“Why? They lied to me…” He lifted his head and reached up, feeling the tiny bump himself. So there it is. I’m angry…very angry. And I’m relieved, too.

“The Hexamon wants you alive. Senator Ras Mishiney has been made the temporary administrator of New Zealand and North Australia…he ordered you be kept alive, and that an implant be installed whatever your feelings, so his job won’t be made any harder. You’re a hero, Garry. If you die, who knows what Old Natives will imagine?”

“You let them do it?”

“They didn’t tell me until after. They didn’t give me any choice.” Her voice softened, and her lip began to tremble. “I told them what you wanted. They did what they said they’d do at first, and then Ras Mishiney came…a sympathy visit, he said.” She wiped her palm across a damp cheek. “He ordered them to put in the implant. He said it must stay until the crisis is over.”

Lanier lay back on the fields and closed his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“I thought you were dead.” She stood, then sat down again and covered both her cheeks with her hands, eyes squeezed tight shut. “I thought we could never resolve…what…”

He reached up to her arm but she shrugged his hand away.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated, reaching for her arm again. She did not refuse his touch this time. “I’ve been selfish.”

“You’ve been a man of principle,” she said. “I respected you and I was afraid for myself.”

“A man of principle can be a selfish man,” Lanier said.

She shook her head and took his hand in hers. “You made me feel guilty. After all we’ve done for the Earth, not to share…its handicaps.”

He looked at the bedroom window. It was night. “What’s been happening?” he asked.

“They’re not telling us everything. I think they’re close to reopening.”

He tried to get out of bed, but the long convalescence had weakened him, and he gave up the effort. “I’d like to talk to the administrator,” he said. “If I’m important enough to keep alive, maybe I’m important enough to talk to.”

“He won’t talk to any of us. Not really talk. He’s full of platitudes. I’ve come to hate them so, Garry.”

What a shock it must have been, Lanier thought, sitting on the porch, wrapped in blankets even though the air was warming. Summer. The Earth was going through its cycles, raw and uncontrolled and beautiful and ugly. What a shock to come from the perfect, controlled, rational environment of the Way and descend like angels into the squalor of the past.