Harvest of Stars by Poul Anderson Page B

after her. “You’ve wandered off, Davis. Are you okay?”
    Crack, she thought, had she been Q-jumping long enough that they noticed? She shook herself. “What you said, sir,” she confessed. Truthfully, if not quite candidly: “I was reminded of the history you’ve seen and, yes, been. It, bueno, rushed over me.”
    “‘There’s rosemary,’” he murmured, “‘that’s for remembrance; pray you, love, remember; and there is pansies, that’s for thoughts.’”
    “Hamlet?”
she blurted in startlement.
    Did he sound the least bit defensive? “Uh-huh. I’m not the unalloyed bullhead they take me for. Back then, too, I did my share of reading. It wasn’t the fashionable stuff, no. Shakespeare, Homer, Cervantes, they might be acceptable, if outmoded, but Kipling, Conrad, MacDonald, Heinlein, that ilk, they were insensitive reactionaries. Or racists or sexists or whatever the current swear word was. You see, they dealt with things that mattered.”
    Kyra wondered what inputs he enjoyed these days. Lee must have learned something about that.
    The intuitionist yawned. “Excuse me,” he said.
    “A natural thing to do,” Guthrie assured him, “and not just because I’m maundering on.”
    “It’s fascinating,” Kyra said. At once: “I’m not trying to kowtow sir.”
    “I know,” Guthrie replied. “But Bob’s right. Or his body is, whatever his forebrain supposes. You need rest, you two, if you’re to be fit for anything tomorrow.”
    “And you, sir?”
    “Likewise.” How Guthrie would pass the night, he left unspoken.
    Talk survived a span longer, increasingly desultory, decreasingly informative. It was Kyra who took the initiative. “Bueno, I’m totalmente outgewashed.” She rose. “Ho for that promised shower, and eight or nine hours of the best. Unless you’d rather go first, Bob?” They had gotten on first-name terms. Guthrie was still “jefe,” but for her the title had gained a certain comfortableness.
    “No, gracias,” Lee said. “I have an idea about what we should do that I want to mull over for a few minutes.”
    “Okay, I’ll keep my mouth shut,” Guthrie offered—the mouth he no longer had.
    A cataract of hot water was sheer hedonism. Kyra wallowed. As she toweled herself, she luxuriated in the steam she inhaled.
    Coming forth aglow, she saw Lee’s face. Instantly he looked away, as if something had caught his eye. Amused, she glanced at his lap. Yes. She’d forgotten how the Avantists frowned on nudity and forbade it in public. Sensuality of any kind distracted humans from what should be their pleasure as well as their duty, to order their minds so that they and their descendants might build the rational society which would be the germ of the Noösphere.
    Poor Bob. He couldn’t altogether resist the creed, surrounded by it. Besides, Xuan’s system had its attractions. If nothing else, it embodied the same sociodynamic matrices with which he worked, and added more.
    She hastened to get into bed, under cover. “Buenas noches,” she said, and closed her eyes. She kept them closed while he visited the cubicle, returned, switched off the light, and cautiously lay down. She saw and felt him breathe.
    Temptation stirred. It had been quite a while. But no. A bad idea, under these conditions. Maybe later. He really was rather sweet.
    Too much so, too gentle? He’d shown himself plenty brave, but that didn’t rule out an inner tenderness which might prove fatally disadvantaging. After all, while he hadspent his life in North America, lived and worked among its citizens, he was Fireball. She suspected, from his style, that he too was Fireball born and raised. Then probably all the people were whom he felt closest to. He might join them over the phone more often than in the flesh, but they were his amigos, his true compadres; and he knew that troth worked both ways and if trouble came upon him he would have the mighty company at his back. So he could afford a certain