"It's impossible to get out."

"I've got to try."

"What's the use of trying if you know you can't get away? Where can anyone go?"

"There must be people who break away," Kane said. "There have to be."

"There's supposed to be an underground, some secret group of some kind that helps people get out."

"Get out—where? Out of the country?"

"It's pretty much like this everywhere. But there are supposed to be areas where it isn't. Islands somewhere. Hidden places right here in the country. Supposed to be places in the Kentucky Mountains, and in New Mexico, places like that."

"The Moon," Kane said. "That's a place I know of. I've been there."

Her eyes were bright for a moment. "I know. It must have been wonderful. Why on Earth did you ever leave?"

"I didn't know what it was like here. And—my wife died. I wanted and needed another wife. More than a wife really. Someone who could share that kind of a life with me, someone who would be interested in the work too."

She turned quickly back to the paper.

"You might be able to get out of the hotel," she said. "But you would be too conspicuous."

"Because I would be traveling alone?"

"Yes."

"If you came with me, there would be two of us. We wouldn't be conspicuous that way."

He saw the flush move up through her face. "Is that the only reason?"

"You know it isn't."

She knew it. They both knew it and had probably known it for a long time. They had a lot in common, a minority of two.

And then he remembered. She wasn't really there in the Midtown with him. She was in Sunny Hill, wherever that was. They couldn't leave inconspicuously together because they weren't together now, and they couldn't 

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