Assignment's End Part 5

_It's over_, Janice Wynn's voice said gently. _Do you remember me now, Filrinn?_

_Janeen_, he said. He stood up slowly.

Her green eyes stirred with an emotion that matched his own. It was incredible that he could ever have forgotten--no matter how thoroughly he had absorbed the protective conditioning--the unity between himself and Janeen.

_I remember_, he said. The wonder of it still dazed him. _It's good to be myself again._

She sighed. _It's good to know why they sent me, instead of one of the others, to bring you back. You remember that?_

"I remember," he said aloud, as if he needed to say the words to make it true. "We were together before this a.s.signment for two hundred of these people's years. We'll be together again for hundreds more, now that we're free to go--for when will we ever find another world that needs attention as this one needed it?"

He saw the Earthgirl then, curled limply on the cabin's sofa.

Her stillness left him alarmed, surprised and ashamed that he should so readily have forgotten an obligation.

Her dishevelment, and the heavy bra.s.s fireplace poker on the rug beside the couch, told him the story at once.

_You came just in time, Janeen. Poor Kitty! You didn't hurt her?_

Janeen shook her head. _Of course not, Filrinn. I caught her mind before the shock of your change could derange it and--conditioned her. She'll sleep until we've gone, and tomorrow Philip Alcorn will be no more than a pale memory._

_Either my conditioning still lingers or my empathetic index is too high ... I'd like her to know the truth about us, Janeen, before we go._

He knelt beside the couch and smoothed the fair, tousled hair back from the Earthgirl's quiet face.

"I'm sorry it had to be like this, Kitty," he said. He spoke aloud, but his mind touched hers below the level of consciousness. He felt the slow, bewildered surge of response. "It'll help you to forget, perhaps, if you know that we came here from a star system you'll never hear of in your lifetime, to study your people and to see what we could do to help them.

"Alike in form, we are so far apart in nature that you could not have borne our real presence, so we buried our real selves under a mask of conditioning as deeply as we buried our s.h.i.+p under the ice of your planet's pole. After ten years of study, our conditioning was to lift slowly, so that we would realize who and what we were. But you are more like us than we had thought, and with some of us, the conditioning was too strong to break.

"It may help to know that your likeness to us will bring our people together again when the time is right, that your children's children may meet us on equal terms."

He lifted her from the couch and carried her to her 'copter. He set the machine's controls to automatic and stepped back.

"Good-by, Kitty," he said.

Janeen was waiting for him in the cabin.

_The auxiliary shuttle is on its way to pick us up, Filrinn. We'll be gone within the hour._

They stood together, linking their minds, sharing an ecstasy in the mes.h.i.+ng of ident.i.ties that was greater than any physical fulfillment.

_But we have that, too_, Janeen said for his ears alone. And then, to the calm, smiling faces that lingered in the background of their mingled consciousness: _Leave us._

The faces withdrew and left them--like children just grown to awareness of their own marvelous gifts--alone.