I was not far from the rust-red, opaque mass of the Ancient House, when I heard behind me short hasty steps and rapid breathing. I turned around and saw O-90 trying to catch up to me. She seemed strangely and perfectly rounded. Her arms and breast, her whole body, so familiar to me, was rounded out, stretching her unif. It seemed as though it would soon tear the thin cloth and come out into the sun, into the light. I think that there in the green debris, in springtime, the unseen sprouts try thus to tear their way through the ground in order to emit their branches and leaves and to bloom.

For a few seconds she shone into my face with her blue eyes in silence.

“I saw you on the Day of Unanimity.”

“I saw you, too.” I at once remembered; below, in a narrow passage she had stood, pressing herself to the wall, protecting her abdomen with her arms, and automatically I glanced now at her abdomen which rounded the unif. She must have noticed, for she became pink, and with a rosy smile: