"Your life, Fand. Your life for mine, and Jill's, and the others here who can still be saved. Destroy the prisms, stop this madness, and you can live to be as old and crazy as your mother."
There was no fear in her. Unbending pride, and hatred, but no fear. She laughed.
He put his hand on her throat, his fingers reaching iron-strong around her neck. "Slim," he said. "Soft, and tender. It would snap so easily."
"Break it, then. Shanga will go on without me. Kor Hal will take over. And you, Burk Winters—you can't escape." Her teeth showed white in a taunting smile. "You'll run with the beasts. No man can break free from Shanga."
Winters nodded. "I know that," he said quietly. "Therefore I must destroy Shanga before it destroys me."
She looked at him, naked and unarmed, crouching in the brush. Once more, she laughed.
He shrugged. "Perhaps it is impossible. I won't know that until it's too late, anyway. It isn't really me I'm worried about, Fand. I could be perfectly happy running on all fours through your garden. Probably I would be perfectly happy hissing and wallowing in the lake. Now the idea sickens me, but after a touch of Shanga it would be all right. No. It isn't me that matters, nor even Jill."
"What, then?"
"Earth has its pride, too," he told her gravely. "It's a younger and cruder pride than yours. It can become pretty ruthless and obnoxious at times, I'll admit. But on the whole, Earth is a good planet, and her people are good people, and she's done more to advance the Solar System than all the other worlds put together. As an Earthman, I don't like to see my world disgraced."
He glanced up and around the amphitheatre. "I think," he went on, "that Earth and Mars can learn a lot from each other, if the fanatics on both sides will stop making trouble. You're the worst one I've ever heard of, Fand. You go even beyond fanaticism." He looked at her speculatively. "I think you're as mad right now as your mother."