HURRICANE TRIO
Theodore Sturgeon
(Galaxy, April 1955)

Yancey, who had once been killed, lay very still with his arm flung across the pillow, and watched the moonlight play with the color of Beverly's hair. Her hair was spilled over his shoulder and chest, and her body pressed against him, warm. He wondered if she was asleep. He wondered if she could sleep, with that moonswept riot of surf and wind going on outside the hotel. The waves blundered into the cliff below, hooting through the sea-carved boulders, frightening great silver ghosts of spray out and up into the torn and noisy air. He wondered if she could sleep with her round, gentle face so near his thumping heart. He wished the heart would quiet itself -- subside at least to the level of the storm outside, so that she might mistake it for the same storm. He wished he could sleep. For two years he had been glad he did not sleep. Now he wished he could; it might quiet his heart.

Beverly, Beverly, he cried silently, you don't deserve this! He wished the bed were larger, so that he might ease away from her and be but a shriek among shrieks, melting into the hiss and smash and ugly grumble of the sea's insanity.

In the other bed, Lois shifted restlessly under the crisp sheet. Yancey looked at her without turning his head. She was a thing of long lines under the dim white, her face and hair two kinds of darkness on the pillow. She was lean and somber. Beverly was happy and open and moved about like the brightly colored bouncing ball which used to lead the singing at theaters, leaping along the lyrics. Lois walked as if she did not quite touch the floor, and the tones of her voice were like the tones of her skin and the clothes she favored -- dark and smooth. Her eyes were long and secret and her face was a floe. Her nostrils, and the corners of her mouth, and sometimes the slightest concerted movement of a shoulder and an eyebrow, hinted at a heat submerged and a strength relaxed and aware, not asleep, not a sleep. Lois . . . a synthesis of subtleties, of mysteries, of delicate scents and soft puzzling laughter.

Lois moved again. He knew that she too was staring tensely up into the mottled darkness. The spume-flecked moonlight was intolerant of detail, but Yancey had memorized her face. He knew of the compression of her lips, and that the corners of her mouth were softly turned despite the tension. He was deeply troubled by the sound of the sheet as she moved, for if he could hear that over the storm, how could Beverly miss the throb of his heart?

Then he all but smiled: of course Beverly did not hear as he did, nor see, nor feel, nor think with all her mind. Poor Beverly. Poor bright, sweet, faithful bird, more wife than woman, how can you compete with one who is more woman than . . . anyone?

Better, this was better than the fearful joy that was like rage. His heart began to obey him, and he turned his cheek slightly to touch her hair. Pity, he thought, is a sharing sort of thing -- you can feel the helplessness of the unarmed -- whereas rage, like passion, stands apart from its object and is a lonesome thing.

He settled himself now, and without moving he went limp in the thundering night, giving himself up to the glimmer and shift of his thoughts. More than anyone else on earth, he was sure, he enjoyed being alive, and his perpetual delight was in being alive altogether, awake and aware, conscious of his body and how it lay, and where, and at the same time afloat like a gull on the wind of his thought, yielding, controlled. Perhaps he enjoyed the dark part of his unending day the most, camouflaged by a coverlet and the closing of eyes. In the day he lived with that which, if he wished, he could command; at night he lived with that which he did command. He could call a symphony to heel, and make a syllogism stand and wait. He could cut a stack of places, fan a hand of faces, choose his pleasure of them and discard the rest. His recall was pinpoint perfect back and back to the point where he had been dead; before that, only excellent. He used it now as a measure against his heart's rebellion, so that Beverly could sleep, and, sleeping, not know.

And because the idea of Lois, here, was unbearable, he let his mind take him back to Lois when she was only a secret. She had been an explosion within him, a pressure and a kind of guilt; but all the things she had been were things he could contain, and no one knew. So back he went, to his renascence; back through the time he had been dead, and still farther to Lois-first-seen, to a time when a man with a job and a wife and a settled gray life found this special astonishment.

There was a lake, and small cheap cabins crouched in a row to sip its shores. There was a "lodge" with its stilted forefeet in the water and its rump on a hillside. There were boats and a float, a splintery dance floor and a bar which purveyed beverages all the way up to beer.

Yancey, with little money and only two weeks' time, had rented a cottage here sight unseen. He expected little of it, being resigned to the truism that a change of surroundings constitutes a vacation all by itself. He expected little of anything in those days. His life had reached a plateau -- a long, narrow, slightly downgraded plateau where the horizons were close and the going easy. His job was safe and, by the chemistry of paternalism, would increase in value as it aged, for all a large business requires of the bulk of its employees is that they stay just as they are.

He had been married for seven years to the blithe and patient Beverly, who was content with him. There had been a time when they interrupted one another in the rush to share themselves, and a longer time when there seemed very little to say, which made them both vaguely unhappy, and they lived with a mild and inexpressible sense of loss. And at last they had discovered that coded communication devised by most folk with their unexciting familiars: small talk, half-finished sentences, faint interrogative and exclamatory sounds, and present -- as opposed to absent -- silences. Life for Yancey and his wife was not dull -- it was too unplanned for that -- but its pulse beat between comfortable limits.

This unplanned quality (for why make plans when life is basically so certain?) was responsible for their late arrival at the lake. Last year's map did not include the dozens of roads closed by the Thruway; somehow Yancey had never gotten around to having the spare fixed, so of course they had a flat; then they had to drive back for the checkbook Yancey had forgotten; and naturally it rained. It had rained all the previous night and all day, and when they turned into the lake road it was past eleven at night and still raining. They pulled up beside the lodge, where a glistening faded sign proclaimed OFFICE, and Yancey turned up his jacket collar and plunged out into the rain and floundered up the wooden steps. When there was no answer to his knock he noticed a soggy pasteboard stuck between the doorframe and a loose pane. He tried to read it and could not. He went to the head of the steps and called, "Bev! Turn the spotlight up here!"

Beverly, between the loose-valved clacking of the motor and the drumming of rain on the car roof, heard a voice but no words. She turned off the ignition and rolled the window down. "What?"

"The light. Spotlight. Shine it up here."

She did, whereupon Yancey went back to the door and crouched before the card. In a moment he came back to the car and slid in, dripping. "They're all in bed," he said, "in cabin 14."

"Which one is our cabin?"

"I don't know. They never said. Just confirmed the reservation. We'll have to wake them up." He pressed the starter.

And pressed it, and pressed it.

When the starter would deliver nothing but a click and a grunt, Yancey leaned back and blew sharply through his nostrils. "Wires wet, I guess."

"What are we going to do?"

