Later that night, lying before the warm glow of the fire, they had made love, and it had been like that first day of discovering each other.
Now they no longer made love. They were both dull with fatigue at the end of each day, even though they rested during the period of brutal midday heat. They were weakened by having had little to eat for days. They had tried various wild plants and even grasses that looked edible. Some were acceptable to their stomachs, some were impossibly bitter, one had made both of them sick. Hunger and thirst had jealously driven out other appetites.
The need for water, Hendley knew, would soon be more urgent even than food. In all this brown, empty land they had found no stream, no spring, no sign of water. They had started out with a two-week supply in the canteens provided them, but in the first days, unused to the weight of the desert sun, they had drunk too generously. It was only near the end of the first week that the necessity for strict rationing became painfully clear. There were mountains to the west, creeping infinitesimally higher each day, and Hendley reasoned that there must be water flowing down from the mountains, but he wondered, the strange new ache piercing to his heart as he held Ann more closely, if they would find it in time.
Really free, he thought. It was true. But this freedom was demanding. They were unprepared for it. Nothing in their lives before had equipped them to cope with it. Everything had always been provided—all the needs of mind and body. The social machine had taken care of its moving parts. Could they manage even to exist cut off from the benevolent machine?
There must have been others banished from the cities. Hendley could not guess how many. Had any of them learned to survive? Where would they have gone? Instinctively toward the mountains, as he had, in search of shelter from the sun and life-giving water? Had they begun to regret their transgressions against the Organization, to wish themselves back in the familiar routine of work and reward, the accepted pursuit of an artificial freedom? Had any of them crawled back to the cities, begging to be taken in?
The last question made Hendley start. A new chill crawled up his spine. Was that part of the punishment—reducing the criminal to abject surrender? Did they expect Hendley and Ann to return to the towers as beggars, shaken by cold and tormented by hunger, ready to accept any terms of rehabilitation?
Angrily he shook his head. There was an insidious weakness in the direction of his thoughts, a half-wish concealed behind the resentment. But the wish was for her, the woman whose body he covered with his own, feeling the bones more sharply outlined, seeing the pinched look of hunger around her mouth....
He waited until the sun's first rays lanced through the concrete fingers projecting along the eastern horizon. Very carefully he eased out of Ann's tight grasp, trying not to wake her. She stirred once, then fell back into the drugged sleep of exhaustion.
For an hour Hendley labored—doggedly, frustrated and tormented by his repeated failures—until at last a puff of smoke drifted from the small pile of powdery leaves and wood pulp he had fashioned. Perspiring in spite of the early morning chill, his face flushed with anxiety, he fanned the first sparks into a steady glow. At length, adding fresh twigs and seeing firm tongues of flame lick around them, he sat back on his heels and luxuriated in a sense of triumph. He had made his first fire.
There was powdered coffee remaining from their meager rations. When he had heated water he carried a cup of the steaming beverage to where Ann lay. He woke her gently.