Brendan nodded. "Yes. But we're running it narrow. Very narrow. This place would never hold up through another generation."
"What difference does it make? We've beaten them. Generation by generation, we've changed to meet them, while all they've done is learn a little. We've bred back, and mutated, and trained. We've got a science of genetics, we've got controlled radioactivity, gene selection, chromosome manipulation—all they've got is hate."
"Yes. And listen to it."
Grinding through the dome, the gnaw and chip came to them clearly.
They began to eat again, after one long moment.
Then she asked: "Is Donel all right?"
He looked up sharply. They had had this out a long time ago. "He's all right as far as I know." He was responsible for all of the children in the nursery, not just one in particular. He could not afford to get into the habit of discussing one any more than another. He could not afford to get into the habit of discussing any of them at all.
"You don't care about him, either, do you?" she said. "Or have you got some complicated excuse for that, too?"
He shook his head. "It's not complicated." He listened to the sound coming through the dome.
She looked it him with tears brimming in her eyes. He thought for an instant of the tragedy inherent in the fact that they all of them knew how ugly they were—and that the tragedy did not exist, because somehow love did not know—and he was full of this thought when she said, like someone dying suddenly. "Why? Why, Sean?"