The adjudicator’s settlement gave the common property to whoever bid the highest for it and the cross-compensations came out about even. After tonight, she’d be springing back to Caledony to visit her family for a while.We hired an adjudicator to divide the common property, which took him something like ten minutes-like any people who value convenience, Hedons take care of their bureaucrats and reward efficiency. “It’s just time, high time, so let’s get it over with, Giraut.”We agreed that I would stay on in the house we were renting, and arranged a room in a hotel for Margaret. and at lunchtime, Margaret had said, emphatically, that she was now sure nothing could be worked out. We had struggled along for about forty unpleasant days, some promising, most not, until the day just past, when, still sullen and angry at breakfast, we had talked idly about what we might do that day, taken a walk on the beach, stopped for lunch. Margaret and I had come to Hedonia, here on Söderblom in the Eta Cassiopeia system, to try to heal our marriage. I wouldn’t be seeing Shan for a while, anyway. If anyone was still alive there, it would be decades before we could contact them.Set against the total loss of a planet, Shan’s failure as a friend didn’t look so big.Well. Despite dozens of OSP operations, Briand had been the first world ever totally lost to the rest of humanity. Shan-my friend, boss, nearly a second father-had not only known of Margaret’s affair he had ordered her to continue it, because the Office of Special Projects had been gathering intelligence on her lover.And it had all been for nothing. Like most divorces, it had been overdue, and had involved betrayals of trust, not all of them by the married people.
It can cause me to drink heavily, pick quarrels, go to bed with the first willing partner, or sit on a beach feeling sorry for myself.It was the night after the afternoon of my divorce.
They marched onto the shore like a slow procession of idiotic monsters.Self-pity is an unattractive emotion that leads to unfortunate behavior. I could do almost anything here.I sat on the low rise, looking across the silver-gray beach at the big black waves. In Hedonia, nobody would have cared, or noticed. I could have undressed and walked into the sea for a swim, unashamedly. I could have sat there all night, comfortably-sand, air, and water were all at room temperature, and in low gravity, buttocks don’t tire from sitting in the sand. Me, I thought the waves were soothing.The bright light of two of Söderblom’s moons, both high overhead, and the scattered light from the warm sea, erased all but the brightest stars. That, and the never-ceasing winds, make the sea restless beyond any other in human space.The waves are big and slow. Part OneSo I Rode This Way1On Söderblom, there is almost never a still puddle, however small, because waves form so easily in the low gravity.
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