"Why do you keep talking about children all the time? After all, it's the adults who run things."
"The children are the adults of the future. It's the way they're brought up that makes these people what they are. You and I—all of us from Terra—we've been brought up on a limited, scientifically regimented, controlled amount of love. These natives have something we'll never have. We've got to work and strive for what comes as naturally to them as breathing."
As she spoke, Kirk suddenly remembered the close-packed faces of Terrans speeding by in the opposite direction on the moving sidewalks at home—tense faces, hard faces, resigned faces, sad faces, timid faces, worried faces. Maybe one in fifty serene and self-confident, maybe one in a hundred vibrantly, joyously alive. Maybe. Probably not that many.
He thought of the faces of the Nemarians.
Jeannette was still talking. "They are what human beings should be," she said slowly. "Somehow they've kept their birthright—the ability to be full of the joy of living whenever they're not in real trouble or sorrow, the ability to be happy just because they're alive. I haven't understood these people because I didn't want to understand them. I didn't want to see that they were better than I am. They're very simple, really; it's we who are complicated and devious."
"Why hasn't anybody ever heard of this place?" Kirk asked.
"It's isolated," she said, "and people don't leave here, once they've seen what's here. They don't write too much, either, because by the time the spaceship arrives again, they understand. They cooperate with the authorities, who are trying to keep this place as much of a secret as possible. Publicize it, and within ten years it would be swarming with wealthy businessmen on vacation and jaded neurotics trying to get away from it all. The Nemarians would be lost in the shuffle."
She was still a moment. "My husband came here to get away from it all. He heard rumors of this place a long way off and traced them. I didn't want to come. I liked cities and night-clubs; I liked being surrounded by amiable, promiscuous men. He dragged me here against my will. Now he's dead, and I'm caught up in his dreams. These people are irresistible; they call out to something basic and deep in you, and you respond to it whether you want to or not. You can't leave this place—unless you have to. Like you will."
Kirk stood up abruptly. "Jeannette, do you mind? I feel terribly confused. A lot has happened to me today. I want to walk alone awhile and think things out."
She nodded, with a sudden look of compassion.