"Walk. Or sit here."

She touched his sodden shoulder and shuddered. "It can't be too far . . . we'll have to take a bag."

"Okay. Which one?"

She considered. "I guess the brown one. It has my robe in it, I remember . . . I think."

He knelt on the seat and reached into the back, found and fumbled the brown suitcase out. "Better turn off the lights. Ignition, too."

"The ignition is off," Beverly said, trying it.

"What!"

"When you were on the porch. I couldn't hear you. I turned it off."

The advantage of that status between married folk which communicates by grunts and silences is that scorn, as well as contentment, can he expressed with little effort. Yancey was simply and completely silent, and she said, "Oh dear." Then, defensively, "How was I supposed to know you didn't turn it back on?"

Yancey merely snorted. Beverly huddled in the seat. "Now it's all my fault," she muttered. This was more than a statement of fact; it meant in addition that any discomfort from this point on would be laid to her, and that the day's previous delays and exasperations would also be attached to her, making her culpable in every way for everything. Yancey maintained his silence. Anything he might say would militate in her favor -- to say one thing would forgive her, another would give her some ground for defense or counterattack. There was no real vindictiveness in his silence. He did not care whether or not she accepted the guilt as long as it was clear that guilt was not his. To put it another way, married familiars in this stage, though nok necessarily enemies, are just not friends.

They left the car by their respective doors, and the rain immediately increased as if it had been cued from the wings. The sporadic wind died completely, and suddenly and water seemed to displace air altogether. It ran down Yancey's spine, it bashed at his eyelids, it threw gouts of mud up to his knees. He felt his way along the fender and around the front of the car until he collided with Beverly. They clung together, gasping and waiting for some kind of light to penetrate the hissing deluge. Some did, at last, a sodden skyglow with a dimmer echo from the lake, and they began to wade up the shore along the line of cabins.

Visitors to the lake have been known to complain that the cabins were built too close together. It is clear that such plaintiffs never walked the row in the seething black of a summer rain. Each cabin boasted a wooden post with a number, cut from plywood with a jigsaw, perched on it. These could be read by water-wrinkled fingertips as they progressed, and they seemed to be fully half a mile apart. Yancey and Beverly did not attempt to talk; the only speech between them was a muttered number when occasionally they investigated one of the posts to check their progress. It was enough to make exasperation itself turn numb, not to he reawakened until they found cabin 12, bypassed the next, and turned in at what should therefore be 14, only to find it called 15.

"Fifteen, fifteen!" Beverly wailed wetly. "Where's fourteen? It's gone!"

"Gone, hell," growled Yancey, uselessly wiping at the water streaming over his mouth. "That'll be it there, that we just passed. Afraid to number a cabin thirteen. Superstition. Well, you know a woman runs this place," he added.

Beverly inhaled, a sharp gasp at this injustice, but took in as much water as air and could only cough weakly. They backtracked and fumbled their way up to the dark bulk of cabin 14. Yancey dropped the suitcase noisily on the small porch.

"Yance! You'll wake everybody up!"

He looked at her and sighed. The sigh transmitted, "What did we come here for?"

He pounded on the door and they pressed close to it, trying to get some shelter from the decorative gable over the door. A light showed, the doorknob moved, and they stepped back into the rain. And nothing, nothing at all told Yancey that in this second a line fell across his life, so that forever his biograpby would consist of the parts life-before-Lois and life-since-Lois, with nothing between them but a sheet of rain and the opening of a door.

It opened altogether, fearlessly. He said, "I'm Yance Bowman, this is my wife, and we -- " and then he saw her face, and his voice failed him. Quickly, effortlessly, Lois spoke into his sudden silence and made it unnoticeable. "Come in, come in !" With one swift balanced movement she took the suitcase from his hand, whirled around them to reach out in the rain for the doorknob, and, closing the door, swept them in.

They stood panting and dripping, looking at her. She wore a maroon hostess robe with a collar that stood up like an Elizabetan ruff; the material fell away and draped from her wide flat shoulders with the static fluidity of a waterfall, all movement even while she was still. Her slight turn and bend as she set down the suitcase told him that those wide shoulders were indeed shoulders and not padding, and the flash of a bare foot declared that here was a woman who would stand and look straight into his eyes.

Beverly spoke, or began to; he turned to her and saw that she was, by comparison, dumpy and wet and exceedingly, farmiliar. "We didn't know which cabin to -- "

"Never mind that," said Lois, "we'll have two weeks to explain ourselves to each other. First of all you've just got to get out of those wet things, both of you. I'll heat some coffee."

"But-but-but we can't -- "

"But you can," said Lois. "Not another word. Go on," she said, crowding them into the hall which led away to the left. "There's the bath. Take a shower. A hot shower." Without pausing she scooped thick towels from a shelf and dropped them into Beverly's astonished hands. She reached past them and turned on the bathroom light. "I'll get your bag."

She was gone end back before Beverly could get her mouth around another syllable. "Hurry now, before the muffins get cold."

"Muffins?" Beverly squeaked. "Oh now, please don't go to that tr--" but she was in the bathroom with Yancey, with the door closed, and Lois' swift light footsteps answering her like a laugh as they ran away down the hall.

"Well I -- " said Beverly. "Yancey, what can we do ?"

"Like the lady says, I guess." He gestured. "You first."

"A shower? Oh, I couldn't !"

He pulled her over in front of the basin and aimed her face at the mirror. "Wouldn't hurt."

"Oh . . . oh dear, I'm a sight." She had one more second of hesitation, murmured, "Well . . . " and then pulled her soaking dress off over her head.

Yancey undressed slowly while Beverly splashed under the shower. About the time the mirror was thoroughly steamed up she began to hum, high and happy. Yancey's numbed brain kept re-creating the vision of Lois as he had first seen her, framed in lamplight which was in turn framed by a hurtling silver halo of rain. His mind formed it and bounced away, formed it again and again retreated. It would only look and look back; it would not evaluate. His world contained nothing like this; he doubted, at the moment, that it could. His only analytical thought came as an academic question, not to be answered by any process he then knew: how could a woman be so decisive, so swift, yet so extraordinarily quiet? Her voice had come to him as through earphones, direct and with fullest quality, yet seeming not to reach the walls. Anyone else in the world, taking charge like that, would certainly have roared like a drill sergeant. "Don't turn it off," he said to Beverly.

"All right." She put a parboiled arm through the curtains and he dropped a towel across it. "Mmm, good," she said, rubbing briskly as she emerged. "I feel as if we'd been kidnapped, but I'm glad."

