Shrugging, he stepped outside and she followed him. The dawn was coming up fresh and clear, with dew hanging brightly in the air. It would, Kesley thought, wash away the pollution in the air from last night's party. He tightened his lips nervously. "Which way is the gate?" he asked. "That way. Are you leaving? Why? Don't you like it here?" Impulsively, she tugged on his arm. "Answer me, Dale." He looked wearily down at her. "I don't like it here. This place is poisoned. I want to get away, before I catch whatever all of you have." "I don't understand you." "Naturally not. Look, Lisa, you and your fellow esthetes have been bottled up in here since--since--when? The year two thousand?" "John Harchman came here to found his colony in 2059," she said as if repeating a catechism. "The year doesn't matter. You've been cooped up five hundred years. And what do you have to show for it? Great works of art? No--just drunken parties." "We've produced wonderful things. Colin's done a glorious visomural, and the sensotapes--" "You've produced nothing," Kesley said inexorably. "You create for yourselves--each other, at best. But not for the world outside." "The world outside doesn't want us." "Wrong. We don't understand you. And it's as much your fault as ours." Kesley turned away. "Leave me alone, Lisa. I should never have come here. I want to leave." * * * * * The jagged, violet blades of knifegrass glinted strangely in the morning sun. Kesley waited patiently while his hungry horse grazed. Mutant horse, mutant grass, the cycle held firm. Spindly, six-legged animal nibbling sharp-toothed, man-high grass. The purple blades blended with the blue-green of the Old Kind. There had been no bombs over Kentucky, but the wind had carried the drifting seeds, brought the zygotes of the strange new grass down here to this unruined land. Now, a tough network of roots dug into the turf, and from them sprang the metal-sharp grass the atoms had made. * * * * * Kesley rode south, his mind full of melancholy thoughts. The trail had completely trickled out--if there had been a trail. He was chasing phantoms, will-of-the-wisps. Daveen, for instance. Who was he? A blind courtier who had vanished some four years previously, whose name van Alen had happened to drop and link with Kesley's. What relation did Daveen have to him? He didn't know. What relation did van Alen have, for that matter? But he was searching for Daveen. The search had led to the Colony, but that was a dead end. Daveen had been there, and Daveen was no longer there, and that was all anyone could or would tell him. Then, Narella. A hauntingly lovely girl--but so, for that matter, was the poetess Lisa. Narella was somewhere in Buenos Aires, at Miguel's court. Would he ever see her again? Again, he didn't know.