"I wonder...."

"Would you prefer to sleep until it's all over?"

"No; I want to be by your side, always."

"Then you must reconcile yourself to the fact that something is alwayshurt by any change. If you do this, you will not be hurt yourself."

Then they listened for the winds to rise.

Three days later, in the still of sundown, between the winds of day andthe winds of night, she called him to the window. He climbed to the thirdfloor and moved to her side. Her breasts were rose in the sundown light andthe places beneath them silver and dark. The fur of her shoulders andhaunches was like an aura of smoke. Her face was expressionless and herwide, green eyes were not turned toward him.

He looked out.

The first big flakes were falling, blue, through the pink light. Theydrifted past the stone and gnarly Normform; some stuck in the thick quartzwindowpane; they fell upon the desert and lay there like blossoms ofcyanide; they swirled as more of them came down and were caught by the firstfaint puffs of the terrible winds. Dark clouds had mustered overhead andfrom them, now, great cables and nets of blue descended. Now the flakesflashed past the window like butterflies, and the outline of Deadlandflickered on and off. The pink vanished and there was only blue, blue anddarkening blue, as the first great sigh of evening came into their ears andthe billows suddenly moved sidewise rather than downwards, becoming indigoas they raced by.

"The machine is never silent," Jarry wrote. "Sometimes I fancy I canhear voices in its constant humming, its occasional growling, its cracklesof power. I am alone here at the Deadland station. Five centuries havepassed since our arrival. I thought it better to let Sanza sleep out thistour of duty, lest the prospect be too bleak. (It is.) She will doubtless be