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was a psychological effect.
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"One thing I must be sure you understand," Luna said. "You may have been absent longer than you
thought."
Vita was in charge at the moment. "Two days," she said. "But you know, in that short time they had
changed from a rocket to a saucer. It-It was okay, but we'd rather have ridden the rocket."
"Two years," Luna said gently.
"What?"
"Unless special dispensation is made, the time that a mortal spends in Purgatory differs from that of the
mortal realm. It may be extended or compressed, but normally seems to be a year here for a day there. I
regret I did not think to warn you before; certainly I should have."
She's right! Jolie thought. I knew that-but I forgot, because it doesn't happen to immortals. Only to
mortals who go physically into Purgatory, which seldom happens. What an oversight!
What an oversight! Orlene echoed, appalled. What have we done to Vita?
"But I feel the same," Vita said.
"You are the same, dear," Luna said. "You have aged only a few hours-the time you spent in traveling-
for the aging process in the Afterlife is so slow as to be meaningless in mortal terms. But the time has
passed here, and you are now legally two years older."
"You mean I'm still fifteen-but the law says I'm seventeen?"
"True, Vita. You are now that much closer to the age of consent, if that is important to you."
Vita chewed on a mouthful, knowing that Luna knew her situation with the Judge, and also knowing that
it must not be spoken. "So if I went back to Purgatory for another couple of days, I'd be nineteen, and-"
"And legally of age to make your own decisions, in this region of the mortal realm," Luna said with the
faintest of smiles.
"Gee." Vita's notions were stirring up like the winds of a tropical storm.
They had trouble falling asleep, because of amazement over the passage of two years and horrified
reflections on the recent (or was it recent?) events of the saucer-jacking and Atropos' change of
personnel. So they turned on the commercial holo, and satisfied themselves that the news was indeed
two years later. Then it went into a rather soupy romance, and they soon became oblivious.
In the morning, true to her word, Luna left on her errand, and they changed into something nice in
anticipation of Roque's arrival. But not too nice, because Vita was determined that it not remain on her
long.
There was a chime, and Vita sailed to the door. There he was, and indeed he looked a bit older. Vita
didn't care. She leaped into his arms. "Oh, Roque!" she exclaimed between ardent kisses, "I didn't know
it was so long! Can you forgive me?"
"Do I have a choice?"
She looked at him archly. "Have you found someone else?"
"No. It has been a legal and lonely period."
"Then you don't have a choice! Oh, my love, my honey, my grand man, I'm so sorry, I thought it was
only two days, I never would have done it if I'd realized, I don't want you to suffer!" She paused. "You
did suffer?"
"Horribly!"
"Then we have two years to make up in one terrific splurge of passion! Get your hands in gear-can you
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feel me while you're carrying me to the bedroom?"
"I can try." He picked her up, and she virtually curled around him, trying to get everything into play at
once.
Talk of nymphets! Jolie thought.
One would think she was the one who had been waiting two years! Orlene agreed.
Roque staggered into the bedroom with the squirming Vita, who was kissing him all over his face and
neck and shirt collar while she ran her hands around his body, pulling out his shirttail. His thinning hair
was hopelessly mussed.
They fell on the bed and indulged in a scramble of undressing in which Vita's hands did more feeling
than Roque's did. Before it was complete, she wrapped her arms and legs around him and scrambled into
the position of mergence, kissing him hungrily all the while.
"A moment."
One might have thought it impossible for either to pause at this point, but this was a peculiarly
compelling presence.
They paused.
"Who the hell are you?" Vita demanded.
That's Nox, the Incarnation of Night! Jolie thought.
"True, ghost-woman" the Incarnation responded. "Orlene must assume the body."
But Vita's in the middle of- Orlene protested. "Then I will change the form of that body to the masculine
aspect." Indeed, as she spoke, the change began. Give me the body! Orlene thought desperately. Vita,
feeling the ghost's horror, yielded the body.
Suddenly it was Orlene in conjunction with him.
"What?" Roque asked, aware of the change, and dismayed.
"It is Nox!" Orlene exclaimed. "She threatens ultimate horror! Oh, what an awful time for her to-"
"An Incarnation?" he asked. "What possible-"
"Now enter my dream." Nox said.
"She is sheer mischief!" Orlene said. "I need her help, and she makes me suffer for it! I must do what
she demands!"
Then the dream surrounded them. It was chaos.
"And the Earth was without form, and void," Roque said, actually sounding relieved to be in a changed
situation. "We seem to be in the beginning of things."
"I'm sorry," Orlene said. "Nox does these things. I never would have gotten you involved if I had
realized-"
"What is that you hold?"
Orlene checked. She was floating separately, with a sphere in her hands. It glowed, showing a scene of
swirling chaos similar to the one outside, but with a single speck amidst it. "I don't know; it just
appeared. A crystal ball?"
"Let me look at it." He drifted toward her and bent to put his face close to the ball. "The scene within
seems to reflect our present situation, but not quite. There are two specks, and one of them is of two
children, no, two people, a man and a woman-why, that's us! Our image is in there!"
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"We're locked in a crystal ball?" Orlene asked, dismayed.
"I think the ball represents the vision we are in, in the manner an inset represents the scale of the larger
picture. This shows where we are." He tried to touch the ball, to turn it, but his hands passed through it
without effect. "The other speck-it is hard to see-seems to be a house, enclosed by a metal fence..."
Luna's estate! Jolie thought. That's where we want to return!
Yeah, I've got pressing business there! Vita thought. We were just getting into it, when-
"Could it be Luna's estate?" Orlene inquired. "Where we wish to return?"
"Yes! Yes, that is it!" he exclaimed. "Nox is showing us where we are relative to where we wish to go.
Now I see a faint line, a thread-a connection between the two. But it winds all around the globe; it is a
devious path, if that is what it is."
"Nox does not yield her secrets readily," Orlene agreed grimly. "I don't know why she sought me out
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