CONDEMNED TO THE FUTURE

Chapter 30.

    The music that was suddenly enveloping them was that of Kitaro, naturally. The Prologue from his "Millenia" album. Even his nearly paralyzed mind knew it instantly; they had both loved this particular work. And almost as rapidly his field gathered to leap upon her and verify her claim.

    But her white-gloved hand rose. "No. Don't try to tele me, Georg. You won't be able to, not here. You're not totally inside the Synergy, and I'm not totally outside."

He felt relieved and curious. "Then just where am I...are we?"

    "Here...and in a partial merge with Bree'a, falling down the Orrt Repository main shaft, as you guessed."

His snorted chuckle came out ghoulish. He strode up to her, pressed his fingers against the silky upswept hair, and took her lovely narrow face between his palms. It was warm, live, real. And in the blue eyes he saw an old soul, a familiar one. Even without a merge, he was certain this was the Shirl he'd known so long ago. The wave of joy and sorrow crumbled his pile of questions.

  "Then kiss me goodbye; it's going to be a very short visit."

She resisted for only a second, then returned both action and emotion.

  And it felt, was exactly the same, as he remembered, the exchange far deeper and more exciting than merely seeing her or listening to her voice, even in the superficial touching of their lovemaking. A merge of another, more universal kind--and totally different than his joining with Bree'a. The music and the past swelled over them.

 Suddenly, without either of them starting, they were dancing. The waltz had rarely been done in the Twenty-First Century on Mars, but they'd spooked everyone by teaching themselves and occasionally performing at parties. Now the graceful flow of the swaying, turning, three-beat dance stole all thought, all urgency from him. They were merely a fairy tale warrior and princess afloat on the moment their own feelings created. Around the mesa and along its edge above black infinity, they were lost in a tiny bubble which held only a precious moment from both their pasts.

  He looked back into her eyes, seeing again what he'd meant to her then, and what she'd meant to him. And it was Love. A sharp pang stabbed him. It overshadowed all else in a joining unlike any-—except what he'd shared with Bree'a. They jerked apart at the same time, as if she had tele'd his thoughts.

  Her expression settled into stiffness. "Subjective time now is far faster than outside, and we've built a special interface allowing your slower mind to interpret. You'll have plenty of pure realtime to save yourself-—and her."

His Analysis was ahead of her. "My connection with Bree'a allows me to experience the Synergy second-hand. So why didn't she tell me about this a long time ago?"

Shirl half-turned away and gazed up at the sky. "She thought you understood this baasa ability all along. Bree'a hasn't been listening to the Synergy too well lately. Distracted, maybe? She believed you were refusing to join with her because you were afraid, or on moral or philosophical principles." Her smile turned wry. "We both know you don't have any."

He stopped his mouth before the "ha, ha" came out. "Is that why you didn't, uh, come out yourself to tempt me into this...?" His hand waved across the sky.

Her look fell back to him as her smile fell away. "It has been so very long since I last even thought about you, Georg. When you awoke and the Synergy decided to act against A.H., I agreed to let my body pattern be used with a new composite personality. But I refused to incorporate myself. Don't go 'outside' anymore; nothing there but pain. And I didn't want to see you again." Her tone was totally neutral. "After all, you sent me away. And that was only a bit over a year ago, to you."