There was something odd in his face, and I wondered at it. Could he--a Hastur--be jealous of Kyla? Jealous of _me_? It had never occurred to me that he might be somehow attracted to Kyla. I tried to pass it off lightly: "Kyla might divert me." Regis said without emphasis, "Yet she brought Dr. Allison back once before." Then, surprisingly, he laughed. "Or maybe you're right. Maybe Kyla will--scare away Dr. Allison if he shows up." * * * * * The coals of the dying fire laid strange tints of color on Kyla's face and shoulders and the wispy waves of her dark hair. Now that we were alone, I felt constrained. "Can't you sleep, Jason?" I shook my head. "Better sleep while you can." I felt that this night of all nights I dared not close my eyes or when I woke I would have vanished into the Jay Allison I hated. For a moment I saw the room with his eyes; to him it would not seem cosy and clean, but--habituated to white sterile tile, Terran rooms and corridors--dirty and unsanitary as any beast's den. Kyla said broodingly, "You're a strange man, Jason. What sort of man are you--in Terra's world?" I laughed, but there was no mirth in it. Suddenly I had to tell her the whole truth: "Kyla, the man you know as me doesn't exist. I was created for this one specific task. Once it's finished, so am I." She started, her eyes widening. "I've heard tales of--of the Terrans and their sciences--that they make men who aren't real, men of metal--not bone and flesh--" Before the dawning of that naive horror I quickly held out my bandaged hand, took her fingers in mine and ran them over it. "Is this metal? No, no, Kyla. But the man you know as Jason--I won't be him, I'll be someone different--" How could I explain a subsidiary personality to Kyla, when I didn't understand it myself? She kept my fingers in hers softly and said, "I saw--someone else--looking from your eyes at me once. A ghost." I shook my head savagely. "To the Terrans, I'm the ghost!" "Poor ghost," she whispered. Her pity stung. I didn't want it. "What I don't remember I can't regret. Probably I won't even remember you." But I lied. I knew that although I forgot everything else, unregretting because unremembered, I could not bear to lose this girl, that my ghost would walk restless forever if I forgot her. I looked across the fire at Kyla, cross-legged in the faint light--only a few coals in the brazier. She had removed her sexless outer clothing, and wore some clinging garment, as simple as a child's smock and curiously appealing. There was still a little ridge of bandage visible beneath it and a random memory, not mine, remarked in the back corners of my brain that with the cut improperly sutured there would be a visible scar. _Visible to whom?_ She reached out an appealing hand. "Jason! Jason--?" * * * * *