for a runaway. As Kyla said, the world
was wide. And it was my world. And I would not be alone in it.

"Kyla, Kyla," I said helplessly, and crushed her against me, kissing
her. She closed her eyes and I took a long, long look at her face. Not
beautiful, no. But womanly and brave and all the other beautiful things.
It was a farewell look, and I knew it, if she didn't.

After the briefest time, she pulled a little away, and her flat voice
was gentler and more breathless than usual. "We'd better leave before
the others waken." She saw that I did not move. "Jason--?"

I could not look at her. Muffled behind my hands, I said, "No, Kyla.
I--I promised the Old One to look after my people in the Terran world. I
must go back--"

"You won't be _there_ to look after them! You won't be _you_!"

I said bleakly, "I'll write a letter to remind myself. Jay Allison has a
very strong sense of duty. He'll look after them for me. He won't like
it, but he'll do it, with his last breath. He's a better man than I am,
Kyla. You'd better forget about me." I said, wearily, "I never existed."

That wasn't the end. Not nearly. She--begged, and I don't know why I put
myself through the hell of stubbornness. But in the end she ran away,
crying, and I threw myself down by the fire, cursing Forth, cursing my
own folly, but most of all cursing Jay Allison, hating my other self
with a blistering, sickening rage.

* * * * *

Coming through the outskirts of the small village the next afternoon,
the village where the airlift would meet us, we noted that the poorer
quarter was almost abandoned. Regis said bleakly, "It's begun," and
dropped out of line to stand in the doorway of a silent dwelling. After
a minute he beckoned to me, and I looked inside.

I wished I hadn't. The sight would haunt me while I lived. An old man,
two young women and half a dozen children between four and fifteen years
old lay inside. The old man, one of the children, and one of the young
women were laid out neatly in clean death, shrouded, their faces covered
with green branches after the Darkovan custom for the dead. The other
young woman lay huddled near the fireplace, her coarse dress splattered
with the filthy stuff she had vomited, dying. The children--but even now
I can't think of the children without retching. One, very small, had
been in the woman's arms when she collapsed; it had squirmed free--for a
little while. The others were in a