After dinner, they watched television in Kathy's dorm room. SG had seen color TV before, but never a picture so clear. And she was astounded by the kind of shows on the air: comedies about gay men living with young women, jokes about the size of breasts and penises, crime dramas with the kind of language she had been taught to shun. "They can say things like that?" she asked, when a street punk told a cop to "fuck off." Kathy looked at her in surprise. "Of course they can. You haven't been watching much television, have you?" "No. Or reading the newspaper much, either," said SG, hoping to preemptively explain any inappropriate references or questions that might pop up in conversation. But Kathy wasn't interested in conversation, or television. She had been sitting in a second-hand armchair, while SG was stretched out on the floor. Now Kathy joined her. They lay on their sides, face to face, their heads propped up on their hands. Kathy leaned forward and brushed her lips against SG's. "Do you like that?" she asked. SG answered by rolling Kathy onto her back and kissing her passionately. In seconds, they were tearing off their clothes. Kathy was an expert lover, with a gift for sensual teasing that SG found irresistible. When she licked SG's pussy, it was like a concert pianist playing a charming, childish ditty. After three orgasms, SG decided to return the favor. She slid her tongue down Kathy's belly and into her crotch. And suddenly, she saw - knew, experienced - the last time Kathy had made love. She felt the sensations Kathy had felt, heard the voice of the man who was on top of her, smelled his body. She sat up. "What happened?" Kathy asked. "What's the matter?" "I don't know," said SG, her face registering her confusion. "It was as though . . . . I can't explain it. I saw you with a boy. I felt it. I felt him on top of you . . . of me. His name was Eric and he had a tattoo of a horned toad on his left shoulder."

"How the hell do you know about Eric?" Kathy demanded. "What kind of game is this?" "It's not a game. When I began licking your clitoris, I suddenly tapped into something. Your memory. Your experiences." Kathy was on her feet, furious. "Get out of here," she shouted. "Get out." SG dressed quickly. She felt devastated. But she hadn't meant any harm. "Is Eric fucking you, too?" Kathy asked coldly as SG prepared to leave. "I've never met Eric," SG said. "Please, do one thing for me. Think of a number while I'm kissing you. A big number, too big to guess." Kathy looked at her with a mixture of suspicion and curiosity. "You pull this stunt and you want to kiss me?" "Please," said SG. They stood far enough that they had to lean forward to kiss. They didn't touch each other, except for their lips. Then SG pulled away and said softly, "Fifty-three thousand, two hundred and eleven." "Holy shit!" Kathy said. This must be one of the "different attributes" the gatekeeper had mentioned, SG thought. She now had a talent for reading other people's minds through sexual contact. So far, it had worked with oral-genital contact and mouth-to-mouth. She wondered if there were other possibilities. She and Kathy spent the night exploring. SG learned much about her attractive host. And Kathy learned that this strange and lovely blonde was a sexual superstar.

# # #

SG had decided, even before she and Kathy finally fell asleep, that what worked with Kathy was worth trying on Professor Kase. She didn't know why Fate had brought her to this college campus, but she was certain it involved learning about space and time. And the dorky professor was the one to teach her - not slowly and tediously in the classroom, but in an orgasmic flash. She didn't waste time. The next morning, she went to the administration building and found Dr. Kase's schedule. He would be free that afternoon from 2 o'clock on. At 2:15, she went to his office. She had bought a special T-shirt from the shop in the student union building, and she wore it under her silk blouse. She knocked at his door. "Come in," he called. He sounded irritated. She opened the door and faced an office with a very bad case of clutter. Books and notebooks were scattered everywhere. One wall consisted of a shiny white board covered with equations written with a black marker. Kase himself was sitting cross-legged in an old-fashioned swivel chair with a book and a calculator in his lap. He looked over his glasses at SG. He gave no sign that he recognized her.

"Can I help you?" he asked, in a tone of voice that said, "Can you disappear quickly?" "I want to learn everything you know about the relationship between time and space," SG said. "I want to know about time travel." Kase sighed. "Time travel is impossible," he said. "Teaching you everything I know about time and space may be possible, but I really haven't the time." He smiled in spite of himself. No time to teach about time. "Okay," said SG, pulling off her blouse to reveal a T-shirt, several sizes too small, with a picture of Einstein and his iconic equation: E=mc2 . "Let's skip the teaching and get to what I'm really here for. I want to have sex with you. Here. Now." Kase put the book and calculator on his desk. "You must really be desperate for a good grade, because I'm not exactly the studly type," he said. "What's worse, I have ethics. I don't fuck students. I don't trade A's for sex."

"I'm not asking for an A," said SG. "I'm not even enrolled in your class, as you discovered yesterday. In fact, I'm not a student at this college." "So what exactly do you want?" "I want to have sex with you, here in your office, right now." He looked at her a long time without speaking. She really was quite lovely. And she filled that T-shirt in a way that gave new meaning to Einstein's theory about the curvature of space. "I really can't . . . ." Before he could finish his sentence, SG had wriggled out of her skirt. She wore the skimpiest of bikini bottoms. He gulped. "You don't have to take the initiative," she said softly. She moved toward him, and he almost fell over backward in his chair. "Just relax," she said. He looked anything but relaxed. She knelt before him, looked into his eyes and began unbuttoning his shirt. "Really," he said, "this is highly . . . ." She kissed his chest, then ran her tongue down his belly to his belt line. It was an amazing experience for both of them. Kase had had sex only once before, with a prostitute, and it had been a quick, slam-bam-thank-you-ma'm affair, with no preliminaries. This was deliciously different. Meanwhile, the instant her lips touched his flesh, SG was overpowered by his memories and speculations. An entire undergraduate semester of hydrology flashed through her in a nanosecond. His recent paper on black holes and singularities was stored in her brain before her tongue reached his navel. "Let's get those pants off, big boy," she whispered huskily. He raised himself in the chair, fumbled with his belt and finally slid his pants halfway down his thighs.

