"Poor Pia," Cole said softly. "These _years_ of grief and fear...." "They'll be ended come Hoggy Darn again, Morwenna grant. Don't you grieve her with your death too, lad. Stay close to the house, in the house." Bidgrass rose and gulped the last of his coffee standing. "I must go, I'm late," he said, more cheerfully than Cole had ever heard his voice. "I have a conference with General Arscoate, our military leader, whom you'll meet soon." He went out. Cole went out too, thoughts wrestling with feelings, looking for Pia. * * * * * In the days that followed Cole took his meals with the family except when there were guests not in Bidgrass' confidence. The doors into the main house remained unlocked and he saw much of Pia, but she seemed unexpectedly elusive and remote. Cole, busy with his report to Belconti University, had little time to wonder about it. He faked statistics wholesale and cited dozens of nonexistent New Cornish authorities. To his real data indicating critical biomass he added imaginary values for the parameters of climate, range, longevity, fertility period and Ruhan indices to get an estimated figure. Then he faked field census reports going back fifty years, and drew a curve dipping below critical ten years before his arrival. He made the latest field census show new biomass forty-two percent below critical and juggled figures to make the curve extrapolate to zero in twelve more years. It pained him in his heart to leave out the curious inverse reproduction data. But it was a masterpiece of deception that should put the seal on his doctorate, and because it reported the extinction of a planetary dominant, he knew it would make the journals and the general news all through the sector. The night he finished it, working late in the library, Pia brought him milk and cookies and sat with him as he explained what he had done. "It's right," he defended himself to her against his scholar's conscience. "Humans on New Cornwall are a threatened species too. The secret must be hidden forever." "Yes," she agreed soberly. "I think if all the sector knew, the ex-wilds would literally die of shame and rage. Being wild is not so bad, but--that other!" She shuddered under her gray dress. "Pia, sometimes I feel you're still avoiding me. Surely now it's all right and genuine between us." She smiled sadly. "I'll bring you trouble, with Morgan. Father came to New Cornwall because of me." "But I didn't. I've been thinking I may _stay_, partly because of you. You've been afraid so long it's habitual." "Strangely, Flinter, I don't feel it as fear any more. It's like bowing with sadness, my strength to run is gone. My old dreams--Morgan coming for me--I have them every night now." "Morgan! Always Morgan!" She shook her head and smiled faintly. "He has a dark, poetic power. He is what he is, just like the stompers. I feel ... not hate, not even fear ... a kind of _dread_."