His enjoyment of her, and hers of him, was hastened and strengthened by her linguistic fluency. She seemed to have switched from her French to American almost overnight. Within a week she was speaking, within her limited but quickly increasing vocabulary, faster and more expressively than he.
However, his delight in her company made him neglect his duties. His progress in learning to read Siddo slowed down.
One day, Fobo asked him how he was doing with the books he'd loaned him. Hal confessed that they were too difficult for him – so far. Fobo then gave him a book on evolution which was used in the wog elementary schools.
'Try these. They're two volumes, but they're rather slim in text. The many pictures will enable you to grasp the text more quickly. It's an abridgement for the youngsters by a famous educator, We'enai.'
Jeannette had much more time to study than Hal, since she had little to do in the apartment while he was gone during the day. She tackled the new boob, and so Hal fell into the lazy habit of allowing her to translate for him. She would first read the Siddo aloud and then translate into American. Or, if her vocabulary failed her, into French.
One evening, she started out energetically enough. But she was sipping beetlejuice between paragraphs, and after a while she began to lose interest in the translating.
She went through the first chapter, which described the formation of the planet and the beginnings of life. In the second chapter, she yawned quite openly and looked at Hal, but he closed his eyes and pretended not to notice. So she read of the rise of the wogs from a prearthropod that had changed its mind and decided to become a chordate. We'enai made some heavy jests about the contrariness of the wogglebugs since that fateful day, and then took up, in the third chapter, the story of mammalian evolution on the other large continent of Ozagen which climaxed in man.
She quoted,' "But man, like us, had its mimical parasites. One was a different species of the so-called tavern beetle. It, instead of resembling a wog, looked like a man. Like its counterpart, it could fool no intelligent person, but its gift of alcohol made it very acceptable to man. It, too, accompanied its host from primitive times, became an integral part of his civilization, and, finally, according to one theory, a large cause of man's downfall.
' "Humanity's disappearance from the face of Ozagen is due not only to the tavern beetle, if it was at all. That creature can be controlled. Like most things, it can be abused or its purpose distorted so that it becomes a menace.
' "This is what man did with it.
' "He had, it must be noted, an ally to help him in the misuse of the insect. This was another parasite, one of a somewhat different kind; one that was, indeed, our cousin, in a manner speaking.
' "One thing, however, distinguishes it from us, and from man, and from any other animal on this planet with the exception of some very low species. That is, that from the very first fossil evidence we have of it, it was wholly– " '
Jeannette put the book down. 'I don't know the next word. Hal, do I have to read this? It's so boring.'
'No. Forget it. Read me one of those comics that you and the Gabriel's sailors like so much.'
She smiled, a beautiful sight, and she began reading Volume 1037, Book 56, The Adventures of Leif Magnus, Beloved Disciple of the Forerunner, When He Met the Horror from Arcturus.
He listened to her efforts to translate the American into the vernacular wog until he grew tired of the banalities of the comic and pulled her down to him.
Always, there was the light left on above them.
Yet, they had their misunderstandings, their disagreements, their conflicts.
Jeannette was neither puppet nor slave. When she did not like something Hal did or said, she was often quick to say so. And, if he replied sarcastically or violently, he was likely to find himself attacked verbally.
Not too long after he had hidden Jeannette in his puka, he returned after a long day at the ship with a heavy growth of stubble on his face.
Jeannette, after kissing him, made a face and said, 'That hurts; it is like a file. I'll get your cream and rub off your whiskers myself.'
'No, don't do that,' he said.
'Why not?' she said as she walked toward the unmentionable. 'I love to do things for you. And I especially love to make you look nice.'
She returned with the can of depilatory in her hand.
'Now, you sit down, and I will do all your work for you. You can think of how much I love you while I'm removing those so-scratchy wires on your face.'
'You don't understand, Jeannette. I can't shave. I am a lamedhian now, and lamedhians must wear beards.'
She stopped walking toward him and said, 'You must? You mean that it is the law, that you will be a criminal if you don't?'
'No, not exactly,' he said. 'The Forerunner himself never said a word about it, nor has any law been passed making it compulsory. But – it is the custom. And it is a sign of honor, for only a man worthy to wear a lamedh is allowed to grow a beard,'
'What would happen if a non-lamedhian grew one?'
'I don't know,' he said, annoyance apparent in his voice. 'It has never happened. It's – just one of those things you take for granted. Something only an outsider would think about.'
'But a beard is so ugly,' she said. 'And it scratches my face. I would as soon kiss a pile of bedsprings.'
'Then,' he said angrily, 'you'll either have to learn to kiss bedsprings or learn to get along without kisses. Because I have to have a beard!'
'Listen to me,' she said, going up close to him. 'You don't have to! What is the use of being a lamedhian if you don't have any more freedom than before, if you must do what is expected of you? Why can't you just ignore the custom?'
Hal began to feel both fury and panic. Panic because he might alienate her so far she would leave and because he knew that if he gave in to her he would be regarded suspiciously by the other lamedhians on the Gabriel.
As a result, he accused her of being a stupid fool. She replied with equal heat and harshness. They quarreled; the night was half over before she made the first movement toward a reconciliation. Then, it was dawn before they were through proving they loved each other.
In the morning, he shaved. Nothing happened at the Gabriel for three days, nobody made any remarks, and he put down to guilt and imagination the strange looks he saw – or thought he saw. Finally, he began to think that either nobody had noticed or else they were so busy with their duties that they did not think it worthwhile to comment. He even began wondering if there were other annoyances connected with being a lamedhian which he could do away with.
Then, the morning of the fourth day, he was called to the office of Macneff.
He found the Sandalphon sitting behind his desk and fingering his own beard. Macneff stared with his pale blue eyes at Hal for some time before replying to Hal's greeting.
'Perhaps, Yarrow,' he said, 'you have been too concerned with your researches among the wogs to think about other things. It is true we live in an abnormal environment here, and we are all concentrating on the day we start the project.'
He rose and began pacing back and forth before Hal.
'You surely must know that as a lamedhian, you not only have privileges, you have responsibilities?'
'Shib, abba.'
Macneff suddenly wheeled on Hal and pointed a long bony finger at him.
'Then, why aren't you growing a beard?' he said loudly. And he glared.
Hal felt himself grow cold, as he had so often when he was a child and his gapt, Pornsen, had made this same maneuver toward him. And he felt the same mental confusion.
'Why, I-I-'
'We must strive not only to attain the lamedh, we must strive to continue to be worthy of it. Purity and purity alone will make us succeed, unending effort to be pure!'
'Your pardon abba,' said Hal, his voice quivering. 'But I am making a never-ending effort to be pure.'
He dared to look the Sandalphon in the eyes when he said that, though where he got the courage he did not know. To lie so outrageously, he who was living in unreality, to lie in the presence of the great and pure Sandalphon!