"Mag says I must have a man," Lisa said. Her voice was tight. He couldn't tell if she was crying because he couldn't bear to look at her. He could only stare out over the canyon and listen and wait.
"She says if it isn't you I'll have to find someone else, later on, but she says it ought to be you. Because they're dangerous, and besides, if it's you our children will be sure to be like us."
"What?" He swung around, startled. "Do you mean that if one parent were normal the child might be too?"
"Yes," she said. "It might. They say that's happened. Sometimes. No one knows why we're born. No one knows why some are one way and some another."
"Lisa...." He stopped.
"I know. You don't want me. I've known that all the time."
"It isn't just that."
He tried to find the words to express what he felt, but anything he might say would be cold and cruel and not quite true. He felt the contentment drain out of him, and he felt annoyed, because he didn't want to have to think about her problem, or about anything.
"Why do they want you to have a child?" he said roughly. "Why do they want our kind to go on, living here like animals, or taken to the valleys and separated from each other and put into institutions until we die? Why don't they admit that we've lost, that the normals own the Earth? Why don't they stop breeding and let us die?"
"Your parents were normal, Eric. If all of us died, others would be born, someday."