"You are recovered? You are strong again?"
Vanning sought for words. "I'm—all right. But where am I? Who—"
"Lysla will tell you." The creature clapped its huge hands together as it turned. The door closed behind its malformed back, opening again to reveal the auburn-haired girl Vanning recognized.
He sat up, discovering that he was in a bare room walled with gray plastic, and that he was lying on a pallet of some elastic substance. Under a metallic-looking but soft robe, he was naked. The girl, he saw, bore over her arm a bundle of garments, crimson as the kirtle she herself wore.
Her smile was wan. "Hello," she said, in English. "Feel better now?"
Vanning nodded. "Sure. But am I crazy? That thing that just went out—"
Horror darkened the girl's blue eyes. "That is one of the Swamja. They rule here."
"Here? Where's here?"
Lysla knelt beside the bed. "The end of the world—for us, Jerry Vanning."
"How do you know my name?"