“And knew of the secret pyramid entrance, too,” Sumpter said. “The connections are important in terms of what happens to the future of this settlement. And in some ways you’re a key to the knowledge.”

“Stop looking at me like that. I don’t know anything I haven’t told you. The old man does, though.”

“Do you want to try an experiment?” Sumpter asked. “I have an idea—”

“No. Suddenly I’m nervous…. Rampa and Orona will have a child, too, won’t they? Born of your people and mine.” Ma-ah looked at him quickly, shrewdly, out of the corner of her eye. “Are there more children like that?”

He waited before answering. “No,” he said. “For several reasons I can’t go into right now, it … hasn’t happened before.”

She didn’t know what to say, the implications of his answer were so startling. “You mean, our child could be the first; or Rampa’s? According to who gets pregnant first, Orona or myself?”

Sumpter nodded.

Ma-ah said slowly, “Our child won’t even know what it was like, outside in my old world, will it? I’ve almost forgotten myself. I try to put it out of my mind, I suppose. It was so terrifying. But I didn’t have anything to compare my experience to before I came here. Then, I just accepted it.” She paused and said: “Maybe I should go back sometime. I’d be frightened now, in a way I didn’t used to be. But perhaps I should do it anyhow.”

Sumpter stared at her. “Once you said you’d do almost anything to stay here.”

“But it occurred to me: I don’t even know what my heritage is. I call the people out there my people. There are bands of them, tribes. Rampa and I came across them but they were leery of us, and chased us sometimes. But their children will know that world. So awful in a way. Yet I feel almost frightened right now because I’m so safe and isolated. My people will go their way, and I’ll go another—” She couldn’t look at him.

“You’re not really thinking of leaving?”

“I probably wouldn’t even have the courage. But I’d like to see it again.”

“If you left, you’d change everything,” he said.

“Oh, why did such an idea come to me? It spoils so much,” Ma-ah said angrily.

“What I said about my awe of the Earth did it, I’m afraid,” Sumpter said. “I emphasized differences—”