"Max—"
"Yes, I know. It's frightening. I'm still afraid, and I think I've been afraid ever since I woke up from that dream. I'm afraid to really try anything—oh, thank God you came, Fran! Thank God! I think I'd have cracked up if you hadn't!"
But the moment of complete and intense rapport was gone; Fran had drawn away from him again, and he felt cold and afraid. He had said too much; she was afraid of him again, and her fear, like her love, communicated itself to him through the impalpable fibres in his very skin. He soaked up her fear and babbled it forth again.
"I've been afraid to really try anything, because that's playing God. I've been doing parlor tricks, Fran, because I haven't really wanted to face the fact that I could do so much more than that!
"Think about it! I turned the air around myself to flames—and burned off my pajamas before I thought to do more than protect my body—because that was sort of wild and weird and ego-inflating. I've wished my clothes on, and levitated, and moved things around—but these are little things! Petty things. But Fran, I could have done so much more—I could wipe out war—there are a thousand ways I could do it. I could feed the starving and house the homeless—Hell, that's minuscule, I could change this whole damn planet, I could change myself, make my body so I could go anywhere, anywhere in the whole physical universe—Fran, I could be God!"
His whole body shook. "I could be God, and I'm playing with burning carpets! Fran—oh, Fran, it's too much for me! I'm not God, I don't want it, I'm too small for it—I wish it was only a dream and now I could really wake up and find it never happened—oh, Fran, Fran, tell me what I am, tell me what to do!"
Aware only of pain and terror, he felt his face wet and did not even know he was sobbing.
"You're Max, Max," Fran wept, "You're Max, and I love you—"
Again the touch calmed him. He clutched at her desperately, clinging to reality, to the wholeness and rightness of her body in his arms, in a sort of senseless terror lest that, too, should dissolve suddenly into a flux of intermingling atoms and force-fields. He was aware only of Fran, close and warm against him, their mingling breath, his own rising hunger and need. He wanted to melt into her, lose himself in her flesh and her reality. The clothes she was wearing separated them, were a senseless intrusion into his longing for contact, for one-ness. He moved. They were gone, her body warm and naked in his arms.