He slumped back, willing his pulse to slow down, counting again his reasons for doing what he did. Norton sat equally still beside him. Lights that they passed flickered across her pseudo-face, then left it once more in an uneasy dusk.
With an effort, he asked at last, “Where are we bound?”
“To Iscah’s laboratory, I suppose,” she answered in the same monotone. She addressed the car: “Is that right?”
“I do not have that information, nor may I speak the address,” it responded.
She shrugged, turned toward Kenmuir, and said, “AH I could tell Juan was to call Iscah and tell him this felt like ‘an emergency, that I had a party with me who might be radiating, and that we’d go to the place on Pico in hopes he could send a screened carrier.” Her head drooped. “If we’d waited there till morning and nothing came, I don’t know what Fd have done.” The head lifted, the words regained a little color. “I’d have thought of something.”
“Concealed doorways, screened tunnel, screened transport,” he said slowly. “You’re quite familiar with this, this underground, aren’t you?”
“Not really.” She regarded him a while before continuing. “I’m not in any illicit operation. Nor am I involved in a revolutionary movement or any such pupule—such nonsense. Nobody I know is. It’s just that I work with metamorphs. Not here, mostly, but the work brings me here from time to time, and it’s caused me to meet some of these people.”
She paused. When she went on, her voice had more emotion in it. “The metamorphs of Earth … they’ve got a hard fate, you know; Prejudice, discrimination, and there’s very little the state can do to help them because in fact they don’t fit in. They can’t. Think how the Lunarians, the lucky ones, don’t.”
Again she fell silent. He waited. A spacefarer grew good at waiting.
“They form their organizations, their societies— cultures, even, or the germs of cultures,” she resumed presently. “Yes, part of what goes on is illegal, but any victims are usually other metamorphs, and often there are no victims, it’s a matter of helping each other toward a life that suits the species better. Most of the different leaders are trying to work out a … commonalty, a way for all metamorphs to cooperate, openly and lawfully. It isn’t easy, it’s not progressed far, in the long run it may be impossible, but we have to try, don’t we? That’s what I’ve been involved in, on behalf of my people.” He wondered if she was a changeling herself, beneath the mask. What breed? If not, how closely did she identify with one of those races, and which? “It’s led me into odd byways, yes, Fve been initiated into certain secrets, because I needed the information so I could go home and suggest to my people the best courses for them to steer. Don’t ask me too much.”“I have to ask a few things,” he rasped. “You, they, were very quick, very well prepared to react against … official actions. That doesn’t sound like legality to me.”
“I admitted some activities are covert,” she replied. “We, the leaders I’ve dealt with, we hope to phase those out, but meanwhile we’ve got to collaborate with the—you can call them gang lords if you insist, but the fact is that their ordinary, decent followers trust them.” After another stillness: “The gang wars have practically ended. And the outright persecutions and the mob attacks by straight-gene humans. But metamorph history remembers, and tells metamorphs to stay prepared.”
Also, he thought, the maintenance of protections and of a communal structure was a strong moral factor by itself, giving cohesion, hope, meaning to life. Fireball—
Norton sank back. “For favor, I’m wrung dry,” she whispered. “Can we just rest a while?”
Compassion touched him. “Surely.” His own bones seemed to go liquid.
The car drove on, kilometer after kilometer, mostly through darkness and ruin. After a while Kenmuir made himself stop looking at the time.
Norton sat leaned into her corner, eyes closed, maybe asleep. She had drawn the poncho close about her, revealing a shapely frame. Remarkable person, formidable, but he had an illogical sense of an inward vulnerability. Why was she engaged in this unhopeful cause? For the sake of her creatures, whichever they were? Hardly that alone. What had Lilisaire promised her?