“There is one thing we could try,” I said.
“I know,” she said. “I thought of it, too... The other worlds. The worlds like the sand dune world. There must be hundreds of them.”
“Out of all those hundreds, there might be. . .”
She shook her head. “You underestimate the people who built the city and set out the trees. They knew what they were doing. Every one of those worlds would be as isolated as this world. Those worlds were chosen for a purpose. . .”
“Have you ever thought,” I argued, “that one of them might be the home planet of the folks who built the city?”
“No, I never have,” she said. “But what difference would it make? They’d squash you like a bug.”
“Then what do we do?” I asked.
“I could go back to the valley,” she said. “I didn’t see what you saw. I wouldn’t see what you saw.”
“That’s all right for you,” I said, “if that’s the kind of life you want to live.”
“What difference would it make?” she asked. “I wouldn’t know what kind of life it was. It would be real enough. How would it be any different than the life we’re living now? How do we know it isn’t the kind of life we’re living now? How do you judge reality?”
There was, of course, no answer to her questions. There was no way in which one could prove reality. Lawrence Arlen Knight had accepted the pseudo-life, the unreality of the valley, living in delusion, imagining an ideal life with as much force and clarity as if it had been real. But that was for Knight; easy, perhaps, for all the other residents of the valley, for they did not know what was going on. I found myself wondering what sort of fantasy had been invoked within his mind to explain our precipitate departure from his living place. Something, naturally, that would not upset him, that would not interrupt, for a single instant, the dream in which he lived.
“It’s all right for you,” I said, limply, beaten. “I couldn’t go back.”
We sat silently by the fire, all talked out, nothing more to say. There was no use in arguing with her. She didn’t really mean it. In the morning she would have forgotten it and good sense would prevail. We’d be on our way again. But on our way to where?
“Mike,” she finally said.
“Yes, what is it?”
“It could have been good between us if we had stayed on Earth. We are two of a kind. We could have gotten on.”
I glanced up sharply. Her face was lighted by the flicker of the fire and there was a strange softness in it.
“Forget it,” I said angrily. “I make it a rule never to make a pass at my employer.”
I expected her to be furious, but she wasn’t. She didn’t even wince.
“You know that’s not what I meant,” she said. “You know what I mean. This trip spoiled it for us. We found out too much about one another. Too many things to hate. I am sorry, Mike.”
“So am I,” I said.
In the morning she was gone.
TWENTY-TWO
I stormed at Hoot. “You were awake. You saw her go. You could have wakened me.”
“For why?” he asked. “What the use of waking? You would not have stopped her.”
“I’d beaten some sense into that stubborn skull of hers.”
“Stop her you would not,” Hoot maintained. “She but follow destiny and no one’s destiny another’s destiny and no interference please. George, his destiny his own. Tuck, his destiny his own. Sara, her destiny her own. My destiny my own.”
“The hell with destiny!” I yelled. “Look at what it got them. George and Tuck both disappeared and now I got to go and yank Sara out of. . .”
“No yank,” honked Hoot, puffing with anger. “That you must not do. Understanding you miss. It is of yours no business.”
“But she sneaked out on us.”
“She did not sneak,” said Hoot. “She tell me where she go. She take Paint to ride, but pledge to send him back. She left the rifle and what you call the ammo. She say you have need of it. She say she cannot bear to make farewell of you. She crying when she left.”
“She ran out on us,” I said.
“So did George run out. So did Tuck.”
“Tuck and George don’t count,” I said.
“My friend,” said Hoot. “My friend, I crying for you, too.”
“Cut out the goddamn sentiment,” I yelled at him. “You’ll have me bawling with you.”
“And that so bad?”
“Yes, it’s bad,” I said.