He stepped into the shower and soaped up. The scalding water was good on his chilled skin;he felt muscles relax which he hadn't known were taut. It was far and away the best shower he had ever taken up to the point when Beverly uttered a soft and tragic wail. He knew the sound, and sighed. "What have you done now ?" he inquired, his voice carrying a labored patience. He turned off the shower and peered through the mists at his wife. She had a towel round her head like a turban, and her pale blue chenille beach robe hung from her shoulders. "The black one," she said.

"Give me a towel. What black what?"

"Suitcase. This is all the beach things. There isn't a thing of yours here but your bathing trunks."

"This," he said after a suitable silence, "is just your night."

"Oh, Yance, I'm sorry."

"I'm sorry too." He stared fixedly at her until she wilted. "I'll just get back into those wet clothes."

"You can't!"

"Got a better idea? I'm going out there in bathing trunks."

There was a knock on the door. "Soup's on!"

Before he could stop her, Beverly called out with a distressed bleat, "Know what I did, I brought the wrong suitcase, there's nothing here for my husband to wear but his bathing suit!"

"Good!" said the soft voice on the other side of the door. "Put it on and come on out. The coffee's poured." When they did not respond, Lois laughed gently. "Did you people come to the lake to be formal? Didn't you expect to be seen in bathing suits? Come on," she added, with such warmth that in spite of themselves they found some sheepish smiles and put them on. "Coming," said Yancey. He took the trunks out of the open suitcase.

In the living-room a fire had been lit and was just beginning to gnaw on the kindling and warm a log. A table was set, simply and most attractively -- gray place mats, black cups, wrought-iron candlesticks with black candles. There was a steaming glass urn and an electric toaster which clucked once and popped up two halves of an English muffin just as they sat down, Lois came out of the kitchen carrying a black sugar bowl. She glided up behind them as they sat at the table, leaning over them. One long arm put the bowl down; her other hand touched Yancey's bare shoulder. Something --

Something happened .

In the other bed, Lois abruptly turned on her side, facing him, She reached over to the night table between the beds, found a cigarette. The wind died just then, taking a deep quiet breath for the next shriek; and in the jolting silence a great sea smashed the cliff below. Lois struck her match, and the light and the explosion of water together plucked Yancey's nerves in a single shattering chord. He steeled himself and did not start. In the blinding flare of the match, Lois' face seemed to leap at him -- a partial mask, centered on the arch of an eyebrow, the smooth forehead over it, the forehead's miniature counterpart in the smooth lowered lid beneath. The arches were stable, flawless; things on which could he built a strong and lovely structure if one could only . . . only . . .

He lost the thought in the ballooning glow of her cigarette as she lay back and puffed quickly, too quickly for her to enjoy it, surely. She drew the glow into a ruddy yellow sharp-tipped cone, and the smoke must have been hot and harsh to taste. Hot and harsh. He moistened his lips.

A surge of anger began to rise within him, matching again the sea outside. With an approaching breaker, the anger mounted and swelled and exploded. But the breaker could turn to foam and mist, and disperse, and he could do nothing but clench his teeth and press his head back into the pillow, for he must not wake Beverly.

This thing was so . . . unjust ! Beverly gave him everything he wanted. She always had, especially since that time at the lake. Especially since . . . Her capacity for giving amazed him, almost awed him. She gave with everything she did. Her singing was an outpouring. She laughed with all her heart. Her sympathy was quick and complete. She gave constantly, to him more than to anyone or anything else on earth. They had -- now -- a marriage that was as good as a marriage could be. How, then, could there be room in him for this -- this thing , this acute, compelling awareness of Lois? Why must there be this terrible difference between "want" and "need"? He didn't need Lois!

The anger subsided. He bent his arm and touched Beverly's hair. She moved, turning her head from side to side, burrowing closer in to his shoulder. This won't do, he thought desperately. Aren't I the boy with the Brain? The man who can't be pushed around, who is never puzzled by anything?

Go back, Yancey. Go back again to where your world was full of Lois and you could control it. If you could do it then, with a tenth of the mind you have now, then why . . . why can't you . . . why is your heart trying to break your ribs?

He closed his eyes against the shouting silver of the night and the bloom of Lois' cigarette. Back, he demanded, go back again. Not to the hand on the shoulder. Afterwards. The rain's letting up, and scurrying through the puddles and the sky-drip to their own cabin, the one next door. Hold it. Hold it right there . . . ah. He had it again; he was back two years, feeling again what it was like to be able to keep Lois to himself, and his heartbeat normal.

Impossible! But he had done it for almost two whole weeks. Lois on the diving platform, then painted on the sky, forever airborne -- forever because awareness such as his photographed and filed the vision; in his memory she hung there still against a cloud. And the square dance, with the fiddle scratching away into an overloaded p.a. system and feet clumping against the boards, and the hoarse, happy shouter: "Alamen lef an' around we go, swing yore potner do-si-do . . . now swing somebody else . . . an' somebody else . . . an' somebody ELSE . . . " and ELSE had been Lois, turning exactly with him, light and mobile in his arms, here and gone before he knew completely that she was there, leaving him with a clot in his throat and a strange feeling in his right hand, where it had taken the small of her back; it seemed not to belong completely to him any more, as if her molecules and his had interpenetrated.

Oh, and Lois breaking up a fight between one of the summer people and a town man, drifting close, ruffling the hair of one and laughing, being a presence around whom no violence could take place; Lois backing the station wagon skilfully among the twisting colonnades of a birch grove . . . And Lois doing unremarkable things unforgettably -- a way of holding her fork, lifting her head, ceasing to breathe while she listened for something. Lois glimpsed through the office window, smiling to herself. Lois reading the announcements at lunch, her voice just loud enough for someone else on, say, a porch swing, yet audible to eighty people.

Lois walking, for that matter, standing, writing, making a phone call . . . Lois alive, that was enough to remember.

Nearly two weeks of this, waking with Beverly, breakfasting, swimming, boating, hiking with Beverly, and his preoccupation cloaked in the phlegmatic communications of familiarity. What difference did it make if his silence was a rereading of Lois' face instead of a reconsideration of the sports page? He would not have attempted to share either one with Beverly; then what was the difference? Earlier in their marriage she might have complained that it was useless to have a vacation if be acted just the same during it as he did at home; at this stage, however, he was completely -- one might say invisibly -- Yancey. Just Yancey, like always.

But there was a line between possible and not-possible in Yancey's ability to contain his feelings about Lois. He did not know just where it was or what would make him cross it; but cross it he did, and there was no mistaking it once it happened.

