“This might be the perfect time, dear, to merge our minds? I’ve been scared to death of it all along, but no more . . . let’s?”
“Uh-huh,” he demurred. “I’m still afraid of it. I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and doing some drilling, and the more I play with it the more scared I get. It’s dangerous. It’s like playing with duodec. I’ve just about decided that we’d better let it drop.”
“Afraid? For yourself, or for me? Don’t try to lie with your mind, Storm; you can’t do it. You’re afraid only for me, and you needn’t be. I’ve been thinking, too, and digging deep, and I know I’m ready.” She looked up at him then, her quick, bright, impish grin very much in evidence. “Let’s go.”
“QX, Joanie, and thanks. I’ve been wanting this more than I ever wanted anything before in my life. But not holding hands, this time. Heart to heart and cheek to cheek.”
“Check—the closer the better.”
They embraced, and again mind flowed into mind; this time with no thought of withholding or reserve on either side. Smoothly, effortlessly, the two essential beings merged, each fitting its tiniest, remotest members into the deepest, ordinarily most inaccessible recesses of the other; fusing as quickly and as delicately and as thoroughly as two drops of water coalescing into one.
In that supremely intimate fusion, that ultimate union of line and plane and cellule, each mind was revealed completely to the other; a revealment which no outsider should expect to share.
Finally, after neither ever knew how long, they released each other and each put up, automatically, a solid block.
“I don’t know about you, Storm,” Joan said then, “but I’ve had just about all I can take. I’m going to bed and sleep for one solid week.”
“You and me both,” Storm agreed, ungrammatically, but feelingly. “Good night, sweetheart . . . and this had all better be strictly hush-hush, don’t you think?”