The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story

ens your entire way of life!" The chain-steel cape moved, the armor creaked.

"She's a beautiful woman," I said, then knew he'd miss the meaning, remind me that I knew many beautiful women.

Silence. Another creak. "Where's your shield? Lost it, I suppose. Luck, that you made it back alive!"

"We got to talking . . ."

"Fool. Do you think we wear armor for fun?" Eyes glowered, within the helmet. A mailed finger traced dents and blows on the metal. "Every mark was made by some woman's design. You were nearly destroyed by marriage, you escaped by miracle, and were it not for armor you would have been cut ten times since by friendships turned obligation turned oppression. One miracle you deserve. Dozens you had better not count on."

"I've worn my armor," I growled at him. "But you want me to ... all the time? Every moment? There's a time for flowers, too. And Leslie is special."

"Leslie was special. Every woman is special for a day, Richard. But special turns to commonplace, boredom sets in, respect vanishes, freedom's lost. Lose your freedom, what more is there to lose?"

The figure was massive, but quicker than a cat in battle, immensely strong.

"You built me to be your closest friend, Richard. You did not build me pretty, or laughing, or warm and pliant. You built me to protect you from affairs turned ugly; you built me to guarantee your survival as a free soul. I can save you only if you do as I say. Can you show me a single happy marriage? One? Of all the men you know, is there one whose

marriage would not go happier through instant divorce, and friendship instead?"

I had to admit. "Not one."

"The secret of my strength," he said, "is that I do not lie. Until you can out-reason me, change my fact to fiction, I shall be with you, and I shall guide and protect you. Leslie is beautiful to you to

day. Other women were beautiful to you yesterday. Every one of them would have destroyed you in marriage. There is one perfect woman for you, but she dwells in many different bodies. . . ."

"I know. I know."

"You know. When you find one woman in the world who can give you more than many women can, I'll disappear."

I didn't like him, but he was right. He had saved me from attacks that would have killed who I was this moment. I didn't like his arrogance, but arrogance came from certainty. It was chilly to stand in the same room with him, but to ask him to thaw was to become casualty to each discovery that this woman or that one is not my soulmate, after all.

As long as I could remember, freedom equaled happiness. A little protection, that's small price to pay for happiness.

Naturally, I thought, Leslie has her own steel person to guard her . . . many more men had planned her capture and marriage than women planned mine. If she lived without armor, she'd be married today, without a prayer of the glad Ipvership we had found. Her joy was founded on freedom, too.

How we frowned at the married ones who sometimes looked to us for extramarital affairs! Act as you believe, no matter what-if you believe in marriage, live it honestly. If you do not, un-marry yourself fast.

Was I marrying Leslie, spending so much of my freedom on her?

"I'm sorry," I told my armored friend. "I won't forget again."

He gave me a long dark look before he left.

I answered mail for an hour, worked on a magazine article that had no deadline. Then, restless, I wandered downstairs to the hangar.

Over the great hollow place hung the faintest veil of something wrong ... so light a vapor that there was nothing to see.

The little BD-5 jet needed flying, to blow the cobwebs from its control surfaces.

There are cobwebs on me, too, I thought. It is never wise to lose one's skill in any airplane, to stay away too long. The baby jet was demanding, the only aircraft I had flown more dangerous on takeoff than landing.

Twelve feet from nose to tail, it wheeled out of the hangar like a hot-dog pushcart without the umbrella, and as lifeless. Not quite lifeless, I thought. It was sullen. I'd be sullen, too, left alone for weeks, spiders in my landing gear.

Canopy cover removed, fuel checked, preflight inspection done. There was dust on the wings.

I should hire someone to dust the airplanes, I thought, and snorted in disgust. What a lazy fop I have become-hire somebody to dust my airplanes!

I used to be intimate with one airplane, now there's a tin harem; I'm the sheikh come to visit now and then. The Twin Cessna, the Widgeon, the Meyers, the Moth, the Rapide, the Lake amphibian, the Pitts Special . . . once a month, if then, do I start their engines. Only the T-33 had recent time in its logbook, flying back from California.