She made no answer to Ashby, but lay her head on Jorden's shoulder while her sobbing subsided. How did it happen? she asked herself. It wasn't anything she had wanted. It had just happened. It had happened that first day when he came in from the field at the beginning of the experiment with all of the planted background that made him think he was meeting Bonnie for the thousandth time instead of the first.
She was supposed to be an actress and receive his husbandly kiss with all the skilled mimicry that made her so valuable to the lab. But it hadn't been like that. She had played sister, mother, daughter, wife—a hundred roles to as many other tested applicants. For the first time she saw one as a human being instead of a sociological specimen. That's the way it was when she met Mark Jorden.
There was no answer to it, she thought bitterly as she rested her face against his shoulder. Ashby was right—just a few more hours and it would all be over. All Jorden's feeling for her as his wife was induced by the postulates of the test, just as were his feelings for Roddy. His subjective reactions were real enough, but they would vanish when their stimulus was removed with the test postulates. He would look upon the restored Roddy as just another little boy—and upon Bonnie, the Doctor in Sociology, as just another misemployed female.
She raised her head and dried her eyes as she sensed that the service was ending. Actually, Ashby was right, of course. They had to go on, and the sooner it came to an end the better it would be for her. She would submit to alteration of her own personal data after the test, she thought. She would let them erase all feelings and sentiments she held for Mark Jorden, and then she would be as good as new. After all, if a sociologist couldn't handle his own reactions in a situation of this kind he wasn't of much value in his profession!
The sun was hot as they returned from the little burial ground near the church. There were quite a number of other graves besides Roddy's, but his was the loneliest, Jorden thought. He had never forgiven them for robbing him of his home and the only world in which he could live.
He felt the growing coldness of Bonnie as they came up to their shabby cabin that had once looked so brave to him. Serrengia had cost him Bonnie, too. Even before Roddy. She had remained only because it was her duty.
He took her hand as she put a foot on the doorstep. "Bonnie—"
She looked at him bitterly, her eyes searching his face as if to find something of the quality that once drew her to him. "Don't try to say it, Mark—there's nothing left to say."