“Oh, don’t worry about a few tears,” said Leslie. “Sit down and let them salt your sandwich.”

So Pat sat at the table with the boys as they ate their first meal together as independent souls, each bound to his own body, each free to make his own choices and act on them.

What they just won, with such effort, is possessed easily by almost every human being on Earth and Westil, thought Pat. The difference is that, having been without that independence for so long, they know what they have.

I hope they never forget. I hope I never forget. How precious it is to be alive, to have a body of my own, to be free to act on this physical world in whatever way I choose.

“What I want to know,” said Enopp, “is whether you can sing.”

Eluik answered in the other language, and both boys laughed until they cried.

Marion interpreted this time. “What he said was, ‘I never could before.’ And apparently that’s hysterically funny.”

Pat couldn’t help grinning—a huge grin, stretching her cheeks because she rarely called on them to show so much happiness.

“And I see that you agree,” said Marion.

“Let the girl eat,” said Leslie. “She’s had a busy day.”

Chapter 9

9

King Prayard no longer showed any surprise when Wad appeared in Bexoi’s heavily guarded chamber. Whether he guessed at Wad’s connection to the Queen—as her lover or as her enemy—was not a particularly interesting question to Wad. The baby in her womb right now was Prayard’s. So whether Prayard resented past betrayals was not a matter of concern to Wad. He had no grounds for feeling betrayed now.

Of course, Wad also knew that people judged whether something was right or wrong by their own standards, and those standards were rarely rational. Wad’s own standards were as mad as could be. Yet they felt viscerally right and true to him, so that if he did not live by them he felt a deep unease until he made things right. That was why he couldn’t simply kill Bexoi and have done with her—because if killing his baby had been wrong, then killing her baby must be just as wrong. Because the crime in killing his boy Trick had not been the offense to and betrayal of Wad, it was in depriving that wonderful, clever, beautiful boy of his life. So taking vengeance on Bexoi by killing a child that was just as innocent would not be vengeance at all, but a new crime, a new injustice. Wad knew this was the law he had to live by, but he did not know why he felt this way, or where his moral code came from. He only knew that he could not bear the idea of doing something as vile as the crime Bexoi had committed.