He felt a compulsion to unburden himself to her, as they walked along, and tried to, stumbling. He stopped long before he had made himself clear, and looked at her, half expecting to see disgusted disapproval in her eyes. There was none. "I don't know what it is you have done," she said, "but you haven't been bad. Foolish, perhaps, but not bad." She stopped, looked a little puzzled, and added reflectively, "I've never met any bad people."
He tried to describe some of the ideals of the Survivors Club. He spoke of the plans for dealing with the control naturals as being the easiest and clearest to explain. No inhumanity, a bare minimum of necessary coercion, a free choice between a simple sterilizing operation and a trip to the future-all this in the greater interest of the race. He spoke of these things as something that might be done if the people were wise enough to accept it.
She shook her head. "I don't think I would care for it," she said gently, but with clear finality. He dropped the subject.
He was surprised when it became dark. "I suppose we should hurry on to the lodge," he said.
"The lodge is closed." That was true, he remembered. The Park was closed; they were not supposed to be there. He started to ask her if she had a skycar there, or had she come up through the tunnel, but checked himself. Either way, she would be leaving him. He did not want that; he himself was not pressed for time-his forty-eight hours would not be up until the morrow. "I saw some cabins as I came this way," he suggested.
They found them, nestling half hidden in a hollow. They were unfurnished and, quite evidently out of service, but strong and weather-tight. He rummaged around in the cupboards and found a little glow-heater with more than enough charge showing on its dial for their needs. Water there was, but no food. It did not matter.
There were not even cushion beds available, but the floor was warm and clean. She lay down, seemed to nestle out a bed in the floor as an animal might, said, "Good night," and closed her eyes. He believed that she went to sleep at once.
He expected to find it hard to get to sleep, but he fell asleep before he had time to worry about it.
When he awoke it was with a sense of well-being such as he had not enjoyed in many days-months. He did not attempt to analyze it at once, but simply savored it, wallowed in it, stretching luxuriously while his soul fitted itself, catlike, back into its leasehold.
Then he caught sight of her face, across the cabin floor, and knew why he felt cheerful. She was still asleep, her head cradled on the curve of her arm. Bright sun flooded in through the window and illuminated her face. It was, he decided, not necessarily a beautiful face, although he could find no fault with it. Its charm lay more in a childlike quality, a look of fresh wonder, as if she greeted each new experience as truly new and wholly delightful-so different, he thought, from the jaundiced melancholy he had suffered from.
Had suffered from. For he realized that her enthusiasm was infectious, that he had caught it, and that he owed his present warm elation to her presence.
He decided not to wake her. He had much to think of, anyhow, before he was ready to talk with another. He saw now that his troubles of yesterday had been sheer funk. McFee was a careful commander; if McFee saw fit to leave him off the firing line, he should not complain or question. The Whole was greater than the parts. McFee's decision was probably inspired by Felix, anyhow-from the best of intentions.
Good old Felix! Misguided, but a good sort anyhow. He would have to see if he couldn't intercede for Hamilton, in the reconstruction. They could not afford to hold grudges-the New Order had no place for small personal emotions. Logic and science.
There would be much to be done and he could still be useful. The next phase started today-rounding up control naturals, giving them their choice of two humane alternatives. Questioning public officials of every sort and determining whether or not they were temperamentally suited to continue to serve under the New Order. Oh, there was much to be done-he wondered why he had felt yesterday that there was no place for him.
Had he been as skilled in psychologies as he was in mathematics he might possibly have recognized his own pattern for what it was-religious enthusiasm, the desire to be a part of a greater whole and to surrender one's own little worries to the keeping of an over-being. He had been told, no doubt, in his early instruction, that revolutionary political movements and crusading religions were the same type-form process, differing only in verbal tags and creeds, but he had never experienced either one before. In consequence, he failed to recognize what had happened to him. Religious frenzy? What nonsense-he believed himself to be an extremely hard-headed agnostic.
She opened her eyes, saw him and smiled, without moving. "Good morning," she said.
"Good morning, good morning," he agreed. "I neglected to ask your name yesterday."
"My name is Marion," she answered. "What is yours?"
"I am Monroe-Alpha Clifford."
"'Monroe-Alpha,'" she mused. "That's a good line, Clifford. I suppose you-" She got no further with her remark; her expression was suddenly surprised; she made two gasping quick intakes of breath, buried her face in her hands, and sneezed convulsively.
Monroe-Alpha sat up abruptly, at once alert and no longer happy. She? Impossible!
But he faced the first test of his new-found resolution firmly. It was going to be damned unpleasant, he realized, but he had to do it. The Whole is greater than the parts.
He even derived unadmitted melancholy satisfaction from the realization that he could do his duty, no matter how painful. "You sneezed," he said accusingly.
"It was nothing," she said hastily. "Dust-dust and the sunshine."
"Your voice is thick. Your nose is stopped up. Tell me the truth. You're a 'natural'-aren't you?"
"You don't understand," she protested. "I'm a-oh, dear!" She sneezed twice in rapid succession, then left her head bowed.
Monroe-Alpha bit his lip. "I hate this as much as you do," he said, "but I'm bound to assume that you are a control natural until you prove the contrary."
"Why?"
"I tried to explain to you yesterday. I've got to take you in to the Provisional Committee-what I was talking about is already an established fact."
She did not answer him. She just looked. It made him still more uncomfortable. "Come now," he said. "No need to be tragic about it. You won't have to enter the stasis. A simple, painless operation that leaves you unchanged-no disturbance of your endocrine balance at all. Besides, there may be no need for it. Let me see your tattoo."
Still she did not answer. He drew his gun and levelled it at her. "Don't trifle with me. I mean it." He lowered his sights and pinged the floor just in front of her. She flinched back from the burnt wood and the little puff of smoke. "If you force me, I'll burn you. I'm not joking. Let me see your tattoo."
When still she made no move, he got up, went to her, grabbed her roughly by the arm, dragging her to her feet. "Let's see your tattoo."
She hesitated, then shrugged her shoulders. "All right ... but you'll be sorry." She lifted her left arm. As he lowered his head to read the figures tattooed near the arm pit she brought her hand down sharply near the wrist joint of his right hand. At the same instant her right fist made a painful surprise in the pit of his stomach.
He dropped his gun.
He dived after the gun before it had clattered to a stop and was up after her. But she was already gone. The cabin door stood open, framing a picture of sugar pines and redwoods, but no human figure. A bluejay cursed and made a flicker of blue; nothing else moved.
Monroe-Alpha leaped to the door and looked both ways, covering the same arc with his weapon, but the Giant Forest had swallowed her. She was somewhere close at hand, of course; her flight had disturbed the jay. But where? Behind which of fifty trees? Had there been snow on the ground he would have known, but the snow had vanished, except for bedraggled hollows, and the pine needles carpet of an evergreen forest left no tracks perceptible to his untrained eye-nor was it cluttered with undergrowth to impede and disclose her flight.