contact as she adjusted her weight. Intimate messages ran up his leg.
'I think his fever is broken,' she said. 'If we can keep him warm tonight, he may improve tomorrow.'
'Maybe the shrew venom counteracted the moth poison,' he said, glad to change the subject. 'Where are we now? I don't remember getting here.'
'Over the pass, the other side of the river. I don't think they can catch up to us here. Not tonight. Do they travel at night?'
'I wouldn't think so. Not if they travel by day. They must sleep sometime.' He paused. 'Straight in from the river? That means we're that much farther into the badlands.'
'But you said the radiation is gone.'
'I said it is retreating. I don't know how far or fast. We could be in it now.'
'I don't feel anything,' she said' nervously.
'You can't feel it.' But it was a pointless discussion. They had no way to escape it, if they were in the fringe zone. 'If the plants haven't changed, it must be all right. It kills everything.' But insects were a hundred times as tolerant as man, and there were more moths than ever.
The conversation lapsed. He knew what the problem was: though they had agreed on the necessity to conserve heat, and knew what was called for, it was awkward initiating the action. He could not boldly invite her to lay her generous breasts against his naked body, and she could not stretch upon him without some specific pretext. What was intellectually sensible remained socially awkward-the more so because the prospect of such contact excited him, practical as its purpose might be, and he war sure it would show. Perhaps it interested her as well, since they both knew that Sol would never embrace her.
'That was the bravest thing I ever saw,' she said. 'Going back for the tent like that.'
'It had to be done. I don't remember much about it, except your screaming at me 'Come on! Come on!'' He realized that sounded ungracious. 'You were right, of course. You kept me going. I didn't know what I was doing.'
'I only yelled once.'
So it had been in his head, along with the other phantasms. 'But you guided me away from the shrews.'
'I was afraid of them. You picked up Sol and ran after me. On and on. I don't know how you did it. I thought you were done when you tripped, but you kept getting up again.'
'The books call it hysterical strength.'
'Yes, you are very strong,' she agreed, not understanding him. 'Maybe not so quick with your hands as he is, but much stronger.'
'Still, you carried the gear,' he reminded her. 'And you set all this up.' He looked about the tent, knowing that she must have carved pegs to replace the ones lost when he uprooted the works amid the shrew invasion, and that she must have hammered them into the ground with a stone. The tent was not mounted evenly, and she had forgotten to dig a drainage trench around it, but the props were firm and the flaps tight. It was proof against the moths, with luck and vigilance, which was what counted, and could probably withstand rough use. The placement of the fire was a stroke of genius. 'An excellent job, too. You have a lot more ability than I gave you credit for.'
'Thank you,' she said, looking down. 'It had to be done.'
There was silence again. The fire was sinking, and all he could see were the highlights of her face and the rounded upper contours of her breasts, all lovely. It was time to lie down together, but still they held back.
'Sometimes we camped out, when I was with my family,' she said. 'That's how I knew to pitch the tent on a rise, in case it rained.' So she had been aware of the necessity for drainage. 'We used to sing songs around the fire, my brothers and I, trying to see how late we could stay awake.'
'So did we,' he said reminiscently. 'But I can only remember one song now.'
'Sing it for me.'
'I can't,' he protested, embarrassed. 'My notes are all off-key.'