It was a Thursday (they were to leave on Sunday), and in the afternoon Yancey had asked Lois to come to their cabin that evening. He blurted it out; the words hung between them and he stared at them, amazed. Perhaps, he thought, he was being facetious . . . and then Lois gravely accepted, and he fled.

He had to tell Beverly, of course, and he didn't know how, and he made up, in advance, seven different ways to handle her in anticipation of the seven ways in which she might react. Each, of course, would result in Lois' coming. Exactly what the evening would be like he could not predict, which was strange in a man who was so ready with alternatives when it came to making a hostess out of Beverly.

"Bev," he said abruptly when he found her pitching horseshoes back of the lodge, "Lois is coming for a drink after dinner."

Beverly tossed a horseshoe, watched it land, skip, and fall, then turned to him. Her eyes were wide -- well, they always were -- and their shining surfaces reminded him at that moment of the reflecting side of a one-way mirror. What would she say? And which of the seven ripostes must he use to overcome her resistance? Or would he have to make up an eighth on the spur of the moment?

She dropped her eyes and picked up another horseshoe, and said, "What time?"

So Lois came; her light, firm knock might just as well have been on the base of his tongue, so immediately did he feel it. If, later on, his will failed him a little, it was because now he sat still using it up, and let Beverly go to the door.

Beverly, he thought, for Beverly's sake, should not permit herself in the same room with Lois. Lois came in and filled the room, but without crowding; Lois went back and down into an easy chair as if carried by flying things; Lois' body grew up out of the cushions supported by what she breathed like an underwater plant. And Beverly bounced about with glasses and ice and talked . . . talked . What Lois did was something different; Lois conversed. He sat dully, contributing little, watching and thinking his own thoughts. He was achingly aware of many things, but foremost was the realization that Lois was making an effort -- a completely successful one, as far as he could judge -- to put Beverly at her ease. She made no such effort for him, and he told himself with pride that this was because she had no need to; they understood one another, and must make things easy for poor Beverly.

He lay back almost drowsily, soaking in Lois' presence as if she were the sun and from her he were gradually acquiring a sort of tan.

Then they were alone in the room, when Beverly went to the kitchen, and then Beverly was wailing something about ice, oh dear, but the Johnsons in nine will have some, no don't bother I'll be right back; the screen door in the kitchen slammed and Beverly's quick feet went bam bam bam down the back steps, and ceased to exist as they encountered pine needles; all this in a brace of moments, and he was alone with Lois.

He rose and went to the couch and sat where its corner touched the arm of the easy chair. It seemed to take all the energy he had; he wanted a cigarette, he wanted tb speak. He could do nothing.

After a silent time he felt Lois' gaze on him. He turned to her quickly and she dropped her eyes. He was glad, because their heads were so close, and he had never examined her this way, slowly. He wet his lips. He said, "Only ten days."

She made an interrogative syllable.

"Knowing you," he said. He rose suddenly and crossed in front of her. He put one knee on the broad arm of her chair so that his foot was by the back. He sat back on his heel, his other foot steadying him on the floor. She stayed just as she was, looking down at her long brown hands. "I want to tell you something, Lois."

A small frown appeared and disappeared on her smooth forehead. She did not raise her eyes.

"It's something I've never told even to . . . never told anyone."

Lois moved a little. She did not raise her face, but now he had a three-quarter view of her profile. She waited, still as a dewdrop.

"The night when we arrived. You made coffee and I sat at the table. You came up behind me to put something down.

"You touched me."

He closed his eyes, and put his arm across his chest and his hand high on his own shoulder. "Something . . . happened ," he said, with an unaccountable difficulty.

Yancey was, in a small way, an engineer. He began abruptly to explain, in didactic tones, "It wasn't static electricity. It couldn't have been. It was pouring rain outside and the air was humid, not dry. You were on the bare floor in your bare feet; it wasn't one of those deep-pile-rug phenomena. So it wasn't anything . . ." He opened his eyes, swallowed. "Static, or anything like that," he managed. Then he was quiet, watching her.

Her face, the flexible mask, was breaking up like an ice floe in a sudden warm strong current. Her brow was like a snowbank with the marks of a kitten's claws on it. There was a tear drop on her left cheek, and the streak of a tear on her right, and her teeth were driving into her lower lip. The corners of her mouth were turned upward, precisely as they would be in a smile, and there was a delicate pucker in the flesh of her chin. She made not a sound. She rose, her eyes seizing his and holding them as she backed to the door. There she turned and ran out into the dark.

When Beverly came back he was still half-crouched, balancing on the arm of the chair. "Why -- where's Lois?"

"She left," he said heavily.

Beverly looked at him. She looked at his eyes, quickly at his hairline, his mouth, and again at his eyes. Then she went into the kitchen and he heard the ice she was carrying fall explosively into the sink. She called out, "Is anything the matter, Yancey?"

"Nothing's the matter," he said, getting up.

She said, "Oh." They cleared up the glasses and ashtrays and went to bed. Lois was not mentioned. Nothing was mentioned. They went about the ritual of retiring in silence. When the lights were out he said, "I've had enough of this place. Let's go home in the morning. Early."

She was quiet for a long time. Then she said, "If you want to."

He thought she slept badly. He did not sleep at all.

In the morning he drove furiously. For the first twenty miles he could not understand what he felt; then he began to understand that it was anger. For another fifty miles he could find no direction for the anger; none of the people involved had, after all, done anything, so how could there be anger?

Occasionally he glanced at Beverly. Ordinarily she sat back, looking forward at the sky, sideways to scenery, or inward to whatever it was she communed with during those silent times they spent together. This morning, however, she sat straight and kept her eyes on the road ahead, which made him aware that he was driving too fast and which annoyed him beyond description. Childishly, he increased both his speed and his anger.

And at last, with a feeling that approached relief, he found something to be angry at.

Beverly.

Why wouldn't she say, "Slow down!" Why had she agreed to let Lois come to their cabin? Why had she gone on blandly being herself this whole time, while he was tearing himself apart inside? Why hadn't she even questioned him when he decided so abruptly to leave? "If you want to," she'd said. "If you want to." What kind of self-respect is that?

Or -- maybe she just didn't care.

'If you want to' . . . for the first time he realized that this was her code, her basic philosophy of life. They had red curtains in the living-room. They had always had red curtains in the living-room. Well, he liked red curtains. He'd said so. She had put up red curtains.

He glanced at her. She was watching the road tautly. He squeezed down a bit more on the accelerator.

The place they lived in, the job he kept; the food they ate and probably the clothes she wore; were they really chosen because they were what he wanted?'

