The Lovers   ::   Фармер Филип Хосе

Hal asked her to slow down and to go over what she had said. She paused, her head cocked slightly to the left, then brushed back her hair. It was a gesture he was to find characteristic of her when she was thinking.

She began to repeat very slowly. But, as she continued, she speeded up, her full lips working like two bright red creatures independent of her, packed with their own life and purpose.

Fascinated, Hal watched them. Ashamed, he looked away from them, tried to look into her wide dark eyes, could not meet them, and looked to one side of her head.

She told her story disconnectedly and with much repetition and backtracking. Many of her words he could not understand but had to supply the meaning from the context. But he could understand that her name was Jeannette Rastignac. That she came from a plateau in the central mountains of this continent. That she and her three sisters were, as far as she knew, the only survivors of her kind. That she had been captured by an exploring party of wogs who'd intended to take her to Siddo. That she had escaped and had been hiding in the ruins and in the surrounding forest. That she was frightened because of the terrible things that prowled the forest at night. That she lived on wild fruit and berries or on food stolen from wog farmhouses. That she had seen Hal when his vehicle hit the antelope. Yes, it had been her eyes he had thought were those of the antelope.

'How did you know my name?' Hal said.

'I followed you and listened to you talk. I could not understand you. But, after a while, I heard you respond to the name of Hal Yarrow. Learning your name was nothing at all. What puzzled me was that you and that other man looked like my father, must be human beings. Yet, because you did not speak my father's language, you could not have come from his planet.

'Then, I thought, of course! My father had once told me that his people had come to Wuhbopfey from another planet. So, it was a matter of logic. You must be from there, the original world of human beings.'

'I don't understand at all,' said Hal. 'Your father's ancestors came to this planet, Ozagen? But... but there is no record of that! Fobo told me–'

'No, no, you do not understand, yes! My father, Jean-Jacques Rastignac, was born on another planet. He came to this one from that. His ancestors came to that other planet which revolves around a star far from here from an even more distant star.'

'Oh, then they must have been colonists from Earth. But there is no record of that. At least, none that I have ever seen. They must have been French.