go?"

Which way? The little stream scrambled over its bright rocks, flashing the sunlight like teeth laughing.

Which way? The servants, the pets, the gladiatorial contests. The old goddesses. Were we becoming weary with time? Juba wondered. What sense did it make? What future did it mold?

The Man got up and came to put his arms around Juba, crossing his arms over her chest and putting his hands on her shoulders. He leaned down until she could feel his breath on the back of her neck.

Then it was that Juba could feel from his strength that everything he said must be right, because he said it, and that he was the name for all those things inside her which had no name.

"I cannot bring you in for the Ceremonies," Juba said. "Whatever you are and whatever I am—these futures must lie with the goddesses. But sacrifice you I cannot." She turned in his arms. "Go," she said. "And quickly."

He kissed her. "I will not go," he said, and she wanted very much for him to stay, but not for the Ceremonies.

"I was to draw you into the gladiatorial contests," she said, "with rich promises. But I cannot. For those who die it is bad. But for those who live it is worse."

"Well, now you have told me and I will not be drawn," he said with that grin. "Who said women are not barbarous? It is up to you," he went on, "to free your world from its deadly isolation."

He kissed her by the vein in her neck, the heavy one, where the blood beats through. And there flashed through her head the instructions for Seduction, Step II, and she wondered that other women had been able to remember printed pages when this happened.

"You must go," Juba said, holding him so that he would not. "What do you want me to do?"

He lost his fingers in her hair, "I like blondes," he said. "And I like a slender waist." There was a tension in the muscles of his lower lip and his eyes seemed to lengthen, and by this Juba knew what he felt at that moment.

But he said, "I want you to switch off your planetary directional diverter. Even if you had let me radio in the coordinates I had they would have been wrong, wouldn't they?"

"Yes," Juba said. "But the directional diverter diverts only in certain patterns, so that it might be possible to figure out...."

"I know. Maybe and maybe not. I want you to turn it off long enough for me to get up beyond your whole system and have my instruments take a fix on your orbit. Then we can planet in blind, if necessary, to set up our station."

"But as soon as you take off," Juba said, wondering if she would really do such a thing or if she would suddenly wake as from a dream and find her wits again, "they'll be on me with their questions. And what could I say to them?"

"You won't have to say anything to them," the Man said. "You'll be on the ship with me."

"With you!" The thought went all through Juba, as ice water does sometimes, and bubbled up into her ears. "With you." When she looked at him she really couldn't see what he looked like any more. Only a sort of shine. "You mean you'll take me away with you?"

"Do you think I could leave you?" he asked, all shiny. "Smash the thing," he said. "They'll repair it, but by that time it'll be too late."

She sat down on the moss, and he was over her, his face urgent, as for Step III. But he said, "Go ahead. Go now. And hurry."

She got up hastily, planning in her mind how she would arrange her face, so as to appear calm if anyone should see her and what excuses she would make if there were anyone about the Machine House. They had no guards and kept no watches, for why should they?

It was at the market place, near the fish stalls, that she met her mother.

The mother tugged at Juba's robe as she went by. "It is not easy for you, is it?" she asked, low, so that no one could hear.

"No," the girl said. "It is not easy." Was it not written all over her? Was it not on her breath and shaken out of her