"I... I can deal with those things." He catches himself before he says that he's dead where he belongs, that anything that happens here, uncomfortable as it may be, is extra for him. He doesn't want to remind Jude of that little fact. But he can agree about the earthquakes, the missing people. He grew up in an occupied city. Unknowable, uncontestable powers that do terrible things once in a while are a fact of life. "I have. I can't--I never could, um, I mean, I just... I can't deal with... Something changing what's inside my head." It happened before. And it ruined him. He's the person he is now because of it, the one shrinking away from Jude instead of pulling him close, losing the thread of fraying sentences, trembling and weak and still resisting the urge to move. But at least the cracked and shattered crystal in his mind that Bor Gullet left behind is still there.