Her fists clenched. “I don’t want to think like a woman. I am a watchman. That is my duty and my glory — and I do not wish to be anything else.” The little spark of anger burned out as quickly as it had come. “Please let me go back to my work. Aren’t there enough women among the valley people to make you happy? I know you think that I am not smart, that none of us are smart, but that is the way we are. Can’t you leave us alone to do what we must do?”

Chimal looked at her, comprehending for the first time.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I have been trying to make you something you are not and preventing you from being something that you want to be. Because I changed I keep feeling that everyone else should want to change too. But what I am has been planned by the Great Designer just as well as what you are. With me, yes, desire to change and understand is the most important thing possible. I hold onto that, no matter what. It is as important to me, and as satisfying, as that thing — what was it — your mortification used to be you.”

“As it is to me,” she called out, standing and, in a moment of righteous strength opening her clothing to turn out the gray edge of fabric to him that circled her body. “I do penance for both of us.”

“Yes, you do that,” he said as she closed her clothing, trembling again at her audacity, and hurried out.

“We should all do penance for the thousands who died over the years to get us here. At least there is finally an end to all that.”

Chimal looked at the rows of empty beds and bassinets, waiting, and realized not for the first time how completely alone he was. Well, that he could get used to, and it was not very different from the loneliness that he had always known. And they would be coming along soon, the children.

Within a year there would be babies, and a few years later they would be talking. Chimal felt a sudden identification with those unborn children. He knew how they would look around at the world, wondering. He knew the eager questions that would be on their lips.

And this time there would be answers to those questions. The empty years of his childhood would never be repeated. The machines would answer their questions and so would he.

At that thought he smiled, peopling the empty room with the eager-eyed children of his mind. Yes, the children.

Patience, Chimal, in a few short years you will never be alone again.