SOS the Rope by Piers Anthony Page A

behind. Even In this regard they were helpful; when he started taking books from the hostel, more appeared, and on the subjects he seemed to favor. He lit the lamp and opened his present volume: a text on farming, pre-Blast style. He tried to read it, but it was complicated and his mind could not concentrate. Type and quantity of fertilizer for specified acreage; crop rotation, pesticide, applications of and cautions concerning.. . such incomprehensible statistifying, when all he wanted to know was how to grow peanuts and carrots. He put the book aside and turned off the light.
        It was lonely, now that Sav was gone, and sleep did not come readily. He kept thinking of Sav, passing his bracelet around, embracing yielding and willing flesh, there in the main tent. Sos could have done likewise; there were women who had eyed his own clasp suggestively even though he carried no weapon. He had told himself that his position required that he remain unattached, even for isolated nights. He knew that he deceived himself. Possession of a woman was the other half of manhood, and a warrior could bolster his reputation in that manner as readily as in the circle. The truth was that he refused to take a woman because he was ashamed to do so while weaponless.
        Someone was approaching his tent. Possibly Tor, wanting to make a private suggestion. The beard had a good mind and had taken such serious interest in group organization and tactics that he outstripped Sos in this regard. They had become good friends, as far as their special circumstances permitted. Sometimes Sos had eaten with Tor's family, though the contact with plump good-natured Tora and precocious Tori only served to remind him how much he had wanted a family of his own.
        Had wanted? It was the other way around. He had never been conscious of the need until recently.
        "Sos?"
        It was a woman's voice-one he knew too well. 'What do you want, Sola?"
        Her "hooded head showed before the entrance, black against the background snow. "May I come in? It's cold out here."
        "It is cold here, too, Sola. Perhaps you should return to your own tent." She, like him, had maintained her own residence, pitched near Tyl's. She had developed an acquaintance with Tyla. She still wore Sol's bracelet, and the men stayed scrupulously clear of her.
        "Let me in," she said.
        He pulled open the mesh with one bare arm. He had forgotten to let down the solid covering after shutting off the lamp. Sola scrambled in on hands and knees, almost knocking over the lamp, and lay down beside his bag. Sos now dropped the nylon panel, cutting off most of the outside light and, he hoped, heat loss from inside.
        "I get so tired, sleeping alone," she said.
        "You came here to sleep?"
        "Yes."
        He had intended the question facetiously and was set back by her answer. A sudden, fierce hope set his pulses thudding, seeming more powerful for its surprise. He had deceived himself doubly: it was neither his position nor his lack of a weapon that inhibited him, but his obsession with one particular woman. This one.
        "You want my bracelet?"
        "No."
        The disappointment was fiercer. "Get out."
        "No."
        "I will not dishoner another man's bracelet. Or adulterate my own. If you will not leave yourself, I will have you out by force."
        "And what if I scream and bring the whole camp running?" Her voice was low.
        He remembered encountering a similar situation in his diverse readings, and knew that a man who succumbed to that ploy the first time could never recover his independence of decision. Time would only make it worse. "Scream if you must. You will not stay."
        "You would not lay your hands on me," she said smugly, not moving.
        He sat up and gripped her furry parka, furious with her and with his guilty longing. The material fell open immediately, wrapped but not fastened.