"No," Jeff insisted. "He has just distinguished light from darkness.
You'd better get him out of here before the Security Guards close in on
this house."
"But first I must see the woman," the old man cried. "The cancellation
of her death has cost me my necklace. After we disarmed Konrad, your
advisor spoke alone with him; that accursed one begged me to cancel our
agreement. To be ethical I had to give him the necklace since it was
where the money went." He paused for breath. "I must see this woman who
is worth more than a necklace. While Konrad was screaming some nonsense
about your advisor double-crossing him, I swore I would see her who has
cost me my necklace and the waste of a skar."
"But your eyes won't focus yet."
"We shall see. Let me up. Shade me from the sun."
So what if she sees him, Jeff thought. He will be just "that old
murderer" with stranger's eyes.
He switched off The Assassin's "sun." Kit entered. The followers sidled
from her advance, until the old man sat alone before her upon the
operating table, turning his head vainly from side to side. For there
was little current in the great nerves of his eyes as yet. The unused
synapses did not make full contact.
"Woman, I hear your breathing. Your scent is close to me. Ranad, give
me light again."
The heir swept back the curtain, throwing a beam of sunlight across
the operating room. It gilded the side of the old man's face and as he
turned his head blindly toward it, it lighted his strange eyes huge and
bright.
Wide and deep, with buried spiders of red, fringed by lashes that beat
as frantically as the wings of a wounded kauri, the eyes glowed. Their
small black centers mirrored in duplicate Kit's face. They reflected in
miniature her slow collapse into Jeff's arms in the instant of silence
that followed her one word: "_Konrad_."
As Jeff carried her from the room, the earless young man crowded ahead
of him, unwrapping his damp package.
"Please sire, am I not next?" He waved a freshly cut pair of ears in
Jeff's face.
"Not right now," the doctor mumbled absently as he pushed through the
doorway.
The door closed. The weapons of the assassins clashed bravely as they
prepared the retreat to the crags and the old man croaked ecstatically
of the beautiful woman he could not possibly have seen.
Two months later the outgoing rocket carried two passengers who held
hands. A third passenger was on the way, an Earthman to be.