Later and with childish delight, Sara showed him where she lived. Her apartment was festooned with the bright little ornaments that were so popular at that time in the Eighteen Planets. Everywhere he looked, Deitrich beheld some little glittering bauble.
There were stories for each, where it came from, how she happened to acquire it. Unmentioned but evident were the carefully nurtured sentimental bonds for each, and with the many little bonds, the growing fabric of emotional citizenship.
Everything had been shown and discussed, and she was smothering her face against his chest when he said, “You know, most TJ pilots carry their women with them, but I never had any.”
Immediately he could feel the tenseness creep into her body, and she looked quickly up at him. Her eyes glistened in the semidarkness. “Let’s not talk about leaving anywhere again, ever.”
He started to speak, but she put her hand 011 his lips. “Let’s pretend, just for a while, that we’ve lived here all our lives, that we belong here and love it.” She kissed him. “Two of us can pretend better than one of us.”
The business of disposing of his cargoes was brief and quickly dispatched into the government channels provided for such things. And the problem of loading the precious, clumsy transport cylinders with goods for the M33 systems was easily handled also by the government agencies. Deitrich soon found his time largely free, with little to think about other than the rapidly approaching date of his departure.
He was concerned. He could see the growing excitement and fear in Sara. There was no mention at all of leaving, but the sober chronometer mounted in the visiphone cabinet at her apartment solemnly measured off the pleasant interlude in little, sensible fragments. Somewhat against his better judgment, Deitrich decided to let things take their course.
One evening after she had proudly shown him the electro park at the Planet Center, the rigid defense she had built up crumbled and she wept.
She could not leave, she explained. She could not again go all through the agony of readjusting herself to a new culture. But now, after him, she could not stay, either. She said that when he left, she would die.
Deitrich had anticipated something of this sort, but suddenly and unexpectedly he was bitter. He muttered harshly, “The only thing you’re in love with is the past.”