"I gathered that impression," Hubbard said.
But why does he sound so unhappy about it? Emrys thought angrily. What's wrong with me? Because he was in love, he could not appreciate the irony of that thought.
VI
Peter Hubbard looked at his old friend with the young face and the young body and the eyes that were unhuman—but less so than before. This was a frightful thing that had been done, and by and by he would feel the full horror of it. Right now he was too numb to care. He felt, as Emrys Shortmire must have felt on coming back to Earth, detached and without interest. But I've felt this way before, he thought; it's because I'm old.
"Were you really satisfied with your bargain, Jan?" he asked, almost casually.
"Not at first," the boy admitted, sinking down on the couch and clasping his hands around his knees. So young, so graceful, and so ... unnatural. "It seemed to me then that the Morethans had given me youth and taken away humanity. Because, once I found I was physically capable, I found I didn't really want the things I had craved so much before."
"So they did trick you?" When all was said and done, Hubbard thought, you could never trust an alien life-form, a foreigner.
"No, no! You still don't understand. The way I see it is that ... certain elements in us may not mean anything to them. They don't know they're there, so they wouldn't realize that anything got lost in ... the process."
"Do you think, Jan," Hubbard asked slowly, "that the way you felt—or didn't feel—might not have anything to do with the Morethans at all? That, for all your young body, you are an old man and feel like an old man?"