He released her. “I’d want to,” he said. “I’d want some land, some cattle that were mine and couldn’t be taken away. Something to love and take pride in.” He turned her so that he could see her eyes by the light from the sky. “You don’t know what I’m talking about, even yet, do you?” he said. Barie shook her head. “I don’t understand you, Rick. Sometimes you frighten me with your talk that I can’t make any sense out of. Why should you want to _own_ something? It already belongs to you. You work the land. You turn in its production. You make your living here.” “Except that now I have to go away and never come back again.” “It makes no difference!” Barie cried. “Wherever you go you’ll have something to do, something to produce, something that will get you your living. If the Machine says you belong in another place, paired to a certain Mech, then that’s right. There’s no argument with it. The Machine can think better than any man ever could! You know that’s so.” He regarded her for a long moment. Then swiftly he took her into his arms and pressed his mouth hard against hers. She clung to him, answering his yearning. But even in the midst of her embrace he felt a coldness somewhere that was like a little stab of terror in his mind. He raised his face from hers. “Does the Machine know how to think about love?” he said softly. “It must.” Barie shrugged and straightened in his arms. “It says a certain Mech girl is more right for your arms than I am.” “And don’t you _hate_ it for saying that?” “Hate it for knowing more than our poor, stupid brains do? Hate it for being right? Would it make sense if you and I went ahead and made a dreadful mistake that would bring us misery all our lives?” “Barie, do you really believe that? In your heart--?” “I think I almost hate _you_ when you pretend to be so blind,” Barie said. “You know it’s true as well as I do.” “Barie--Barie--has it all been so empty? Has it all been meaningless--since that day when I was nine and showed you what land and cattle could really mean to a man?” He had to turn away to keep her from sensing the sudden, quick sob that welled up from the depths of him. And then she came to him and stroked his long hair with her soft fingers. “Of course it has not been meaningless and empty,” she said. “It’s been wonderful. We’ve been happy. Our childhood has been sweeter because of each other. And now it is time to grow up. Do you want childhood to last forever, Rick?” He stood looking down at her face--at her long black hair teasing about her shoulders in the soft night wind and her wide dark eyes so full of trust for the world to which they were born that she would not listen even to her own heart. It added to the smouldering, uncertain hate in his own heart against that same world. “Is it childishness that we love each other?” he demanded almost roughly.