"Yes, I really am."
"I'm sorry that it had to happen at just this time."
"I'm not," I said.
She looked about the lab, then out through the quartz windows at the slushy field beyond.
"How can you be happy out here, all alone?"
"I'm not," I said. "But it's better than being in town."
She shook her head, and I watched her hair.
"You're wrong. They don't care as much as you think they do."
I filled my pipe and lit it.
"Marry me," I said softly, "and I'll build you a palace, and I'll buy you a dress for every day of the year - no matter how long the years are in whatever system we pick."
She smiled then.
"You mean that."
"Yes."
"Yet you stole, you ..."
"Will you?"
"No. Thanks. You knew I'd say that."
"Yes."
We finished our coffee, and I saw her to the door and didn't try to kiss her.
Hell, I had a pipe in my mouth, and that's what it was there for.
I killed a forty-three-foot water snake that afternoon, who had thought the shiny instrument I was carrying in my left hand looked awfully appetizing, as well as my left hand and the arm attached to it and the rest of me. I put three splints into him from my dart gun, and he died, thrashing around too much, so that he ruined some important things I had growing. The robots kept right on about their business, and so did I, after that. I measured him later, which is how I know he was a forty-three-footer.
Robots are nice to work with. They mind their own business, and they never have anything to say.
I fixed the radio that night, but they were worried about iron on all frequencies, so I turned it off and smoked my pipe. If she had said yes, you know, I would have done it.
In the week that followed, I learned that Sandow was diverting all of his commercial vessels in the area to aid in the evacuation, and he'd sent for others from farther away. I could have guessed that without hearing it. I could guess what they were saying about Sandow, the same things they always say about Sandow: Here is a man who has lived so long that he's afraid of his own shadow.
Here is one of the wealthiest men in the galaxy, a paranoid, a hypochondriac, holed up on a fortress world all his own, going out only after taking the most elaborate precautions - rich and powerful and a coward. He is talented beyond his own kind. Godlike, he can build worlds and feature them and populate them as he would. But there is really only one thing that he loves: the life of Francis Sandow. Statistics tell him that he should have died long ago, and he burns incense before the shrine of statistics. I guess all legends have unshined shoes. Too bad, they say that once he was quite a man.
And that's what they say whenever his name comes up.
The evacuation was methodical and impressive. At the end of two weeks there were a quarter million people on Dismal. Then the big ships began to arrive, and at the end of the third week there were 150,000 remaining. The rest of the big vessels showed up then, and some of the first ones made it back for a second load. By the middle of the fourth week, there were 75,000, and by the end of it, there was hardly anybody left. Vehicles stood empty in the streets, tools lay where they had been dropped. Abandoned projects hummed and rumbled in the wilderness. The doors of all the shops were unlocked and merchandise still lay upon the counters, filled the shelves. The local fauna grew restless, and I found myself shooting at something every day. Vehicle after vehicle tore at the air and sank within the cloud cover, transporting the waiting people to the big unseen vessels that circled the world. Homes stood abandoned, the remains of meals still upon their tables. All the churches had been hastily deconsecrated and their relics shipped off-world. We sampled day and night, the robots and I, and I analyzed and drank coffee and fed the data to the computer and waited for it to give me the answer, but it didn't. It always seemed to need just another scintilla of information.
Maybe I was crazy. My time was, technically, borrowed. But to be so close and then to see the whole thing go up in flames - it was worth the gamble. After all, it would take years to duplicate the setup I had there, assuming it could be duplicated. The valley was, somehow, a freak, an accidental place that had occurred during millions of years of evolutioxr compressed into a decade or so by a science I couldn't even begin to understand. I worked and I waited.
The visitor bell rang.
It wasn't raining this time, in fact the cloud cover showed signs of breaking up for the first time in months. But she blew in as though there was a storm at her back again, anyway.
"You've got to get out," she said. "It's imminent! Any second now it could-"
I slapped her.
She covered her face and stood there and shook for a minute.
"Okay, I was hysterical," she said, "but it's true."
"I realized that the first time you told me. Why are you still around?"
"Don't you know, damn you?"
"Say it," I said, listening attentively.
"Because of you, of course! Come away! Now!"
"I've almost got it," I said. "Tonight or tomorrow, possibly. I'm too close now to give up."
"You asked me to marry you," she said. "All right, I will - if you'll grab your toothbrush right now and get out of here."
"Maybe a week ago I would have said yes. Not now, though."
"The last ships are leaving. There are less than a hundred people on Dismal right now, and they'll be gone before sundown. How will you get away after that, even if you decide to go?"
"I won't be forgotten," I said.
"No, that's true." She smiled, slightly, crookedly. "The last vessel will run a last-minute check. Their computer will match the list of the evacuees with the Dismal Directory. Your name will show up, and they'll send a special search vessel down, just for you. That'll make you feel important, won't it? Really wanted. Then they'll haul you away, whether you're ready or not, and that'll be it."
"By then I might have the answer."
"And if not?"
"We'll see."
I handed her my handkerchief then and kissed her when she least expected it - while she was blowing her nose - which made her stamp her foot and say an unladylike word.
Then, "Okay, I'll stay with you until they come for you," she said. "Somebody's got to look after you until a guardian can be appointed."
"I've got to check some seedlings now," I said. "Excuse me," and I pulled on my hip boots and went out the back way, strapping on my dart gun as I went.
I shot two snakes and a water tiger - two beasts before and one after the seedlings. The clouds fell apart while I was out there, and pieces of bloody Betelgeuse began to show among them. The robots bore the carcasses away, and I didn't stop to measure them this time.
Susan watched me in the lab, keeping silent for almost an entire hour, until I told her, "Perhaps tomorrow's sample ..."