Free The Avatar by Poul Anderson

bird get born?”
    He hoisted himself to sit cross-legged beside her. “The same way an idea gets hatched,” he suggested.
    “Aye,” she responded quickly, “see, Einstein brooded long over his—they had to bring him his food and tobacco where he sat—until one fine day the egg went
crack
and a little principle of special relativity peeped forth, all wet and naked, and then the poor man must scurry to and fro fetching long wiggly equations to stuff down its beak, but at last it was grown to be a grand big cock of a general relativity theory and the quantum mechanics came to build a proper perch for it.”
    “Ye-es.” He laid an arm around her. “As for launching a project, I see it lying on the greased ways, and you come and break a bottle of champagne across the director—he’s the figurehead, of course—”
    Their foolishness went on. Her merriment was an indivisible part of what he held dear about her.
    “Hey,” he remarked eventually, “you haven’t told me how you found this cave. Not that I wasted time asking. But since we’re taking a rest, how did you?”
    She grinned. “How do you think?”
    “Uh—”
    “The handsomest hunter last year… Do you know, my treasure, I could almost wish—almost—you’d set out a single day later? I was developing designs on that lad when you came by. Ah, well, no doubt he can bide for a bit.”
    He tried not to stiffen. She felt it, embraced him, and said, “I’m sorry. Have I hurt you? I mourn.”
    “Well, naturally, I can’t expect you to stay celibate monthson end,” he made himself reply. “You’ve got too much life in you.”
    “You are him I love, Daniel. True, there’ve been past loves, and they flamed too, but none like this. Your strength, your knowledge, the skill in your darling hands, och, you are wholly a
man,
and yet you are kind and generous and caring. You I will love till they close my eyes. The rest… some few turn out bad, most are good, none have been dull, but frolic is all they really ever are. Or, at most, a making of closer comradeship.”
    “Yeah, sure,” he said. “I’m not exactly a monogamist either.”
    She tried to get past the barrier in him: “I’ve told you, my heart, I’m no she-cat. An impulse now and again, aye, but mainly I must think well of him first, and after that reckon I would not be the harm of anybody else, before I will give more than a kiss. It’s no vast number of lovers I’ve had. A score, maybe, since I turned sixteen on Earth?”
    “And me, I’ve not always been choosy,” Brodersen admitted.
    He caught her to him and held her there a minute. “Forgive me,” he said thereafter, shakenly. “I didn’t mean to react like that to a little teasing. But—”
    “But?” she urged, seconds later.
    “I think what did it was your kidding me that I might’ve left home today instead of yesterday. Suddenly I remembered that I did leave home, and why.”
    “And you stepped back into jealousy because the real thought pained you too much. O beloved.” She knelt before him, stroked his face, regarded him through tears.
    “Could be,” he said. “I’m not in any habit of probing my psyche.” He pulled his lips upward. “As long as the damn thing runs, not rattling a lot, I’ll simply give it an occasional change of oil. Okay, let’s drop this subject with a dull, sickening thud.”
    She remained grave. “No, Dan. You are in danger, and everything you care about is, Lis and the children foremost. How could I deserve being your mistress if you must shelter me from your griefs? Tell me.”
    “I did while we drove here.”
    “You laid out a skeleton for me. Breathe on it now, that it may rise alive.”
    “I, uh, I don’t know what to say, Pegeen.” That was a name for her which they had private between them.
    “Let me lead you, then.” She settled beside him fresh; they touched, arm to arm and flank to flank, while they gazed outward at torchflies, trees and fugitive stars. Save for