we turn it off?"
Then Viktor had the floor. The teacher sat there smiling, leaving it all to the children to ask questions, and that they did. About Old Earth. (People rode horses? If they made love did they really have babies out of their bodies? And what, for heaven's sake, was a "storm"?) About the Sorricaine-Mtiga objects (Oh, they must have been exciting to see!), and about his near-death in orbit around Nebo (Something tried to kill you? Really take away your life?), and about Newmanhome and the Big Bang and the reasons why there were so few stars anymore anywhere in the sky.
That was where Viktor began to wax really eloquent, until Balit, speaking for all of them, said gravely, "Yes, we see, Viktor. The stars that blew up, the sun going dim, the changes on Nebo, the disappearance of all the other stars—we see that as they all happened at the same time, or close enough, they must be connected. But how?"