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Are you ready for the world to change, Harry?

I guess I better be

It’s all so old and tired

Not all of it, I said, openly ad to love him so much, she said

Who?

The people

Oh, yeah Them

They’ll love the way he’ll take charge Bring order His conificent dental work

She laughed, but then chastised reat man, Harry You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t think so

Cautious about being seduced to respond outside the character that I had created--or, rather, borrowed from a Graham Greene novel--I said, For , Valonia blew out a poof of breath through puckered lips The old, tired world--just gone

Do that again, I requested

Staring at me, she puckered and blew

I said, Maybe, after all, it’s not entirely about the , the tireso No one will reed, but was overco yet hate so much

He’ll shut them up, Harry

It’s time somebody did

And in the end, they’ll like it

She inhaled as if trying to clear nasal congestion

The endless quarreling, she said, e know the issues were really settled long ago

Ages ago, I agreed

She tried to clear her nose again The people are going to be so grateful for the New Civility

I could hear the uppercase N and C in the way that she said it

Do you believe, Harry?

Deeply Plus there’s the money

It’s so wonderful to believe

You come so alive when you say the word

Believe, she said with childlike yearning Believe

She inhaled noisily, and again

Daies, she complained, and reached into a coat pocket for a handkerchief

Froun that held two un but deadly, hung up on the lining of her coat pocket as she tried to draw it

Valonia, don’t

The snagged lining tore

Please, I said

The gun came free, and in her passion to defend the faith, she fired wildly

In every direction from the bullet hole, the laminatedbeside my head instantly webbed to the limits of its frame

I shot her once, not just to wound, because it never could have been that way

Golden hair swirled, shimmered, as she spasun, and dropped herself, collapsing toward a needed rest, faceup on the stained and soiled deck, an orchid in theher pistol, I knelt beside her

Her eyes were open, but not yet vacant She stared at so, perhaps a et to see…

I took one of her hands in both of mine, and I was not assaulted by the vision of a red tide That future had been thwarted

I’ll never get to see…the neorld, she finished

No, I said I spared you that

Her lihtened on mine

She closed her eyes And at once opened theer noithout sophistication or artifice