Under the Moons of Eden       by: Christopher Leeson       ©1996 Revised 1/2000

Chapter 1

*The sly slow hours shall not determinate
The dateless limit of thy dear exile.*

                                    KING RICHARD II

Our outfit, the 54^th Battle Group Earth Alliance, was in transit to Cathara when an Asymmetric search-and-destroy mission intercepted us off Ophir. Since our light escorts had no firepower to match theirs, they did a good job of turning our fleet into slag before the escort commander broadcast the general order for a cold jump.

A cold jump for hyperspace! You have to be suicidal to try that, but our ships were going out like Christmas lights on the day after New Years and there wasn't any other way out. Against every rule in the book the surviving fighters and freighters flooded their unprepared converters with antimatter and pushed the button. We watched the beleaguered ships blink out of this spatial continuum—in some cases permanently—but ours wasn't going anywhere; a disabling shot had fused our Morrison stabilator and made us the last sitting duck in a pond of sharks.

The Asymmetrics—or Assies as we usually called them—knew that our systems were down and so didn't circle back with torpedoes blazing. Our colonel, lieutenant colonel, and two senior majors had gone down with their own ships or jumped away—a circumstance which left me senior officer. Unconditional surrender was my introduction to independent command.

We knew that the Assies took prisoners; the kicker was that we didn't know what the enemy did with their prisoners. There had been no POW exchanges between belligerents, and not even the most routine sort of communication. Capitulation was a hard call, but I made it understanding that the enemy would gain little from capturing the personnel and basic equipment on board.

The Assies—odd-looking critters—boarded us to shut down our cannons, confiscate our infantry weapons, and lock our transport in a tractor beam. A few days of towing through hyperspace brought us to their intended destination, a new planet in Assie-space. It didn't look bad from high orbit: clouds, oceans, and plenty of green-tinged land. In fact, it seemed like a prime piece of stellar real estate.

This blue-and-green planet had never been on any Earther's chart, so it had no name and the Assies didn't volunteer one. Our captors didn't talk at all, except to have us pack our gear into the pods and prepare for a drop. That prospect was better than a blaster in the back of the head, but the Assies weren't wasting time with ceremonial send-offs. We were shoved into the planet's upper atmosphere, and that was it. The aliens, for all we could tell, jumped away and forgot about us.

#

We were abandoned, marooned with no instructions, no special equipment, nothing. Our prison walls were the .9G gravity of a nameless planet. We supposed that we had been deposited on an Assie POW world and were expected to live or die on our own. We definitely preferred choice number two, and so got to work setting up. It wasn't too long before the rank and file called our new home "Klink!" Well, why not? With everything going wrong, a low joke sometimes helps. Had we been able to see into the future, we might have started out calling it something much less polite.

Klink was an earth-type world with an ecology of chlorophyll plants, furry animals and flyers that, if you didn't look too closely, could pass for Terran birds. It has always amazed me the degree which alien evolution can parallel Earth's; of course, some people say that all the worlds originally came off the palette of the same Artist. Metaphysics was never my strong suit.

The first temperature reading we took was 18 degrees Centigrade. That was disappointingly chilly, but one of the fleet techs corralled with us calculated that we had set down during the winter season in the northern hemisphere. He estimated from the axial tilt and the latitude that the climate might be something like that of the Upper South in the USA. In other words, we could expect a long warm-to-hot summer, a short, mild spring and autumn, and a winter of intermediate length in which the temperature would occasionally drop below freezing—which, under the circumstances, didn't sound too bad.

Klink was orbited by two moons and, as we learned, they periodically went into conjunction and looked like they were about to collide. To plot the conjunctions, the fleet techs advised, one had to take into account the immense complexities of dual orbits and apparent retrograde motion. For the life of me I saw no reason to bother.

How little we knew then.

Anyway, we called our heavenly bodies Big Boob and Little Boob because we were a bunch of sex-obsessed SOB's. Who could blame us? Women hadn't served in combat units for a hundred years, and so did not exist in our corner of the galaxy. The chances for sexual recreation aside, we were well off. As Captain Montgomery Ames put it in those early days, "We've got everything we need for a party, except dames."

