The very word "war" roused that red spark of self-preservation. It was harder, Dodd had found, to live with hope than to live without it: it was always possible to become resigned to a given state of affairs—but not if you kept thinking matters would improve. So he stamped on the spark, kept it down, ignored it. You had to accept things, and go on from there.
It was too bad Norma didn't know that.
He'd tried to tell her, of course. They'd even been talking, over in Building One, on the very night of the near-escape. He'd explained it all very clearly and lucidly, without passion (since he had cut himself off from hope he found he had very few passions of any kind left, and that made it easy); but she hadn't been convinced.
"As long as there's a fighting chance to live, I want to live," she'd said. "As long as there's any chance at all—the same as you."
"I know what I want," he told her grimly.
"What?" she asked, and smiled. "Do you like what you're doing? Do you like what I'm doing—what the whole arrangement is here?"
He shrugged. "You know I don't."
"Then get out of it," she said, still smiling. "You can, you know. It's easy. All you have to do is stop living—just like that! No more trouble."
"Don't be sil—"
"It can be done," she went on flatly. "There are hundreds of ways." Then the smile again. "But you'd rather live, Johnny. You'd rather live, even this way, being a slaver, than put an end to it and to yourself."