Page:Fantastic Volume 08 Number 01.djvu/103

 there is a slight discrepancy, and certain phases of A Priori contain more time than space. If we should become involved in one of these phases—or storms, if you like—we would lose our awareness of our objective reality and proceed to relive a subjective and sporadic playback of our pasts. So all that could happen to us, actually, are the things that have already happened to us—with the difference that we would relive not only our own experiences, but one another's as well; in pure time, individuality does not exist."

"But wouldn't our objective reality be affected?"

He nodded. "It could be," he said, "since, in the absence of any real passage of time, it would be in temporal ratio to our involvement in our pasts, which might force it into a different time plane altogether."

She dropped her eyes. "Then—then in spite of what you said before, something could happen after all—something that hasn't happened before."

"I suppose so, my lady Will that be all?"

"Yes—for now."

"I'll be in my cabin "

After he had gone she closed the door but did not lock it, then she let the towel slip to the floor and went over and lay down on the couch. He would be back, she knew—there was no other answer—and when he returned she would welcome him the way she had welcomed all the others—

No, not quite the same, she thought, frowning. He was, after all, the father-to-be of her child-to-be, her—her monster-to-be. But, child or monster, it was—would be—his flesh and blood as well as hers, and that, she realized suddenly, was something quite unique—and quite strangely wonderful.

She was disconcerted, at first, when the walls of the room began to shimmer, not because she had doubted that there would be a time storm, but because she had expected him to be in her arms when it broke. Then she remembered something else she had heard about time storms.

Like hurricanes, they had eyes

Cross stirred on the couch, sat up. The storm was over and gone. The Lady Berenice's eyes were closed. Her breathing was soft, almost imperceptible. Her face, bereft now of all the hardness and the cynicism civilization PASSAGE TO GOMORRAH