Part 9 (1/2)

”Mag says I must have a man,” Lisa said. Her voice was tight. He couldn't tell if she was crying because he couldn't bear to look at her.

He could only stare out over the canyon and listen and wait.

”She says if it isn't you I'll have to find someone else, later on, but she says it ought to be you. Because _they're_ dangerous, and besides, if it's you our children will be sure to be like us.”

”What?” He swung around, startled. ”Do you mean that if one parent were normal the child might be too?”

”Yes,” she said. ”It might. They say that's happened. Sometimes. No one knows why we're born. No one knows why some are one way and some another.”

”Lisa....” He stopped.

”I know. You don't want me. I've known that all the time.”

”It isn't just that.”

He tried to find the words to express what he felt, but anything he might say would be cold and cruel and not quite true. He felt the contentment drain out of him, and he felt annoyed, because he didn't want to have to think about her problem, or about anything.

”Why do they want you to have a child?” he said roughly. ”Why do they want our kind to go on, living here like animals, or taken to the valleys and separated from each other and put into inst.i.tutions until we die? Why don't they admit that we've lost, that the normals own the Earth? Why don't they stop breeding and let us die?”

”Your parents were normal, Eric. If all of us died, others would be born, someday.”

He nodded and then he closed his eyes and fought against the despair that rose suddenly within him and blotted out the last of the contentment and the unreality. He fought against it and lost. And suddenly Lisa was very real, more real even than the books had ever been. And the dirty old women were suddenly people--individuals, not savages. He tried to pity them, to retreat into his pity and his loneliness, but he couldn't even do that.

The people he had looked for were imaginary. He would never find them, because Mag and Nell and Lisa were his people. They were like him, and the only difference between him and them was one of luck. They were dirty and ignorant. They had been born in the mountains and hunted like beasts. He was more fortunate; he had been born in the valley.

He was a sn.o.b. He had looked down on them, when all the time he was one of them. If he had been born among them, he would have been as they were. And, if Lisa had lived in another age, she too would have sought the stars.

Eric sat very still and fought until a little of the turmoil quieted inside of him. Then he opened his eyes again and stared across the canyon, at the rock slides and the trees growing out from the slopes at twisting, precarious angles, and he saw everything in a new light. He saw the old race as it had been far earlier than the age of s.p.a.ce-travel, and he knew that it had conquered many environments on Earth before it had gained a chance to try for those of s.p.a.ce. He felt humble, suddenly, and proud at the same time.

Lisa sat beside him, not speaking, drawing away from him and letting him be by himself, as if she knew the conflicts within him and knew enough not to interrupt. He was grateful both for her presence there beside him and for her silence.

Much later, when afternoon shadows had crept well out from the rocks, she turned to him. ”Will you take me to the valley someday, Eric?”

”Maybe. But no one must know about you. You know what would happen if any of them found out you even existed.”

”Yes,” she said. ”We'd have to be careful, all right. But you could take me for a ride in the aircar sometime and show me things.”

Before, he would have shrugged off her words and forgotten them. Now he couldn't. Decision crystalized quickly in his mind.

”Come on, Lisa,” he said, getting to his feet and reaching down to help her up also. ”I'll take you to the valley right now.”

She looked up at him, unable to speak, her eyes s.h.i.+ning, and then she was running ahead of him, down the slope toward the aircar.

The car climbed swiftly away from the valley floor, up between the canyon walls and above them, over the crest of the hills. He circled it for a moment, banking it over on its side so that she could look down at the gorge and the rocks and the cascading stream.

”How do you like it, Lisa?”

”I don't know.” She smiled, rather weakly, her body braced against the seat. ”It feels so strange.”

He smiled back and straightened the car, turning away from the mountains until the great, gardened valley stretched out before them, all the way to the foot of the western hills.