The Lovers   ::   Фармер Филип Хосе

She would weep in private, he was sure, for she loved him in herfrigid way, though in public she would be dry-eyed. Her friends and professional associates would sympathize with her, not because she had lost a beloved husband, but because she had been married to a man who thought unrealistically. If Hal Yarrow had been killed in a crash, he must have wanted it that way. There was no such thing as an 'accident.' Somehow, all the other passengers (also supposed to have died in this web of elaborate frauds to cover up the disappearance of the personnel of the Gabriel) had simultaneously 'agreed' to die. And, therefore, being in disgrace, they would not be cremated and their ashes flung to the winds in public ceremony. No, the fish could eat their bodies for all the Sturch cared.

Hal felt sorry for Mary; he had a time keeping the tears from welling to his own eyes as he stood in the ciowd in the observation dome.

Yet, he told himself, this was the best way. He and Mary would no longer have to tear and rend at each other; their mutual torture would be over. Mary was free to marry again, not knowing that the Sturch had secretly given her a divorce, thinking that death had dissolved her marriage. She would have a year in which to make up her mind, to choose a mate from a list selected by her gapt. Perhaps, the psychological barriers that had prevented her from conceiving Hal's child would no longer be present. Perhaps. Hal doubted if this happy event would occur. Mary was as frozen below the navel as he. No matter who the candidate for marriage selected by the gapt...

The gapt. Pornsen. He would no longer have to see that fat face, hear that whining voice...

'Hal Yarrow!' said the whining voice.

Slowly, icy yet burning, Hal turned.

There was the squat, loose-jowled, thick-lipped, vulture-nosed, narrow-eyed man smiling at him. Under the narrow-brimmed conical azure hat, gray-flecked black hair hung down to a high-ruffed black collar. The azure jacket fit snugly over a large paunch – Pornsen had endured many a lecture from his superiors because of his overeating – and a broad blue belt held a metal clasp for the handle of his whip. The thick legs were enclosed in tight azure pants with a black stripe running vertically along the outer and inner sides and with azure knee-high boots. The feet, however, were so tiny they looked ridiculous. On the toes of each boot was a seven-sided mirror.

There were some dirty stories about the origin of the mirrors circulating among lower-class elements. Hal had once overheard one, and he still blushed whenever he recalled it.

'My beloved ward, my perennial gadfly,' Pornsen whined.