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like they don't like the Syndicate, and Bedap, and and you. They call The big sister in the dorm
room, she said you we were all tr She said we were traitors," and saying the word the child jerked
as if she had been shot, and Shevek caught her and held her. She held to him with all her strength,
weeping in great gasping sobs. She was too old, too tall for him to pick up. He stood holding her,
stroking her hair. He looked over her dark head at Bedap. His own eyes were full of tears. He said, "It's
all right, Dap. Go on."
There was nothing for Bedap to do but leave them there, the man and the child, in that one intimacy
which he could not share, the hardest and deepest, the intimacy of pain. It gave him no sense of relief or
escape to go; rather lie felt useless, diminished. "I am thirty-nine years old," he thought as he walked on
towards his domicile, the five-man room where he lived in perfect independence. "Forty in a few decads.
What have I done? What have I been doing? Nothing. Meddling. Meddling in other people's lives
because I don't have one. I never took the time.
And the time's going to run out on me, all at once, and I will never have had& that." He looked back,
down the long, quiet street, where the corner lamps made soft pools-of light in the windy darkness, but
he had gone too far to see the father and daughter, or they had gone. And what he meant by "that" he
could not have said, good as he was with words; yet he felt that he understood it clearly, that all his hope
was in that understanding, and that if he would be saved he must change his life.
When Sadik was calm enough to let go of him, Shevek left her sitting on the front step of the
dormitory, and went in to tell the vigflkeeper that she would be staying with the parents this night The
vigilkeeper spoke coldly to him. Adults who worked in children's dormitories had a natural tendency to
disapprove of overnight dom visits, finding them disruptive; Shevek told himself he was probably
mistaken in feeling anything more than such disapproval in the vigilkeeper. The halls of the learning center
were brightly lit, ringing with noise, music practice, children's voices. There were all the old sounds, the
smells, the shadows, the echoes of childhood which Shevek remembered, and with them the fears. One
forgets the fears.
He came out and walked home with Sadik, his arm around her thin shoulders. She was silent, still
struggling. She said abruptly as they came to their entry in the Pekesh main domicile, "I know it isn't
agreeable for you and Takver to have me overnight."
"Where did you get that idea?"
"Because you want privacy, adult couples need privacy."
"There's Pilun," he observed.
"Pilun doesn't count"
"Neither do you."
She sniffled, attempting to smile.
When they came into the light of the room, however, her white, red-patched, puffy face at once
startled Takver into saying, "Whatever is wrong?" and Pilun, interrupted in sucking, startled out of bliss,
began to howl, at which Sadik broke down again, and for a while it appeared that everyone was crying,
and comforting each other, and refusing comfort This sorted out quite suddenly into silence, Pilun on the
mother's lap, Sadik on the father's.
When the baby was replete and put down to sleep,
Takver said in a low but impassioned voice, "Now! What is it?"
Sadik had gone half to sleep herself, her head on Shevek's chest. He could feel her gather herself to
answer. He stroked her hair to keep her quiet, and answered for her. "Some people at the learning center
disapprove of us."
"And by damn what damned right have they to disapprove of us?"
"Shh, shh. Of the Syndicate."
"Oh," Takver said, a queer guttural noise, and in buttoning up her tunic she tore the button right off the
fabric. She stood looking down at it on her palm. Then she looked at Shevek and Sadik.
"How long has this been going on?"
"A long time." Sadik said, not lifting her head.
"Days, decads, all quarter?"
"Oh, longer. But they get& they're meaner in the dorm now. At night. Terzol doesn't stop them."
Sadik spoke rather like a sleep-talker, and quite serenely, as if the matter no longer concerned her.
"What do they do?" Takver asked, though Shevek's gaze warned her.
"Well, they& they're just mean. They keep me out of the games and things. Tip, you know, she was
a friend, she used to come and talk at least after lights out. But she stopped. Terzol is the big sister in the
dorm now, and she's& she says, 'Shevek is Shevek ' "
He broke in, feeling the tension rise in the child's body, the cowering and the summoning of courage,
unendurable. "She says, 'Shevek is a traitor, Sadik is an egoizer' You know what she says, Takver His
eyes were blazing. Takver came forward and touched her daughter's cheek, once, rather timidly. She
said in a quiet voice, "Yes, I know," and went and sat down on the other bed platform, facing them.
The baby, rucked away next to the wall, snored slightly. People in the next room came back from
commons, a door slammed, somebody down in the square called good night and was answered from an
open window. The big domicile, two hundred rooms, was astir, alive quietly all round them; as their
existence entered into its existence so did its existence enter into theirs, as part of a whole. Presently
Sadik slipped ofi her father's knees and sat on the plat form beside him, close to him. Her dark hair was
rumpled and tangled, hanging around her face.
"I didn't want to tell you, because& " Her voice sounded thin and small. "But it just keeps getting
worse. They make each other meaner."
" Then you wont go back there," Shevek said. He put his arm around her, but she resisted, sitting
straight.
"If I go and talk to them " said Takver.
"It's no use. They feel as they feel."
"But what is this we're up against?" Takver asked with bewilderment
Shevek did not answer. He kept his arm around Sadik, and she yielded at last, leaning her head
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