As I said, there were no Assie guards to bother us, no camp administration breathing down our necks, no rules imposed from above. Weapons-wise, we had only bayonets, knives, and hatchets, but though we occasionally found the tracks of large animals, and even sighted them from a distance, the wildlife seemed to be shy of our human scent and gave us wide berth. As far as we knew, Klink had no intelligent life, and therefore the lack of hardware did not add up to any immediate problem.

More than the confiscated arms, we missed the communicators. Without them we held no hope for easy contact with other humans on Klink—assuming that we were not the only prisoners. The planet seemed fertile and the climate mild. We wondered why the Assies hadn't developed Klink for themselves instead of "infesting" it with enemy aliens. Assies and humans liked the same worlds—a fact which had resulted in a decade-long border war. Now it seemed damnably strange that the Assies would invade human space and take large losses in material and life when they had an unused high-order T-type world in their own back yard. I sometimes wondered whether there was a serpent hidden in this Eden waiting for the chance to bite.

A soldier wastes his time trying to understand alien psychology. The welfare of our exiled fraction of the 54^th Battle Group Earth Alliance was the first order of business. Defeat is an unmanning thing, and so we had to keep our troops busy to maintain morale. Many of them had families back home, wives and children. The idea of permanent separation from loved ones is a bitter pill for a family man, and it's pure poison if you let him wallow in his loss. For that reason, I had my five captains and ten lieutenants drive the men hard during those first few weeks—exploring, cutting timber, constructing shelters and latrines, and foraging for a food supply.

We were out of the war, probably for good, but our outfit was first-rate and I intended to keep it that way. Few of the rank and file were career men, and consequently didn't like the idea of living the army way for the rest of their days. I sympathized, but discipline had to be preserved. It was better to live in a well-ordered organization than degenerate into a pack of bewhiskered, self-pitying bums on a camp-out.

Our survey selected a campsite a couple miles from our original landing. It was on a slight rise overlooking a fast-running creek which analyzed pure and would supply our needs for water. That allowed the Group to get to work in earnest.

But a man can't lose himself in work all the time. Though our men were kept hard at it, the private soldier on a detail can at least put his shovel down when the sergeant or lieutenant is out of sight and gripe to his buddies for a few minutes. Even officers were able to talk things over with those who shared their rank. But I was the commanding officer and had to keep my doubts and anxieties to myself. I knew capture had badly shaken the ranks and so it was up to me to keep everyone steady. I had to preserve the impression—the illusion—that someone was in control. That meant acting like I knew the answers. The trouble was, I didn't know the half of them.

Pressure—and loneliness—will buckle a man if he doesn't have a friend with whom he can be honest and up-front. The closest thing I had to a buddy on Klink was Dr. Sebastian Lowry, the only surgeon who had been aboard when the Assies took us. Unlike most of my officers, Lowry was not a careerist, but had been drafted as warrant officer for the medical corps. Dr. Lowry had run a civilian practice, but even after a year in a military-medicine academy no career soldier would ever mistake him for one of their kind. I think that fact made it easier to achieve a rapport with him. Anyway, Sebastian was a clear-thinker, had brains and not brass in his head, and was always game for a round of poker.

Our encampment of 537 men and officers was hardly up and running before IT happened for the first time.

#

Klink's moons were beginning their next conjunction, pairing like the women's boobs they were named after, when Pvt. Rick Halder disappeared. The man had been standing in front of the members of his squad when, at 14:07, he turned into a silhouette of white light and faded from view—without even leaving a sooty spot behind. We knew of no weapon that acted on human flesh that way.

As soon as I received the report, I put the battle group on alert and sent every available man out searching for enemy snipers. Because of the confusion, we only realized later that a second man, Pvt. Lionel Olson, was also missing. No one had seen him "go," but it seemed likely that he had vanished in the same bizarre fashion.

