“Christ,” he said. He had had no clear idea of how this meeting would go, but it was apparent that it had begun badly.

When Dorrie came out of the bathroom she wasn’t crying, but she wasn’t speaking either. She went into the kitchen without looking at him. “I want a cup of tea,” she said over her shoulder.

“Wouldn’t you rather I made you a drink?” Roger offered hopefully.

Roger could hear the sounds of the electric kettle being filled, the faint susurrus as it began to simmer and, several times, a cough. He listened harder and heard his wife’s breathing, which became slower and steadier.

He sat down in the chair that had always been his chair and waited. His wings were in the way. Even though they elevated themselves automatically over his head he could not lean back. Restlessly he roamed into the living room. His wife’s voice called through the swinging doors: “Do you want some tea?”

“No.” Then he added, “No, thank you.” Actually he would have liked it very much, not because of any need for fluids or nutrients but for the feeling of participating in some normal, precedented event with Dorrie. But he did not want to spill and slobber in front of her, and he had not practiced much with cups and saucers and liquids.

“Where are you?” She hesitated at the swinging doors, the cup in her hands, and then saw him. “Oh. Why don’t you turn a light on?”

“I don’t want to. Honey, sit down and close your eyes for a minute.” He had an idea.

“Why?” But she did as he requested, seating herself in the wing chair on one side of the fake fireplace. He picked up the chair, with her in it, and turned it away, so that she was facing into the wall. He looked around for something to sit in himself — there was nothing, or nothing that comported with his new geometry: floor pillows and couches, all awkward for his body or his wings — but on the other hand, he knew, he had no particular need to sit. His artificial musculature did not need that sort of relaxation very much.

So he stood behind her and said, “I’d feel better if you weren’t looking at me.”

“I understand that, Roger. You frightened me, is all. I wish you hadn’t burst in the window like that! On the other hand, I shouldn’t have been so positive I could see you, I mean like that, without — Without going into hysterics, I guess is what I want to say.”

“I know what I look like,” he said.

“It’s still you, though, isn’t it?” Dorrie said to the wall. “Although I don’t remember you ever climbing the outside of a building to get into my bed before.”

“It’s easy,” he said, taking a chance on what was almost an attempt at lightness.

“Well” — she paused for a sip of tea — “tell me. What’s this about?”

“I wanted to see you, Dorrie.”

“You did see me. On the phone.”

“I didn’t want it to be on the phone. I wanted to be in the same room with you.” He wanted even more than that to touch her, to reach out to the nape of her neck and press and caress the tendons into relaxing, but he did not quite dare that. Instead he reached down and ignited the gas flame in the fireplace, not so much for warmth as for a little light to help Dorrie. And for cheerfulness.

“We aren’t supposed to do that, Roger. There’s a thousand-dollar fine—”

He laughed. “Not for you and me, Dorrie. Anybody gives you any trouble, you call up Dash and say I said it was all right.”

His wife took a cigarette from the box on the end table and lit it. “Roger, dear,” she said slowly, “I’m not used to all this. I don’t just mean the way you look. I understand about that. It’s hard, but at least I knew what it was going to be before it happened. Even if I didn’t think it would be you. But I’m not used to your being so — I don’t know, important.”

“I’m not used to it either, Dorrie.” He thought back to the TV reporters and the cheering crowds when he returned to Earth after rescuing the Russians. “It’s different now, I feel as if I’m carrying something on my back — the world, maybe.”

“Dash says that’s exactly what you’re doing. Half of what he says is crap, but I don’t think that part is. You’re a pretty significant man, Roger. You were always a famous one. Maybe that’s why I married you. But that was like being a rock star, you know? It was exciting, but you could always walk away from it if you got tired of it. This I don’t think you can walk away from.”

She stubbed out her cigarette. “Anyway,” she said, “you’re here, and they’re probably going crazy at the project.”

“I can handle that.”

“Yes,” she said thoughtfully, “I guess you can. What shall we talk about?”

“Brad,” he said. He had not intended it. The word came out of his artificial larynx, shaped by his restructured lips, with no intervention by his conscious mind.

He could feel her stiffening up. “What about Brad?” she asked.

“Your sleeping with him, that’s what about Brad,” he said. The back of her neck was glowing dully now, and he knew that if he could see her face it would display the revealing tracery of veins. The dancing gas flames from the fireplace made an attractive spectrum of colors on her dark hair; he watched the play appreciatively, as though it did not matter what he was saying to his wife, or she to him.

She said, “Roger, I really don’t know how to deal with you. Are you angry with me?”

He watched the dancing colors silently.

“After all, Roger, we talked this out years ago. You have had affairs, and so have I. We agreed they didn’t mean anything.”

“They mean something when they hurt.” He willed his vision to stop, and welcomed the darkness as an aid to thought. “The others were different,” he said.

“Different how?” She was angry now.

“Different because we talked them over,” he said doggedly. “When I was in Algiers and you couldn’t stand the climate, that was one thing. What you did back here in Tonka and what I did in Algiers didn’t affect you and me. When I was in orbit—”

“I never slept with anybody else while you were in orbit!”

“I know that, Dorrie. I thought that was kind of you. I really did, because it wouldn’t have been fair, would it? I mean, my own opportunities were pretty limited. Old Yuli Bronin wasn’t my type. But now it’s different. It’s like I was in orbit again, only worse. I don’t even have Yuli! I not only don’t have a girl friend, I don’t have the equipment to do anything about it if I did.”

She said wretchedly, “I know all that. What can I tell you?”

“You can tell me you’ll be a good wife to me!” he roared.

That frightened her; he had forgotten what his voice could sound like. She began to cry.

He reached out to touch her and then let his hand fall. What was the use?

Oh, Christ, he thought. What a mess! He took consolation only in that this interview had been here, in the privacy of their own home, quite unplanned and secret. It would have been unbearable in the presence of anyone else; but naturally we had monitored every word.