Life in North Nast continued as if it was a normal place that had always existed. Molly spent most of her time away now, coordinating whatever printing and distribution and subversive activities she coordinated. Hoyle continued to mend, progressing in the space of a couple weeks from sitting up on his own, to walking with the help of a length of iron pole, to walking unaided, to doing light-duty weight training. His little sister Holly enrolled in a local unofficial community school run by another one of the mothers in the warren, and regularly brought home comments praising her precocious reading ability but voicing concern about her inability to keep quiet about her frankly offensive ideas about reintegration (evidently Molly was giving lectures about the topic and Holly was helping her distribute pamphlets).
Ern split his time between reading, walking and working out with Hoyle, and every moment he could catch with Celine, who still had much to show him both with regards to the local culture and to herself. He found that, when they weren’t together, his mind wandered to her, as if it could leave his body and flutter the corridors and warrens until it found her, and the two of them would hover together wordlessly until the real world demanded his attention again. It was a kind of pain he found difficult to understand, because the only thing worse than feeling it was the idea that something might change, and he would not feel it anymore. Like the throbbing of an injured ankle, the pain of her absences—brief though they were—reminded him how important she was to him, and how much he didn’t want to have to do without her.
But in spite of that, he was beginning to feel restless. While he could make his way indefinitely just on modeling fees alone—seeing as how male models were in such short supply here—and while he found he enjoyed the work almost as much as he enjoyed spending time with Celine, there was ultimately no place for him in this city of Exiled women, and he knew it. He was tolerated because he was polite, and because his presence added a touch of the exotic to the place. But like a new mural on the tunnel wall, he would eventually become unremarkable and would then become undesirable, and someone would wish to paint him over so as to remove his unbelonging presence from their delicately balanced social order.
Celine agreed with him when he brought up his growing misgivings, but didn’t have any better idea than he did what he might do. Finding some way back to Marino might work, but then what? He’d have to find somewhere to live, and something to do, and he didn’t know what people might even need done in a place where there were so many machines. Doc wasn’t there anymore—he’d gone to South when Ern had gone to rescue Hoyle—so it wasn’t like he could drop in and ask for a place to stay. He was pretty sure Susan would kick him right back out the front door; he’d gotten the distinct impression that she neither liked him nor approved of his relationship with Doc, especially when Doc had announced he was returning to the Cities of Nast because of Ern and Molly.
Ern tried to explain this as he and Hoyle jogged the outer circuit in the North Nast warrens network.
“Nast, Ern, you are such a whiner.”
“Go jump in an acid pit.”
“No, I mean it. We’ve got a job, all we’ve gotta do is report in. Phil’s still running the operation. You’ve got that collections list.”
“Eh. It’s been months. He’s probably had it taken care of already.”
“With everything going on in Central? He’s got to worry about CARE looking over his shoulder on everything now. Where’s he going to find more enforcers that didn’t get shot in the fight?”
“He could hire people from Marino. Or South.”
“Maybe, but that’s harder to do. Two’ll get you ten it’s too small potatoes to worry about until it gets out of hand, and it’s getting out of hand because nobody’s been collecting delinquents all this time.”
“I guess.”
“Guess nothing. Look, you wanna keep seeing this girl, right?”
“She has a name you know.”
“They all have names, doesn’t make ‘em special. You know it, I know it, and they say the same thing about us—don’t tell me you haven’t noticed.”