"Exactly," said Lao.
They walked back to the settlement in silence. Both girls had a great deal to ponder over. When they got there Lynne settled down to listen to some musicrolls in the recreation building and Lao left to tend to her various executive functions.
Lynne's new life on Mars passed without notable incident for another week, Earth-time. She was beginning to adjust to days and nights almost twice as long as those of her home planet, to the small cool sun, to the use of her oxyrespirator whenever her lungs felt empty.
She was even beginning to enjoy the give-and-take of the neo-pioneer society of Barkutburg. Yet loneliness continued to gnaw at her, loneliness for the twin she had known such a short time, loneliness for Rolf, at whose activities she could only guess. And some of her guesses were in lurid vidarcolor.
Late one afternoon, in the recreation building, the musicroll was playing a fine concerto for theraharp by Liston-Lutz, the most important human composer yet to emerge on Mars. Back on Earth his music had seemed to Lynne to be both glaringly dissonant and a trifle decadent. Here on Mars she understood it. He was writing of the red planet itself, of a world that had all but died and was now having its life renewed through lusty Earth-pioneers.
"Like it?" one of the engineers enjoying an off-shift rest asked Lynne over a colafizz globe.
"Very much. It—fits," said Lynne. She was still smiling at him when the headache came back—with a sharpness and depth of discomfort she had never felt on Earth. For a full minute or two she thought she was going to be physically sick from the pain.
She managed to get up and move toward her quarters before anyone noticed she was feeling badly. It would never do to have them worried about her—after all, they had enough to worry about. Besides, she knew what was the matter. Revere was in New Samarkand and they were doing something to him, something that might easily either kill him or drive him permanently insane.
VII