Van Alen slipped the electrostimulator into his hand once again and let the minute voltage caress his nerves. "So?" he said quizzically.
"I still feel the force-screen ought to come down."
Van Alen shook his head frowningly. "You're not the green boy you were when you left, you know. You've seen the courts of the Dukes; you've worked on a farm. You know what it is to flee for your life."
"And I've seen Mutie City and the Colony and Wiener," Kesley added. "I've really been around."
"And?"
"And I think the world's rotten at the core! I think you can save it—if you'll only lift your damned Barrier and give what you have here to the rest of the world!"
Pain filtered over van Alen's face. He stared sadly at Kesley for a moment, with the timeless expression in his eyes that Kesley knew he, himself, would one day acquire. "You still don't understand," van Alen said huskily, "why that Barrier is up."
"No. I don't."
"You've dealt with three Immortals: Winslow, Miguel, me. What do we have in common?" van Alen demanded suddenly.
Startled, Kesley stopped to think of their common characteristics. Nothing in common, he nearly answered. Then he saw he was wrong.