of the room faced a three-foot-square video screen. Carol led me to the sunken pool and, releasing my hand, made a shallow dive into the water.
My evolved adventurous self won a quick victory which led me swiftly out of my tunic and into the water after her. I found the water very warm and clear. The floor slanted down until at the far end of the pool, which I went to immediately, it was about eight feet deep. Carol was apparently using her PK power, because a clear plastic partition, slid out of the wall and completely surrounded our pool-bath.
'There,' she said, turning to me. 'Now we can splash to our heart's content. Let's wash each other!'
With these words Carol surprised me with another PK demonstration as the floor beneath us began to slowly rise until we were standing in water that barely covered our knees.
I felt very naked.
A wall panel slid open revealing two retractable hoses, one dispensing sparkling, slippery cleansing bubbles, the other clear water. Carol invited me to stretch out on a cushion that extended out from the shallow end of the pool. There she began spraying me with one hand while slowly lathering my body with the other.
She covered every square inch of my body with the utmost care. Once again, I tried not to think or feel sexually and ended up with one hell of an erection.
As her hands slid over me I listened to her softly telling me of the joys of sharing a bath with your Alpha mate. She admired my shoulders and my firm abdominal muscles. When she came to my penis she made a number of casual remarks about its esthetically pleasing composition and its remarkable tumescence. This last was too much for me, and I broke my long silence.
'For God's sake, Carol, help me,' I pleaded: 'I don't want to be sexually aroused.'
'Why not?' Carol promptly asked.
'Because,' I replied lamely, 'it makes me feel like a child who can't control himself. Besides, I don't want to be unfaithful to Lea.'
'If you're worried about Lea, she's at ninth level,' Carol said in her deep soothing voice, as if this should immediately put my mind to rest. 'I mean,' she continued, 'that Lea is so adequate that she has no neurotic need to possess any part of you and so she could not be offended or jealous, no matter what you do.'
'But, I don't-'
Carol interrupted, 'Lea asked me to help you in every way I could and that specifically included dealing with your sexual neurosis.'
'I'm not neurotic!' I defended vehemently. 'I am perfectly normal.'
'Maybe, by 1976 standards,' Carol replied calmly, 'but it's not normal in a 22nd century Alpha to feel inadequate or in conflict with yourself over a perfectly normal, healthy enjoyment of out beautiful bodies.'
'Well,' I replied righteously, 'in 1976 I didn't take baths with girls I had only just met five minutes ago.'
While we were talking, Carol had finished washing me, then used the other hose to rinse. Now she handed the hose to me and, raising her arms above her head, began to turn slowly and seductively about. I took a deep breath and gingerly began to apply the sparkling bubbles while I held the hose with both hands.
Carol smiled impishly. 'That's not how I washed you, Jon. Are you really afraid that you'll lose control if you touch me?'
'Oh, hell!' I exploded and began to feverishly rub the bubbles over her satin smooth skin.
'Hardly hell,' Carol answered with a laugh. 'It feels to me more like what the 20th century might have called heaven!'
She was right. I recognized my guilt-ridden judgmental self shaking its frightened finger at me. It was so limited, so one-sided, like a white-line figure drawn on a blackboard. I erased it and began to enjoy a truly heavenly experience. I covered her with bubbles, then, with both hands, lovingly explored every delightful curve and valley. I was in no hurry and would have stayed in that bath all day if Carol had not, after some time, caused the floor to descend, taking us back down into the water. After a few moments of splashing, and playful wrestling, Carol led me out of the pool. Activating another circuit, she removed the plastic shield and emptied the pool, refilling it with fresh water. Streams of warm air quickly dried our bodies. Taking my hand, she ran and flopped across the huge pad in the corner.
For the next hour I abandoned myself to the joy of a romping physical emental union with Carol.
By the end of that hour I had learned that sexual intercourse, when it is emental intercourse as well, can open two people to a oneness that I had never before thought possible.
As we lay in each other's arms I told Carol about my guilt and fear concerning pregnancy. I told her that I had not been able to freely enjoy a sexual relationship since my high school days. As I talked about my guilt concerning Valerie, I relived the most unpleasant experience of my teen years when my father had angrily denounced me– for my 'animal selfishness:' It was then that Carol told me that no female in the Macro society could ever have a child without special emental preparation. Even then it required permission from the Deltar.
I didn't understand her technical explanation of how the female reproductive cycle had been modified so that no female experienced menstruation unless she was going to bear children. However, I knew it would have been welcomed by most 20th-century women-and men!
We talked about the Macro society policy of permitting only their finest members (physically, ementally, and spiritually) to produce children. They restricted births so that the student population was approximately 10 percent of the total population. When I realized how few women would ever have an opportunity to bear children, I was shocked.
'Carol,' I asked, 'do you honestly feel it's fair to deny nine out of ten people the right to become parents?'
'Fair?' Carol questioned, then laughed. 'For a moment I forgot you're from the 1970s, Jon. Creating and giving birth to a child was the most physically destructive ordeal that woman put herself through. It's no longer necessary. The incredible conceit of couples thinking the world needed little copies of themselves was just a sad symptom of micro man's limited perspective.
'I studied the history of micro man,' Carol continued. 'For thousands of years anyone could have children, and they were treated as possessions. By the 20th century, in your country, they could no longer be put to work at an early age, so the micro family began ignoring them. The drug cults and youth revolts of your time were partially the result of micro man's compulsion to create far more offspring than he/she was at all prepared to guide into effective adulthood.'
'And your solution,' I said, 'is to parentally disenfranchise ninety percent of your population.'
'Oh, Jon,' Carol, said shaking her head and giving me a wry smile. 'You don't understand. Anyone can have a child if they prepare themselves for this purpose. It may take a few lifetimes for some, but we're not imprisoned in one lifetime as micro societies thought they were. Micro man's motto was 'you only live once, so eat, drink, and pollute, for tomorrow you may die.' And, of course, his frantic selfishness not only destroyed him but almost destroyed our whole planet.'
I had to admit that by 1976 we had seriously polluted most of our lakes and rivers and were affecting the oceans as well.
I wondered how bad it had gotten between my 'time' and Carol's.
Obviously perceiving my thought, she paused for a moment, her eyes saddened as if remembering something very unpleasant. Then she continued, 'You polluted your oceans, your air, and your land until almost all animal and fish life was gone. Then you caused geophysical imbalances in the earth which produced-earthquakes, and tidal waves so destructive that when you look at a map of our world today you will not recognize it.',
'Well,' I said lightly, not really comprehending. the magnitude of the disaster, 'I guess that solved our overpopulation problem. How many people are alive in the world of, 2150?'
'Approximately 303 million,' Carol said. 'There would have been a lot more, in spite of the physical disasters, if micro man could have at last cooperated and helped each other. Unfortunately, he accentuated all the traditional divisions-nationality, race, religion, language, educational and socioeconomic levels-and fought over the fast-dwindling resources of his ravaged planet.'
'Did micro man really become as extinct as the dinosaur and dodo bird?' I asked.
'Almost,' Carol responded. 'There are only about three million micro beings in existence today, and they
