Ewen Ross hesitated over the genetic charts and looked up at Judith Lovat. "Believe me, Judy. I'm not trying to make trouble for you, but it's going to make our records a lot simpler. Who was the father?"

"You didn't believe me when I told you before," Judy said flatly, "so if you know the answer better than I do, say whatever you like."

"I hardly know how to answer you," Ewen said. "I don't remember being with you, but if you say I was--"

She shook her head stubbornly, and he sighed. "The same story of an alien. Can't you see how fantastic that is? How completely unbelievable? Are you trying to postulate that the aborigines of this world are human enough to crossbreed with our women?" He hesitated. "You aren't by any chance being funny, Judy?"

"I'm not postulating anything, Ewen. I'm not a geneticist, I'm simply an expert in dietetics. I'm simply telling you what happened."

"During a time when you were insane. Two times."

Heather touched his arm gently. "Ewen," she said, "Judy's not lying. She's telling the truth--or what she believes to be the truth. Take it easy."

"But damn it, her beliefs aren't evidence." Ewen sighed and shrugged. "All right, Judy, have it your way. But it must have been MacLeod--or Zabal. Or me. Whatever you think you remember, it must have been."

"If you say so, of course it must have been," Judy said, quietly stood up and walked away, knowing without needing to look that what Ewen had written down was father unknown; possible: MacLeod, Lewi; Zabal, Marco; Ross, Ewen.

Heather said quietly behind the closing door, "Darling, you were a little rough on her."

"I happen not to think we have room for fantasy on a world as rough as this. Damn it, Heather, I was trained to save life at all costs--all costs. And I've already had to see people die… I've let them die--when we're sane, we've got to be supersane to compensate!" the young doctor said wildly.

Heather thought about that for a minute and finally said, "Ewen, how do you judge? Maybe what seems sanity on Earth might be foolishness here. For instance, you know the Chief is training groups of the women for prenatal care and midwifery--in case, he says, we lose too many people this winter for the Medical staff to cope. He also said that he himself hadn't delivered a baby since he was an intern--you don't in the Space Service of course. Well, one of the first things he told us was; if a woman's going to miscarry, don't take any extraordinary measures to prevent it. If having the mother rest and keep warm won't save the child, nothing else; no hormones, no fetal-support drugs, nothing."

That's fantastic," Ewen said, "it's almost criminal!"

"That's what Dr. Di Asturien said," Heather told him. "On Earth, it would be criminal. But here, he said, first of all, a threatened miscarriage may be one way of nature discarding an embryo which can't adapt to the environment here--gravity, and so forth. Better to let the woman miscarry early and start over, instead of wasting six months carrying a child who will die, or grow up defective. Also, on Earth, we could afford to save defective children--lethal genes, mental retardates, congenital deformities, fetal insults, and so forth. We had elaborate machinery and medical structure for such things as exchange transfusions, growth-hormone transplants, rehabilitation and training if the child grew up defective. But here, unless some day we want to take the harsh step of exposing defective infants or killing them, we'd better keep them down to an absolute minimum--and about half the defective children born on Earth--maybe ninety per cent, nobody knows, it's such routine now on Earth to prevent a miscarriage at any cost--are the result of preventing children who really should have died, nature's mistakes, from being selected out. On a world like this, it's absolute survival for our race; we can't let lethal genes and defects get into our gene pool. See what I mean? Insanity on Earth--harsh facts for survival here. Natural selection has to take its course--and this means no heroic methods to prevent miscarriages, no extreme methods to save moribund or birth-damaged babies."

"And what's all this got to do with Judy's wild story about an alien being fathering her child?" Ewen demanded.

"Only this," Heather said, "we've got to learn to think in new ways--and not to reject things out of hand because they sound fantastic."

"You believe some nonhuman alien--oh, come, Heather! For God's sake!"

"What God?" Heather asked. "All the Gods I ever heard of belong to Earth. I don't know who fathered Judy's baby. I wasn't there. But she was, and in the absence of proof about it, I'd take her word. She's not a fanciful woman, and if she says that some alien came along and made love to her, and that she found herself pregnant, damn it, I'll believe it until it's proved otherwise. At least until I see the baby. If it's the living image of you, or Zabal, or MacLeod, maybe I'll believe Judy had a brainstorm. But during this second Wind, you behaved rationally, up to a point. MacAran behaved rationally, up to a point. Evidently after the first exposure, a little control remains on subsequent exposures to the drug, or pollen. She gave a rational account of what she did this time, and it was consistent with what happened the first time. So why not give her the benefit of the doubt?"

Slowly, Ewen crossed out the names, leaving only "Father; unknown."

"That's all we can say for sure," he said at last, "I'll leave it at that."

In the large building which still served as refectory, kitchen and recreation hall--although a separate group-kitchen was going up, built of the heavy pale translucent native stone--a group of women from the New Hebrides Commune, in their tartan skirts and the warm uniform coats they wore with them now, were preparing dinner. One of them, a girl with long red hair, was singing in a light soprano voice:

When the day wears away,

Sad I wander by the water,

Where a man, born of sun,

Wooed the fairy's daughter,

Why should I sit and sigh,

Pulling bracken, pulling bracken

All alone and weary?

She broke off as Judy came in:

"Dr. Lovat, everything's ready, I told them you were over at the hospital. So we went ahead without you."

"Thank you, Fiona. Tell me, what was that you were singing?"

"Oh, one of our island songs," Fiona said. "You don't speak Gaelic? I thought not--well, it's called the Fairy's Love Song--about a fairy who fell in love with a mortal man, and wanders the hills of Skye forever, still looking for him, wondering why he never came back to her. It's prettier in Gaelic."

"Sing it in Gaelic, then," Judy said, "it would be fearfully dull if only one language survived here! Fiona, tell me, the Father doesn't come to meals in the common room, does he?"

"No, someone takes it out to him."

"Can I take it out today? I'd like to talk to him," Judy said, and Fiona checked a rough work-schedule posted on the wall. "I wonder if we'll ever get permanent work-assignments until we know who's pregnant and who isn't? All right, I'll tell Elsie you've got it. It's one of those sacks over there."

She found Father Valentine toiling away in the graveyard, surrounded by the great stones he was heaving into place in the monument He took the food from her and unwrapped it,laying it out on a flat stone. She sat down beside him and said quietly, "Father, I need your help. I don't suppose you'd hear my confession?"

He shook his head slowly. "I'm not a priest any more, Dr. Lovat. How in the name of anything holy can I have the insolence to pass judgment in the name of God on someone else's sins?" He smiled faintly. He was a small slight man, no older than thirty, but now he looked haggard and old. "In any case, I've had a lot of time to think, heaving rocks out here. How can I honestly preach or teach the Gospel of Christ on a world where He never set foot? If God wants this world saved he'll have to send someone to save it… whatever that means." He put a spoon into the bowl of meat and grain. "You brought your own lunch? Good. In theory I accept isolation. In practice I find I crave the company of my fellow man much more than I ever thought I would."