's even sweet to have Change
Death poised over your neck, to know that the past isn't the precious
indestructible thing you've been taught it was, to know that there's no
certainty about the future either, whether there'll even be one, to know
that no part of reality is holy, that the cosmos itself may wink out
like a flicked switch and God be not and nothing left but nothing!"

He threw out his arms against the Void. "And knowing all that, it's
doubly sweet to come through the Door into the Place and be out of the
worst of the Change Winds and enjoy a well-earned Recuperation and share
the memories of all these sweetnesses I've been talking about, and work
out all the fascinating feelings you've been accumulating back in the
cosmos, layer by black layer, in the company of and with the help of the
best bloody little band of fellow Fausts and Faustines going!

"Oh, it's a sweet life, all right, but I'm asking you--" and here his
eyes stabbed us again, one by one, fast--"I'm asking you what it's done
to us. I've been getting a completely new picture, as I said, of what my
life was and what it could have been if there'd been changes of the sort
that even we Demons can't make, and what my life is. I've been watching
how we've all been responding to things just now, to the news of Saint
Petersburg and to what the Cretan officer told beautifully--only it
wasn't beautiful what she had to tell--and mostly to that bloody box of
bomb. And I'm simply asking each one of you, what's happened to you?"

* * * * *

He stopped his pacing and stuck his thumbs in his belt and seemed to be
listening to the wheels turning in at least eleven other heads--only I
stopped mine pretty quick, with Dave and Father and the Rape of Chicago
coming up out of the dark on the turn and Mother and the Indiana Dunes
and Jazz Limited just behind them, followed by the unthinkable thing
the Spider doctor had flicked into existence when I flopped as a nurse,
because I can't stand that to be done to my mind by anybody but myself.

I stopped them by using the old infallible Entertainers' gimmick, a fast
survey of the most interesting topic there is--other people's troubles.

* * * * *

Offhand, Beau looked as if he had most troubles, shamed by his boss and
his girl given her heart to a Soldier; he was hugging them to himself
very quiet.

I didn't stop for the two ETs--they're too hard to figure