"It's quite safe," Hendley said. "They've been letting people come out for years now, even here. And the Freeman Camps are all exposed like this."

"I know," she said. "It isn't that."

Her smile was apologetic. Her face was still squinting, eyes almost closed, lips drawn back in a bow, and the expression was youthfully innocent and appealing. A strange complex of emotions—compassion, tenderness, delight—engulfed him. Where her mouth was bowed, as if she were about to fling an arrow of words against the white target in the sky, he kissed her. Her lips were soft and dry. A tremor communicated itself from her spine to his hand.

Suddenly she tore her lips away and fell against him, her face turned down, pressing against his chest. "Oh, Hendley!" she cried. "How I've wanted you to do that!"

He held her tightly, a little dazed by the passion behind her words, so unlike the unemotional, almost indifferent acceptance of his Assigned....

He broke off the thought. He didn't want reality, past or future, to intrude on them. It was as if, emerging from the tunnel into the open sunlight, they had removed themselves from the real world, shutting it behind them with an act as simple as closing a door. The Organization existed behind the thick concrete walls, in the network of underground streets and moving walks—but only there. Not outside. Not in the sun.

Except for the Freemen, he thought unexpectedly.

He put one hand to the girl's hair, feeling its softness bristle at the nape of her neck where it was cut short, then turn soft as water when his fingers passed through the longer curls.

His hand stopped. "Your head is hot," he said. "We'd better get out of the sun."

"I'm all right."

"No. Neither of us is used to this much sun. It'll be shady on the other side."

He led her by the hand, keeping within arm's reach of the curving wall. Here and there they passed steel doors set flush with the smooth concrete, and once a slab of steel in the ground about ten feet from the wall, similar to the one from which they had emerged. He thanked the luck which had made him remember these exits and how to find them.

They reached shade, sharp and definite as black ink on white paper, painting the shape of the building long and 

 Prev. P 19/165 next