"Your life, Fand. Your life for mine, and Jill's, and the others here
who can still be saved. Destroy the prisms, stop this madness, and you
can live to be as old and crazy as your mother."
There was no fear in her. Unbending pride, and hatred, but no fear. She
laughed.
He put his hand on her throat, his fingers reaching iron-strong around
her neck. "Slim," he said. "Soft, and tender. It would snap so easily."
"Break it, then. Shanga will go on without me. Kor Hal will take over.
And you, Burk Winters--you can't escape." Her teeth showed white in a
taunting smile. "You'll run with the beasts. No man can break free from
Shanga."
Winters nodded. "I know that," he said quietly. "Therefore I must
destroy Shanga before it destroys me."
She looked at him, naked and unarmed, crouching in the brush. Once
more, she laughed.
He shrugged. "Perhaps it is impossible. I won't know that until it's
too late, anyway. It isn't really me I'm worried about, Fand. I could
be perfectly happy running on all fours through your garden. Probably
I would be perfectly happy hissing and wallowing in the lake. Now the
idea sickens me, but after a touch of Shanga it would be all right. No.
It isn't me that matters, nor even Jill."
"What, then?"
"Earth has its pride, too," he told her gravely. "It's a younger and
cruder pride than yours. It can become pretty ruthless and obnoxious at
times, I'll admit. But on the whole, Earth is a good planet, and her
people are good people, and she's done more to advance the Solar System
than all the other worlds put together. As an Earthman, I don't like to
see my world disgraced."
He glanced up and around the amphitheatre. "I think," he went on,
"that Earth and Mars can learn a lot from each other, if the fanatics
on both sides will stop making trouble. You're the worst one I've
ever heard of, Fand. You go even beyond fanaticism." He looked at her
speculatively. "I think you're as mad right now as your mother."
She did not flare up at that, which convinced him that she was not mad
at all, only twisted by the way she lived and the things she had been
taught.