And again, he knew, she was right. He felt very tired and empty, the way he'd felt after Schiemann and Balas had died, as if nothing mattered any more. He didn't argue with her.
"What would you do if you left me, Lyddy?" he asked gently.
"I can always—" she swallowed—"go back to my old job, I guess."
Alard gave an exclamation of horror, and Mattern agreed in his mind that that solution would never do. Beyond a doubt, she was his responsibility. And so was Alard. Why had he ever longed for a family?
And then an outside mind joined in with his and he knew what to do.
"Alard," he said, "before, I offered to do something for you. Now I'm not going to do anything for you, not a damn thing."
Alard drew himself erect. "I wouldn't expect you to, see? Even if you wanted to, I wouldn't take—"
"I want you to do something for me," Mattern cut in.
Alard paled, then flushed with anger. "If this is some half-baked way of thinking you can make up for things without me feeling—"