Were they what he wanted?

Should he have what he wanted?

Why not? Beverly had.

He laughed, making Beverly start violently. He shook his head at her, which meant either "I won't tell you" or "Mind your own business." He had disqualified himself from finding any flaw in this new and breath-taking conclusion and it made him exultant. He enjoyed speed in his exultation, and control. He sent the car howling through a deep cut in the crest of a hill, and around the blind turn on the other side, which is where he collided with the space ship and was killed.

As it will at times in the wake of a hurricane, the wind died. Less tractable, the sea punished the cliff unabated. The night was as noisy, but the noise was so different it was as shocking as sudden silence. In it, Lois twisted and angrily rammed her cigarette into the ashtray on the night table. With a crisp angry rustle of sheets, she turned her back and then sighed. The sound was only half vocalized, but such a voice propagates more like light than like sound. Beverly came hurtling up out of slumber and flashed free like a leaping fish, only to fall back and swirl near the under surfaces of sleep. She raised her head, turning it as if seeking, but her eyes were closed. "Hm?" she said sleepily. Then her face dropped to Yancey's chest again and she was still.

What I should do, thought Yancey wildly, is to sit her up and slap her awake and say, "Look, Bev, you know what? I got killed that morning when we had the accident, I was dead altogether, the late Yancey Bowman, r.i.p., and when they put me back together I was different. For two years now you've been living with a man with a mind that never sleeps and never makes mistakes and does . . . can do. . . anything it wants. So you can't expect ordinary conduct from me, Bev, or rational behavior based on any reason you can understand. So, if I do anything that . . . that hurts you, you mustn't be hurt. Can't you understand that?"

Of course she wouldn't understand.

Why, he thought desperately, when they put me back together, didn't they iron out that little human wrinkle which made it possible for Pascal to make that remark about the heart having "reasons which reason does not know"?

He snorted softly. Heart. Heck of a name for it.

He lay on his back and watched the motion of surf-scattered moon on the ceiling. He let his mind float into the vague shadows, be one with them away from, above, beyond his insupportable, insoluble problem. And gradually he found himself back there again, two years ago -- perhaps because of the momentum of his previous thinking, perhaps because, in reliving a time when there was Lois (and he could stand it) and a time when there was Lois (and he could not), it was a welcome thing to go into a time where Lois, and Beverly, and for that matter Yancey Bowman, had little significance.

As the space ship lifted, it retracted its berthing feet; it was one of these which Bowman's sedan struck. The car continued under the ship, and the edge of the flat berthing foot sliced it down to the belt line, leaving a carmine horror holding the wheel. The ship hovered momentarily, then drifted over to the side of the road where the mangled automobile had come to rest. Directly above the car, it stopped. An opening appeared in the bottom of the ship and dilated like a camera iris. There was a slight swirl of dust and leaves, and then what was left of the car rose from the ground and disappeared into the ship. The ship then slid away to the clearing in the woods where it had lain hidden during its stay on Earth. Here it settied. It camouflaged itself and lay outwardly silent.

Exactly what was done to him, Yancey could not how. He was made aware of the end results, of course. He knew that what had been injured had been repaired, and that in addition certain changes had been made to improve the original. For example, his jaw hinges had been redesigned to eliminate a tendency to dislocation, and a process was started which would, in time, eliminate the sebaceous cysts which had kept forming and occasionally inflaming ever since he was an adolescent. His vermiform appendix was gone -- not excised, but moved in some way which would indicate, in the event of an autopsy, that it had never formed in the first place. His tonsils had been replaced for reasons which he could not understand except that they were good ones. On the other hand such anomalies as his left little toe, which since birth had been bent and lay diagonally across its neighbor, and a right eye which wandered slightly to the right when he was fatigued -- these were left as they had originally been. The eye was one of the most interesting items, he thought later; the toe had simply not been improved, but the eye had been restored with its flaw. His teeth, too, were as irregular as before, and contained fillings in the same places, though he knew there had been little enough left of them. In sum, he had been altered only in ways which would not show.

He did know, however, why these things had been done. There was inside that ship an aura of sympathy mixed with remorse unlike anything he had ever felt. Another component was respect, an all-embracing respect for living things. Somewhere near where he lay in the ship's laboratory was a small covered shelf containing a cicada, two grasshoppers, four summer moths, and an earthworm, all casualties in his accident. Their cell structure, organic functions, and digestive and reproductive processes were under study as meticulous as that which was being lavished on him. For them restitution was to be made also, and they would be released in as good condition as this unthinkably advanced science could make them. The improvements seemed to be in the nature of a bonus, an implemented apology.

And, of course, there was no denying that as long as such repayment was made the alien footsteps on Earth were fairly obliterated. Yet Yancey was always certain that this was not a primary motive, and that the aliens, whoever they were, wherever they came from, would have sacrificed anything, themselves included, rather than interfere with terrestrial life.

He was to find out later that they had done the same thing with his car as they had done with him. He had not the slightest doubt that if they had wished they could have rebuilt the old sedan into a gleaming miracle, capable of flight and operable forever on a teacup-full of fuel. He found it looking as it had always looked, even to rust spots and a crinkling around the windshield where moisture had penetrated the laminations of the safety glass. Yet there was a little more pickup, a little more economy; the brakes were no longer grabby in wet weather; and the cigarette lighter heated up in fewer seconds than before.

Who were they? Where had they come from? What were they doing here and what did they look like?

He was never to know. He knew precisely as much as they permitted. He even knew why he knew as much as he did. They could restore his crushed head and shoulder, and did. They coUld make slight improvements, and did. But even they could not predict every situation in which he might find himself in the future. It was deeply important to them, and it would be to him, to conceal the changes which had been made, or the reciprocal impacts between him and his society might greatly affect both. The best concealment would be his full knowledge of what had been done, and a solemn injunction to divulge nothing of it to anyone. That way he could never innocently perform public miracles and then be at a loss to explain.

What miracles?

Most miraculous, of course, was the lowered impulse-resistance of his nervous system, including the total brain. He need no longer run over and over a thought sequence, like a wheel making a rut, to establish a synapse and therefore retain knowledge. He had superfast physical reactions. He had total recall (from the time of his release from the ship) and complete access to his previous memory banks.

Yet a prime directive among his "surgeons" seemed to have been a safeguarding of what his world called Yancey Bowman. Nothing -- nothing at all -- was done to change Yancey Bowman into something or someone else. He functioned a little better now, but be functioned as Yancey Bowman, just as the changes in his digestive system were basically improvements rather than replacements. He could get more energy out of less food, even as he could breathe higher concentrations of CO2 than he could before. He could be, and was, Yancey Bowman more efficiently than ever before. Hence nothing was changed . . . even (or especially) the turmoil which was uppermost in his mind when he died.

