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shapes showed her strong body to advantage, whose colors harmonized with her red hair, continued
to sit close beside the huge man, looking at him lovingly. It was a restful attitude. There was no
hurry about anything.
"Ben?" As if she were wondering-not worried, only curious-why he remained silent.
"Ariane? It's really you?"
"Yes, foolish man, are you still worried? Of course it's me." Strong pale fingers pinched his arm.
He rubbed the pinched spot absently. "But how did you get here? On the Moon? And when?"
"You're here, aren't you?" She made it sound like an eminently practical answer. "Well, I've been
here, with my father, almost since I last saw you."
Absently he rubbed at his forehead, where his fingers could no longer discover any sweat, or
blood. Or wound. He asked: "You mean with the Emperor? Since when?"
"I've just told you. Yes, the man you call the Emperor's my father-but you knew that. Actually, to
me it doesn't seem very long since you and I were parted. We were trying to steal some treasure,
as I recall. All in a worthy cause, of course." She smiled as at some memory of childhood pranks.
She stroked Ben's head, the back of his neck. If there was a little soreness still, pain had
receded so far as to be faintly enjoyable, little more than a memory, as happened when a wound or
a sprain was almost healed.
He asked: "Just you and your father live here?"
Ariane's laughter tinkled; a delicate sound to come from a body so big and strong. 'No, Foolish
One. There are others. A great many other people. You'll meet them. Some you already know."
"Really?"
He wanted to ask who else was here that he might know, but instead closed his eyes. Whether magic
was involved in what Ariane-and her father-were doing for him, or technology, or some sweet drug
in the drink she'd given him, or what, Ben was being slowly overwhelmed by a sense of blissful
tiredness and relaxation. In a little while, he felt sure, he was going to fall asleep. Now there
would be time and security in which to sleep.
Ben felt a momentary regression toward childhood. How strange. But he was certain there was no
danger, now, in such abandonment. Opening his eyes again, Ben told his love: "I wish I had a
father like yours."
She nodded soberly, as at some reasonable request. "He'll be glad to be your father if you want."
Ben thought about it. The last time he had seen the Emperor, the Emperor had looked younger than
Ben. Ben started a chuckle but it quickly faded.
Then something occurred to him, to his renascent adult self. An item of information that should be
passed along. "Your mother's here," he told Ariane. "Lady Yambu came with me in the shuttle, from-
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from the Earth."
The green eyes of his beloved opened wide with eagerness; a delicious little personal trait that
Ben realized he had forgotten until this moment. She said: "I want to see my mother- but there's
no hurry. Right now I just want to be with you."
Ariane, Ariane. Yes, it had to be twenty years, Ben thought-really a little more than twenty-since
he had seen this young woman or touched her hand. But he remembered perfectly how her hand felt,
solid and warm and somewhat roughened by active use. It felt just like this.
So many seasons, so many events and people had come and gone that he was finding it difficult to
be accurate about the reckoning.
"As I remember the way things were so long ago-you loved me then. You really did."
"I really did. I really do." And at this point the red-haired young woman kissed this man who
loved her. Then she got up from her seat and her fingers became busy, rubbing her fingers over the
now-painless spot on Ben's head where he'd been wounded, then splashing him gently with more water
from the fountain.
It was all delightful. Perfect. But Ben's lingering sense of mundane reality, though fading by the
moment, was still strong enough to be offended by this situation. "I was a young man then, when
last we met. I'm getting to be an old man now. My wife and my daughter may both be dead, for all I
know. They were taken hostage, I think. ..."
"I know." But here, now, no one's death seemed to be of any great concern. Everyone had some
difficulties along that line, but they were temporary. And Ben's beloved, as young and beautiful
as memory would have her, put a hand on his arm. Her touch was very real. She only smiled,
faintly, as if there was something, some delightful secret, that she was going to explain to him,
sooner or later, when she got around to it. But there was no hurry. Ben understood, without having
it spelled out for him, that there was going to be plenty of time for explanations. All the time
that anyone could want.
A little later, Ben became aware of other people, moving, strolling, at some distance along the
shore of the Lake of Life. He could hear other voices from time to time, though their words were
indistinguishable. "Who's that-?"
And at the same time, in a secluded cove not very distant along the shore of this Lake of Life,
the Silver Queen, Ariane's mother, was being reunited with her husband.
There was a black-brown curve of sandy beach, lapped by occasional waves, and out beyond the
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