She turned and plunged outside, into the fresh, cleansing night air. It braced her, cleared her head, returned to her some measure of control.
A tangle of honeysuckle vines on the next terrace wall up moved softly. Slowly, gently, they became another manifestation, of Coral this time, with blossoms for the pupils of her eyes. But she spoke with Tory's voice.
"You would not enjoy godhood," he said, "but the being you become will."
"Give me time to think!" she cried. She wheeled and strode rapidly away, out of the residential cluster, through a scattering of boulders, and into a dark meadow.
There was a quiet kind of peace here, and Elin wrapped it about her.
She needed that peace, for she had to decide between her humanity and Tory. It should have been an easy choice, but-the pain of being without.
Elin stared up at the earth; it was a world full of pain. If she could reach out and shake all the human misery loose, it would flood all of creation, extinguishing the stars and poisoning the space between.
There was, if not comfort, then a kind of cold perspective in that, in realizing that she was not alone, that she was merely another member of the commonality of pain. It was the heritage of her race. And yet-somehow-people kept on going.
If they could do it, so could she.
Some slight noise made her look back at the boulder field. Tory's face was appearing on each of the stones, every face slightly different, so that he gazed upon her with a dozen expressions of love. Elin shivered at how alien he had become. "Your need is greater than your fear," he said, the words bouncing back and forth between faces. "No matter what you think now, by morning you will be part of us."
Elin did not reply immediately. There was something in her hand--Tory's terminal. It was small and weighed hardly at all. She had brought it along without thinking.
A small, bleak cry came from overhead, then several others. Nighthawks were feeding on insects near the dome roof. They were too far, too fast, and too dark to be visible from here.
"The price is too high," she said at last. "Can you understand that? I won't give up my humanity for you."
She hefted the terminal in her hand, then threw it as far and as hard as she could. She did not hear it fall.
Elin turned and walked away. Behind her, the rocks smiled knowingly.