Wide-eyed, not breathing, he stared at her. Knife in hand, its point aimed at his belly, she stared back. She was dressed in a man's trousers, torn off at the ankles, and a yellow blouse that might have belonged to her mother, and new-looking shoes she must have found, or killed for, only a week or so ago. Her face was as sunburned and dirty as his. A squirrel chittered over their heads as they stared at each other. Steven noted expertly that she seemed to be carrying no food and had no gun. No one with a gun would carry a drawn knife. She still held the knife ready, though the point had drooped. She moistened her lips. He wondered if she would attack. He obviously didn't have any food either, so maybe she wouldn't. But if she did--well, she was only a little larger than he was; he could probably kill her with her own knife, though he might even get his own knife from the ground before she got to him. But it was a _woman_, he knew ... without knowing exactly what a woman was, or how he knew. The hair was long--but then, some of the men's hair was long too. It was something different--something about the face and body. He hadn't seen many women, and certainly never one as little as this, but he knew that's what it was. A _woman_. Once he'd seen some men kill another man who'd killed a woman for her food. By their angry shouts he knew that killing a woman was different somehow. And he remembered a woman. And a word: mother. A face and a word, a voice and a warmth and a not-sour body smell ... she was dead. He didn't remember who had killed her. Somehow he thought she had been killed _before_ everything changed, _before_ the "bomb" fell; but he couldn't remember very well, and didn't know how she'd been killed or even why people had killed each other in those days.... Not for food, he thought; he could remember having plenty to eat. Another word: cancer. His father had said it about his mother. Maybe somebody had killed her to get that, instead of food. Anyway, somebody had killed her, because she was dead, and people didn't just _die_. Seeing a _woman_, and such a little one ... it had startled him so much he had dropped his knife. But he could still kill her if he had to. She stirred, her eyes wide on his. She moved just an inch or so. Steven crouched, almost too fast to see, and his knife was in his hand, ready from this position to get in under her stab and cut her belly open. She made a strangled sound and shook her head. Steven pulled his swing, without quite knowing why. He struck her knife out of her hand with his blade, and it went spinning into the leaves. He took a step toward her, lips curled back. She retreated two steps, and her back was against a tree trunk. He came up to her and stood with his knife point pressing into her belly just above where the blouse entered the man's pants. She whimpered and shook her head and whimpered again.