e urge
to kill.

To embrace, to possess, to glut lust on, yes even briefly to love,
briefly to shelter in--that was good, that was a relief and release to
be treasured.

But it couldn't last. You could draw it out, prop it up perhaps for a
few days, for a month even (though sometimes not for a single
night)--you might even start to talk to each other a little, after a
while--but it could never last. The glands always tire, if nothing else.

Murder was the only _final_ solution, the only _permanent_ release.
Only us Deathlanders know how good it feels. But then after the kill the
loneliness would come back, redoubled, and after a while I'd meet
another hateful human ...

_Our_ problem of the two urges. As I watched this girl slogging along
parallel to me, as I kept constant watch on her of course, I wondered
how _she_ was feeling the two urges. Was she attracted to the ridgy
scars on my cheeks half revealed by my scarf?--to me they have a
pleasing symmetry. Was she wondering how my head and face looked without
the black felt skullcap low-visored over my eyes? Or was she thinking
mostly of that hook swinging into my throat under the chin and dragging
me down?

I couldn't tell. She looked as poker-faced as I was trying to.

* * * * *

For that matter, I asked myself, how was _I_ feeling the two urges?--how
was I feeling them as I watched this girl with the blue eyes and the
jaunty scar and the arrogantly thinned lips that asked to be smashed,
and the slender throat?--and I realized that there was no way to
describe that, not even to myself. I could only feel the two urges grow
in me, side by side, like monstrous twins, until they would simply be
too big for my taut body and one of them would have to get out fast.

I don't know which one of us started to slow down first, it happened so
gradually, but the dust puffs that rise from the ground of the
Deathlands under even the lightest treading became smaller and smaller
around our steps and finally vanished altogether, and we were standing
still. Only then did I notice the obvious physical trigger for our
stopping. An old freeway ran at right angles across our path. The
shoulder by which we'd approached it was sharply eroded, so that the
pavement, which even had a shallow cave eroded under it, was a good
three feet above the level of our path, forming a low wall. From where
I'd stopped I could almost reach out and touch the rough-edged