She clenched her hands and trembled in the dark, and felt the quickening beat of the things that made her run.
In the dark, the suffocating dark now that she knew what it could mean to really be alive and not one of the walking dead. In the dark, alone, dreaming of Kelsey, dreaming of human heart touching human heart, of the lips of his kiss, of his arms around her neck; longing for the face of Kelsey next to her own in darkness lit by love, to take his mouth, to cover his body with kisses, to clasp his neck in her hands—
And there alone where she had dreamed a thousand dreams, she knew she could no longer merely dream. Dreams were not enough.
Not enough! Not enough!
A silent scream shrieked inside the narrow closet and cut the dark to tatters, and she ran out, out into the back yard of Kelsey's house and stood under the open sky.
She had the order blank, the paper, in her hand. A thing stolen, the result of an act no robot could be guilty of because no robot had a soul.
But I have a soul. There is a point at which the soul is sick. At this point one awakens—awakens or dies.
Clutching the paper she had stolen from her love, she ran toward the Commutor jet station. Nowhere was there a light; not even from the city ten miles from the housing project in which Kelsey lived. But Alice had no thought whatever of an air-raid. There were worse darknesses than a blackout. There were worse ways to die than under a rain of white fire bombs.
The fear of the bombs was the fear of never having lived, not a fear of dying.