"Oh, my God," said Nyla.
"And someday," I finished, "there's going to be so darn many of them that there'll be thousands or millions, all breaking through at once-and do you think anybody's going to be able to hold the lid on that?"
"Holy sweet jumping baby Jesus God," said Nyla.
"Exactly," I said.
"All that ballistic recoil," she said.
I nodded, letting it soak in.
She looked at me with what was either fright or respect—I hadn't known my bride long enough yet to know which. "Are you the only one who knows about this?" she demanded.
"Of course not. The people who snatched us are bound to know, but they're not around to ask about it. And I'm sure there are others. I've tried to bring it up a few times. Some people don't seem to get what I mean, like the senator. Most of them—well, they just don't want to talk about it. Scared, I guess."
She flared up. "Damn right, they're scared! Personally, I'm panicked."
"Well," I said, "considering how bad all this might turn out to be, you'd be crazy if you weren't. But look at the good side. You and I ought to be okay. We're going to be out in the desert, where it's not too likely anything really scary is going to be going on in any time. It'll be bizarre, all right, oh, boy, will it! But it won't be as physically dangerous as it would be in a city, say—where, I don't know, maybe a zeppelin could fly right into your bedroom or something."
Nyla gave me a really unbridely look. Not loving a bit. "What you're telling me," she said scathingly, "is that we'll survive and screw the rest of the human race, right? Right?" she yelled. "And you've been having the nerve to tell me I was a tough, selfish, hardboiled—"
"Na, na," I said, gently putting my fingers across her lips, "I never said any of that. Exactly. And I do care about the human race. I care a lot."
"But—but then what are we going to do about it, Dom?"
I said, "Nothing, love. There's nothing we can do. It's just going to happen. . . . There's one good thing, though."
I waited for her to ask what the good thing was. When she started to scowl and her eyebrows knotted and she opened her mouth, I didn't think I was going to like the way she was going to ask me, so I said hastily, "That is, it will start small. I'm pretty sure of that. There'll be lots of warning before it gets really bad—time to evacuate the cities, maybe, or do whatever anybody can do. And—it can't be prevented, do you see? So we'll just have to do the best we can."
She hopped out of bed and stared down at the empty plains below. I let her think it over. Finally she turned to me. "Dom?" she said. "Are you sure we're doing the right thing? I mean, you were talking about having kids and, I don't know, sometimes I think maybe I'd like that myself. But isn't this a kind of scary world to bring kids up in?"
I got up and stood beside her, the two of us naked and touching, hip to shoulder, with my arm around her. "You bet it is," I said. "But was there ever one that wasn't?"