So it was that after death had struck one Friday morning, the same morning hour on Sunday revealed a strange sight, (but only to some birds and a frightened chipmunk). Slipping out of earth itself, the ship spread topsoil where it had lain, covered it with a little snow of early-fallen leaves, and shouldered into the sky. It wheeled and for a moment paralleled the deserted highway below. The opening on its belly appeared, and down throngh the shining air swept an aging two-door sedan, its wheels spinning and its motor humming. When it touched the roadway there was not so much as a puff of dust, so perfectly were wheels and forward motion synchronized.

The car hurtled through a cut in a hilltop and around the blind turn on the other side, and continued on its way, with Yancey Bowman at the wheel, seething inwardly at the unreachable stupidities of his wife.

And was there a moment of shock when he found himself alive and on his way unharmed, in his undamaged automobile? Did he turn and crane to see the dwindling speck in which his life had ended and begun again? Did he pull over to the side, mop his brow, and in a cascade of words exult over his new powers? Did Beverly demand to know what had happened, and would she not go out of her mind when she found that Friday was Sunday now, and that for her there had been no Saturday this week?

No, and no, and no. There was no shock, because he was certain to his marrow that this was the way it would be; that he would say nothing and that he must not look back. As for Beverly, her silence on the matter was proof enough that her convictions would suit the situation as well.

So he drove too fast and was too quiet, and his anger bubbled away until at length it concentrated into something quieter and rather uglier. As it formed, he drove more sensibly, and Beverly relaxed and leaned back, turning now and again to inspect the shutters or curtains in a house they passed, watching the sky up ahead while she thought her own thoughts.

If you could call them thoughts, he reflected.

The product of his anger was a cold projection, and took the form of an unspoken dictum to Beverly. He found that with his new reflexes he could give the matter his full attention, since now his hands seemed quite able to drive by themselves, and even, it appeared, to read route signs.

So, echoing noiselessly in his mind, this structure built: This is not the end, Beverly, because the end must have been long since. You are not a woman living her life; you are a half-person living mine. Your ambition could not push me ahead, your senses could not know when I was in torture, your taste is not your own, and your abilities are limited to a dull search for what might please me and a trial-and-error effort to get it for me. But aside from me you are nothing. You do not and you could not earn your own living. Cast out on your own resources you could not so much as fill a receptionlst's chair, or even run a summer resort. If nothing whatever had happened to me during those three days, what we have could never be called "marriage" again, not by me. I have looked into the sun, Beverly; I have flown; I can never crawl the mud with you again. I was too much for you before; what then am I now?

So it ran, turning and elaborating itself but always returning to a silent scornful chant, buoyed up by glimpses of freedom and far horizons. After about an hour of this he sensed her gaze, and turned to look at her. She met his eyes and smiled her old smile. "It's going to be a lovely day, Yance."

He turned abruptly back to the road. Something in his throat demanded attention, and he found that he could not swallow it. His eyes stung. He sat, unwillingly examining his feelings, and slowly it came to him that among his other traits, that characteristic called empathy -- the slipping on of other people's shoes, the world seen through the eyes of others -- this quality too had suffered a sea-change and was heightened more than was comfortable. What, to Beverly, had happened? Numbly, perhaps, she had been aware that something was amiss at the lake. He seriously doubted if she had identified the something. She'd known it was important because she'd okayed their leaving so abruptly without asking any questions. But what was this "lovely day" business? Did she think that because their backs were turned to the unidentified threat, it had ceased to exist? Why, that must be exactly what she thought!

Oh Beverly, Beverly, are you going to get a kick in the teeth!

But a day went by and no such thing happened. It didn't happen the first week, either, or in a month. Part of this was because of his work. He went back to it with a new sense, an awareness. He became totally sensitive to a condition called "integration," himself with his job, his job with his office, his office to the firm, and the firm itself in the economic mosaic. He wasted no motion in his job, and found himself spending his working day in pondering the structure of his surroundings. His first new effort was expressed through the suggestion box. It was perfect of its kind. It was an idea simple enough to have been thought of by his pre-accident self, and unlikely to be advanced by anyone not in this particular job. It eliminated the job and Yancey was advanced two grades and given new work to do. So he was busy, immersed, engaged, even at home. That in itself was enough to submerge his feelings about Beverly.

But it was only a part of his procrastination. (He called it that at first: sooner or later, he thought, there would be changes made.) Largely, he delayed because of this accursed empathy. Beverly was so happy . She was happy and proud. If he became unaccountably silent, she tiptoed about the place, quite convinced that the great man was dreaming up something else for the suggestion box. If he was short-tempered, she forgave. If he bought her something, or approved something she had bought, she was grateful. Home was harmonious; Beverly was so happy she sang again. He realized that it had been a great while since she had sung.

And all the while he knew how she felt. He knew it surely and painfully, and was fully aware of the impact she would suffer if he broached to her his inner thinking. He'd do it; oh yes, he'd do it, some day. Meanwhile, it wouldn't hurt anything if she got that new winter coat she had eyed so wistfully in the Sunday paper. . . .

So a year went by and he did nothing about the matter. Actually, he thought less about it after a year, though there were moments . . . But work was more engrossing than ever, and home was such a pleasure -- though a quiet one -- and Beverly was fairly blooming. If a man has the virtue or the curse of empathy, he has to be kind. He must, for the most selfish of reasons: any time he kicks out at another human, he will find bruises on his own shins.

Once, suddenly, he asked her, "Beverly, have I changed?"

She looked puzzled, so he enlarged it. "Since last year, I mean. Do I seem different?"

She thought about it. "I don't know. You're -- nice. But you were always nice." She laughed suddenly. "You can catch flies," she teased. "Why, Yance?"

"No reason. The new job, and all." He passed the reference to flies. One had been bothering her last fall and he had absently reached out and caught it on the wing. It was the only time he had come near betraying some of his new talents. She had been astonished; in eight years he had never demonstrated coordination like that. She would have been more astonished if she had noticed that he caught the fly between his thumb and forefinger.

"The new job hasn't gone to your head," she said, "if that's what you mean."

He maneuvered a situation in the office which required attention in an out-of-town branch and arranged matters so that sending him out there was only logical. He was gone two weeks. He had seen to it that it was not the kind of task that required genius, just application and good detail work. He met two girls while he was there, one brilliant and high in the company, the other far better than anything the company would ever be able to hire. He left them alone, disliking himself not a little because he knew, in his heart of hearts, whom he was being faithful to.

