Piet was the one who broke the silence. "All right. So let's say I'm her guardian now; I guess I am. Give me a reason it's all right for you two to get married."

"Okay," I answered slowly. "First let's assume she's willing; that she wants to. Evdash is part of the Empire now, so legally, sixteen should be old enough, if we consider you her guardian and you give your permission. And next, we're outside the law, so we can't go to some courthouse and ask them to marry us. We couldn't if we were thirty, so age isn't the issue. Only whether she wants to and whether you're willing."

"Why not wait?" he said. "You're not the kind who lets his gonads rule his life."

There was no denying that sex was part of it, but only part, though I suppose it added a lot of the urgency to it. And like I said, I felt protective of her. But I also felt fond, and-I just wanted to be with her as her husband. I didn't really have the language to describe it.

It also occurred to me that now Piet's questions were more to make sure I'd thought it through myself. That probably meant he'd say yes. "Why not wait?" I said, answering his question. "Because in two weeks there's a good chance we'll all be dead. And we could have had two weeks together by then."

Piet turned the door handle. "Ask her," he said. "I hope she tells you yes. Five to one she does."

We shook hands on it and got out. When I'd closed the door, we walked together through near night the twenty yards to camp. I almost went over to her hammock right then to ask her, but I didn't, Hers was between Deneen's and Tarel's-they were only about six or eight yards apart-and I wanted my proposal to be private.

Sometime in the middle of the night it rained again. Not a downpour like we'd had that afternoon, but a pretty good rain that chased us all out of our hammocks and into the shelter. So of course we had to bunk down on the bare ground-not the most comfortable sleeping, especially with Bubba smelling like a wet canid. He read my thought and chuckled, a sound so human you'd have to hear it to believe it.

In the morning we could cut vegetation and pile it in the shelter for beds. The repellent fields would keep it from getting full of insects and other arthropods. But the hammocks, which were made of fine-mesh netting, were cooler and generally more comfortable than piles of weeds would be. So the best solution seemed to be to keep on sleeping in the hammocks and only take shelter as needed-hopefully not often. I couldn't see any practical way of slinging hammocks inside the shelter.

Maybe, I told myself, we'd been too quick to leave our hammocks. We didn't wear much to sleep in anyway, and as long as the rain wasn't too cold… And the hammocks were made of "Skin-Soft" synthetic, so they didn't soak up water.

Which brought to my mind the matter of privacy if Jenoor agreed to marry me. We had a second repellent field, so we could have our hammocks away from the others, but they were too small and unstable for double occupancy. And as for separate shelter if needed… This definitely seemed to be the rainy season. The best possibility seemed to be the floater, if we moved it a little farther away. The floater would get around the problem of hammock stability, too. At the very beginning, Piet had said no one would sleep in the floater because everyone couldn't, not comfortably, and he wasn't going to give anyone, including himself, special privileges. Besides, hammocks were cooler.

But Jenoor and I would be married. If she said yes. And he'd treat that as a different situation, I was sure.

I went back to sleep feeling pretty cheerful, considering our long-range prospects.

The next morning had a good feel to it. It even smelled good-not dusty any longer, but fresh-and I was glad the rainy season had arrived. We all had a hand-foot workout and then Deneen and Tarel went fishing. Piet sat on a log stool-we'd sawed five blocks from a log to use for seats-and began working on a new carving. He was the best of us all at turning a piece of wood into something artistic. It would have been my day to keep the still supplied with salt water, except that now we had rainwater-all of it we needed.

It was Jenoor's day to collect jonga fruits, beat them thoroughly with a hammer, and put them to soak, to soften for tomorrow's breakfast. The way to pick jonga fruits is to take a pole with a heavy survival knife lashed to it and find some you can reach from the ground or from some branch you could climb on. Then, with the pole and knife, you saw or hack at their tough stems till they drop off. She had picked up the pole and her old plaited packsack and was leaving camp when I fell in beside her.

Bubba had fallen in on her other side. Not all right, Bubba, I thought to him. He knew what I had in mind. This isn't going to be easy for me. If you have to eavesdrop, do it from somewhere out of sight, okay?

He flashed me a quick grin and veered off casually to explore some interesting smell. As if there was any spot or critter on Lizard Island that he hadn't examined a dozen times already.

"Okay if I walk along with you?" I asked Jenoor.

She smiled sideways at me. "Sure. Glad to have you."

"I've got something in particular I want to talk to you about."

"All right." She looked interested, and something more. I really didn't know what to say next, or rather, how to say it. Will you marry me would make sense of course, but it seemed kind of abrupt and inelegant.

"What I want to say is-it's a question." I stepped in front of her. "Jenoor, will you marry me?"

So much for elegance.

She looked at me seriously, not turning her eyes down shyly or anything like that. "Of course I will, Larn. I've been hoping you'd ask one day. I can't imagine marrying anyone else; I haven't since the first week Tarel and I came to live with your family."

"You mean it!" I said. It seemed a wonder. "You really mean it!" I stepped back from her and looked around for something to sit on; my knees felt a little weak. But there wasn't anything handy.

"Who'll marry us?" she asked.

"I asked Piet if he would, last night when he and I went to the floater. He's the one we look up to here- sort of the magistrate of Lizard Island. He questioned me about it pretty closely, and then he said he would, right here on the island, if you agreed. He even said he hoped you'd say yes. And I've already solved the problem of privacy."

It suddenly occurred to me I was talking too much, too fast, and I stopped.

She answered slowly. "Of course. The extra repellent field and the floater. Piet would let us use the floater, under the circumstances."

I nodded.

"When would you like the wedding?" she asked.

"How about-this evening? Just before supper."

She nodded thoughtfully. "That sounds good." Then she leaned the pole against a tree beside her. "Is there…" This time it was her turn to be a little embarrassed, "Is there something we should do now to seal the agreement?"

I stared. She was so darned pretty. I put out my hands. She took them and we stepped together and kissed, long but gently. Then she stepped back.

"I'm going to like being married to you," she said. "And I want it to last a very long time. Until… As long as circumstances allow. But now I want you to go back to camp, and I'll go cut some jongas. It's best if we don't spend all day together."

"Right," I said, and started back to camp. She'd handled the whole scene as if she was twenty-five years old, I told myself. I'd known she was mature for her age, but she'd been incredible.

Suddenly I flipped out and did a run of three handsprings right there in the forest.

Back at the shelter I told Piet what Jenoor's answer had been. He accepted it matter-of-factly and didn't even smile. To my surprise, that bothered me. It was as if I wanted him to pump my hand and congratulate me or something. Then it occurred to me that I'd once heard mom mention something to dad about someone she called "Gwennith"-as if this Gwennith had been married to Piet, or anyway been someone special to him. And as if something had happened. But I'd never heard anything more. In the rebel life he'd led, with the political police always looking for him… She might have been killed or imprisoned, or they might have had to separate and never found one another again. I was sure Piet would have been a heck of a good husband. He had all the qualities.