"I always hear the sounds of my children. Even the little one when he stirs in his grave. It is the way of a mother." She drew a cup of coffee and sat with them at the table in the small kitchen patio.
"The hour was late," Roberto said, "and I did not wish to disturb you with greetings that would keep until morning. You sleep little enough as it is. Though the hard days are gone, the sun still rises after you."
Roberto's father looked up from his newspaper. "She will always be full of the old ways," he said with fond gruffness. "For her there is no change. Our children have grown proud and fine and freed us from bondage to the soil. Yet she still behaves as a peon. To her we still toil in the fields of the patron, bent with exhaustion over the planting or harvesting consoles, struggling to control the many field machines. She bakes her own bread. The market vegetables do not please her so she chafes her hands with the buttons and switches of a garden. And a robot to scrub the floors she will not hear of. Perhaps she thinks it would be prettier than she and I might run off with it to Mexico City."
"Foolish old man," Mrs. Sanchez said with mock severity, "you have lost even the memory of what it is to run."
"Mama," Roberto said, "I have a present for you."
Something of an eager little girl looked out of the wise eyes.
"I have no need of a present," she said but her eyes searched the leafy little patio. "All I ask as a gift is for you to come out of the sky for a little while and marry."
Roberto smiled. "Have not my brothers and sisters given you grandchildren enough? And what woman will marry the captain of a space vessel? With my journeys to Jupiter and Saturn and outermost Nyx, I would forever be a stranger to my children and an occasional guest to my wife." From under his napkin he drew forth a small silvery box. "Mama, your present."
She gasped with delight when she opened it. In a black velvet womb nested a strange glittering jewel suspended on a delicate, spider-strand, silver chain. "Roberto!" she exclaimed with a feeble remonstrance.
"Like the others I have brought it is not expensive," Roberto said. "The stone is a common one on Nyx. But it is very beautiful and when I found it I thought of you."