"Yes," she smiled again from her seat above the edge of the paper-cluttered desk. "It's like sodium. And we are not guardians. We do not care whether men live or die but we do ... enjoy ... their being glad about living or dying. I will not leave you till you are sorry." She stood and came near his chair.
Herl could not see that she walked in the air ... she was just nearer. He rose and put out his hands as if to take hers to assure himself that she would stay, but where his hands entered the cloud they disappeared and felt nothing. He withdrew his offered embrace and his hands reappeared.
"Sorry for what?" asked Herl's voice; and Herl's heart quickened and his breathing forced, as he grew afraid to lose her and wild to keep her with him.
"Just sorry."
Regret was like a knife stab. He must lose her: a man couldn't go around rejoicing forever. Anger succeeded regret, and he accused her bitterly, "So that's why you do nothing for the poor Eyefers! Because they're sorry to be that way! When you could save the poor creatures even by picking them out of the air, it offends your sensibilities to save them from a little red tape. Is that kind or just?"
His voice sneered 'kind' and 'just' as his mind pictured 'sympathetic' and 'the best that men ought to receive.' He was angry for himself, for the Eyefers. His anger grew with the hurt to include all humanity betrayed by heartless beauty.
But a flood of intense living greenness washed through the control room, blotting out the walls and lapping against Herl's red tunic above the hip pockets, as if a strange sea rose about him to quench his anger.
He repeated his last words, vaguely, enthralled by the green waves, "Is that kind or just?"
The green waves changed to living blue and he heard her voice like a distant bell. "No."