“Why not?”
“Because it wasn’t there when I got there.”
“But you just said you didn’t get there.”
“Of course I didn’t, human, if it wasn’t there.”
“Well, is it there now?”
“How can I tell? I’m here, not there.”
Yes, he would always be here, but never there. The paradox was that a man just wasn’t here, was nothing, if he weren’t trying to get there. Shakespeare had said it, as he’d said everything. You had “to shine in use, or rust in monumental mockery.”
But one didn’t learn from books, only from one’s own experience. As a youth, he’d read Stevenson’s proclamation that to travel hopefully was a better thing than to arrive. He agreed, but mental subscription wasn’t enough. As a man, he’d have to learn it the hard way.
He set his sights on the next goal, the V-shaped notch in the distant mountains. Once, coming from the other direction, he had thought of it as the gateway to Na-Abiza. Well, it still could be. Without Rosala, for him there could be no Na-Abiza.
It was the deep orange time, and he was well into the pass, almost back to the village. He was sad but not afraid. The Three-people were not dangerous so long as you didn’t consort with them. And, as he knew, isolated in their separate cells, they wished only to be left alone.
Then he saw the graveyard, just off the road. Fleeing from the house, he must have stumbled mindlessly past it before. It was well tended and there were two new graves, heaped with fresh earth, with carved wooden boards at the heads of each. He picked his way between other graves to them.
The inscriptions, not long completed by an unknown villager, said baldly on the one board: LAUREL CANATO.
And even more baldly on the other: UNKNOWN.
There were several other nameless headboards around, too, but they were old and weathered. This could only be Lee’s.
He stood for a long time looking at it, remembering. But for the accidental death of Canato breaking up the amalgam, he himself would probably be filling another nameless grave here.
Just behind him, someone stepped on a twig and snapped it. He started violently and spun around.
It was Rosala. Surprise stunned him. He could only stare at her. She was wearing a tunic he’d never seen before. It was somewhat travel-stained. And she was lovely—lovelier even than he remembered—in the warm orange light.
She was smiling, yet on the verge of tears. She could say nothing, but held out her arms to him.
They embraced with passion.
After a time, he said, “How did you come to be here? I don’t understand. You said Petrans are forbidden to leave their own area. The law—”
“I broke the law, darling. I didn’t want to go on living on sufferance any longer. I decided I’d rather be dead.”
“Yet you’re alive.”
“Yes. I think more alive than I’ve ever been. Because I decided not to wait for my man to come back to me, but to go and seek him.”
A doubt, arising from the old jealousy, came upon him. He held her a little apart from him.
“Myself? Or Lee?” He added, a trifle sourly, “As it happens, you’ve found us both.”
“Both? What do you mean?”
Haltingly, he explained, and was as distressed as she. She knelt over the grave and cried freely. He watched her with mixed feelings.
