The priest looked helplessly at Norris.
"No!" she said. "And you can't do it to Peony either!"
"Perhaps I had better go," Paulson said to his host.
Norris sighed. "Maybe you better, Padre. You found out what you wanted to know."
Anne stalked angrily out of the room, her dark hair swishing like a battle-pennant with each step. When the priest was gone, Norris picked up the child and held her in his lap. She was shivering with fright, as if she understood what had been said. Love them in the parlor, he thought, and kill them in the kennels.
"Can I go home? Doesn't Daddy want me any more?"
"Sure he does, baby. You just be good and everything'll be all right."
Norris felt a bad taste in his mouth as he laid her sleeping body on the sofa half an hour later. Everything was all wrong and it promised to remain that way. He couldn't give her back to O'Reilley, because she would be caught again when the auditor came to microfilm the records. And he certainly couldn't keep her himself—not with other Bio-agents wandering in and out every few days. She could not be concealed in a world where there were no longer any sparsely populated regions. There was nothing to do but obey the law and turn her over to Franklin's lab.
He closed his eyes and shuddered. If he did that, he could do anything—stomach anything—adapt to any vicious demands society made of him. If he sent the child away to die, he would know that he had attained an "objective" outlook. And what more could he want from life than adaptation and objectivity?