There was no follow-up attack and a search failed to identify anything unusual in the vicinity. At sunset, I ordered the perimeter heavily patrolled, although I knew men armed with knives could do little against a technologically superior attacker. Our pickets were not disturbed during the night and we resumed the search at sunup. The morning patrols soon turned up a new mystery.

Two women were discovered not far from camp, side by side, unconscious but apparently unhurt. Each was nineteen or twenty—a dark-honey blonde and a brunette. Each wore uniforms like ours—exactly like ours and much too large for them.

Our men reacted as if they had found treasure. "Isn't this an answer to our prayers, Major Breen!" crowed Sgt. Gold as we followed the females to camp borne on makeshift stretchers. "I only hope there's plenty more sleeping beauties where these two came from."

#

I followed the stretchers into the hospital where Dr. Lowry, assisted by his young medic, Alan Drew, transferred the women to the cots. The doctor observed that they appeared to be anesthetized, not comatose.

I thought back on Gold's excitement. Once Lowry brought the girls around, I could foresee all kinds of discipline problems. We had five hundred men starved for female companionship, and only two of the latter. The visitors would have to be sent home as soon as possible for their own good—and ours.

"Why don't they wake up?" I asked the doc. "They're not brain-damaged, are they?"

"When I find out, you'll be the first one I'll tell, Rupe."

"They must be colonists from an earlier prisoner drop—" I conjectured, knowing that the aliens had captured several Terran outposts over the last ten years, and evacuated the settlers.

Lowry opened the brunette's shirt and read the tag around her neck. "What the -- ?!"

"What is it?" I asked.

"The tag says 'Richard Halder!'" Lowry replied slowly, his face a mask of bewilderment.

I read the tag for myself; it actually was Halder's. "How in hell did this girl get it?! It should have been vaporized with Halder, but here it is. Does this mean that Halder's alive?"

Lowry had no answer, but then Drew began searching the blonde and found a similar I.D. tag. It said "Lionel Olson!"

"You've got to bring them around, Doc," I urged. "We've got to know what we're up against."

"Then give me working space, Rupe! I mean it! -- Get out of here!"

In the infirmary a doctor was god, so I contained my impatience and left the medics to their work. There was not much I could do except wait. Because of the crisis I had suspended even the construction teams. Every day we had been packing away more of our modular shelters as more permanent barracks replaced them. Now I wondered whether we'd ever live long enough to need them.

We faced, I guessed, alien kidnappers using matter-to-energy-to-matter technology. BEM's who had such advanced capabilities would be tough customers.

Through it all I remained preoccupied by the mystery of the women. That first day a strange thought occurred to me: Was this bizarre affair an exchange, a trade, a couple of "their" people for a couple of ours? Who would do such a thing, and why? It wasn't human thinking—it was a trade rat's! It was the expression of a very alien type of intelligence.

I had not been in my quarters long before Dr. Lowry came to my hut and started jabbering a report that made me think he had been breathing chemical vapors. More to confirm that diagnosis than to credit his report, I followed the good doctor to the infirmary on the double-quick.

I saw that both females were awake; one, the brunette, was sitting up, trembling, suffering from shock—head bent, fists clenched, shoulders quaking. The other was in a fetal position and seemed even farther gone. I addressed the brunette:

"Excuse me, Miss—" I began, but stopped myself. What if what Lowry said was true? I realized that I didn't know how to address the patient, and so I softened my tone as not to frighten her.

"Can you—can you tell me your name?" I queried.

Because the girl didn't raise her head I lifted her chin with my fingertips. Men who had been gut-shot sometimes had expressions like hers. "What is your name?!"

Frantic, she was trying to speak, but the words wouldn't come.

"That's all right," I coaxed. "Take all the time you need."

"P-Private Halder, sir!" she finally answered. "D-Don't you kn-know me, sir --?! Christ, don't you know me?!"

#

I fought the idea until the facts could no longer be denied, questioning the young woman who claimed to be Halder intensely, since the blonde remained unfit for interrogation. I tried hard to doubt the brunette's stated identity, but she was desperate to convince me. I went away, believing in my head, but not in my stomach.

