Her name’s Agathe. His is Zerph. She’s 30 but she feels older… He’s well over 84, right smack in the prime life. She drives a broken-down old clunker… He zips around in his sleek, private spaceship… She only speaks French… He has only 8,000 languages in memory. She vacations in a hole in the wall in Auvergne called Salers. He’s something of a galaxy-troter. She likes romance, sunsets, poetry, evenings by the fire, cooking… Among his favorite activities are : whining, complaining, going off half-cocked, criticizing, and playing Casandra… She hopelessly, desperately believes in true love, though she’s never actually foud any. He’s never touched a woman but he is equipped with the necessary appratus. They were world apart, not to mention several million light-years… And they would have stayed that way, but for a peculiar twist of fate.