She smiled tolerantly. "Of course, dear."
"I'm telling you something no one has dreamed of before and you fuss about your crystals! Don't you ever get sick of this little cage? Don't you ever feel like getting out and running away?"
"Cage?"
"I'm telling you the earth can be ours! People can live like mechanoids if they'll only wake up and stop their childish play!"
"But why, dear?"
"Why? We were meant to, that's why. Because we've already done it, or someone has. But we're still here, left behind. We've got to catch up!"
"How silly." She returned to her chemicals.
Sethos felt a burning rage seize him. This woman he had loved—she was only a shell, a stick of wood, with no ideas of her own—no curiosity. Nothing! And she didn't have the faintest notion what he was talking about. She didn't care!
Furious, he grasped a heavy bronze ash tray and hurled it, hard as he could, into the mass of shining crystal that filled the room. With an explosive rainbow of color and a reverberating crash, it collapsed under the heavy blow into a million tiny fragments.
He stood, glaring at the scattered shards, waiting for Ela to leap at him, screaming and clawing him for the ruin he had made of her masterpiece.