The Lovers   ::   Фармер Филип Хосе

It was a moment before he could realize that Jeannette had leaped to her feet and slammed him hard withthe palm of her hand. He saw her standing above him with her eyes slitted and her red mouth open and drawn back in a snarl.

Then, she whirled and ran into the bedroom. He got up and followed her. She was lying on the bed, sobbing.

'Jeannette, you don't understand!'

' Fva tuh fe fu! '

When he understood that, he blushed. Then he became furious. He grabbed her by the shoulder and turned her over so that she faced him.

Suddenly he was saying, 'But I do love you, Jeannette. I do.'

He sounded strange, even to himself. The concept of love, as she meant it, was alien to him – rusty, perhaps, if it could be put that way. It would need much polishing. But it would, he knew, be polished. Here in his arms was one whose very nature and instinct and education were pointed toward love.

He had thought he had drained himself of grief earlier that night; but now, as he forgot his resolve not to tell her what had happened, and as he recounted, step by step, the long and terrible night, tears ran down his face. Thirty years made a deep well; it took a long time to pump out all the weeping.

Jeannette, too, cried, and said that she was sorry that she had gotten angry at him. She promised never again to do so. He said it was all right. They kissed again and again until, like two babies who have wept themselves and loved themselves out of frustration and fury, they passed gently into sleep.

14



At 0900 Ship's Time, Yarrow walked into the Gabriel, the scent of morning dew on the grass in his nostrils. As he had a little time before the conference, he looked up Turnboy, the historian joat. Casually, he asked Turnboy if he knew anything of a space flight emigration from France after the Apocalyptic War. Turnboy was delighted to show off his knowledge. Yes, the remnants of the Gallic nation had gathered in the Loire country after the Apocalyptic War and had formed the nucleus of what might have become a new France.

But the swiftly growing colonies sent from Iceland to the northern part of France, and from Israel to the Southern part, had surrounded the Loire. New France found itself squeezed economically and religiously. Sigmen's disciples invaded the territory in waves of missionaries. High tariffs strangled the little state's trade. Finally, a group of Frenchmen, seeing the inevitable absorption or conquest of their state, religion, and tongue, had left in six rather primitive spaceships to find another Gaul rotating about some far-off star. It was highly improbable that they had succeeded.