"Elementary stuff, Eddie. Just as they learned teleportation through space ten thousand years ago, so they learned you can do the same thing through time. Mental effort, applied properly, can move physical objects. It was always latent in human beings through some unknown ancestor—they just had to learn how to control the power."
Eddie was still skeptical. "So you studied history by actually going back there?"
"Something like that. Then I found you, Edam Hurst."
"Ed Amhurst."
"What's the difference? I found you and once I did, purely by chance, of course—that was the end of history. No more studying. They tell me I'm a throwback—less psi-quotient, more sex identification than anyone here. Maybe that explains it.
"Anyway I had to bring you back. People constantly teleport trophies through time—but not in a thousand years has anyone brought back a human being. I saw that you had no ties and I brought you. Unfortunately there's a law against it, I think."
Eddie asked her why.
"It can cause a lot of trouble. You can change history by bringing someone where he doesn't belong. But I had to. I'm a throwback. I couldn't be satisfied...."
Slowly, almost imperceptibly, she had been walking closer and closer to Eddie, ever since she had turned off the loudspeaker. Now, abruptly, she was standing next to him—and then she was sitting on his lap. She snuggled in close and then she began to kiss him and Eddie knew at once that kissing had come a long way in fifty thousand years, even if the psi quotient was greater and sex identification had diminished.
Three minutes later Eeb got up and Eddie knew quite suddenly that while he had always known love at first sight to be ridiculous and impossible, love at first kiss was a very different matter.