Brink gave her a shove.
"If you worked as you should, you wouldn't find time to be discontented. And next year you can draw a new partner from the unattached pool."
The girl's eyes were hot as she turned and raced off along the path bisecting the knoll's green-swarded crown.
And Dorav Brink set to work building the huge stone-and-clay chimney that was to warm them in the winter ahead. The memory of Rea's words and the softness of her, kept intruding. Suddenly, he found himself longing for the comforts and the security of York Dome—he had been a peace guard, serving two hours every month—life had been soft and easy....
Savagely Brink swung his stone hammer, trying to smash his memories of mechanized, pleasant sloth as well as the harsh substance of the rocks.
It was another morning, the weeks of feverish planting and hunting for game to trade at the frozen locker plant at Center, were behind them. Now it was late summer on Sulle II, and even the early morning was uncomfortably warm.
Brink yawned and stretched luxuriously on his cot. Across the room Tzal still slept, her tousled, short-cropped hair faded by the sun, and her exposed firm flesh a ripe, golden-red. Her face was turned toward him and she was smiling faintly, as though at some pleasant dream fantasy.
Brink felt a pleasant lethargy. Tzal was a good partner, she never criticized without reason, and he trusted her judgment. His eyes ranged over the cabin. It was stout and well-joined—and their hands had erected it. Their credits at the locker plant were growing, despite the disappearance of most of the wild herds of "cattle". In another eight or ten years they would have repaid the passage advances and own a valuable property.
It was odd, he thought idly, that he never considered any woman other than Tzal as his partner when he thought of the future. Actually, of course she would request a change of partners, as he also intended to do, at the year's end. If the Commission allowed it she might even specify Bryt Carby—they worked well together in the fields and forest, and the three of them were good friends.