s work at the anthropological
laboratories, the joy of poking among the cultures of the past. And at
night there was the joy of living with her, of sharing the tantalizing
stimulations of the culture of the present, the infinite varieties of
love mingling with passions.

For months there was this happiness of the closeness of her. And then
she was gone from him, for the moment. He still owned her, but they were
physically apart and there was the hunger of loneliness in him. The
months his work kept them apart seemed like centuries, until, finally,
he could return.

* * * * *

He was walking through a happy, shouting crowd, walking back to her. It
was the eve of the new year, a time for beginnings, a time for looking
from the pleasures of the past to those waiting in the future. There was
a happy outcry inside him that matched the mood of the crowd.

"Happy New Year!"

Women stopped him on the street, asking for his affection. But he passed
them by, for she was waiting for him and he was hungry for the
possessive love of his slave.

He went eagerly into the building where they lived.

* * * * *

The crowd was gone. A door was opening. The voice of his love, sudden,
full of naked surprise, bleated at him. And another voice, that of a man
standing behind her, croaked with hasty excuses and fear.

A change of hungers--it seemed no more complex than that.

He put his hand to his side and took out a piece of shaped metal,
pointing it at the man. A blast of light and the man was dead. He put
the weapon aside.

Young Oliver Symmes walked toward the girl. She backed away from him,
pleading with words, eyes, body. He noticed for the first time the many
small imperfections of her face and figure.

Cornered, she raised her arms to embrace him. He raised his arms to
answer the embrace, but his hands stopped and felt their way around the
whiteness of her neck. He pressed his hands together, thumbs tight
against each other.

Minutes later, he dropped her to the floor and stood looking at her. He
had owned her and then destroyed her when his ownership was in dispute.

He bent to kiss the lax lips.

* * * * *

Shadows. As a man grows older, the weight and size of his brain
decrease, leaving cavities in his mind. The years that pass are a
digger, a giant excavator, scooping the mass of past experience up in
the maw of dissipa