But Dawes knew that he had changed most of all, and yet not changed. The thing that was inside him, the curiosity, the seeking mind - now, it was alive and truly working for the first time. How wrong it had been to dream of that cozy, dead existence in his nice Ohio home with his nice Ohio wife and his nice Ohio children I He realized now that he wanted to get out into the wilderness and see the aliens again, find out why they were the way they were, what they had wanted from the prisoners in the cave, how they had taken it, what they were really like. Osiris held a million mysteries. And through the miracle of selection he had been put here to solve them.
I'm different now.
It was a hard fact to assimilate. He realized with a jolt, looking at Carol's suitcase, that she was still his wife.
He didn't want her any more. The boy Mike Dawes had been taken by her innocence and shyness, but that boy no longer existed. And he needed someone more solid, someone who could share problems with him instead of simply clinging dependently.
Someone was knocking outside the bubble.
'Come on in,' Dawes said.
It was Cherry.
She looked flustered and confused. 'You just walked away from everybody like that,' she said. 'You feeling okay, Mike?'
'I just wanted to think. I had to be by myself for a little while. I'm okay.'
She was looking at him earnestly. Glancing away, she saw the two suitcases.
'Carol's with Noonan,' she said.
'I figured as much,' said Dawes without a trace of a quiver in his voice. 'I don't care. Really, I don't.'
It was funny, he thought, how lousy deals turned out to be the biggest things in your life. Being picked by the lottery, and then being grabbed by the aliens on top of that. And losing your wife to a man like Noonan. And none of it mattered - each loss was a find, each finish a beginning.
An animal honked in the forest, and Dawes grinned. A whole world lay out there beyond the stockade, waiting to have its secrets pried open in the years to come. And he'd do it.
He said, 'If Noonan's with Carol - where are you going to stay, Cherry?'
'I haven't figured that out yet.'
He smiled. Carol had left her suitcase here, but nothing else. If Noonan could be happy with her, let him be.
Cherry stepped forward awkwardly. Dawes wanted to tell her that he forgave her and loved her and needed her, and that he saw through her toughness and through the scars life had left on her. But he couldn't say any of those things out loud, and he realized he wasn't finished growing up, quite yet. She would help him, though. And he would help her.
Funny. Getting picked in the lottery had seemed like the end of the world to him, once. But he couldn't have been more wrong.
He smiled at Cherry. The girl before him was like a stranger, even after the days in the cave. Everything was oddly brand new. He tipped her face up the inch or two that separated them in height, and kissed her, listening to the wind of the alien world - his world.
'Hello,' she said tenderly.
'Hello,' he said.