She finished the job, pulling down his underpants to reveal a penis of modest dimensions but filled with enthusiasm. She sucked slowly, sensually, guided by her extensive experience. He moaned and, unsure what to do with his hands, finally placed them on her head. Then he was thrusting upward, into her mouth, and making little sobbing sounds. "Oh, yes, yes, yes," he cried. "Oh, God, yes." He came, in an eruption of equations. SG was dizzy. Cum dripped from her lips, and numbers whirled through her mind. It was the most exciting sex she had ever had. Kase lay sprawled in his chair, his head hanging over the back. He looked like a dead man - a dead man with a goofy smile on his face.

# # #

Kase wasn't dead, but the experience was so overpowering that he spent the next three days in bed at his apartment, trying to make sense of it - to master it with reason. SG also needed time to sort out all that she had learned. Kase's sensual and emotional experiences, many going back to early childhood, had been transmitted to her, along with his scientific theorizing. She discovered that he had been an only child, that he had an imaginary playmate named Eustace, and that his puppy, Lex, had been killed by a delivery truck. She also learned that he had a secret crush on Kathy, that he had written poetry when he was an undergraduate, and that Kathy had discovered some of his poems in an obscure college literary magazine. What most interested SG, though, was Kase's complex relationship with Dr. Pilger Altezeiten, professor of ancient history and polymath extraordinaire. Dr. Altezeiten was perhaps the university's leading academic figure - certainly the only one with an international reputation as impressive as Kase's. The two men were very different. Kase was only 32. Altezeiten was over 70. Kase was a rigorous rationalist. Altezeiten had an equally keen mind but was at heart a romantic.

They admired and liked each other but disagreed on a wide range of subjects, not the least of which was the possibility of time travel. As best SG could understand from what she had learned through her intellectual cock-sucking, Altezeiten was convinced not only that time travel was possible, but that it had already occurred. Beings from the distant past and equally distant future walked among us. Kase thought this was New Age rubbish. SG decided it was time to get it straight from Professor Altezeiten.

# # #

He was easy. Altezeiten was, in fact, a dirty old man. He was delighted when a very attractive young woman rang the doorbell of his condo and asked for a private meeting with him. He was even more delighted, and not the least bit embarrassed or resistant, when she began stripping in front of him - all the while chattering about how much she admired his work and how eager she was to learn from the master.

In seconds, she was completely naked, except for her tennis shoes and her emerald pendant. With European courtliness, he suggested they retire from the entrance hall, where someone outside might see her through the beveled glass on either side of the front door. He led her to his "recreation room." This room was filled with exercise equipment and chrome and leather devices SG had never seen before. "You want to learn," he said. "I want to teach. But I am old-fashioned. I am not a democrat when it comes to learning. I must be the master. And that leaves, for you, the role of . . . ." "Slave?" SG suggested brightly. "Exactly," said Dr. Altezeiten. "You are a very intelligent student." In no time at all, SG was bent over a leather bench with her butt raised and exposed, her wrists tied to rings at the far end of the bench and her head firmly held by two padded arms of a vise. "As they say nowadays, no pain, no gain," said the professor. With that, he whacked her behind with a slender bamboo cane. It made a surprisingly loud noise, but SG found that the sting was not very painful. In fact, the tingle that followed was quite pleasurable. "Shall we continue?" he asked. "By all means," she said. But it was difficult to speak with her head in the vise, and while whipping might be a great turn-on for the good doctor, it didn't put her in direct physical contact with him. How would she learn what she needed to know? Her speculation was interrupted by a much more vigorous blow, this time from a 12-tail leather flogger. It hurt. The second and third blows hurt even more. She yelped and assumed that once he heard her protest, he would release her. But he seemed to have become too involved to stop. The blows continued, and so did her cries of pain. These he finally stopped by stuffing a ball-gag into her mouth and tightening the vise on her head.

Her muffled protests excited him even more. "Yes," he said. "I'm sure it does hurt. But we haven't broken the skin, so I don't think any permanent harm has been done. Let's keep it up, shall we?" With that, he resumed flogging her. He grew stronger with each blow, as if the aging process was in reverse.

At last, as tears streamed down SG's face, he dropped his pants, put on a condom and shoved his prick into her already well lubricated pussy. "I see you've been enjoying all this," he said cheerfully. "The vagina speaks truths that the mouth will not utter." He fucked her with the savagery of a man half his age. SG waited for the great revelation, but it didn't come - even though he did. He collapsed on top of her, gasping for breath. His dick slowly shrunk, but he was in no hurry to withdraw it. "Is that all?" SG wondered. She could have broken her bonds at any time but had refrained for fear of sabotaging her experiment. Now it seemed she had put up with pain and indignity for nothing. He released her slowly and methodically. The ball gag was the last restraint to be removed.