“If you say I must, I must, but I feel embarrassed that you say, that you give so much and I can’t give you the same.”

“Words are just one language, Virisse. Just one way of expression. You speak with your eyes, you speak with your sweet tongue and gentle fingers, with your whole body. Like this, and this. What?”

“No, I just, no; here, come here, hold me, hold me like this. Here, I’ll … Be my presence, hang over me, embrace me. I need you. Do anything for you. I give myself. I need to give myself. Oh, you don’t hate me for being so needed, do you? I am. I know I am. My own needing, it betrays me.”

“Oh, my darling. I love that you need me as much as I, desperately, need you. But don’t distress. What is it? What can …?”

“You don’t think they’re lying to us, the Sublimed, the Presence; you don’t think they’re lying to us, deceiving us, do you?”

“What? Is that …? Not for a moment. Oh, be calm, Virisse. Of course not. Do you think I would risk losing you? If I thought for a moment there was any danger they lied to us, that what we’re offered isn’t true, that we might simply die or be blown away like mist, I’d never even think of this, for myself, for you, for us, for all the people.”

“Isn’t it like a threat, though, this thing, hanging over us? I look at it some days, hanging over the city, over us, and it makes me shiver.”

“It used to make me catch my breath, sometimes, I’ll give you that. What can I say, Virisse? Promises take many shapes, and the more … momentous they are, the more they might look like threats. All great promises are threats, I suppose, to the way things have been until that point, to some aspect of our lives, and we all suddenly become conservative, even though we want and need what the promise holds, and look forward to the promised change at the same time. So we have that great grey shape hanging over us, over the parliament itself, as a reminder that this is where the final decision was taken, this is where we made up our minds. And it reminds us that there are powers and forces beyond us, that we are in the process of surrendering our full authority in this, and of taking a great new leap.”

“Is it too late?”

“What? I’m sorry, my love, I didn’t—”

“Is it too late? Can we still unmake our minds?”

“Well, no, it isn’t. We can all change our minds, right up until the last moment.”

“Must there always be forces beyond us?”