Shevek saw clearly that Takver had lost her young grace, and looked a plain, tired woman near the middle of her life. He saw this more clearly than anyone else could have seen it. He saw everything about Takver in a way that no one else could have seen it, from the standpoint of years of intimacy and years of longing. He saw her as she was.

Their eyes met.

“How—how’s it been going here?” he asked, reddening all at once and obviously speaking at random. She felt the palpable wave, the outrush of his desire. She also flushed slightly, and smiled. She said in her husky voice, “Oh, same as when we talked on the phone.”

“That was six decads ago!”

“Things go along pretty much the same here.”

“It’s very beautiful here—the hills.” He saw in Takver’s eyes the darkness of the mountain valleys. The acuteness of his sexual desire grew abruptly, so that he was dizzy for a moment, then he got over the crisis temporarily and tried to command his erection to subside. “Do you think you’ll want to stay here?” he said.

“I don’t care,” she said, in her strange, dark, husky voice.

“Your nose is still dribbling,” Sadik remarked, keenly, but without emotional bias.

“Be glad that’s all,” Shevek said. Takver said, “Hush Sadik, don’t egoize!” Both the adults laughed. Sadik continued to study Shevek.

“I do like the town, Shev. The people are nice—all characters. But the work isn’t much. It’s just lab work in the hospital. The shortage of technicians is just about over, I could leave soon without leaving them in the lurch. I’d like to go back to Abbenay, if you were thinking of that. Have you got a reposting?”

“Didn’t ask for one and haven’t checked. I’ve been on the road for a decad.”

“What were you doing on the road?”

“Traveling on it, Sadik.”

“He was coming from half across the world, from the south, from the deserts, to come to us,” Takver said. The child smiled, settled herself more comfortably on her lap, and yawned.

“Have you eaten, Shev? Are you worn out? I must get this child to bed, we were just thinking of leaving when you knocked.”

“She sleeps in the dormitory already?”

“Since the beginning of this quarter.”

“I was four already,” Sadik stated.

“You say, I am four already,” said Takver, dumping her off gently in order to get her coat from the closet. Sadik stood up, in profile to Shevek; she was extremely conscious of him, and directed her remarks towards him. “But I was four, now I’m more than four.”

“A temporalist, like the father!”

“You can’t be four and more than four at the same time, can you?” the child asked, sensing approbation, and now speaking directly to Shevek.

“Oh, yes, easily. And you can be four and nearly five at the same time, too.” Sitting on the low platform, he could hold his head on a level with the child’s so that she did not have to look up at him. “But I’d forgotten that you were nearly five, you see. When I last saw you you were hardly more than nothing.”