And it was good, good to get home. Due to what he had done out of town, he was raised another notch but had to reorganize his new office, so there was no vacation that year. He could easily have analyzed this development, and determined for himself whether he had purposely avoided a vacation, but he did not. He'd rather not know.

There was a company picnic, and Beverly sang. People reacted so enthusiastically -- especially to Yancey, as if he had invented her -- that he coaxed and goaded her into auditioning for a television show. She won the audition and appeared. She lost the audience vote to an eight-year-old boy with an accordion, but she was incandescentiy, happy because Yancey had cared, Yancey had helped.

In the matter of Beverly, Yancey began to like himself.

That, in Yancey's private code, was the Year of the Big Christmas. They took a week off and went to a ski lodge in New Hampshire. They did a number of things together, and nothing was wrong about any of it. And one night they sat before a Christmas-card kind of fireplace with a crowd of kindred souls, drinking 'glögg' and roaring carols, until they were too sleepy to move. After everyone else had gone to bed, they sat holding hands silently and watching the fire go out. As it will at such moments, when one is living, not dying, his life whisked across his inner eye and stopped here at this hearth, and on it was superimposed the uneasy question 'What am I doing here?' Over him came a flood of tenderness for Beverly, poor Beverly. For the first time it occurred to him that the fantastic thing that had happened to him might have a grim and horrible result. His metabolic efficiency, his apparent immunity to everything from the common cold up, his outright inability to get too little rest or too little food . . . suppose he should live -- well, not forever, but --

He glanced at his wife, and though she was young-looking for her age, his quick mind vividly supplied a wrinkle here and there, a little sag. He'd be able to conceal his feelings about it, of course, but would she? Empathetically, he went through a brief torture with her future, seeing her wither while he went on as he was.

He averted his face, and his eyes filled with tears.

Gently she disengaged her hand. He felt it stroking, stroking his wrist. And she had the wit, or the luck, to say absolutely nothing as she did it.

When he thought back on it, much later, he thought too that though there were many women who could do many things Beverly couldn't do, not one of them would have done just that, just that way.

In the spring he turned down a promotion, sensitive as he was to the feelings of his co-workers; this would benefit him far more in the long run. And again it was summer, and this time there would be a vacation.

Well -- where? He would choose a place, and Beverly would say, "If that's what you want, darling," and off they'd go. He thought, and he thought about it. With his total recall, he recreated a great many scenes for himself. He all but decided, and then he hesitated; and then, sitting at his desk in the office, he said aloud, "No! No, not yet," and startled some people.

They went to New England, to a place new to them, craggy, rugged, sparkling, where sailboats notched the skyline and the wind smelled clean and new and quite unused by anyone else. For four days they fished and swam, danced, and dug littlenecks. On the fifth day they stayed snugly indoors while the sky pressed down like a giant's palm. At three o'clock the small-craft warnings went up. At four the Coast Guard called and warned them away from their rented shack; yes, it was a hurricane, a real hurricane and not just a storm.

They loaded the car haphazardly and tumbled into it, and already there was a blinding fog of spume blowing horizontally across the coast road. They ground up the hill to the town and pulled into the hotel yard.

The hotel, of course, was full, with a bed laid in the linen room and a cot set up behind the desk.

"What are we going to do?" Beverly wailed. It was not distress, not yet. This was exciting.

"We're going to have a drink. Then we're going to have some hot chowder. Then we're going to think about what we're going to do."

With their lungs full of ozone and their eyes full of sparks, they went to the dining-room.

There was a picture which, say, a year ago, Yancey used to call to mind so often that it was as familiar as his safety razor. A slim back, wide shoulders clad in rich brown moleskin; lamplight glancing from dark obedient hair, and a long brown hand resting lightly against an ivory cheek. When he saw it now, right before his eyes, he discounted it as an unwelcome phantom, a trick of the charged air. But Beverly squeezed his elbow and cried, "Yance -- look!" and before he could draw a breath she sprang away from him to the table.

"Lois! Lois, whatever in the world are you doing here?"

This, Yancey told himself heavily, just had to happen. He went forward. "Hello, Lois."

"Well . . . !" It was a single syllable, but it contained warmth and welcome and . . . but how would you ever know, even when she smiled? A mask can smile. "Sit down, please sit down, Beverly. Yancey."

There was a rush of small talk. Oh, yes, she had sold the resort, last spring. Worked for a while in town. Resigned, looking for something better. Came up here to let the wind blow the smog out of her hair. "Now I'm afraid it'll take the hair too." Oh yes, Beverly was saying, so warmly, so proudly . . . two promotions . . . turned down another one too; he'll run the place in another year, just you watch . . . and a good deal more, while Lois watched her hands and smiled a small smile. "What about you, Lois, are you married or anything?"

"No," said Lois huskily, "I'm not married" -- and here Yancey dropped his eyes; he couldn't bear to meet hers while she said it -- "or anything."

They had a drink, and another, and then some superlative New England chowder, and beer, and another drink. And then it was over, and Yancey, paying the check, was telling himself glumly, "You did fine, boy; so if you're a little on the silent side for a day or two, what's that? I'm glad it's over. But I wish . . . "

Rising, Beverly said, "You're staying, here?"

Lois smiled oddly. "There's nothing they can do about it."

Before he could stop himself Yancey said, "Now what exactly does that mean?"

Lois laughed quietly. "I just got in an hour and a half ago. I never dreamed I'd need a reservation -- funny, isn't it, after my experience? Anyway, they're full up. I shall just sit here until they want to close the place. I will then be a problem, and be up to them to solve it." She laughed again. "I've solved worse ones in my time."

"Oh, Lois, you can't! They'll make you sleep on the bar!"

She shrugged, really not caring.

"Yancey," said Beverly. She was flushed and urgent. "Do you remember a time when two wet strangers couldn't find their beds, and what happened to them?"

He did meet Lois' eyes this time. This was when his heart began hammering.

Beverly said, "It's our turn. We're going down the coast. We'll find a place. Come on. Come on , Lois!"

Yancey thought, listen to her, takin~ the bit in her teeth. Doesn't she usually find out first what I want? And he answered himself, no; most of the time she just does what I want with out asking. And he told himself further, stop talking like a damned fool.

Ten miles south there was a town with a hotel. Full up. Four miles further, a motel. Packed to the eaves. The next stretch was twenty miles, and it was getting late. It was raining the kind of rain they had slogged through to Lois' cabin two years before, but this time they had a howling gale along with it.

