The Lost Perception by Daniel F. Galouye Read Free Book Online

was apparent she was talking around his protracted absence from the farm. And he welcomed her indirection, for he didn’t care to be pressed into an explanation.
    Later, she put on a heavy-knit sweater that seemed to accentuate the trimness of her hips while its turned-up collar imparted an almost adolescent youthfulness to her rather attractive face. If Gregson hadn’t known better, he might have suspected that her subsequent suggestion of a stroll in the pasture was part of a calculated design.
    He agreed to the walk. But he firmly set himself against any sentimental involvement.
    And if he should seem cool as a result of his resolve, he’d simply have to hope she wouldn’t be hurt.
    They stayed close to the fence, talking about insignificant things while she stooped occasionally to draw a bull-grass stalk out of its sheath and twist it absently in her fingers.
    She came to her point abruptly. “Bill and I were hoping you’d decide to come out to the farm permanently.”
    “Someday, perhaps I will,” he said noncommittally. Until two months ago he would have sprung upon her suggestion. But not now.
    “Things are going to be different,” she went on. “Reconstruction’s pretty much in hand all over. Market lines are being restored. And the demand for food is becoming orderly. Profitable too. Why, we haven’t had a single crop raid this fall.” .
    They paused beneath a tree and she leaned back, resting her head against its bole while the wind drifted strands of her blond hair against dark bark.
    “Yes,” he agreed. “It’ll pay off—if Bill can hire some help.”
    She reached out and touched his arm importunately. “Why don’t you quit the Security Bureau? You don’t really belong there. And it’s dangerous work.”
    He stared into her face. How would she know?
    “The bureau discharges the most important function in the world today,” he said stiffly, covering over the real reason why he wouldn’t allow their conversation to become more intimate.
    “Some say it’s assuming too many functions—that it has a high potential for tyranny, controlling almost everything as it does.”
    “They don’t know what they’re talking about. We’ve got a world-wide plague on our hands, so we use world-wide authority to fight it. Assumption of that responsibility naturally calls into play other forms of necessary control.”
    She sighed, then smiled. “Oh, let’s forget about the bureau. I was only trying to lead up to—well, an answer to your question.”
    Unprepared for this thrust, he tried not to meet her anxious eyes.
    “Arthur Gregson!” she exclaimed with feigned exasperation. “A year ago you asked me to marry you. I said you were just sorry for me. Six months ago, you asked again. I thanked you for .being generous and sweet. In August you asked once more. I said, ‘Perhaps—someday—when I’m ready.’ Well…” she spread her arms, “… I’m ready.”
    All along he had feared something like this—ever since his first Screamie seizure. He could only lower his head.
    Her smile drained off and she glanced away. “Seems it’s my turn to be rejected.”
    He had hurt her, he saw. And, of incidental importance, he was feeling the pain almost as much as she. He seized her impulsively and kissed her, but regretted at once that she would misinterpret the gesture.
    Which she promptly did when she drew back and sprightly asked, “Then you will leave the bureau?”
    After a moment he shook his head resolutely.
    Her eyebrows drew together. “But I don’t understand.”
    And he would never explain—not about the Screamies. “There’s too much important bureau business to take care of.”
    “And when it’s over?”
    There was no point in dragging it out. If he broke off completely, she might perhaps not even hear about his being committed to an isolation institute when it happened.
    “It won’t be over—not for a long while.”
    “Greg, is there somebody else?”
    Leaving it at that, he