Two more men disappeared that afternoon and two more girls were found the next morning. As we feared, once able to speak, they identified themselves as the missing soldiers. Yet, for some strange reason, none of these transformed men remembered anything of their time away. Fear settled over the camp as every day the number of affected personnel grew.

In their strange new female incarnations, the metamorphosed soldiers usually looked eighteen to twenty, regardless of their original ages. Dr. Lowry observed that the transformed men—the "transformees," as we soon began calling them—had all come back in very good physical condition, with scars and physical defects removed—including the last phalanx of the little finger that Sergeant Pitts had lost on Regis and now apparently had regrown.

Psychologically, all the transformees were suffering. Lowry suspected that the trauma was a side-effect, since normal trauma should not have come on well-balanced men so quickly—at least not until they had time to appreciate the full meaning of their situation. Possibly, though, the effect could be rooted in terror, experienced during captivity and effecting the transformees now, even though the conscious memory of it had been erased or blotted out. The fear they had presumably undergone might be lurking as a nightmare just below the surface.

But Lowry emphasized that it was the speed of the trauma, not the fact of it, which was surprising. It was the nature of males, especially men accustomed to the military life, to be repulsed by any idea of effeminacy and everything was done to screen out weak material during recruitment and boot camp, and then beat into hard steel the ones who were left. "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" had gone the way of female-tailored battle fatigues, and even earlier.

A female transformation was consequently a terrible shock for the soldiers. It was as though the patients' minds were interpreting what had happened to them as a profound physical violation. They were exhibiting what the doctor thought was very like post-rape trauma in women. Unfortunately, Lowry had no treatment, not even a theory of treatment for any aspect of the metamorphosis.

Sometimes the transformees' reaction to their condition was so violent or hysterical that restraint had to be called for. After the first few days, there was no space for them in the infirmary, requiring Sebastian to farm out his patients to the huts. After all, their problems were mental and emotional, not physical. All the doctor could do was prescribe rest and call on the affected soldiers each day to monitor their progress.

In the meantime, we were trying to discover the agent responsible. Over the next couple weeks we sent search parties as far as a hundred kilometers out looking primarily for aliens. They discovered nothing whatsoever—nothing, except the information that when a group went beyond a certain vague range from our main body, the same unseen powers acted, abducting and transforming searchers as if they were a separate group requiring separate attention from the planet Klink. The men's anxiety grew daily as the transformation count rose. Since dispersion only increased our problems, I decided to keep our men close together. Whatever lay behind our predicament, it didn't respect rank; Captain Ames vanished two weeks after the first incident, only to reappear the next morning as a hard-bodied, angel-faced female with a halo of fluffy blonde hair. Ironically, it had been Ames who had remarked, "We have everything we need for a party, except the dames!" Now we had more "dames" than we wanted—and were getting more every day.

At first, none of the stricken soldiers were fit for work. They spent much of their time in bed suffering from deep depression and huddling out of sight, ashamed to be seen, but sometimes they wandered the camp like somnambulists—when not breaking into fits of whimpering or screaming.

None of the rest of us knew how to react and morale plummeted. That was the worst of it—the fear. Rare friends came through for their transformed comrades, but to the majority, the transformees were pariahs.

I saw groups dissolve without a word when a woman, perhaps not looking where she was going or desperate for companionship, came near. Fear makes the human animal cruel, alas. The 54^th had been a cohesive outfit; its members looked out for one another. They were not able to act that way now and were deeply ashamed of themselves. All our men, both the transformed and the others, took a heavy emotional beating and we had no clue where it was leading.

Then something ghastly happened. Lionel Olson, one of the first two transformees, had been lodged with Halder in a hut of their own. Olson never became rational and, a couple days after leaving the infirmary, she opened one of her own arteries with a utility knife and bled to death before we found her in the morning.

Olson's death hit us like a laser cannon. We had been idiots! We should have anticipated the possibility of suicide. I cursed myself for an incompetent, unthinking fool. But neither had the danger occurred to the mystified and harried Dr. Lowry.

