“Her name is Orona,” Rampa said.

“Who cares?” Ma-ah flared, automatically. Yet again to her own surprise she realized that she didn’t care. They’d joined forces in the old world, and whatever held them together there no longer applied. Rampa smiled when she snapped at him, and she found herself smiling back.

“You agree, then?” he asked.

“To what? … To you and … Orona?”

“That you and I be … separate?”

Ma-ah nodded. He relaxed visibly and said in a softer voice: “They hoped that you would like Sumpter more. They have plans for us, but I don’t know what they are yet.”

“I’ll make my own plans,” Ma-ah said with some defiance.

Rampa was silent for a moment. Then he said slowly: “Will you come when they build a dwelling for Orona and me?”

The implications flew through her mind—memories of their being together on the prickly hides, the moonlight through the rock crevices. But she nodded, agreeably, astonished at her own reaction once more. All right, she thought, very clearly. All bonds were cut. She and Rampa in their robes, with their new language and knowledge, were no longer the people they had been. For one thing they weren’t half-starved all the time; they didn’t have to cling together for protection and mutual help, they didn’t have to hide in the cold, forsaken cliffs. All right.

“I’ll come,” she said soberly. She turned and walked away, but her eyes stung and she glared accusingly at Sumpter once more as they left the courtyard. “So it was all planned,” she said. “And what more is planned? I might be heartbroken for all you and your people know or care. It just happens I’m not. But you couldn’t have known that—”

“It was hoped that you’d turn to me, as Rampa turned to Orona,” Sumpter said painfully.

“I turn to no one,” Ma-ah said. But when he didn’t answer, she grinned to herself: rather than go back to her old world, she’d do … well, practically anything. Something in Sumpter’s manner made her suddenly realize that he’d hoped she would turn to him, too, in the … way she hadn’t. Her steps quickened. The realization gave her a certain sense of power. Ma-ah also began to feel very free and unfettered. A mate was just a mate, she thought; important in the old world because men were stronger than women. But here …