The few MONeans I've met are pleasant but reserved around me. Whether it's my newness or my Tel status that holds them at bay I cannot yet say. No one is hostile though in thought or deed. Even a non-Tel can pick up strong emotions, observation being a large part of anyone's ability to understand those around them. Tels just have the capacity to confirm and get detail.

Tikki comes trotting up from the field and insinuates herself between my feet.

A light breeze whistles over my cottage, and I hum along with it tunelessly. I take one step toward Glim's cottage, and immediately trip over Tikki, who jumps on me, purring, as soon as I'm on the ground. I wrestle her off me and get up, heading for Glim's place, keeping an ear open for the zipper as I go. The gra.s.s brushing against my boots as I walk and Tikki's purr are all I allow to announce my approach and possible ambush.

When I am nearly all the way to Glim's place, I can hear the cut of his broadsword through the air, his voice counting. I walk around his cottage and see him before he senses me and turns. He is covered with sweat, wearing only a pair of shorts. I smile. Tikki storms him, sword play being one of her favorite games, but he throws the sword down before she reaches him, Tikki goes and sits by the sword, attention divided between it and Glim.

I thought you were going to help with the harvest, he says, ignoring Tikki.

If the zipper ever comes.

Always so impatient, he says.

It comes from years of having to be someplace on schedule, I respond. You're just used to letting everything take forever.

Jurors learn that everything happens in its own time.

I send him a mental raspberry. You've only been a juror for five point two six years longer than I have; Earth-standard at that. Your problem is you've got too much money.

Not anymore, he reminds me. How he can be so -- mild-- about it still dumbfounds me.

Are you sure it was worth giving up? I ask.

What we have together is worth any price, he responds, walking toward me. I only wish we could live without having to hide it out here on the edge of the universe. There are places I would love to share with you.

But any place I am with you is perfect. I smile up at him.

Glim cups my face in his hands for the first time since we've landed without the numbing edges of a damper field around us, and time seems to shift and blur. I smell his sweat mingled with the MONean flowers in an impressionistic symphony.

Our minds surf together in a wave, and I open my lips to kiss him . . . the world explodes in an orange and black and white flash of light and the screaming and I see them floating in the black and orange -two of them, they must be the Ellysians, I think --long hair floating behind them, androgynous in form and Glim's mind and mine embrace and I can feel the power in the joining grow and I feel the others, Serba and Eileen and Eckart and Homar, trying to separate us with their minds and flinching from the a.s.sault and I see MON through a black veil and-- how can the spiritual bond between Glim and me be this strong? What has happened? Why has it not happened before? How could I ever give this up? How could anyone ask me to deny it?. -- then Tikki is between my feet and I am falling and Glim tries to hold me but Tikki is between us, he loses touch, and the bond is broken.

I fall on my back, jamming my shoulder, and Tikki jumps on me, purring and robbing her face against my chin. The colors are gone. The screaming has stopped.

What in the living h.e.l.l was that? Serba demands.

I look up at Glim. He is staring at his hands.

The others are coming, I say. Are you all right?

He looks up from his hands. Are you all right? I ask again.

What happened? he asks. His question sparkles in my mind with shock and wonder.

I shake my head. I don't know. Are you okay?

It was so powerful, he says. Like we were fusing into one --

Are you okay? I shoot at him, worrying about personality subsumption.

Yes, he says, finally. Not subsumption. Mind s.e.x.

I can see the others, the Calcedorn in the lead, coming around the comer of Glim's cottage. Tikki settles down on my chest with her paws snuggled into my neck, the tips of her claws p.r.i.c.kling against the surface of my skin.

"What happened?" demands Serba, stopping several feet from me. The others stand a little way from her. No one moves to help me shake off Tikki. I wrestle Tikki off and slowly stand up. No one attempts to help me at all.

"What happened?" Serba repeats.

"I don't know," I say. "Everything was black and orange, and they were floating."

I turn toward the main colony and sense that Glim follows my gaze.

"The Ellysians," she says. "You saw the Ellysians. But how could you see them here? We've only seen them at the Pool."

"You never told me you'd seen them before."

"I didn't want to influence you. It Eileen and the scientists are right, and it is simply a 'narco-pathic response to elements unknown,' I could influence your perceptions by giving you expectations."

I feel as if the blood has been drained from my body. Glim may be right.

Although the term doesn't describe the experience itself, "mind s.e.x" is the best description the feeling left in its wake. "You could never have suggested what we just saw and felt."

"Never," Glim chimes in. His nipples are still hard from the experience, his body flushed. He sits down quickly, knees drawn up in an effort to hide his excitement.

Serba, however, is too intent on me to notice or care. "What did you see?" Her level of pa.s.sion is almost fanatical.

"I, we, saw two beings. I didn't get a sense of male or female. They had long hair of some sort that appeared to have motion or they were in some kind of nul-grav field. There were colors: black and orange. A sense of . . . of . . .

welcome? Is that what you would call it, Glim?"

"I didn't feel anything. I saw what you saw, but we share all our senses when we're joined, uh, linked mentally."

Glim is actually fl.u.s.tered. I have never seen him off balance before.

"Your 'link' was most extraordinary," Homar interjects. His molting must not be finished; a fine trail of particles marks the path from his cottage. I find myself musing again over the nature of his physical being. "Is this what you two normally experience during your mating process?"

Thus Homar brings Glim's and my relationship to the table, albeit in a less than tactful manner. Glim, all sign of embarra.s.sment gone, stands to confront Homar.

"I don't believe we have invited you into our hive."

Homar goes rigid for a moment, the insult stunning him. "Actually," he answers, calmly precise, "as you have already shared your feast, we are no longer strangers on the path to your hive."

Glim finally bows in a.s.sent and responds, "Andadmonee, Sic Homar, then allow me to show you the proper entry."

"You know my people's customs well, Glimmer. But know, too, that what has happened here today is extraordinary; so much so that it draws me out at a time when no other, certainly no other of an alien race, may expect to see me. That being said, let us end our sparring. I think we are both vulnerable at the present moment." Homar gestures behind him, and Glim notices for the first time the trail of the airborne particles.

"Very well."

"So you both saw the same things," Eckart jumps in, promptly sneezing. "I'm sorry, I ran out without my eco-mask."

"Didn't we just clear your sinuses for you?" I look at Eckart holding his palm over his nose. I begin to giggle.

"This is not something to laugh about!" Eileen is darkly flushed with rage. "You two blasted all of us with something you had no right to inflict."