"Too?" He stared at her.
"Of course I loved Ian," she said. "I couldn't help loving him. But after he died, I grew up."
She broke off. Then began again.
"I tried to help you understand," she said. "Weren't you listening when I talked to you about the first Amanda, and the second? Couldn't you hear what I was telling you?"
"No," he said, "now that you ask, I guess I didn't. I didn't realize you were trying to tell me something."
She made a small, harsh sound in her throat and walked for a few seconds toward the rain without saying anything more. He went in silence beside her.
"I'm sorry," she said, after a minute, more gently. "It's my fault. I was the one trying to explain. If you didn't understand, then it's my responsibility. I told you about the other two Amandas hoping you'd understand about me."
"What was it I should have understood?" he asked.
"What I am - what all three of us are. The first Amanda had three husbands; but really - even including Jimmy, her first son, who was a special case - what she lived for was her family and people in general. She was a galloping protector." Amanda breathed deeply, going ahead with her eyes still fixed on the rain curtains at the edge of the pad. "The second Amanda understood herself. That's why she wouldn't marry Kensie or Ian - particularly Ian, whom she loved best. She gave them both up because sooner or later she knew a choice would come for her, between the one she'd chosen and her duty to everyone else; and she knew that when that happened it wouldn't be him, but everyone else she'd choose."
She walked a few more paces.
"And I'm an Amanda too," she said. "So, I'm going to be just as wise as the second Amanda; and save myself and other people heartache."
They walked on.
"I see," said Hal, at last.
"I'm glad you see," said Amanda. She did not look at him.
"Well," said Hal, after a moment. He felt numb; and in the domed space created around them by the weather control, everything appeared artificial and unreal. He looked at the spaceship. "Perhaps I ought to be getting on board."
She stopped, and he stopped with her. She turned to him and held out her hand. He hesitated for a fraction of a second, then took it.
"I'll be back," he told her.
"Be careful," she said. Their hands still clasped tightly together. "The Others aren't going to like what you're doing. The easiest way for them to stop it, is to stop you."
"I'm used to that." He stood, looking into her eyes. "I've been running from them for over five standard years, remember?"
He smiled at her. She smiled back; and with an effort they both let go.
"I'll be back," he said again.
"Oh, come back!" she told him. "Come back safely!"
"I will."
He turned and ran for the spaceship. When he reached the top of the landing ladder and paused to turn his papers and certificate of passage over to the ship's officer, just inside the airlock, he looked back and saw her, made very small by the distance, still standing a little beyond the east end of the terminal building, and looking in his direction, with the curtains of the rain distant behind her, still coming down.
Chapter Forty-nine
"Tell them," said Hal, "that I don't have a pass. But ask them to contact Ajela and give her my name - Hal Mayne."
He stood in the debarkation lounge of the spaceship that had brought him from Freiland to Earth and which now lay holding its distance at ten kilometers from the Final Encyclopedia. He was talking to the debarkation officer, a slim, gray-haired man; and the two of them were alone in the lounge, now that most of the hundred and fifty-three other passengers had left for Earth's surface.
At the further ends of the long lounge, the lights had already automatically dimmed themselves to a level of standby illumination; and there was a coolness in the air, because for the few minutes yet the lounge would remain open it was not economical for the heating elements to remedy the drop in room temperature caused by the sudden absence of the large crowd of warm bodies who had abruptly and noisily left it for the landing jitney. The slight chill wrapped around Hal, bringing back to his mind once more the dream from which he had woken in the mountains on Harmony, to find himself trying to strangle Jason Rowe. The dream had come again, ten hours ago, his last night here on shipboard. Again, he had taken leave of those with him, had dismounted and started off alone across the rubbled plain toward the distant tower; only, this time, he had penetrated further into the plain than ever before, and discovered the deception of its appearance.
From its edge it had appeared level and smooth, all the way to the tower. But as he went, he found that the scant grass and hard, pebbled earth of the surface on which he had started had gradually begun to show a change. For one thing, the slope of the ground was deceptive. The fact emerged that the plain actually rose as it approached the tower; and only some trick of perspective had made it seem level, seen from far off.
But, more important, the farther he had penetrated across its bare openness, the more the apparent flatness and smoothness of it had revealed itself to be an illusion. The ground gradually became seamed with cracks enlarging to gullies, the pebbles were superseded by rocks, and the rocks by boulders; and what had been stony soil became only stone; so that his toilsome progress toward the tower had been hindered and slowed to the rate of a man climbing a cliff…
But now, as he stood chilled and separate from the officer who was talking on his behalf with the Final Encyclopedia, it was not his recollection of the struggle across the rocky land, his turnings and backtrackings between the great rocks barring his way, that had been brought back to mind. It was something remembered from very early in the dream and very simple. It had been the creak of his saddle leathers as he had swung down to the ground, the decisive abandonment of the warmth and strength of the horse-body between his knees, the overall feel of leave-taking from all who were familiar, in order to take up the unmarked path of a pilgrimage to some hidden but powerfully attractive goal. Something about this moment and this waiting for entrance this second time to the Final Encyclopedia had brought it back to him…
But the ship's officer had finally gotten into talk with someone at. the Encyclopedia who could undertake the conveying of the message Hal had asked sent to Ajela.
"Stand by," said the male voice of whoever was at the far end.
Silence fell on the speaker grilles by the phone.
"Who's this Ajela, then?" the officer asked.
"The personal assistant to Tam Olyn," said Hal.
"Oh." The officer looked down and became busy with a stylus on the desktop screen under his fingers. Hal waited. But in less than a minute, the voice came again.
"No need to pass that request on," it said. "I thought I'd seen the name before, so I just checked. Hal Mayne's on the permanent pass list."
"Thanks," said the officer in the phone. "All right. We'll have him straight over to you."
He cut connection and turned to Hal.
"You didn't know you had a permanent pass?"
Hal shook his head, smiling a little.
"No."
"All right," said the officer, into the phone. "Launch Deck - is the repair boat ready yet?"
"Already on its way."
"Thank you."
In fact, the officer had hardly cut connection for a second time before the warning chime from the airlock announced that a boat had docked at it and was unsealing. Hal turned and went to the lock, and the officer came along behind him.
They waited, listening to the sounds of the unsealing process, that carried through the closed inner airlock door. Finally, it swung open; and Hal could look through the matched airlocks to the repair boat's interior, cluttered with machine shop equipment.