Confused and bitter, Kataya swore she would
not let herself want him, and be hurt yet again and again.
All three slept alone, finding no shelter from the mocking night.
Chapter 40
The next day was Sunday, and the one day a week which the hard-working
colonists had agreed to set aside as a respite from their labors. Those
who worked the fields, those who maintained the power and water supply,
those who scavenged the city for underground vaults filled with books
and computer records, as well as those who performed the experiments,
translations, and radio communications (never answered) which were vital
to the group's morale and sense of purpose, all surrendered for this
one day the businesslike security of endeavor, to think and contemplate
like the first pious Jews, who had looked to the heavens and tried to
understand their world.
In the hushed morning they gathered for the non-denominational service,
Christian, Jew, Buddhist and atheist alike, spread about the candle-lit
conference room. And it was here that Sylviana first felt the depth of
loneliness and sorrow that this handful of survivors carried with them
as inescapably as a damaged organ, or the memory of an amputated limb.
And she realized that all their surface carelessness and ease, all the
jokes about being bored with one another, were mere facade, the
necessary illusions of commonplace existence.
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