t on his
back and debated with Andra the advisability of transplanting a certain
shrub from its chance-chosen place in the meadow to a position in their
own gardens. Throughout their discussion he was conscious of little
drops of perspiration threading their way down his naked spine, and he
longingly savored the coolness of the stream-bank on which Andra
reclined, a mile or two to the south.

In good-humored exasperation he commented enviously on woman's lot and
drew a dry rejoinder from a chance traveler on the highway to the north.
He joined in the general laugh at his own expense, hearing the sally
repeated and elaborated until it drifted out of conversational range. He
was tempted to follow it farther out of curiosity, but it was not good
form to blanket local conversation for a mere whim. While his attention
was distracted, however, Andra became involved in an exchange of local
recipes with a newcomer to the district, a farm-wife whose husband had
had a fancy to try the westward farm lands. He joined the husband in a
wry grimace at the loquacity of women, and simultaneously caught sight
of a distant figure crossing a ridge somewhat north of him. The figure
paused at the same instant, looked searchingly in his direction, then
waved on sighting him and strolled on. It was the traveler whose quip
was now being repeated miles away, far in advance of him. Andra showed
no sign of running out of recipes and returning to shrubs. He sighed,
and stood alone in the meadow....

* * * * *

The casual facility of memory bridged time and space without
disorientation. He was strolling in the evening with his bride, Andra's
arm linked with his for the added pleasure of physical contact. In the
manner of lovers they supplemented their thoughts with murmured words
and sounds, thus sharing still another physical intimacy, for they were
still in that newly-mated condition where every manifestation of the one
was a source of delight and wonder to the other.

They paused momentarily by a vine-covered wall and he felt a cool frond
reach out to caress his shoulder while a long tendril curled gracefully
about his forearm between the upper and the lower wrists. A few
hundred-thousand years ago his remote ancestor would have recoiled
violently from the touch of what was then a strangler vine, but now he
casually disengaged the half-sentient tendril and with his mind caught
the faint, faint flicker of rudimen