No. That was Nate’s idealistic hogwash. Progress was never bad. Learning, even if it ended up in a notebook next to her bleaching bones, was never for naught. It was her only god. She had to believe in it.

But the hollowness in her belly deepened, quenching her enthusiasm like coals being overwhelmed by dark, filthy water. The images from the clinic wouldn’t leave her. The poor female, chained to a bed and no male willing to go near her. How had this society come to that? How could beings who’d had enough of a spark of life to evolve from nothing, from microbes out in that desert, to a highly technological society suddenly lose the drive to reproduce, to live?

Nate came in. The lights went on automatically at his movement. She was lying on her back, and now she wished she’d been facing the wall. She squeezed her eyes shut. She heard him taking off his shoes, quietly, getting ready for bed. She wanted to say she was sorry, but she wasn’t sorry and didn’t know why she should be. The room was so still. He lay down. It got quieter. The lights went out.

That hollowness reverberated inside her in the silence, like a place where her name should be and wasn’t. Then her name appeared. At first she thought it was just in her head, but it was Nate. He had said her name, “Jill.” His tone, lingering in her ears, sent a shiver up her spine.

“Jill.”

Again. The hollowness, despair, was in his voice, too. It said a lot of things. It said he was sorry about the argument—not as in an apology but as in it didn’t matter anymore, not in the face of that overwhelming emptiness. She knew what he needed—human contact. A touch, comfort, something real, something from home, something to ease the chill. She wanted it, too.

She could reach across in the dark and take his hand. She could even imagine herself rolling off the bed in the dark and lying down next to him, putting her head against his chest. She almost did it. But the thought occurred to her: Then what? Where would it lead? Would he kiss her again? And then what? It had been such a long time since she’d been intimate with a man, not since her college days, and even then it had been a disaster. She’d felt sexual desire for Nate, god only knew. But the idea of being naked, vulnerable, here in this place—exposing herself so intimately physically and mentally at this precise moment of time? It terrified her.

“Jill,” he said again, this time louder, darker, demanding a reply.

She pretended to be asleep. The silence was so uncomfortable that she added a light snore, just to make sure he was convinced, to plug up once and for all the awful stillness.

19

Loved and honoured hadst thou lain

By the dead that nobly fell,

In the underworld again,

Where are throned the kings of hell,

Lordly in that citadel

19.1. Seventy-Thirty Jill Talcott

When Jill awoke, Nate was gone. She could hardly believe it. She looked around outside the apartment, even outside the building, to confirm. Why would he go anywhere without her? That wasn’t very smart. Now she had to sit around and wait for him to get back.

Her doubts of the night before had vanished. She was ready to work again, thought it would do them good—do him good—if they could get a fresh start on the day, make some progress, keep their minds occupied. She tried to study the pile of printouts from the spaceport, but her mind kept wandering, listening for the sounds of his return.

When he came in an hour or so later, he said he’d gone for a walk, hadn’t slept well. His answers were clipped and stiff. Jill was determined to be patient.

“Nate, please don’t go off on your own like that, not without telling me.”

“You know what?” Nate flashed an icy smile. “You’re not my mother, or even my boss for that matter, not here.”

Jill stared at him in dismay. “What is the matter with you?”

“I know you were awake last night. I mean, how stupid do you think I am?”

Jill was embarrassed. The snore had, perhaps, been overdoing it. “I’m—I’m sorry. I just…”

“Whatever.” He began folding his blanket in quick jerks.

“What are you doing?”

He didn’t answer.

“Nate, please. I do… I do care about you. It’s just that at this moment I think we should stay focused on what’s important here.”

“You know what? When you say ‘we should stay focused on what’s important’ what you’re really saying is ‘this is what I choose to deal with.’ That way, you can sweep everything you can’t handle—all that ‘unimportant stuff,’ like emotions, and love, and your humanity—under the rug. You know what that leaves you with?”

She blinked at him, speechless.

“It leaves you with a very fat rug!”

Jill was at a loss. She had never seen him like this. His face was harsh with anger and pain. His words were not half as bad as that look on his face.

“Nate… I—”

“Forget it. You do what you want. I’m done with it.” He stalked out, leaving her alone.

Jill ran to the door of the building and called after him, told him he was being childish, told him he couldn’t go off on his own. God only knew what all she said, but she didn’t say the right thing. Nate disappeared around a corner, never even turning around.

Jill waited at the apartment for several hours. It was a stressful situation, she told herself. It would be for anyone. She tended to forget that Nate had a very large Greek family, friends. He might never see any of them again. Of course he’d be grieving about that.

She tried to understand, to imagine what he was feeling, but it was hard. The truth was, this place did not feel all that bad to her. She rather liked the quietness of it, the feeling of owning the City that its desertion allowed her to have. And there was that sense she’d had from the start of something familiar. She didn’t miss all those things Nate missed—TV, radio, even food. Not really, not when she had her work, the potential of the alien technology laid out in front of her. It was about as thrilling an opportunity as any scientist could imagine.

And she wasn’t leaving anyone behind. If there was one person in her old life she would have missed, it was Nate, and he was here. Nate was here.

And if Nate were not here? Would she like being here then? No, she would not be nearly so okay with this if Nate were not here.

Still, whatever pressure he was under, he was being outrageously unprofessional and irresponsible by going off like that. Something might happen to him out there on his own. How would he get back? How would she know? Would he even come back?

Of course he would come back. Of course he would.

The printouts were on her lap. She tried to pull her mind back to them and could not. She sighed. How much time this was all taking! They should be getting work done, not wasting time arguing. But the only thing she could think about at the moment was, How could she get him to forgive her? How could she make it okay?

If they couldn’t get off the planet it only made sense to allow her relationship with Nate to… to develop. He had needs, even here apparently, even on a seventy-thirty world. At the very least he had emotional needs. She should be more sympathetic. For the sake of the mission, if nothing else.

The flat, featureless cubicle of a room was dead, so amazingly empty. Jill had never heard a quiet this deep. She suddenly realized that since Nate had sprung her from the hospital she’d been with him every second. How many hours had that been? Seventy-two? Longer than that. Well over a hundred. At least a week since she’d not known where he was, since he had not been within earshot, if not right beside her.