"Ab," she said.
"It's been five years," he said. "Your parents both passed away. From natural causes. They weren't unhappy. You made the right choice."
She was conscious of being naked, and the eternal virgin in her made her flush with embarrassment. But he touched her (and the memory of the night they first almost made love was still fresh-- it had been only a few hours ago-- and she was already aroused, already ready) and she was no longer embarrassed.
They went to his apartment, and made love gloriously, and they were blissfully happy for days until she finally admitted what was gnawing at the back of her mind.
"Ab. Ab, I have dreams about them."
"Who?"
"Mother and father. You've told me it's been years, and I know that. But it still feels like yesterday to me, and I feel terrible for having left them alone."
"You'll get over it."
But she did not get over it. She began to think of them more and more, guilt gnawing at her, tearing at her dreams, stabbing like a knife when she made love with Abner Doon, destroying her as she did all the things that she had wished, since she was a child, she could do.
"Oh, Ab," she wept one night-- only six nights since waking-- "Ab, I'd do anything, anything to undo this!"
He stopped moving, just froze. "Do you mean that?"
"No, no, Abner, you know I love you. I've loved you ever since we met, all my life, even before I knew you existed I loved you, don't you know that? But I hate myself! I feel like a coward, like a traitor for having left my family. They needed me. I know it, and I know they were miserable when I left them."
"They were perfectly happy. They never noticed you were gone."
"That's a lie."
"Batta, please forget them."
"I can't. Why couldn't I have done the right thing?"
"And what was that?" He looked afraid. Why is he afraid?
"To stay with them. They only lived a few years. If I'd stayed with them, if I'd helped them through the last few years, then Ab, I could face myself. Even if they were miserable years, I'd feel like a decent person."
"Then feel like a decent person. Because you did stay with them."
And he explained it to her. Everything.
She lay silently on the bed, staring at the ceiling.
"Then this is a fraud, isn't it? Secretly, truly, I'm a miserable bitch of an old maid who rotted away in her parents' house until they had the courtesy to die, a woman without the guts to commit suicide--"
"Absurd--"
"Who was only saved from her fate by a man who contrived to play God."
"Batta, you have the best of both worlds. You did stay with your parents. You did the right thing. But you can go on with your life now without having the memories of what they did to you, without having to become what you became."
"And was I so horrible?"
He thought of lying to her, but decided against it. "Batta, when I saw you in that room in the colonization office, I nearly cried. You looked dead."
She reached over and stroked his cheek, his shoulder. "You saved me from the penalty of my own mistake."
"If you want to look at it that way."
"But there's a contradiction here. Let's be logical. Let's call the woman who decided to stay with her parents Batta A. Batta A actually stayed and went crazy, like you said, and she chose to go off to the colonies and keep her madness to herself."
"But it didn't happen that way--"
"No, listen," Batta insisted, quietly, intensely, and he listened. "Batta B, however, decided not to go back to her parents. She stayed with Abner Doon and tried to be happy, but her conscience tore at her and drove her mad."
"But it didn't happen that way--"
"No, Ab, you don't. You don't understand. Understand at all." Her voice cracked. "This woman lying on the bed beside you-- this is Batta B. This is the woman who turned away from her parents and didn't fulfil her commitment--"
"Dammit, Batta, listen to reason--"
"I have no memory of helping them. They suddenly-- end. I walked out on them--"
"No you didn't!"
"In my own mind I did, Ab, and that's where I have to live! You tell me I helped them but I can't remember it and so it isn't true! That choice-- that was the choice that the real Batta made, staying with them. And so the real Batta was shaped by that experience. The real Batta suffered through those years, even if they were awful."
"Batta, they were worse than awful! They destroyed you!"
"But it was me they destroyed! Me! The Batta who chooses to do what she believes she ought to!"
"What is this, the old-time religion? You have a chance to be spared the consequences of your own suicidal sense of right and wrong! You have a chance to be happy, dammit! What difference does it make which Batta is which? I love you, and you love me, lady, and that's the truth, too!"
"But Ab, how can I be anything but what I am?"
"Listen. You agreed. Instantly. You agreed to let me erase those years, to wake you up and have you live with me as if that agony had never happened. It was voluntary!"
She didn't answer. Only asked, "Did they tape me when they put me under somec? Did they record the way I really am?"
"Yes," he said, knowing what was coming.
"Then put me under again and wake me up with that tape. Send me to a colony."
He stared at her. He got up from the bed and stared at her incredulously and laughed. "Do you realize what you're saying? You're saying, please take me out of heaven, God, and send me to hell."
"I know it," she said, and she began trembling.
"You're insane. This is insane, Batta. Do you know what I've risked, what I've gone through to bring you here? I've broken every law concerning the use of somec that there is--"
"You rule the world, don't you?"
Was she sneering?
"I pull all the strings, but if I make a mistake I could fall anytime. I've deliberately made mistakes for you--"
"And so I owe you something. But what about me? Don't I owe me?"
He was exasperated. He hit the wall with his hand. "Of course you do! You owe yourself a life with a man who loves you more than he loves his life's work! You owe yourself a chance to be pampered, to be coddled, to be cared for--"
"I owe me myself." And she trembled more and more. "Ab. I haven't. I haven't been happy."
Silence.
"Ab, please believe me, because this is the hardest thing I've had to say. Since the moment I woke up, something was wrong. Something was terribly, terribly wrong. I had made the wrong choice. I hadn't gone back to my parents. I have felt wrong. Everything has been colored by that. It's wrong. I wouldn't choose to live with you, and so everything about it is wrong!" She spoke softly, but her voice was intense.
"I would not be here," she said.
"You are here."
"I can't live a lie. I can't live with the contradiction. I must live my own life, bitter or not. Every moment I stay here is pain. It couldn't be worse. Nothing I suffered in my real life could be worse than the agony of living falsely. I must have the memory of having done what I knew was right. Without that memory, I can't keep my sanity. I've been feeling it slip away. Ab--"
And he held her closely, felt her tremble in his arms. "Whatever you want," he whispered. "I didn't know. I thought the somec could-- make things over."
"It can't stop me from being who I--"
"Who you are, I know that, I know it now. But Batta, don't you realize-- if I use that other tape, you won't remember this, you won't remember these days we had together--"
And she began to sob. And he thought of something else.