The Lovers   ::   Фармер Филип Хосе

Before he left, she kissed him again on his now frozen lips.

'Hurry! I'll be waiting.'

'Yeah.'

11



Hal Yarrow knocked lightly on the door of Fobo's apartment. The door did not open at once. No wonder. There was so much noise inside. Hal beat on the door, though reluctantly, for he did not want to attract Pornsen's attention. The gapt lived across the hall from Fobo and might open his door to see what was going on. Tonight was not a good time for Pornsen to see him visiting the empathist. Even though Hal had every right to enter a wog's home without being accompanied by a gapt, he felt uneasy because of Jeannette. He would not put it past the gapt to enter his, Hal's, puka while he was gone for a bit of unofficial spying. And, if Pornsen did, he would have Hal. All would be up.

But Hal comforted himself with the thought that Pornsen was not a very brave man. If he took the liberty of entering Hal's place, he would also take the chance being discovered. And Hal, as a lamedhian, could bring so much pressure to bear that Pornsen might not only be disgraced and demoted, he might even be a candidate for H.

Loudly, impatiently, Hal rapped on the door again. This time it swung open. Abasa, Fobo's wife, was smiling at him.

'Hal Yarrow!' she said in Siddo. 'Welcome! Why didn't you come in without knocking?'

Hal was shocked. 'I couldn't do that!'

'Why not?'

'We just don't do that.'

Abasa shrugged her shoulders, but she was too polite to comment. Still smiling, she said, 'Well, come on in. I won't bite!'

Hal stepped in and shut the door behind him, though not without a backward glance at Pornsen's door. It was closed.

Inside, the screams of twelve wog children at play bounched off the walls of a room as large as a basket-ball court. Abasa led Hal across the uncarpeted floor to the opposite end, where a hallway began. They passed by one corner where three wog females, evidently Abasa's visitors, sat at a table. They were occupied in sewing, drinking from tall glasses before them, and chattering. Hal could not understand the few words he could hear; wog females, when talking among themselves, used a vocabulary restricted to their sex. This custom, however, so Hal understood, was swiftly dying out under the impact of increasing urbanization. Abasa's female children were not even learning woman-talk.

Abasa led Hal down to the end of the hall, opened a door, and said, 'Fobo, dear! Hal Yarrow, the No-nose, is here!'

Hal, hearing himself so described, smiled.