Torcred's jaw muscles twitched. "I'm wishing you a happy homecoming,"
he answered, "by way of saying goodbye."
"But you're coming with me!... Aren't you?... What else can you do?"
He shook his head somberly. "I'm too used to freedom, Ladna. I'll take
my chances with the desert again."
"I told you my people will accept you, and your fate among them will
be no worse than mine...." Her protest trailed off as she read the
inflexible refusal in his impassive face.
"Earth and sky can't meet." He looked back down the canyon, toward
where a wedge of the barren plain, pink with reflected sunset, showed
between the rock walls. Then the girl was in front of him again. Her
eyes were very large, and her red lips spoke no more useless words of
pleading.
Instead--her hands were on his shoulders, her arms slipped round
his neck as her slim body swayed against him, her face blurred with
nearness, tilted up....
Gravely, according to the terrapin custom, Torcred touched noses with
her.
He felt her go tense, and she drew back. Her eyes glistened with a
shock and disappointment he was at a loss to understand. She said in a
choked voice, "Good-bye!" and turned and fled up the ravine.
Mechanically Torcred picked up the satchel with the remainder of her
share of the food and water, which she had remembered to leave behind.
His muscles tightened with a violent urge to run after her and bring
her back by force.
But how could he hold her with him? She still had her place, however
small, in the world of machines that had cast him out.... Suddenly he
hated them all without exception, all the iron monsters that ruled
the world in whose sight flesh and blood were helpless, hopeless, as
nothing.
He stumbled down the mountain, going into an exile lonelier than that
stigmatized by the brand on his forehead. Yet withal, loneliness and
hatred, he felt a curious inner peace. His brain was no longer a
battlefield of hostile allegiances and longings. He still had no name
for what he had become. But it didn't matter any more.
He reached the bottom of the last rock slide, and looked back; in the
failing light he could just make out the mesa rim, above which must lie
the aeros' eyrie. Nothing moved up there. She would be at home now,
among her own kind.