“It’s terrible,” she said, slithering in past him and going straight to the table to read Takver’s letter. She picked it up; Shevek plucked it out of her hand with a calm rapidity she had not prepared for. “Perfectly terrible. Not even a decad’s notice. Just, ‘Come here! Right now!’ And they say we’re free people, we’re supposed to be free people. What a joke! Breaking up a happy partnership that way. That’s why they did it, you know. They’re against partnerships, you can see it all the time, they intentionally post partners apart. That’s what happened with me and Labeks, exactly the same thing. We’ll never get back together. Not with the whole of Divlab lined up against us. There’s the little empty crib. Poor little thing! She never ceased crying for these four decads, day and night. Kept me awake for hours. It’s the shortages, of course; Takver just didn’t have enough milk. And then to send a nursing mother off to a posting hundreds of miles away like that, imagine! I don’t suppose you’ll be able to join her there, where is it they sent her to?”

“Northeast. I want to get over to breakfast, Bunub. I’m hungry.”

“Isn’t it typical how they did it while you were away.”

“Did what while I was away?”

“Sent her away—broke up the partnership.” She was reading Sabul’s note, which she had uncrumpled with care. “They know when to move in! I suppose you’ll be leaving this room now, won’t you? They won’t let you keep a double. Takver talked about coming back soon, but I could see she was just trying to keep her spirits up. Freedom, we’re supposed to be free, big joke! Pushed around from here to there—”

“Oh, by damn, Bunub, if Takver hadn’t wanted the posting she’d have refused it. You know we’re facing a famine.”

“Well. I wondered if she hadn’t been looking for a move. It often happens after a baby comes. I thought long ago you should have given that baby to a nursery. The amount it cried. Children come between partners. Tie them down. It’s only natural, as you say, that she should have been looking for a change, and jumped at it when she got it.”

“I did not say that. I’m going to breakfast.” He strode out, quivering at five or six sensitive spots which Bunub had accurately wounded. The horror of the woman was that she voiced all his own most despicable fears. She now stayed behind in the room, probably to plan her move into it.

He had overslept, and got to commons just before they closed the doors. Ravenous still from the journey, he took a double helping of both porridge and bread. The boy behind the serving tables looked at him frowning. These days nobody took double helpings. Shevek stared frowning back and said nothing. He had gone eighty-odd hours now on two bowls of soup and one kilo of bread, and he had a right to make up for what he had missed, but he was damned if he would explain. Existence is its own justification, need is right. He was an Odonian, he left guilt to profiteers.