The man of noble mein nodded his noble head in the direction of the entrance, and they accompanied him outside. Gordon did a doubletake when they stepped into the street. It was strewn with freshly picked flowers of every hue and description and lined by little children waving green twigs that resembled olive branches. He came to a staring stop. "Won't someone please tell me what's coming off?" he said.
Sonya stopped beside him. "Don't you really know?" she asked, her eyes fixed on a flower at her feet that was almost as red as her face had become.
"I know we're the focal point of some kind of ceremony—but what kind of a ceremony is it?"
Slowly Sonya raised her eyes. "It's a wedding ceremony," she said. "They—they married us."
The flower-carpet stretched all the way to the outskirts of the village, and so did the two lines of little children. Gordon stumbled along at Sonya's side, hopeful that he would wake up any second in the bachelor's barracks at New Canaveral. But the street stubbornly refused to dissipate, and so did the little children and the man of noble mein. As for Sonya, much less than dissipating, she took on added detail, and the metal collar around her neck seemed to throw off flame after lambent flame, and each one was brighter than its predecessor.
The man of noble mein escorted them outside the village, then turned his back on them as though they no longer existed and returned the way he had come. After his passage, the little children broke ranks and began playing in the flowers. Gordon faced Sonya. "Now maybe you'll tell me why they married us," he said.
"I will tell you on the way back to our ships."
She did not speak again till they reached the top of the ridge. Then, after she got her breath back, she said. "They married us because, underneath their demigod exteriors, they are nothing more than bronze-age puritans. Yesterday, when the man and woman saw us standing together by the brook, they were bewildered because neither of us was wearing what to them is a universal symbol of marriage—a metal collar—and when you touched me they were shocked. You see, in their society, no man and woman can be alone together unless they are married, and it is unthinkable for a man to touch a woman unless she is his wife, or some immediate member of his family."
"We could have been brother and sister," Gordon pointed out.