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in a strange place. But the face and the voice were not strange.

"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