"No, I'm certain you're completely recovered. I'm not even sure you had a deadly bug, anyway."

"Okay. But I wonder if it might be better if I stick around for another week or two, until the garden's going a little better and you don't have to spend so much time on it."

I frowned. This was going all wrong—she was supposed to be jumping at the chance to get back to humanity again, not making excuses to stay here. "Thanks for the offer, but I can manage. You've been a lot of help, though, and I wish I could repay you more than..." I let the sentence trail off. Heather's face and body had gone rigid, and she was no longer sewing. "What's the matter? Would you rather go somewhere else instead of Hemlock? I'll help you get to anywhere you want."

Heather shook her head and sighed. "No, it's not that. I just... don't want to leave you."

I stared at her, feeling sandbagged. "Why?"

"I like being here. I like working with you. You don't—you don't care that I'm blind. You accept me as a person."

There was a whole truckload of irony in there somewhere but I couldn't be bothered with it at the moment. "Listen, Heather, don't get the idea I'm all noble or anything, because I'm not. If you knew more about me you'd realize that."

"Perhaps." Her tone said she didn't believe it.

There was no way out of it. Up till now I'd been pretty successful at keeping my appearance a secret from her, but I couldn't hide the truth any longer. I would have to tell her about my face. "If you weren't blind, Heather, you wouldn't have wanted to stay here ten minutes. I'm... my face is pretty badly disfigured."

She nodded casual acceptance of the information. Maybe she didn't believe it, either. "How did it happen?"

"I was a captain in the army during the Iranian segment of the Last War; you know, the Soviet drive toward the oil fields. They were using lots of elaborate nerve gases on us, and one of them found its way into the left side of my gas