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And that's what he did, after Mrs. Williams fussed a while, making Darcy borrow some of her classy clothes, and sending them off with a big ice chest of food and drink.
They had a lovely drive. Matt took the "low road" to San Antonio, the more southerly U. S. Highway 80, rather than Interstate 10. It was about ten hours either way, but the old road offered much better scenery and some interesting rest stops. Darcy was concerned about her interview, so Matt figured it was better to drive straight through to give her a little extra time to prepare once they arrived. They might investigate some of the points of interest on the return drive.
She was still sleeping a lot, either against a pillow mashed against the window, or sometimes, to Matt's total delight, against him. She had been dozing this way when Matt drove over the Pecos River Bridge. The road was bumpy, so it took him a minute to realize that Darcy was shaking on her own.
Darcy awoke sobbing, and he wrapped his free arm around her, pulling off at the observation area over the canyon. All she would say was that she had been dreaming about people chasing her.
After they walked around a few minutes and watched the buzzards wheeling in circles far below them in the canyon over the river, Matt asked her if her fatigue was a leftover effect from the strain of the Olympics.
"It might be," she said. "It's probably also a result of my diet, though."
"You mean they didn't give you enough to eat?"
"No, I had plenty to eat. I just wasn't burning it fast enough. That’s how I won those events, by turning food into energy so quickly, and by metabolizing the lactic acid and byproducts. It’s really complicated.
“I first noticed the slowdown after I had been training for several weeks. My times dropped off because my body wasn't producing energy efficiently on a sustained basis. Remember when you helped me send that message to Hleo?"
"I'll never forget it."
"I was so relieved when Hleo answered. I sent him my medical records to analyze and he figured out I needed extra large amounts of an enzyme, a sort of metabolic catalyst. I don’t understand it myself.
“But once Dr. Hashmi found some for me and I began taking it, my energy output began improving gradually. It had to build up in my body first, and I was afraid it wouldn't work soon enough. But I managed," she said simply. "I guess I ran myself down at the end, though. I'm feeling better now."
"Did you ever manage! You may be a genetic miracle, but you've also got a lot of guts."
"Really?"
"Are you kidding? To do what you did, all alone in a strange place, with the whole world watching and people trying to grab you off the street at any minute? That's not genes. That's bravery. I still can't believe the courage you had."
"That's sweet, Matt. No one ever told me I had ‘a lot of guts’ before."
"Well, you do. You really do."
"That’s funny, Matt. I'm glad you're here. Thank you for driving me to San Antonio."
The small cab of Matt's truck turned out to be a wonderful place to chat intimately with Darcy. It felt natural to talk of personal matters that might not have been as comfortable at Mrs. Williams’ Bar-S home.
Matt was almost embarrassed to summarize his pathetic career as a graduate student, studying literature and linguistics. That was what had originally interested him in Darcy, he reminded her: that book of cuneiform she had been studying.
He glossed over his arduous and frustrating career as a teacher of writing at El Paso Community College, and his newspaper career as well.
He felt he was talking too much.
Matt wanted to know about her family and early life. She seemed as embarrassed by the details of her life as he had been by his.
"Aw, c'mon, Darcy! What about you? For instance, were you always such a good athlete, even when you were young?”
“I was always active, yes. We have competitions of all kinds, but I was never a great performer. It’s just that the moon station has a nice little gym in it, and I used to love to work out there. I have a—what do you call it? A treadmill?—and other equipment too. I was in better shape on your moon than I was on Thomo. And you know, some of the credit should go to coach Haskin. He was wonderful.”
“Weren’t the boys always after you back home?”
“What do you mean? After me? Not really.”
“Well, don't your people get married?"
"Of course!"
"Well, how do they arrange it? I mean, is it like here, where a boy will ask a girl out, and they fall in love and decide to get married?"
"It depends, Matt. I told you, we're a tribal society. We're a lot more stratified than you are here. The ordinary people do sort themselves out like that. The chiefs and their children tend to make arranged marriages, for political reasons, to strengthen alliances and so forth."
"Didn't you tell me your father was a chief?"
"Yes."
She looked at her hands in her lap.
"I'm sorry," blurted Matt. "I forgot. That was a long time ago. Your father wouldn't still be around, would he? That was stupid of me."
"No, that's all right. I just hadn't thought about my parents in several days. The truth is, I wasn't the best daughter I could have been."
"Really?"
"I actually refused two marriage proposals. When I refused the third, well, that's when they sent me on this mission. It was sort of an honor, but also sort of like exile."
"I didn’t know that! Golly! So, you were alone... even before you were alone?"
"Yes."
"Aww, Darcy. You're not alone now."
Darcy’s smile was so beautiful that Matt put his arm around her and hugged her again.
