Why should Brannock? Forlorn hope in truth.
He made his preparations. While he waited for the onslaught, his spirit ranged beyond the clouds, out among the stars and the millions of years that his greater self had known.
X
The room was warm. It smelled of lovemaking and the roses Laurinda had set in a vase. Evening light diffused through gauzy drapes to wash over a big four-poster bed.
She drew herself close against Christian where he lay propped on two pillows. Her arm went across his breast, his over her shoulders. “I don’t want to leave this,” she whispered.
“Nor I,” he said into the tumbling sweetness of her hair. “How could I want to?”
“I mean—what we are—what we’ve become to one another.”
“I understand.”
She swallowed. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. Can you forget I did?”
“Why?”
“You know. I can’t ask you to give up returning to your whole being. I don’t ask you to.”
He stared before him.
“I just don’t want to leave this house, this bed yet,” she said desolately. “After these past days and nights, not yet.”
He turned his head again and looked down into gray eyes that blinked back tears. “Nor I,” he answered. “But I’m afraid we must.”
“Of course. Duty.”
And Gaia and Wayfarer. If they didn’t know already that their avatars had been slacking, surely she, at least, soon would, through the amulets and their link to her. No matter how closely engaged with the other vast mind, she would desire to know from time to time what was going on within herself.
Christian drew a breath. “Let me say the same that you did. I, this I that I am, damned well does not care to be anything else but your lover.”
“Darling, darling.”
“But,” he said after the kiss.
“Go on,” she said, lips barely away from his. “Don’t be afraid of hurting me. You can’t.”
He sighed. “I sure can, and you can hurt me. May neither of us ever mean to. It’s bound to happen, though.”
She nodded. “Because we’re human.” Steadfastly: “Nevertheless, because of you, that’s what I hope to stay.”
“I don’t see how we can. Which is what my ‘but’ was about.” He was quiet for another short span. “After we’ve remerged, after we’re back in our onenesses, no doubt we’ll feel differently.”
“I wonder if I ever will, quite.”
He did not remind her that this “I” of her would no longer exist save as a minor memory and a faint overtone. Instead, trying to console, however awkwardly, he said, “I think I want it for you, in spite of everything. Immortality. Never to grow old and die. The power, the awareness.”
“Yes, I know. In these lives we’re blind and deaf and stupefied.” Her laugh was a sad little murmur. “I like it.”
“Me too. We being what we are.” Roughly: “Well, we have a while left to us.”
“But we must get on with our task.”
“Thank you for saying it for me.”
“I think you realize it more clearly than I do. That makes it harder for you to speak.” She lifted her hand to cradle his cheek. “We can wait till tomorrow, can’t we?” she pleaded. “Only for a good night’s sleep.”
He made a smile. “Hm. Sleep isn’t all I have in mind.”
“We’ll have other chances … along the way. Won’t we?”
2
Early morning in the garden, flashes of dew on leaves and petals, a hawk aloft on a breeze that caused Laurinda to pull her shawl about her. She sat by the basin and looked up at him where he strode back and forth before her, hands clenched at his sides or clutched together at his back. Gravel grated beneath his feet.
“But where should we go?” she wondered. “Aimlessly drifting from one half-world to another till—they—finish their business and recall us. It seems futile.” She attempted lightness. “I confess to thinking we may as well ask to visit the enjoyable ones.”
He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I’ve been thinking differently.” Even during the times that were theirs alone.
She braced herself.
“You know how it goes,” he said. “Wrestling with ideas, and they have no shapes, then suddenly you wake and they’re halfway clear. I did today. Tell me how it strikes you. After all, you represent Gaia.”
He saw her wince. When he stopped and bent down to make a gesture of contrition, she told him quickly, “No, it’s all right, dearest. Do go on.”
He must force himself, but his voice gathered momentum as he paced and talked. “What have we seen to date? This eighteenth-century world, where Newton’s not long dead, Lagrange and Franklin are active, Lavoisier’s a boy, and the Industrial Revolution is getting under way. Why did Gaia give it to us for our home base? Just because here’s a charming house and countryside? Or because this was the best choice for her out of all she has emulated?”
Laurinda had won back to calm. She nodded. “M-m, yes, she wouldn’t create one simply for us, especially when she is occupied with Wayfarer.”
“Then we visited a world that went through a similar stage back in its Hellenistic era,” Christian went on. Laurinda shivered. “Yes, it failed, but the point is, we discovered it’s the only Graeco-Roman history Gaia found worth continuing for centuries. Then the, uh, conciliar Europe of 1900. That was scientific-industrial too, maybe more successfully—or less unsuccessfully—on account of having kept a strong, unified Church, though it was coming apart at last. Then the Chinese-American—not scientific, very religious, but destined to produce considerable technology in its own time of troubles.” He was silent a minute or two, except for his footfalls. “Four out of many, three almost randomly picked. Doesn’t that suggest that all which interest her have something in common?”
“Why, yes,” she said. “We’ve talked about it, you remember. It seems as if Gaia has been trying to bring her people to a civilization that is rich, culturally and spiritually as well as materially, and is kindly and will endure.”
“Why,” he demanded, “when the human species is extinct?”
She straightened where
