farmer in a smock coughing and spitting the night out
of his throat. They cross the farmyard and it's filled with rose light
and she sees the sun is up and she knows that Bruce Marchant has just
bled to death.

"There's an empty open touring car chugging loudly, waiting for someone;
it has huge muddy wheels with wooden spokes and a brass radiator that
says 'Simplex.' But Suzaku leads her past it to a dunghill and bows
apologetically and she steps through a Door."

I heard Erich say to the others at the bar, "How touching! Now shall I
tell everyone about my operation?" But he didn't get much of a laugh.

"That's how Lilian Foster came into the Change World with its
steel-engraved nightmares and its deadly pace and deadlier lassitudes. I
was more alive than I ever had been before, but it was the kind of life
a corpse might get from unending electrical shocks and I couldn't summon
any purpose or hope and Bruce Marchant seemed farther away than ever.

"Then, not six hours ago, a Soldier in a black uniform came through the
Door and I thought, 'It can't be, but it does look like his
photographs,' and then I thought I heard someone say the name Bruce, and
then he shouted as if to all the world that he was Bruce Marchant, and I
knew there was a Resurrection beyond Resurrection, a true resurrection.
Oh, Bruce--"

She looked at him and he was crying and smiling and all the young beauty
flooded back into her face, and I thought, "It has to be Change Winds,
but it can't be. Face it without slobbering, Greta--there's something
that works bigger miracles than Change."

And she went on, "And then the Change Winds died when the Snakes
vaporized the Maintainer or the Ghostgirls Introverted it and all three
of them vanished so swiftly and silently that even Bruce didn't
notice--those are the best explanations I can summon and I fancy one of
them is true. At all events, the Change Winds died and my past and even
my futures became something I could bear lightly, because I have someone
to bear them with me, and because at last I have a true future
stretching out ahead of me, an unknown future which I shall create by
living. Oh, don't you see that all of us have it now, this big
opportunity?"

"_Hussa_ for Sidney's suffragettes and the W.C.T.U.!" Erich cheered.
"Beau, will you play us a medley of 'Hearts and Flowers' and 'Onward,
Christian Soldiers'? I'm deeply moved, Lili. Where do the rest of us
queue up for the Great Love Affair o