And by the time they reached the next town, the warnings were in; the hurricane, true to its unpredictable breed, had swung east leaving rain and a maddened sea, but no further danger. So they drove into the slick shining streets of a city still quaking in its boots, but vastly relieved.

Here and there a store was open. There were three hotels, two of them full. They stopped at an all-night drugstore to ask directions to the third and Lois bought cigarettes and Beverly found a book-club edition of "Anna Karenina" and scooped it up with joy; she said she'd always wanted to read it.

The third hotel had one double with bath.

"Twin beds?"

The clerk nodded. Yancey looked at Lois but her eyes were cloaked. He looked at Beverly and she said, "Why not? We can fit in a twin bed. I'm not very big."

No, Bev, he thought, you're not.

Lois said, "Beverly -- "

"Shh," said Beverly. "We'll take it," she said to the clerk.

Lois turned again. Now she was looking up at the ceiling with him. Think of that! he thought addly, here we are sharing some antiseptic moonbeams.

His biting thought was protection for a very brief while. His heart began again. It shook him with each beat. It shook the bed, the walls, the building, the beaten cliff outside, making it hurl back the sea with even greater violence.

There was the softest butterfly-wing touch on his chest. Beverly had opened her eyes.

Yancey thought madly, it's like one of those meaningless conjugations they give you in first-year French. I stare up into the darkness, you stare up into the darkness, she stares up into the darkness . . .

Beverly moved. She wriggled up closer. She put her hand behind his head, pulling it toward her. She put her mouth on his ear. He felt her warm breath. Barely audible, her breath said, "'Darling. What is it? What do you want?"

What did he want? Nothing, of course. Nothing he could have. Nothing, certainly, that he should have. He shook his head.

Beverly crept back until her head was on his shoulder again. She lay still. She slid one hand over his chest, to rest lightly on his hammering heart.

Lois sighed quietly and turned over, away from them. The wind laughed and laughed outside, and another breaker smashed and spouted. The room grew black, then silver again.

Abruptly Beverly sat up. "I can't sleep," she said clearly.

Lois was silent. Yancey watched Beverly. The silver light made everything in the room look like an overexposed photograph, but Beverly's flesh seemed pink -- the only thing in the whole mad, pulsing world that had any color but grey or black.

Beverly swung her legs out, stood up, and stretched in the moonlight. She was small and firm and -- pink? Was she really pink, or was that a memory too?

What a beautiful complementation, he thought hotly; how balanced an equation expresses this chaos! Beverly, small and fair; open, simple, direct. Lois, tall, slender, dark, devious, complex. And each so clearly lacking just what the other had.

Beverly said, "I have nineteen chapters of "Anna Karenina" to read. Take me about an hour." She knelt on Yancey's bed briefly, reached across to the night table, and scooped something up. Then she went to the highboy and got the book. She went into the bathroom. Yellow light appeared starkly under the closed door.

Yancey lay quite still, looking at the line of yellow light.

At last he rolled over and looked at her. He could see the sliver of yellow again, across her eyes. She was half sitting, resting her weight on one slender arm. She was looking at him.

"What was it she picked up from the night table, Yancey?"

"Her watch."

Lois made a sound, perhaps "Oh." She sank down slowly, until she rested on her elbow. She was looking at him now.

He lay still, wondering if Lois could hear his heart. She probably could. Beverly probably could, through the door. He wondered, with shattering inconsequentiality, whether Beverly liked red curtains.

Lois made a slight motion with her chin toward the yellow gleam. She whispered, "I couldn't do that."

A great hungry yearning came over him, but at the moment, incredibly, it seemed to have no direction. It yawned somewhere beneath him, waiting to engulf him. A puzzlement plucked at him, and then, seeing the polished yellow lines in Lois' eyes, it came to him which of these women was simple and direct, and which was subtle and deep and complex.

"I couldn't do that," Lois had said. How many other things could Beverly do that Lois could not?

What kind of a woman was Beverly?

For the very first time Yancey Bowman asked himself what had happened to Beverly the day he was killed. He'd assumed she was simply in cold storage while they put him back together. He'd assumed . . . how could he assume such a thing? He had never even asked about her. That was impossible! Unnatural!

But of course -- he wasn't to ask. He would not have thought of it, and the chances were that he could not have asked her.

It must be time to think of it. Something had happened to him, permitting him to. Qualifying him to. But he hadn't changed; he couldn't change. He was built and rebuilt and designed and redesigned, to be Yancey-Plus. What change could . . .

Supposing, he told himself, they had a very young thing to rebuild. Wouldn't they build it so that it could go on growing? Then he could have grown. How? How?

Well, what would he have done in this same mad situation, two years ago, even after he left the space ship? He wouldn't have lain here these swift seconds, speculating.

"I couldn't do that." Lois had whispered. Supposing Beverly had been killed too, and changed as he had been changed. He had never told her what he knew; why would she have told him? Wasn't the prime purpose to improve a little, but to change nothing? He was Yancey-Plus; who went right ahead ruling the roost, accepting his wife's quiet variety of slave labor. Wouldn't she go right on being Beverly, giving him always what he wanted?

And suppose she hadn't been killed, hadn't been changed. What kind of a woman was she, who could do what Lois could not do, what -- it painfully occurred to him -- he himself, with all his powers, could never do? Was the original Beverly a bigger person than Yancey-Plus?

Then it was, with a surge of relief that made his head spin, that his heart eased and he smiled. He knew now how he had changed, how he had grown. He knew, all at once, what to do now and what to do for the rest of his life with Beverly. Up to now he had not been able to ask her if she was the same Beverly he had married. Now, by choice, he never would ask her. Their marriage would be spiced and underscored and made most beautiful by that one mystery between them.

All this in seconds, and he became aware again of the yellow lights in Lois' long eyes. Quite changing the subject, he used her exact words. "I couldn't do that." he whispered.

Lois nodded slowly. She sank back on the pillow and closed her eyes. He thought she trembled. He didn't know. He didn't much care. He turned over and filled his lungs, as he had not been able to do for more than an hour because of his leaping heart; "Beverly!" he bellowed.

The book fell on the tiles. There was silence for a moment, and then the door opened.

"Yes, Yance."

"Get back to bed, idiot. You can read that some other time. You need your sleep."

"I just -- all right, Yance, if you want."

She switched off the light and came in. A moonbeam swept across her face as she approached. She was looking across him at Lois, her lips trembling. She got into bed. He put his arms around her, gently, humbly. She turned to him and suddenly held him so tight that he almost cried out.