And was that actually so terrible? Might as well feel pity for bacteria as for these mindless creatures. But then, in New York, there had been that Son who had recalled a female of the masses who had fought to keep her child. And that Son had remembered it as beautiful.
However dim, perhaps not sharper than the anguish of a wobbly tooth, the anguish of the soul was not yet gone from them. And on that anguish he could build.
"This is the shaft," the Son beside him said.
So O'Hara and Nedra and their child ascended once more to the surface above Emporia and went across the multi-hued coiling of the photosynthetrons and again upon that long march into the upland valleys. And there the Son turned back.
"Good-by," O'Hara called to him.
The Son stood silently. His weak eyes focused for a moment, then he shook his head. "But you will be returning," he said. "The Father frees you for a purpose that is known to him. When you have achieved it, he will send us again to take you back to him."
"You do believe that, don't you?" said O'Hara. "You do believe—"
But the Son was gone.
For the next five days O'Hara and Nedra and the child wandered higher into the mountains. And the beauty of growing things, the trees that soared toward the intense blue skies, and the soft thick mosses and grass beneath their feet, and the birds that fluttered suddenly off when they approached, and the frogs and insects that hopped away or crawled from under rocks, the bite of the wind that came whining down the far white slopes ahead, the gaggle of water searching its path through pebbles, the heat of a true sun in the heavens, all these—and freedom from oppressive walls and more oppressive destiny—awakened them slowly from the long timeless stupor of the lowlands. Nor did they know how deeply, if how troubled they had slept.
"I am hungry," said Nedra.