On the other hand, Sam had seemed more relaxed lately. Things had been going extraordinarily well. Even those small annoyances that used to plague him, as well as everyone else in the settlement—parts lost, equipment broken, necessary supplies not arriving on time—even those annoyances seemed to have taken temporary leave. Therefore, it was possible that Sam wouldn’t be so picky, possible they might just enjoy being together. Besides, she was curious. She wanted to know what this thing was he was playing at, and maybe … just maybe he would tell her.
“Come for dinner,” she said, next time she saw him, not staying to watch his face light up.
Red meat was raised over in Settlement Nine, almost entirely for export. The settlers’ allotment of it was miniscule. All the settlements had plentiful supplies of poultry-birds, however, for both meat and eggs, so China planned her dinner around fowl. Each settlement had plentiful grain supplies and vegetables, including the so-called fragile vegetables, grown in greenhouses. Fruits tended to be seasonal, but were dried and preserved for settler use. The people in the settlements where wine and cheese were made hadn’t seen fit to share their expertise yet, so their products stayed in short supply, but China had credits squirreled away for a special occasion.
She asked Africa if Jeopardy and Peace could come to Africa’s sisterhouse for supper.
“You and Sam playing winkies again?” asked Africa with a leer. “Or is it someone else?”
China shrugged. “No one else.” She didn’t know. Not really.
“I thought it wouldn’t be long,” Africa murmured. “A changed man, our Sam. All full of human kindness.”
“Africa …” China murmured. “Don’t tease.”
“Well, why not? The two of you are a scandal and an amusement to the rest of us. Be nice if you could get along instead of you walking on eggs here in settlement, trying to avoid him, and Sam out there fighting monsters on the hills for his fair lady …”
“That’s not what he’s doing!”
“Well, what is he doing?”
“I don’t know, Africa. Except it doesn’t have anything to do with me. It’s something inside Sam. He wants to be somebody else. Somewhere else.”
“Topman isn’t enough, huh?”
“It doesn’t have anything to do with enough. It’s … there’s something inside him, like a hole. A vacancy. A question. He keeps trying to fill it up. All that playacting, that’s just part of it.” She had surprised herself considerably by saying this. She considered it to be true, but if anyone had simply asked her to explain Sam, she would have said she couldn’t explain him at all. Maybe as she got older, her understanding was increasing.
“Fighting ghost-beasts with his bare hands? That’s part of it?”
China shook her head. No one had ever learned exactly what it was that Sam had fought, but ghosts didn’t have bones. Even though the bones told no tales. For a while China had worried about that, worried quite a lot, afraid some visitor or intelligent being would come up missing, but except for that Soames man from Settlement Three, no one had, and the bones weren’t human. Quite. China thought CM should have done a quick survey, looking for an Out-System ship maybe, but she hadn’t suggested it. The skull was at CM, and everybody had looked at it. It had long teeth and big bony ridges over the eyes, and no one knew what it was. If they hadn’t thought it might be something from Outside, why should she?
Africa shook her head and laughed. “Send Peace and Jeopardy over. They can spend the night with their cousins.”
China seasoned her bird with Hobbs Land spices and fried it in grain oil. She made a vegetable-noodle dish that had been invented locally and was called a hobbspudding. There was fresh bread and fruit, plus the wine and cheese. They ate at the small table near the window which looked west, away from the fields, toward the wooded land.
Sam ate and smiled and smiled and ate, without picking at her and, when he had finished everything but the bones, suggested they take the last of their wine into the bedroom.
She started to say no, but then said yes instead, without really meaning to.
They lay on the wide bed, her head on his shoulder.
“We need legends here,” he said.
Oh, hang him by his heels, she thought, her entire body stiffening. Here he goes again.
“Legends of lovers,” he said. “Who are the great lovers, China Wilm?” He sounded merely interested, not picky.
This was a new question. “Great lovers?” she asked, relaxing a little.
“I asked that question of the Archives, and they gave me names. Names as empty and dry as dust. They meant nothing to me. Who was Abelard? Who was Romeo? Who was Gercord Thrust or Standfast Murgus and the Lady Vees? I did not know.”
“Nor I,” she murmured into his neck, feeling his arm tighten around her, his hand slide downward on her skin.
“Samasnier Girat and China Wilm,” he whispered to her. “Why shouldn’t they be legendary?”
“A legend in our time?” she giggled.
“For all time,” he whispered, kissing her before going on to other things. “For all time.”
For all time, she thought, wondering why the words echoed so fatefully. For all time. “Do that again,” she commanded. “Oh, do that again.”
He did it again, and then something else, and then time went away entirely. There was thunder, which they did not hear, and then a downpour of rain, lashing against the window with whispering whips.
A long time later they heard the rain and wondered at it.
“Early,” said Sam in a puzzled voice. “Early this year.”
Thus far he had not picky-picked at her once.
She was not content to leave it alone. She had to test it.
“What did you mean about legendary lovers?” she asked.
“I have decided legends are like spiders,” he said, unaccountably.
“Yes,” she urged, doubtful of the direction he was taking.
“Though the closest thing we have to spiders here upon Hobbs Land has ten detachable legs, we all know about
