We had only just lain down on the bed when the raid started. It made no difference. Death never mattered at those times-- in the early days I even used to pray for it: the shattering annihilation that would prevent for ever the getting up, the putting on of clothes, the watching her torch trail across to the opposite side of the Common like the tail-light of a slow car driving away. I have wondered sometimes whether eternity might not after all exist as the endless prolongation of the moment of death, and that was the moment I would have chosen, that I would still choose if she were alive, the moment of absolute trust and absolute pleasure, the moment when it was impossible to quarrel because it was impossible to think. I have complained of her caution, and bitterly compared our use of the word 'onions' with the scrap of her writing Mr Parkis had salvaged, but reading her message to my unknown successor would have hurt less if I hadn't known how capable she was of abandonment. No, the VIs didn't affect us until the act of love was over. I had spent everything I had, and was lying back with my head on her stomach and her taste-- as thin and elusive as water-- in my mouth, when one of the robots crashed down on to the Common and we could hear the glass breaking further down the south side.
'I suppose we ought to go to the basement,' I said.
'Your landlady will be there. I can't face other people.'
After possession comes the tenderness of responsibility when one forgets one is only a lover, responsible for nothing. I said, 'She may be away. I'll go down and see.'
'Don't go. Please don't go.'
'I won't be a moment.' It was a phrase one continued to use, although one knew in those days that a moment might well be eternity long. I put on my dressing-gown and found my torch. I hardly needed it: the sky was grey now and in the unlit room I could see the outline of her face.
She said, 'Be quick.'
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