Part 29 (1/2)

”You were not speaking intellectually or theoretically or platonically. Your voice trembled with the devotion of a woman for her lover. You were wild and forward, and I -- I was powerfully moved by it. You meant it.

”Your vision of seeming death had charged you, first with grief, then with enormous pa.s.sion. We were naked, and in love, and it seemed wholly natural that we resort to the natural culmination. All the suppressed urges I had entertained toward you were released in the bursting of that dam; it seemed I could never get my fill of your body. And you were eager for me; you were a creature of l.u.s.t. It was as though we were two animals, copulating interminably, driven by an insatiable erotic imperative.

”All day we remained in that cave. Once there was a terrible tremor. It bounced Tyrann half awake; it dislodged stalact.i.tes from the back of the cave. We were afraid the mountain would collapse in on us -- so we made love again, and slept, and woke, and did it yet again.

”At night I woke, disgusted with myself for using you like that. Yet even as I looked at you in your divine sleep, the pa.s.sion rose in me again, and I knew that I had to get out of the sight of you if I were not to succ.u.mb again. So I retreated to the back of the cave.

”I remembered the key and searched for it in the dark. My hand found it on the ledge. I picked it up and shook it -- and suddenly there was a illumination about me, and I experienced that dizzy feeling -- and there was the machine in front of me again.

”Alarmed, I returned to where you slept -- but you were gone. You could not have left by the cave mouth, for Tyrann was there, and there were no fresh tracks in the powdering of snow near him. I was sure you had not left by the rear pa.s.sage, for I had been there. Yet there was absolutely no evidence of your presence; even the lichen on the ledge where we had made love was undisturbed, as though no one had ever been there.

”Forgive me: My first thought was intense regret that I had not awakened you for one more act of love before you disappeared. Then I cursed my sordid nature, for I would love you as strongly were I a eunuch. I lay down and tried to piece it out, and finally I slept again. In the morning I knew it had been a dream -- an extravagant, far-fetched, ridiculous, wonderful, masculine wish fulfillment. And so I put it out of my mind, ashamed of the carnal nature underlying my love for you, and I have maintained a proper perspective since.”

Aquilon sat leaning over her diagrams, stunned. The episode Cal had so vividly described had never happened, and it was shocking to hear him speak so graphically, so uncharacteristically. Yet it mirrored the secret pa.s.sion she had longed to express if only there were some way around her inhibitions and his. And it touched upon something hideous, something she herself had buried until this moment.

”Cal -- ” she faltered but had to force herself to go on, lest he think it was revulsion for the s.e.xual description that balked her. Yet she could not say what she had intended, and something almost irrelevant came out instead. ”Cal, the key -- what happened to it?”

”What happens to any dream artifact when the sleeper wakes?” he asked in return, as though glad for the change of subject.

”No -- did you keep it, or put it back? Did you check for that machine again? It should have -- ”

”I must have replaced the key automatically,” he said. ”I never returned to the rear of the cave. It was part of my disgust, and I refused to humor the pa.s.sions of the dream by checking.”

”Oh!” It was a faint exclamation of emotional pain. He had never even checked! But that pang freed her inhibition somehow, and now she was able to approach her own hidden concern. ”Cal, you said I thought you had died in your dream. What did I say?”

He did not answer, and she knew he was suffering from acute embarra.s.sment, realizing how frankly he had spoken.

”Please, Cal -- this is important to me.”

His voice came back from the machine. ”Not very much. We did talk about it some, but it was not a pleasant subject, and there obviously had been some error.”

Aquilon concentrated. ”Tyrann galloped after you, those awful double-edged teeth snapping inches short of your frail body, the feet coming down on you like twin avalanches. Snap! and your rag-doll form was flung high in the air, striped grisly red, reflected in the malignant eyes of the carnosaur. Tyrann's giant claw-toes crushed your body into the ground; the jaws closed, ripping off an arm. Your head lolled from a broken neck, and your dead eyes stared at me not with accusation but with understanding, and I screamed.”

Now Cal's head jerked out of the machine. ”Yes!” he exclaimed. ”That's what you said in essence. How could you know?” Then he did a double take. ”Unless you actually were there in that cave -- ”

”No,” she said quickly. ”No, Cal, I wasn't there. I was stranded on an earthquake-torn island with Orn's egg. I swear it.”

Still he looked at her. ”You desired my death?”

”No!” she cried. ”I dreamed it -- a nightmare. I told that dream to the birds, Orn and Ornette, that third day, before the last quake. That I had seen you die.”

”You dreamed it -- the same time I dreamed my -- ”

”Cal,” she said, another shock of realization running through her. ”In some alternate -- could it have happened?”

He came to her. ”No. How could I have made love to you if I were already dead?”

She caught his hand, shaken, desperate. ”Cal, Cal -- your dream was so much better than mine. Make it come true!”