CHAPTER 16

Zina said, "Yes, I will tell you who I am, Emmanuel, but I will not let your world return. Mine is better. Herb Asher leads a much happier life; Rybys is alive . . . Linda Fox is real-"

"But you did not make her real," he said. "I did."

"Do you want back again the world you gave them? With the winter, its ice and snow, over everything? It is I who burst the prison; I brought in the springtime. I deposed the procurator maximus and the chief prelate. Let it stay as it is.',

"I will transmute your world into the real," he said. "I have already begun. I manifested myself to Herb Asher when you kissed him; I penetrate your world in my true form. I am making it my world, step by step. What the people must do, however, is remember. They may live in your world but they must know that a worse one existed and they were forced to live in it. I restored Herb Asher's memories, and the others dream dreams."

"That's fine with me."

"Tell me, now," he said, "who you are.

"Let us go," she said, "hand in hand. Like Beethoven and Goethe: two friends. Take us to Stanley Park in British Columbia and we will observe the animals there, the wolves, the great white wolves. It is a beautiful park, and Lionsgate Bridge is beautiful; Vancouver, British Columbia is the most beautiful city on Earth."

"That is true," he said. "I had forgotten."

"And after you view it I want you to ask yourself if you would destroy it or change it in any way. I want you to inquire of yourself if you would, upon seeing such earthly beauty, bring into existence your great and terrible day in which all the arrogant and evil-doers shall be chaff, set ablaze, leaving them neither root nor branch. OK?"

"OK," Emmanuel said.

Zina said:

We are spirits of the air

Who of human beings take care.