Dark Of The Woods

time since he had known her. "So am I."
    He tensed against her. "You're married?"
    "Do you mind?"
    "Uh—"
    "If you do—" She started to move as she spoke.
    "No. Don't go yet."
    Silence. Time passing. The roar of the future speeding darkly on to meet the present and be thrust into the past.
    "Is he—a winged man?"
    "One of my own? Of course, yes."
    "Then why—"
    "What?"
    "Why leave him to love me like this. I couldn't compare with—" He was furious, and the words stuck in his throat, clung to his lips and would not come forth. He felt that she had been making a fool of him. Surely, loving a man as free as the birds, being enfolded within his wings in joy, could be much better, much more fulfilling than anything a cumbersome, landbound brute such as he could offer. His tenderest movements would seem gross and stupid in comparison.
    "He isn't impotent," she said, "but sterile, just as I am sterile. You are not. I wanted a fruitful man, even if I cannot bear children."
    "Then it wasn't me—but simply my juices?"
    She squirmed away, stood. "I better be leaving now," she said in her elfin voice. She slipped her heavier winter toga on and walked quickly toward the portal.
    He heard her wings.
    Proteus came alert at the sound, looked about for an enemy.
    Davis rolled onto his face, filled with anger and a sense of loss—and chiefly relief.
    The next day came and went, and she did not appear as she had for so many days in the recent past. He made a pretense of correlating his notes, but his mind was elsewhere, tangled in memories of her, lost in the alleyways of her smile. He tried to convince himself that a longing of the flesh could be overcome easily, and that such was all this was. The second day without her was worse. He gave up the phony facade of writing and patrolled the woods about the towers, hands in his pockets, head bent to the chill wind of early winter. Why had he told her he was married? And why, most of all, had he felt such overwhelming relief when he had watched her leave and known it was forever? And why, if he was relieved, did he now ache emptily, like a drained can of fruit left to rust in the ditch, with only particles of sweetness still clinging to the corroded metal? Was it only relief that he was no longer a criminal and only the ache of the aftermath of his fear—or was there, as he suspected, some deeper reason for it?
    On the third day, he got in the grav car and set the coordinates for the port, for he had an appointment to keep with Mrs. Bunter's reading club. She had called the previous evening, and he had accepted, anxious to have some reason to flee the confines of this aviary. He sat in the front seat brooding, watching the leaves smack wetly against the windscreen, watching the sky cloud and pack itself for snow.
    The club meeting was held in the squat woman's home: a rather palatial mansion with a large drawing room where a podium had been placed before five rows of ten chairs each. He was playing to a full house by the time he began his lecture. They were quite intent, and soon he got wrapped up in telling of the trials and tribulations that had gone into the construction of
Lilian Girl, Dark Watch on the River,
and other famous Stauffer Davis novels.
    Afterwards, there was a social hour with the traditional lightly alcoholic punch and homemade cookies. Mrs. Bunter had corralled him and was leading him about, showing off. Proteus followed close to his left, constantly on guard.
    "I hope he's been recarded," Mrs. Bunter (who kept telling him to please call her Alice) said, eyeing Proteus cautiously. "I'm wearing a new brooch." She raised a protective hand to the live beetle that skittered across her lapel, straining to the end of its tiny golden chain, then back again.
    "Yes," Davis assured her, "he has."
    Still, they both noticed the way the machine's plasti-plasma sloshed inside whenever he came near the bug.
    Up and down the room, back and forth, corner to corner they went until he had met nearly everyone. He was arm in arm with Alice Bunter now as she exhibited him like a mother with a son freshly graduated from college. The light alcoholic punch only served to bolster his spirits and make him quite talkative. These people were really not so bad, he decided. Wasn't that what he usually discovered? Weren't they always nice when he met them personally in the social period after the lecture? He had a fondness for them, a somewhat paternal affection that made their company