"We cannot do it now."
"I can die now, I can climb these tiers of books and leap—"
"But I cannot. And you would never leave me."
O'Hara bowed his head. At last he asked, "Where were you all that time I was alone in that exquisite room? Where was the baby born?"
"I was with the Father. A woman of the masses was with me."
"I have seen no masses here in Washington."
"Nonetheless they are here. Millions, millions—like those we saw jammed together in the corridors of Emporia, jamming the corridors below the upper levels of the capital. They exist, down there, as we exist up here—as worms exist within concentric rings in a decaying log. The baby is sleepy, O'Hara. And I am sleepy too."
She stretched herself upon a couch that he remembered, holding the baby closely in her arms, and she was smiling drowsily up toward the screen when the light upon it ebbed.
"Nedra! Don't leave."
"But I am not leaving. As long as the Father wishes it, I shall be here, as close to you as if we were upon two couches in this same exquisite room, able always to see each other and to speak."