longer.
She didn't want to die, refused to die. Even if Graham had been killed
already, she didn't want to follow him into death. She loved him more
than she had ever loved anyone else. At times she became frustrated
because she could not find the words to express the breadth and depth of
her feeling for him. The' language of love was inadequate. She ached
for him. But she cherished life as well. Getting up in the morning and
making French toast for breakfast.
Working in the antique shop. Reading a good book. Going out to an
exciting movie. So many small delights. Perhaps it was true that the
little joys of daily life were insignificant when compared to the
intense pleasures of love, but if she was to be denied the ultimate, she
would settle willingly for second best. She knew that her attitude in
no way cheapened her love for Graham or made suspect the bonds between
them. Her love of life was what had drawn him to her and made her so
right for him. To Connie, there was but one obscenity, and that was the
grave.
Fifteen feet above, someone moved in the light that radiated through the
open window.
Bollinger?
Oh, Jesus, no!
But before she could give in to despair, Graham's face came out of the
shadows. He saw her and was stunned.
. I Obviously, he had expected her to be twenty-three stories below, a
crumpled corpse on the snow-covered pavement.
'Help me,' she said.
Grinning, he began to reel her up.
In the twenty-third-floor corridor, Frank Bollinger stopped to reload
his pistol. He was nearly out of ammunition.
,So you read Nietzsche last night. What did you think?'
'I agree with him.
,About what?'
'Everything.'
'Supermen?'
'Especially that.
'Why especially?'
,He has to be right. Mankind as we know it has to be an intermediate
stage in evolution. Otherwise, everything is so pointless.
'
'Aren't we the kind of men he was talking about?'
'It sure as hell seems to me that we are. But one thing bothers me.
I've always thought of myself as a liberal. In politics.
'SO?'
'How do I reconcile liberal, left-of-center politics with a belief in a
superior race?'
'No problem, Dwight. Pure, hard-core liberals believe in a superior
race. They think they're it. They believe they're more intelligent
than the general run Of mankind, better suited than the little people
are to manage the little people's lives. They think they have the one
