“Oh?”

“I guess I didn’t really explain how long I’d spent on the shadow Earth where I went to school, where I had that job I was telling you about…” I began, and suddenly I was pouring out more autobiography to her — a thing I don’t usually do. I wasn’t certain why I was telling it at first, and then I realized that I just wanted someone to talk to. Even if my strange suspicion was correct, it didn’t matter. A friendly-seeming listener made me feel better than I had in a long while. And before I realized it, I was telling her about my father — how this man I barely knew had rushed through a massive story of his struggles, his dilemmas, his decisions, as if he were trying to justify himself to me, as if that were the only opportunity he might have to do it, and how I had listened, wondering what he was editing, what he had forgotten, what he might be glossing over or dressing up, what his feelings were toward me…

“Those are some of the caves,” I told her, as they interrupted my now embarrassing indulgence in memory. She started to say something about my monologue, but I simply continued; “I’ve only seen them once.”

She caught my mood and simply said “I’d like to go inside one.”

I nodded. They seemed a good place for what I had in mind.

I chose the third one. Its mouth was larger than the first two, and I could see back into it for a good distance. “Let’s try that one. It looks well lighted,” I explained. We walked into a shadow-hung chill. The damp sand followed us for a while, thinning only slowly to be replaced by a gritty stone floor. The roof dipped and rose several times. A turn to the left joined us with the passage of another opening, for looking back along it I could see more light. The other direction led more deeply into the mountain. We could still feel the echoing pulse of the sea from where we stood.

“These caves could lead back really far,” she observed.

“They do,” I replied. “They twist and cross and wind. I wouldn’t want to go too far without a map and a light. They’ve never been fully charted, that I know of.”