they won?t be allowed to keep having children. That way, by the time we break away from Earth, your people will have died of age.?
She shook her head slowly as I spoke. ?I don?t believe you. Even your people can?t destroy all the Earth.?
?Not all of it, no. It?s like
when you eat a piece of fruit that has an inedible core or inedible seeds. There will be a rocky core of the Earth left?a great mass of material, useful for mining, but not for living on. We?ll be scattering in a great many ships. Each one will have to be self-sustaining in interstellar space perhaps for thousands of years.?
?Self-sustaining in
??
?Just think of it as being beyond any possible help or dependable resupply.?
?In space
between the stars. That?s what you mean. No sun. Almost nothing.?
?Yes.?
?The elders who raised us when our mother died
they knew about such things. One used to write about them before the war to help others understand.?
I said nothing. Let her think for a while.
She sat silent, frowning, sometimes shaking her head. After a while, she rubbed her face with both hands and moved to sit next to TomAs.
?Shall I wake him?? I asked.
She shook her head.
I went into the forest and brought back a few sticks of dry wood. The rain began just as I returned. Jesusa sat where I had left her, rocking back and forth a little. I hung the basket of food that I had brought on the stump of a branch that had been left on one of the support saplings. Jesusa was hungry, but she did not want to eat now. I could satisfy the needs of her body without getting her to eat. Linked with her, I could transfer nourishment to her.
I fed the fire, then went to sit with her, TomAs lying between us.
?I don?t know what to think,? she said softly. ?My brother was going to die, you know.? She stroked his black hair. ?Someone is always going to die.? She paused. ?He was going to kill himself as soon as he got me within sight of home. I don?t know whether I could have stopped him this time.?
?He tried before?? I asked.
She nodded. ?That was the reason for this trip. To keep him alive a little longer.? She looked at me solemn-faced. ?We didn?t need you to tell us he was becoming disabled. We?ve watched it happen to too many of our people. And
they just go on having children until they die or it becomes physically impossible.? She touched his misshapen face. ?Last year, he broke his leg and had to lie on his back with his leg splinted and attached to weights for weeks. He told the elders he didn?t remember what happened. I told them he fell. They would have locked him up otherwise. We both knew he?d jumped. He meant to die. That long fall down to the river should have killed him. Thank god it didn?t. I promised him we would make this trip before they married us off. I said when his leg was strong, we would slip away. He had wanted to do that for years. Only I knew. It was wrong, of course. Fertile young people risking themselves in the lowland forests, risking the welfare of everyone
. I did it for him. I didn?t even want to come here.? Tears streamed down her face, but she made no sound of crying, no move to wipe her face.
I reached over TomAss, caught her by the waist, and lifted her. She wasn?t heavy at all. I put her down beside me so that I was between the two of them?where I belonged.
?You?ve saved him,? I said. ?You?ve saved his life and your people?s lives. You?ve saved yourself from a life of unnecessary misery.?
?Have I done so much good? Then how is it that my people would kill me if they found out??
She believed me. It didn?t make her feel any better, but she did believe.
?We can?t go home,? she said. ?The elders always told us that if even one of your people learned the truth about us, they would find us, and the thing we were trying to rebuild would be destroyed.?
?Perhaps it will only be healed and transported to Mars. Everyone who wants to go will be sent.?
?They won?t believe you. They wouldn?t even believe me. Even if I went home now, when your people came to collect us, my people would know who had betrayed them.?
?That?s not what you?ve done. Anyway, I want you to stay with me.?
She studied me, vertical frowns forming between her eyes where there was a small expanse of clear skin. ?I don?t know if I can do that,? she said.
?You?re with me now.? I lay down and moved close against TomAs so that all the sensory tentacles on his side of my body could reach him. Linking into him was such a sharp, sweet shock that for a moment, I could not see. When the shock had traveled through me, I became aware of Jesusa watching. I reached up and pulled her down with us. She gasped as the contact was completed. Then she groaned and twisted her body so that she could bring more of it into contact with me. TomAs, not really awake yet, did the same, and we lay utterly submerged in one another.
8
By the next morning, most of Jesusa?s small tumors had vanished, reabsorbed into her body. She was not truly healed yet, but her skin was soft and smooth for the first time since her early childhood. She cried as she ate the
