On the way home he was just the least bit tempted to go topside, however. He thought he might like to walk the broad, quiet boulevards under the stars. His brain functioned better there. The tunnels were so clean and bright and sterile, so wonderfully functional and sensible, that they oppressed him somehow. Maybe, he sometimes thought, he wasn't fit for this age. Maybe he should have been born a couple of hundred years ago. But common sense told him that people in that age must have often thought exactly the same thing to themselves.
He looked at his chrono and decided he had better go home.
The apartment, when he came to it, was cold and empty without Ciel. He bathed and tried to keep up his spirits by singing in his tuneless way, but it didn't help.
He went back into the living room, selected a film from the library and slipped it into a lap projector. He sat down and tried to concentrate on the film, a historical adventure about the days of the first moon rockets. He couldn't follow it.
The viewer rang.
He bounded from the chair as though he had triggered a high speed ejection seat in a burning jet. He went to the viewer and flicked it on. The plate shimmered, and then Ciel's image came into focus.
"Baby!" He was certain his shout overmodulated every amp tube in the entire World City viewer system. But he felt better, wonderfully better, already.
She was smiling. "Hello, Dick."
"Hello."
And then they looked at each other in affectionate embarrassment for a moment.