There was no such occasion. She was never out of hearing of the sailors or other members of their group. After a few days of frustration, Fringe put the matter out of mind. She would deliver the message as soon as possible after reaching Panubi.
Meantime, the members of the sideshow spent each day on the forward hatch cover, returning to the tiny shared cabins only after the night winds had cooled them. Danivon and Curvis exchanged Enforcer stories and Fringe taught the twins the local trade language. Fringe was a reliable teacher, though more conscientious than talented. Luckily, Nela and Bertran acquired languages easily. The Curward sailors offered considerable help with the more vulgar words, since they called out bawdy suggestions whenever Curvis and the twins practiced their sleight of hand, making things vanish from Curvis’s hands to reappear in Bertran’s, or vice versa. The twins knew they were improving when the sailors quit jeering at their patter and started whistling and telling them jokes in local patois.
Each morning Danivon stripped to his smalls and poured buckets of seawater over himself, watching Fringe from the corners of his eyes to see if she was appreciating him. He had an appreciable body, or so he’d been told, not that she seemed to notice. Danivon found himself getting peevish about it, spending time contemplating assault, or rape, or both successively. The damned woman would not be anything but impersonal. She would not meet his eyes. Would not … anything.
“What’s wrong with me?” he asked Curvis in their cabin aboard the ship, peering at himself in the mirror, meantime, to see if he’d grown two heads, though she, Fringe, seemed fonder of two heads than one! She got along well enough with the twins!
“Nothing,” grunted Curvis. “Nothing the matter with you.”
“Then why does the fool woman act this way!”
“Shit, Danivon! We’re on a mission. Attend the Situation. Leave her alone.” Curvis had no objection to women, particularly as cooks or bedmates, but Danivon’s preoccupation with Fringe was becoming an annoyance.
“I don’t want to,” Danivon said softly. “I just don’t want to. She’s … different.”
Curvis laughed shortly. “The only difference with that woman is she wants nothing to do with you. It’s the novelty of that fact has you fascinated.” Fringe was not a type that appealed to Curvis, and he did not take Danivon’s infatuation with her at all seriously.
“Why doesn’t she want to?”
Curvis glared at him, then grinned. “If you want to understand Fringe, ask Nela. Close as the two halves of a chaffer shell, Fringe and Nela. Bertran will be a good fellow and pretend not to overhear.”
So Danivon waited until Fringe was below and asked Nela.
She thought for a moment, recalling things Fringe had said about her childhood. “On the surface, there’s little mystery about Fringe, Danivon. When she was a child, she thought the world began and ended in her daddy. She talks about him, you know, but always about him when she was a toddler, a little child. She was no doubt adorable, as many little beings are. Wide-eyed. Bright-haired. With baby skin and baby talk. So he petted her like a kitten. Then when she grew older and became prickly and difficult, as many young folk do when confronting the reality of the world, he shoved her aside as troublesome. I doubt he meant her harm. He was preoccupied with other problems and had no idea how to deal with a girl-woman.” She shook her head, reflecting that things had not changed much in thousands of years—not so far as families and children were concerned.
Bertran had the same thought. “It amazes me, Danivon Luze, that human nature, which had changed little in the several thousand years before our time, is still unchanged all these millennia later! Man has swept himself along on wings of technology, but he remains psychologically much the same. As I read it, Char Dorwalk’s life was unconventional enough that it let him in for a good deal of criticism from his class and family. Perfection in his children would have justified his break with convention.”
“Bertran may be right,” Nela said in a doubtful tone. “Since his daughter was not perfect, she justified nothing. He may have resented her falling short of his expectations.”
“Which has what to do with me?” growled Danivon.
“Only this,” said Nela. “Little girls learn about men from their fathers. They learn to trust, or not; to respect, or not. And Fringe may remember her daddy being handsome and charming and herself being of little value to him when push came to shove. And aren’t you handsome and charming also, Danivon Luze?”
“I wouldn’t treat her like that!”
“Of course not,” Nela said, turning her attention to the costume she was sewing for Fringe. “Oh, of course you wouldn’t, Danivon Luze.”
When Danivon left, Bertran asked, “You said, ‘On the surface,’ Nela. What did you mean?”
She gazed at the sparkling waves, her hands for the moment still. “Only that it’s all too easy an explanation for how Fringe is, Bertran. You know, some people are the way life has made them be …”
“A truism, dear sister,” he interjected.
“… and some are the way they are, despite what life hands out. I’m not sure which applies in her case. There is something about Fringe that feels … immutable.”
Bertran hadn’t noticed it, but he took her word for it.
Nela was curious enough to mention the matter to Fringe. “He’s a good-looking man,” she said to Fringe. “You’re sure you want nothing to do with him?”
“Certain sure,” muttered Fringe.
