He had seen some of the material on the Stoners' technological advances. He had experienced the education system used in the library. He had touched on the ways the Stoners had tampered with biology and psychology. (Tampered—did that betray a prejudice? Yes. Some of it had shaken him to his core and contributed to his worst bouts of being Stoned.) He was uncertain what his own beloved country would do with such power, much less the Soviets.

Patricia sat in on the charade a few more minutes, then left. He stood to follow after her and caught up near the corner of the women's bungalow.

"Just a minute," he said. She halted and half turned, not looking at him but at a potted lime tree growing in a wide space between two buildings. "I don't intend for you to stop your work. Not at all."

"I won't," she said.

"I just wanted to make that clear."

"It's clear." Now she faced him directly, hands slipping into her pockets. "You can't be happy with the way things are going."

His eyes widened, and he drew his head back, feeling a sudden anger at her presumption, obtuseness, whatever it was she rolled up into one short sentence.

"You can't be a happy man, keeping us here, knowing all that."

"I'm not keeping you here."

"You've never talked to me, to any of us that I've seen. You say things but you don't talk with us."

The anger evaporated and left behind an equally sudden pit of lostness, aloneness. "Rank hath its privileges," he said softly.

"I don't think so." Squinting at him. She wanted to challenge, to provoke. "What kind of person are you? You seem kind of. . . solid. Frozen. Are you really, or is that just a privilege?"

Lanier lifted a pointed finger and waggled it at her, his face creasing with a grim smile. "You do your job," he said. "I'll do mine."

"You still aren't talking."

"What the hell do you want?" he said in a harsh undertone, stepping closer to her, shoulders hunched forward and chin drawn back almost into his neck, an incredibly tense and uncomfortable posture, Patricia thought. She was startled by the sudden breakthrough.

"I want somebody else to tell me what to feel," she said.

"Well, I can't do that." Lanier's shoulders corrected themselves and he extended his jaw. "If we start thinking about anything—"

"But the work, the work," Patricia completed, on the edge of mockery. "Jesus, I'm doing the work, Garry. I'm working all the time." There were tears in her eyes, and to her further shock, she saw tears in his. Lanier's hand moved to his face but he held them back and one tear fell to his cheek, then down the furrow at the side of his mouth.

"Okay," he said. He wanted to leave but he couldn't. "So we're both human. Is that what you wanted to know?"