brother, grateful that she had
escaped from the destruction of Schiller, and that he, still in
training, would not see combat for some time. But he was forced to
admit that these meant little to him. His brother's life (until very
recently, when he had joined the space navy after the fall of Athena),
had taken a different path. Tomas was an artist, he a soldier. They
were no longer close, as in childhood. And his mother, too, was like a
distant figure, his affection for her a dying ember that the fearful
walls of her religion kept any living breeze from ever fanning. He
cared for nothing and no one, but Ara.

The thought came to him again of his own existence without her. His
stomach crawled. He got up and paced back and forth in nervous
agitation. This restlessness was maddening! His mind raced, but could
seize hold of nothing concrete to calm it. At length, the mock energy
expended, he lay down again and covered his eyes, not caring.....

He woke two hours later, feeling stifled in his clothes. And checking
the clock he saw that deep night was only just beginning. And knew
that he would not be able to sleep for many hours. He sat on the edge
of the bed and took off his shirt. His arm started for the light
switch, but something drew back the hand. Moved by what he could not
say, he reached instead into the drawer of his dressing cabinet and
pulled out from it the thick tallow candle, brass capped, that had been
given him by his wife. Taking out also the metal igniter, he touched a
flame to the wick and set it before him.

For a long time he did not look at his reflected image in the closet
mirror, holding his head in his hands, incapable of purity of thought
or emotion. He felt little outside his own fatigue, but also a slow
strange stirring of the soul.

He looked up, studied his features in the soft, forgiving light of his
lover. The face that he had never associated with himself..... His
eyes were drawn downward to the wiry muscles that reached from his
chest to his arm. Always slender and taut, they now looked almost
famished, layered rope wrapped stranding and twine after strand into
nothingness. What were they for? And the rage inside him. Could he
tear down the walls? Could he dive through the mirror and come to the
place where his wife lay needing him, distraught, possibly frightened
and in torment?

And suddenly the image changed, becoming sinister and spectral. The
remembrance