Emmanuel said, "You miss Rybys."

"Yes." That was true.

"She isn't there," Emmanuel reminded him. He ate slowly, somberly, bite after bite. As if, Herb thought, eating was for him a solemn ritual. A matter of consuming something sanctified.

"Can't you bring her back?" he said to Emmanuel.

The boy did not respond. He continued to eat.

"No answer?" Herb said, with bitterness.

"I am not here for that," Emmanuel said. "She understood. It is not important that you understand, but it was important that she know. And I caused her to know. You remember; you were there on that day, the day I told her what lay ahead."

"Okay," Herb said.

"She lives elsewhere now," Emmanuel said. "You-"

"Okay," he repeated, with anger, enormous anger.

To him, Emmanuel said, speaking slowly and quietly, his face calm, "You do not grasp the situation, Herbert. It is not a good universe that I strive for, nor a just one, nor a pretty one; the existence of the universe itself is at stake. Final victory for Belial does not mean imprisonment for the human race, continued slav- ery, but nonexistence; without me, there is nothing, not even Belial, whom I created."

"Eat your dinner," Zina said in a gentle voice.

"The power of evil," Emmanuel continued, "is the ceasing of reality, the ceasing of existence itself. It is the slow slipping away of everything that is, until it becomes, like Linda Fox, a phantasm. That process has begun. It began with the primal fall. Part of the cosmos fell away. The Godhead itself suffered a crisis; can you fathom that, Herb Asher? A crisis in the Ground of Being? What does that convey to you? The possibility of the Godhead ceasing-does it convey that to you? Because the God- head is all that stands between-" He broke off. "You can't even imagine it. No creature can imagine nonbeing, especially its own nonbeing. I must guarantee being, all being. Including yours. Herb Asher said nothing.