listenââ
âNo no no!â
When at last he looked up, she was gone, the door standing open. On the threshold rested a small gray parallelogram of stone. Stooping warily over it, he could see the faint imprint of a leaf in the surfaceâor perhaps it was a fern; it had been many years since he had looked at pictures of plants. With a tablemat he scooped up the stone, held it near his face. There was a faint smell of damp. The tiny veins of the leaf formed a riotous maze of intersecting lines that reminded him of the mapâs labyrinth of rivers. Had it been decontaminated? Where had she found it, in what mire out there? For a long time he hesitated, fingers poised a few centimeters above the stone. And then at last he touched the mazy indentation, gingerly, so as not to injure himself. The delicate lines of the fossil proved hard, harder than his cautious fingers.
The stone felt cold in his palm, slick with perspiration, as he shifted from foot to callused foot before her door. That was her doing, the calluses, the twitching in his legs, the lust for escape. Passengers streamed by on the pedbelts, slashing him with their glances as he debated what to do. But he ignored them, and that also was her doing. Should he report her, get her wilder-license revoked, then try coaxing her into sanity again? Could he betray her that way? Or should he let her make those journeys outside, each one longer, until, one day, she failed to return? Could he actually go out there with her?
His heart raced faster than it ever had from their walking or stair-climbing.
At last he rang, and the door clicked open. For the first time he entered her lair, smelling her, but unable to see anything in the dim light. He groped his way forward. âTeeg?â
âIn here.â
Her voice came from a second room, visible only as a vertical streak of blue light where the door stood ajar. With halting steps, hands raised to fend off obstacles, Phoenix picked his way through the darkness toward the blue slither of light. As he approached, the door eased open, forcing him to shield his eyes from the brightness. Swimming in the wash of blue was Teegâs silhouette, not naked, surely, but with arms and legs distinctly outlined. Was she in her working gear, a shimmersuit?
âI found this,â he said, reaching the fossil toward her in his open palm.
âThat was for you to keep,â she snapped. âA gift for parting.â
âI didnât come to return it. I came to have you read it for meâtell me what it meansâtell meâI donât know.â He halted in confusion. The hard edge of her voice, the blue glare, the inner turmoil made his eyes water. âYouâve got to be patient with me.â
âSo youâll have time enough to file that infection alert?â
âI didnât mean for you to see that.â
âNo, Iâll bet you didnât.â
âI wonât file it. I canât.â
She studied him. âWhy did you get it in the first place?â
âI just wanted to keep you,â he stammered.
âWhat do you mean, keep me?â
âKeep you safe, keep you inside.â
âWell I wonât be kept inside, you hear me? Not by you or the health board or anybody .â
His eyes still watered, but he could make out her swift movements as she paced about the room gathering vials and cassettes and food capsules into a massive carrycase. It was a shimmersuit she wore, silvered to reflect sunlight, clinging to her like a second skin to allow for work on the outside. The disclosure of her body embarrassed him. Even in stage ten of the mating ritual he had never seen a woman so exposed.
âWhere are you going?â he demanded.
âIâm not waiting here to be arrested.â
âYouâre not going back outside?â
âEventually. A few of us together, back to the wilds, home.â She slammed the carrycase on the floor.
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