A panel clanged down from above. O'Hara and Nedra were alone.
It was an exquisite room. Hexagonal in shape, its floors were deeply cushioned with a carpeting of woven plastic threads. Its walls were carved intricately in stone so that the semblance of an open window centered each facet and yet there were actually no windows, no exits visible now that the panel had clanged shut. The ceiling was vaulted, fashioned of a glasslike material that shaded from the palest blue toward blue black at its apex. Against the far wall were two immense beds, or divans, side by side, and a refectory table wrought from polished and dark metal, with various bowls and beakers containing the multi-hued liquid foods of the photosynthetrons.
O'Hara strode with Nedra to the beds. And as he slid her burden from his numbing arms, a strange low music filled the room, the sweetness and ethereal thinness of flutes but with a sustained tone, yet without the throatiness of an organ—close, he thought, to the human voice, in octaves incredibly high and with a quality incredibly lyric. The music of sirens, the music of desire, a music that a man might hear in dreams. But Nedra was at last awakening.
She was lying there motionless, her long rich hair disheveled on the bed, her eyes now wide, her full lips whispering, and as he knelt beside her quickly she was saying, "—not even they could have done this to me. I could have made them destroy me, O'Hara. But you refused, you were too weak, you will be the father of my child—"
He threw himself upon the bed beside her. "No, Nedra, you are wrong, it is not weakness but violence that I hold against myself. We have lost nothing that we had. We retain the privilege of death."
"You believe that, O'Hara?"
"I am certain of it. I have the means here," he said, tapping his jacket.
"But you haven't the will. That is the trouble now, O'Hara. This thirst of yours to know what happens next is like a disease. Your hand becomes more reluctant each time you stay it, and now that you have seen the Father, what else is there? There are no more wonders. Why do you wait? Let me tell you, O'Hara—"
"Nedra, you are obsessed with dying. Is there no strength in learning to endure?"
"Endure for what purpose? Yes, if there is a purpose, but we cannot escape, we can only sink deeper and deeper into these slick abominations."