‘That’s it.’
‘You got a series all at once? In a split second?’
‘That’s right. Look, for that split second I was her, don’t you see? I was her, everything she’d ever done, everything she’d ever thought and heard and felt. Everything, everything, all in the right order if I wanted to bring it out like that. Any part of it if I wanted it by itself. If I’m going to tell you about what I had for lunch, do I have to tell you everything else I’ve ever done since I was born? No. I tell you I was her, and then and forever after I can remember anything she could remember up to that point. In just that one flash.’
‘A gestalt, ’ he murmured.
‘Aha!’ I said, and thought about that. I thought about a whole lot of things. I put them aside for a moment and said, ‘Why didn’t I know all this before?’
‘You had a powerful block against recalling it.’
I got up excitedly.’ I don’t see why. I don’t see that at all.’
‘Just natural revulsion,’ he guessed. ‘How about this? You had a distaste for assuming a female ego, even for a second.’
‘You told me yourself, right at the beginning, that I didn’t have that kind of a problem.’
‘Well, how does this sound to you? You say you felt pain in that episode. So—you wouldn’t go back into it for fear of re-experiencing the pain.’