Eric saw that
it was an old, old woman. She couldn't straighten very far. She was too
old, bent and twisted and brittle, feebler looking than anyone Eric had
ever seen before. She hobbled toward him slowly, teetering from side to
side as she walked, her hands held out in front of her, her eyes on the
ground.

"What is it, Mag?" Her voice was as twisted as her body.

"A boy. Valley boy. Just the age for our Lisa, too."

Eric felt his face redden and he opened his mouth to protest, to say
something, anything, but Mag went right on talking, ignoring him.

"The boy came in an aircar. I thought he was one of the normals--but
he's not. Hasn't their ways. Good looking boy, too."

"Is he?" Nell had reached them. She stopped and looked up, right into
Eric's face, and for the first time he realized that she was blind. Her
eyes were milky white, without pupils, without irises. Against the brown
leather of her skin they looked moist and dead.

"Speak, boy," she croaked. "Let me hear your voice."

"Hello," Eric said, feeling utterly foolish and utterly confused. "I'm
Eric."

"Eric...." Nell reached out, touched his arm with her hand, ran her
fingers up over his shoulders, over his chest.

"It's been a long time since I've heard a man's voice," she said. "Not
since Mag here was a little girl."

"Have you been--here--all that time?" Eric asked, looking around him at
the hut, and the meat hanging to dry, covered with flies, and the
leather water bags, and the mounds of refuse, the huge, heaped mounds
that he couldn't stop smelling.

"Yes," Nell said. "I've been here longer than I want to remember, boy.
We came here from the other mountains when Mag was only a baby."

* * * * *

They walked toward the hut, and as they neared it he smelled a new
smell, that of stale smoke and stale sweat overlying the general odor of
decay.

"Let's talk out here," he said, not wanting to go inside.

They sat down on the hard earth and the two women turned their faces
toward him, Mag watching him intently, Nell listening, her head cocked
to one side like an old crippled bird's.

"I always thought I was the only one like me," Eric said. "The people
don't know of any others. They don't know you exist. They wouldn't
believe it."

"That's the way we want it," Mag said. "That's the only way it can be."

Nell nodded. "I was a girl in the other hills," she said, nodding toward
the west, toward the museum. "Th