She smiled and came to the man. She kissed him again, and pressed in closely, running her hands across his body as eagerly as he was running his hands across hers. Then they were in the throes of the kind of lovemaking that worked best in imagination: no miscues, no objections, no misalignment of actions. Everything was perfect, and her ardor matched his. Despite the perfection, it took a wonderfully long time to run its course, for illusion could endure for inhuman lengths.
Then the woman faded from the scene. Earle found himself embracing and kissing Kara’s huge finger. But Kara herself was relaxed. In fact, she had fallen asleep.
The shared image had finally distracted her enough so that she had tuned out her fatigue. That had after all been the point of it. But in the process, Earle had discovered something awesome. He was falling in love with the giantess.
IN the morning Kara evidently felt better, but Earle was nervous and confused. How could he love an amazon giant? The notion was ludicrous. Nothing could ever come of it. Yet his pulse raced as he gazed up at her face, and it raced again as he gazed across and down at her body. She was his ideal woman, in personality, magic, and form—except for her size. To her it had been a game of idle fancy; it should have been the same for him. After all, the same sequence that had aroused his ultimate passion had put her to sleep. That showed that even had they been the same size in life, she would not have taken any such relationship seriously. It was no more than innocuous diversion for her. A harmless flirtation without true emotional involvement. Only a complete fool would see it otherwise.
Earle knew himself for a fool.
She lifted him out of the pocket and brought him past the truly awesome valley between her breasts and on up to her face. She touched her lips to his head, then set him down. Was she deliberately playing with his feelings, as she had with his image? She was after all an amazon; they were notorious for their callousness toward peons. Yet his magic indicated that she remained friendly. He wanted to trust that magic.
They ate their morning meals, then made ready to travel. Kara made the water porous and breathable, and walked down under the sea to the nether crevice of the East Valley. But here she paused, and an image appeared.
It showed a black-clad man riding up along the filament toward the next world of what some call the Milky Way. A larger red-clad woman remained behind.
She wasn’t coming? Somehow he had assumed that she was. But why should she leave her world? She had no reason to bring the animus; it would only deprive her of her magic. She had helped him travel, and had played with him in fancy, and that was it. She would see him off, then return to her home.
But he did not want to go without her. His mission remained, but his day and night with her had done more than move his body. It had moved his mind. His heart.
He made a response image: a small black man with a large red woman, both traveling the filament. Then a reprise of their shared image of the evening, the two figures the same size, the man hugging the woman. He was telling her that he cared for her, however foolishly, and wanted her continuing company. That was all he could do. How would she respond?
She smiled. Then she made the effort, and abruptly they were sailing up along the filament between worlds. She had wanted only his confirmation, his invitation! Did that mean that she cared for him too, or merely that she sought a pretext for adventure? He still wasn’t sure why she should support his mission, because it would cost her her magic. But after last night he was not inclined to question her too closely about that.
For one thing, this was a much longer and more convoluted ride than the one he had taken alone from Jupiter to Sol.
In fact, it shot right past worlds of Jupiter’s size and larger, and in and out of small ninety-nine-ray stars in a seemingly endless progression. This was part of the huge ray structure of the star with which Jupiter was associated, which was not the one closest to Jupiter. That was because Jupiter was near the end of a formation reaching from Star 99 to Star 98. They were moving in toward 99, and it became glorious as they went, though the constant spins into and out of starlets were dizzying. Gradually Star 98 faded behind, and the light of Star 99 dominated. But as they whirled into its mighty vortex, he realized that it was composed entirely of starlets, which were composed of smaller starlets, in turn composed of yet smaller ones. He couldn’t focus on them; he had to orient on the larger filament, to stop from getting disorientation sickness. What a contrast to his straight-line travel from Jupiter to Sol!
Into the heart of 99, into a brief eternity where the endless filament met the infinitely small space, just as was the case with the myriad starlets which comprised the larger pattern. Then out again, whirling and whirling, but the larger filament was almost straight to the head of what appeared to be a tiny projection on a truly monstrous world. It was in fact a rad, of the same sort as was on Sol, and on any world: the boulderlike base for an emerging filament. But this rad was perhaps a thousand times the size of Sol, and the world was perhaps a thousand times the size of the rad. Earle simply could not get a proper perspective on it; his imagination was too small. He had not realized that the universe was quite this big.
They landed on the tip of this projection of the Milky Way, a world of mind-numbingly vast dimension. Its surface was rough, and there were no familiar things, just balls and bags and sticklike things. Kara seemed as mystified as Earle was. These worlds were supposed to be similar, differing only in size.
Then they realized that they were so small for this world that they were the size of germs, those malicious little creatures that cast spells of ill-health on whomever they infested. No wonder it wasn’t recognizable! But it probably wasn’t safe either, because those germs could be as big as Kara, and Earle wouldn’t even make a meal for one.
So they cooperated on a vision, magnifying their perceptions until they could see on a scale a million times as large. Now it was apparent that they stood on the tip of the smallest head, looking down toward the main head, and beyond it the body of the rad, which was actually a tiny one deep in the crevice of Seahorse Valley, between the Milky Way’s own head and body. It was perhaps the least significant aspect of this world, and their entire system, down along the filament, was so minor as never to have been noticed by the folk here. This was not the most pleasant revelation for either Earle or Kara, but did not entirely surprise them.
Near this rad grew normal trees. It seemed to be regular farmland, with pastures and villages interspersing the forests. But a million times as big as what Kara had known, and even further removed from Earle’s experience. How were they going to communicate with anyone here, let alone get help? For it was obvious they would need help; this world was simply too large for them to handle themselves.
But Earle was determined to proceed. He made a picture: the two of them flying to the nearest native residence and making pictures for that person. They themselves might be far too small for the native to see, but their illusion images could be large enough. Illusion could be any size, for it was formed of nothing.
So they found shelter in a crevice of stone and rested for a day and night, because the journey along the filament had tired them both. They made food and drink and had a good meal, then relaxed and shared another same-size fantasy. This time they did not bother with a fence or sheep; his image and hers appeared directly. It was apparent that Kara enjoyed this as much as Earle did, whatever the nature of her underlying feeling. Such a thing was impossible physically, but in the image their representations hugged and kissed, and she ran her fingers through his hair and he ran his hands across her bottom, and their passion mounted to heights like those of the trees of this world, and they proceeded to an act of love whose perfection was limited only by their comprehensive imaginations.