Could I love a third man without diminishing what I have with the other two? I wish we had more precise words for love, dozens of them, like the Eskimos supposedly had for snow. I do already love all three of them, in three distinctly different ways. Daniel needs me and I need to nurture him, protect him. John is my comforter, and still my mentor. (People who don’t know us well would probably assume that the relationships went the other way, because of John’s deformity. But I don’t even see it anymore, except as a sign of the patient strength, the calm acceptance, that drew me to the man in the first place.) And what about Sam?

On Earth, where we were working with groundhog survivors, he saw how upset I was when Daniel and John called down to ask me to allow Evelyn to join our line. I knew and liked Evy but resented the timing, the handicap of not being there to physically confront them. I would have said yes anyhow, so I gave permission as gracefully as I could. As soon as the comm link was broken, though, I started to mope and growl and bitch. Sam offered himself and I jumped his lanky bones.

We grew pretty close pretty fast. We have the same kind of intelligence, shallow but broad, and therefore many enthusiasms in common. We make each other laugh. The sex wasn’t all that great, but he had youthful enthusiasm and recuperative power.

Then the project turned into a disaster, a bloodbath and plague that we barely escaped. A grisly nightmare the reward for months of backbreaking labor. During the week of quarantine outside New New, Sam and I kept making love with frantic desperation. (There wasn’t much privacy, and some people were scandalized. They were people I didn’t mind scandalizing, though.)

I thought then of asking him to join the line. It would have made an interesting symmetry, since he was the same age as Evy, nineteen. Twelve years younger than me—and a damn sight younger than my lecherous husbands! Sorry, Evy. I do love you like a sister but still sometimes get angry at them. Even thoughtful hunchbacked philosophers get pulled around by their dicks sometimes.

Dramatic memories aside, how do I feel about Sam now? Admittedly, I’ve been a little annoyed that he didn’t respond to my gentle hints with instant lust. But his proposal puts that into perspective. He’s the kind of man who makes timetables and sticks to them. When he worked for me on Earth, for all his wacky humor, he was about the most dependable person I had. He was also physically brave and showed infinite patience and compassion with the Earth children, who could be real monsters.