"There will be no guilt. I will erase the past from my memory."

"What about us? We'll be-"

"Quiet, Quentin."

"What difference does it make now, dear?"

"Maybe you're right."

"As I was saying, O Lord of the Universe, we'll be living reminders. Unless you mean to wipe us out too."

"No, I will not destroy you."

"Don't tell us we'll be your new Adam and Eve."

"No, I must fashion my creatures in my own image."

"That should be interesting."

"It will be."

"So what about us? If you're not killing us or saving us, then what?"

"I am master of eternity. I will return you to your happiest moment together and you will relive it forever. Think, and I shall make it to be."

Yvonne and Quentin stared at each other.

This new madness offered them their only hold on sanity. They smiled fiercely to keep from laughing crazily. In each other's eyes they watched themselves play back the highlights of living together. Each angrily eyelashed away flashes of vapid domesticity, each looking for the peak.

Yvonne's head lifted.

"I know, darling! That double evening in the Sand Castle of Bin-Bin under 'the transfigured and transfiguring moons.'"

"Yes, that was nice, dear."

"Nice? I thought it heaven. But maybe I was wrong. If you have something better in mind, darling…"

"You know what's just come back to me? The time we rode the air coil through the tunnels of the Magnetic Mountains."

"That was on Dunark, wasn't it?"

"No, on Thymargul."

"Oh, of course."

"Well?"

"Yes, that was fine, darling,"

"But?"

"But I'd hardly want to spend all eternity doing that"

"At the time-and I remember this quite clearly-you said you never wanted it to end."

"Did I? If I did, that was then. This is now. That's the whole point. This… new God … is offering us an oasis of stasis, an amber forever, a frozen womb, I'm beginning to think I don't want any then.