Ma-ah frowned. “I won’t go back. That’s all there is to it. Not willingly, and I know enough about your people to know you wouldn’t use force. But I don’t like to do something because I’m supposed to, either. I know how animals mate. Rampa and I have done that often, if that’s what you mean. You say children come that way, but Rampa and I had none. If I had any, they’d be mine. So I’m not sure what you want me to do. If it’s what Rampa and I did, why didn’t you just say so? That’s only natural and makes you feel good all over. But you must mean more than that in some way I don’t understand, or you wouldn’t be making such a fuss about it.”

“What you and Rampa did, we’ll do then,” Sumpter said, very formally.

“That’s all you wanted?” Ma-ah was astonished.

“Why did you and Rampa stay together?” he asked quietly.

“Why, we needed each other. It’s much easier to hunt for food—and we helped protect each other. Why else?”

“No other reason?” Sumpter asked carefully.

“What other reason could there be?”

“Did you feel toward each other the way Rampa and Orona seem to feel now?” he asked.

Ma-ah’s face darkened. “No.” She paused and said, accusingly “You feel that way toward me sometimes, though, and it makes me uneasy. I thought that you wanted me to feel … that way too, whatever that way is. I didn’t understand that you just wanted me to do what Rampa and I did, or I’d have said yes at once. I haven’t done it since I’ve been here, and I’ve missed it, too.”

She expected Sumpter to laugh, now that the matter was cleared up. Instead, some hope seemed to drain away from his face. He looked up at her and said, “I’ll never threaten your sense of … emotional freedom. I’ll settle for what you can give me now. And the mating, hopefully, will bring a child. You’re much healthier than you were.”

Ma-ah looked up, startled, to see that the shadows were beginning to fall. There had been no decision to make, then! Yet she felt oddly cheated, as if there had been a decision that she hadn’t seen or recognized—and should have. “Just mate, as Rampa and I did?” she asked again.

“Yes, Ma-ah,” Sumpter said quietly.