“The ships are important,” he said, taking his eyes from her with an effort, looking with disinterest at the thick-walled storage building across the width of the lava road. “They are six weeks late today, and we are four weeks late in leaving. Something must be decided tonight. Have you asked The Hradil again about our getting married?”
“Yes,” Alzbeta said, turning toward him and taking his hands in hers, even though people walking by could see them. Her eyes were dark and sorrowful. “She refused to hear me out. I must marry someone from the Semenov Family, or I must not marry. That is the law?’
“Law!” He grated the word out like an oath, pulling his hands from hers, moving away from her on the bench, tortured by her touch in a way she did not know. “This is no law, just custom, stupid custom, peasant superstition. On this peasant planet around a blue-and-white star that can’t even be seen from Earth. On Earth I could be married, have a family.”
“But you are not on Earth.” She spoke so softly he barely heard her:
It drained the anger from him, making him suddenly weary. Yes, he was not on Earth and would never return to Earth. He had to make his life here and find a way of bending the rules. He could not break them. His watch read twenty hours, though the endless twilight still prevailed. Though the twilight was four years long, men still measured time with their watches and clocks, with the rhythms in their bodies of a planet light-years distant.
“They’ve been in that meeting and going at it for over two hours now, going over the same ground again and again. They should be tired.” He rose to his feet.
“What will you do?” she asked.
“What must be done. The decision cannot be put oil any longer.”
She took his hand briefly in hers, letting go quickly, as though she understood what the touch of her skin did to him. “Good luck.”
“It’s not me that needs the luck. My luck ran out when I was shipped from Earth on a terminal contract.”
She could not go with him, because this was a meeting of the Family Heads and the technical officers only. As Maintenance Captain he had a place here. The inner door to the pressurized dome was locked and he had to knock loudly before the lock rattled and it opened. Proctor Captain Ritterspach looked out at him suspiciously from his narrow little eyes.
“You’re late.”
“Shut up, Hem, and just open the door.” He had very little respect for the Proctor Captain, who bullied those beneath him in rank, toadied to those above.
The meeting was just as demoralized as he had expected. Chun Taekeng, as Senior Elder, had the chair, and his constant hammering and screaming when he was ignored did nothing to help quiet things. There was cross talk and bitter denunciation, but nothing positive was being proposed. They were repeating the same words they had been using for over a month, getting no place. The time had come.
Jan walked forward, holding up his hand for attention, but was ignored by Chun. He walked closer still until he stood before the small man, looming over him. Chun waved him away angrily and tried to peer around him, but Jan did not move.
“Get out of here, back to your seat, that is an order.”
“I am going to speak. Shut them up.
The voices. were dying down, suddenly aware of him. Chun hammered loudly with the gavel, and this time there was silence.
“The Maintenance Captain will speak—” he called out, then threw the gavel down with disgust. Jan turned to face them.
“I am going to tell you some facts, facts you cannot argue with. First — the ships are late. Six weeks late. In all the years the ships have been coming, they have never been this late. Only once in all that time have they been more than four days late. The ships are late and we have used up all our time waiting. If we stay we burn. In the morning we must stop work and begin preparations for the trip.”
“The last corn in the fields!” someone shouted.
“Will be burned up. We leave it. We are late already. I ask our Trainmaster Ivan Semenov if this is not true.”
“What about the corn in the silos?” a voice called out, but Jan ignored that question for the moment. One step at a time.
“Well, Semenov?”
With reluctance the gray head nodded solemnly. “Yes, we must leave. We must leave to keep to our schedule.”
“There it is. The ships are late, and if we wait any longer we will die waiting. We must begin the trip south, and hope they will be waiting for us when we get to Southland. It is all we can do. We must leave at once, and we must take the corn with us.”
There was stunned silence. Someone laughed briefly, then shut up. This was a new idea, and they were only confused by new ideas.
“It is impossible,” The Hradil finally said, and many heads nodded in agreement. Jan looked at the angular face and thin lips of the leader of Alzbeta’s family, and kept his voice toneless and flat so his hatred of her would not show.
