Forty Thousand in Gehenna by C. J. Cherryh Page B

inside and sat down in the light from the open tentflap.
    He said nothing, finding nothing appropriate to say. He was excited about being near her at last, but what they were supposed to do together, which he had never done with anyone—that was for nighttime, after their shift was done. The tape had said so.
    Her hair was growing back, like his, a darkness on her skull; and her eyes had brows again.
    “You’re thinner,” she said.
    “Yes. So are you. I wished we could have been near each other on the voyage.”
    “The tape asked me to name an azi I might like. I named Tal 23. Then it asked about 9998s; about you in particular. I hadn’t thought about you. But the tape said you had named me.”
    “Yes.”
    “So I thought that I ought to change my mind and name you, then. I hadn’t imagined you would put me first on your list.”
    “You were the only one. I always liked you. I couldn’t think of anyone else. I hope it’s all right.”
    “Yes. I feel really good about it.”
    He looked at her, a lift of his eyes from their former focus on the matting and on his knees and hands, met eyes looking at him, and thought again about what they were supposed to do together in the night—which was like the cattle in the spring fields, or the born-men in their houses and their fine beds, which he had long since realized resulted in births. He had never known azi who did the like: there were tapes which made him imagine doing such things, but this, he believed, would be somehow different.
    “Have you ever done sex before?” he asked.
    “No. Have you?”
    “No,” he said. And because he was a 9998 and confident of his reason: “May I?” he asked, and put out his hand to touch her face. She put her hand on his, and it felt delicately alive and stirred him in a way only the tapes could do before this. He grew frightened then, and dropped his hand to his knee. “We have to wait till tonight.”
    “Yes.” She looked no less disturbed. Her eyes were wide and dark. “I really feel like the tapes. I’m not sure that’s right.”
    And then the PA came on, telling all azi who had located their assignments to go out and start their day’s work. Pia’s eyes stayed fixed on his.
    “We have to go,” he said.
    “Where do you work?”
    “In the fields; with the engineers, for survey.”
    “I’m with the ag supervisor. Tending the sets.”
    He nodded—remembered the call and scrambled for his feet and the outside of the tent. She followed.
    “5907,” she said, to remember, perhaps. She hurried off one way and he went the other in a great muddle of confusion—not of ignorance, but of changes; of things that waited to be experienced.
    Should I feel this way? he would have liked to have asked, if he could have gone to his old supervisor, who would sit with him and ask him just the right questions. Should I think about her this way? But everyone was too busy.
    There would be tape soon, he hoped, which would help them sort out the things they had seen, and comfort them and tell them whether they were right or wrong in the things they were feeling and doing. But they must be right, because the born-men were proceeding on schedule, and in spite of their shouts and their impatience, they stopped sometimes to say that they were pleased.
    This was the thing Jin loved. He did everything meticulously and expanded inside whenever the supervisor would tell him that something was right or good. “Easy,” the supervisor would say at times, when he had run himself breathless taking a message or fetching a piece of equipment; would pat his shoulder. “Easy. You don’t have to rush.” But it was clear the supervisor was pleased. For that born-man he would have run his heart out, because he loved his job, which let him work with born-men in the fields he loved, observing them with a deep and growing conviction he might learn how to be what they were. The tapes had promised him.
v
    Day 32, CR
    Gutierrez stopped on the hillside,