"Such talk for a grown boy," said Anna. "I won‘t listen to it. You’ll come along. I say so."
"Anna, if the boy doesn‘t want to..." started the old man.
But there was no arguing. She hustled them into the canal-boat and they floated up the canal under the evening stars, Tom lying on his back, his eyes closed; asleep or not, there was no telling. The old man looked at him steadily, wondering. Who is this, he thought, in need of love as much as we? Who is he and what is he that, out of loneliness, he comes into the alien camp and assumes the voice and face of memory and stands among us, accepted and happy at last? From what mountain, what cave, what small last race of people remaining on this world when the rockets came from Earth? The old man shook his head. There was no way to know. This, to all purposes, was Tom.
The old man looked at the town ahead and did not like it, but then he returned to thoughts of Tom and Anna again and he thought of himself. Perhaps this is wrong to keep Tom but a little while, when nothing can come of it but trouble and sorrow, but how are we to give up the very thing we’ve wanted, no matter if it stays only a day and is gone, making the emptiness emptier, the dark nights darker, the rainy nights wetter? You might as well force the food from our mouths as take this one from us.
And he looked at the boy slumbering so peacefully at the bottom of the boat. The boy whimpered with some dream. "The people," he murmured in his sleep. "Changing and changing. The trap."
"There, there, boy." LaFarge stroked the boy‘s soft curls and Tom ceased.
LaFarge helped wife and son from the boat.