He did not tell her about it. Love, hate; he tried to mark distinctions and foundered on his own ignorance. Ignorance and ignore are the same word.

They heard the shrieking in the night.

Coffins, on Saquetta, are round. After the massacre in Polo Valley, it fell to the Earther, Zagaramendo, to build the coffins. The round, little coffins. Like round fruits cut in half, hollow, filled with a boneless corpse and resealed. The coffins were made of something like teakwood, and were nailed together.

It fell to the Earther, for the Earther had done the killing. Not really, yet he had. There had been, in Polo Valley, seven hundred Saquettes.

In the thinly wooded area just beyond the Valley he used his burner and beamed down enough timber to make seven hundred coffins. From the inventory he took nails. And Zagaramendo began nailing up the victims of his need, his helplessness, his weakness. It took him six days.

On the night of the sixth day…

“Margret, pack your nightgown—”

“I haven’t got a nightgown, Bob.”

“Pack up your mother’s silver!”

“You said you’d polish—”

“Finish microfilming my notes. We’re going home tomorrow, I called the ship, they’re coming.” He swayed on the porch, grinning at the disbelief blooming on her face.

He let the handle of the burner clunk against the porch-rail. Then let it go completely. The muzzle clinged on the boards.

“You’re finished? You mean you’ve really finished?”

He reached into the swag pocket of his overalls and pulled out a handful of black, wooden spheres. “Finished. With them, with the Rank, with all of it. We’ll go home, and start again. I’ll tell them no more out here. They’ll have to listen; I’ve got tenure.”

The tentative expression, first. Then the smile breaking. Then her laughter that shattered all the lines of distance the three years as Ecological Observers had strung between them, all the lines separating them during eleven weeks on Saquetta, lines that had been cemented on her face by her belief in the death around them.