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." "You're learning to think, Nedra, and I'm not sure that it's desirable. Yet less than half an hour ago the fear that you might never think again was terrifying me. What does a man really want?" "I know what you want. To talk." "Why, yes," he said. "To talk--" The opalescent light was dying out. The music now faint. "To talk," O'Hara said, "and sleep, and wake again. Yes, Nedra, if we can be sure to wake again. Eternal life! Remind me to explain to you--though later on--" But it was the Father who reminded him, and much later. For when O'Hara awoke the room was filled once more with that opalescent light that symbolized day, for actually, in this city of the Father, this capital of the Lost Continents behind the Atomic Curtain, there was neither day nor night. It was true that there were fourteen hours of synthetic light, radiating from the ever-present tubing recessed into the ceilings of the great halls and subterranean avenues, and these fourteen hours were succeeded by ten hours of darkness in the chambers used for sleep. But there was no real night. O'Hara, then, awakening into this synthetic day, and finding Nedra still asleep beside him, was in no hurry to arise, but lay there staring toward the vaulted ceiling, remembering Nedra's bitter accusation, "We can only sink deeper and deeper into these slick abominations."