Despite our regrets, it was too late to help Olson. All we could do was lay her into a grave and put a board over it explaining that Lionel Olson had died "a good soldier, a beloved comrade."

After that ordeal, we knew what we were up against and every new transformee was placed under a suicide-watch. This was intended to continue until Lowry felt confident that the soldier's—the woman's—emotional state was no longer life-threatening. This need tied up many people—more each day, and the work on our camp slowed drastically.

Everyone's nerves frayed. How long did we have before there was an explosion?

* * * *

 

Chapter 2

But, being awaked, I do despise my dream.

                             KING HENRY IV, Part II

I visited Ames in—her? -- hut.

We often found ourselves guiltily referring to our miserable comrades as "hers" and "shes." We did it unconsciously, unable to help ourselves until it became too commonplace to notice. Sadly, that instinctive choice of pronoun reeked of unintentional insult. It was like telling these unfortunate soldiers that they were out of the club, that they didn't fit in anymore, that they had become different and apart.

Ames shared a hut with her friend and suicide-watcher, Capt. Philbrick. I found the transformed officer sprawled lifelessly on her cot and staring at the ceiling with an expression of torment. She didn't even glance my way, just lay there murmuring a many-times repeated one-word question: "Why?"

"Captain Ames," I addressed the traumatized woman carefully.

She blinked, then slowly looked my way, her eyes full of pain—a real pain, but not of the physical kind. I thought that I had come prepared, but nonetheless found myself pitying what was left of a once personable and jocular officer. Everything I had come prepared to say now sounded hollow and foolish; I stood there with nothing to offer beyond the blandest inquiry after her health. What could I say or do to give comfort under such circumstances? I was no psychologist, no clergyman. I feared a misstatement that might do harm. Should I lie, tell her—him—what he—she—wanted to hear—that she—he—would soon be all right, that Lowry was working on a way to reverse the metamorphosis?

Ames would have had to be pretty far gone to believe such rot. She knew as well as I did that Dr. Lowry believed the transformations to be genetic, not surgical. How could we then, with our limited means and resources, ever hope to unscramble a human being's chromosomes? Of course, given a major medical facility, a good deal could be done cosmetically by transplanting, by applying hormone therapy, but Lowry possessed neither the equipment, the pharmaceuticals, nor the training to attempt any such thing.

Unless we managed to capture the people or the equipment responsible and make it or them reverse the process, the transformees were almost certainly doomed to remain physiological females for—well if not for life, for as long as our unknown enemy wanted to keep them that way.

I excused myself after a few minutes but kept thinking about what Ames had said. The captain had not been the first transformee who had asked that damnable question, "Why?" I would have supposed that their burning question should have instead been, "How?"

#

I tried to visit my transformed officers and NCO's regularly, all in much the same state as Capt. Ames—able to shake their heads despondently to insistent questions, but seldom spontaneous or conversational. For that reason, my visits to Ames and the others degraded into a personal ordeal. How could I help them? How should another human being relate to one of these unhappy creatures, either as a commander or a comrade?

Fortunately, over the weeks, Lowry confirmed what common sense had been telling us all along. The transformees responded best if not treated differently, if accepted as the men they had been—men who were impaired by stress neuroses and/or bearing physical wounds. Regard and respect, not pity, seemed to be the best tonic for our unfortunate mates.

#

Our command staff kept working on the theory of alien hostility. One idea we floated was that the Assies were subjecting us to psychological torture to break our spirit. But why? We were already their prisoners. If they wanted to break us, they had a thousand simpler methods to go about it. In fact, they had given no sign that they were interested in us at all. Or had they brought us here to test a new weapon? Not likely. A "sex-change ray" seemed like a damned fool weapon for a military campaign. Even if the enemy had such a thing, what was the strategic gain? Why not kill humans in the tried-and-true fashion?

At one staff meeting, Lieutenant Hawk wondered whether the transformation was an alien method of counting coup, a practice which existed among his Amerind ancestors in frontier days. Others argued that we weren't in battle. Our attackers were "counting coup" in a jail cell, the act of a coward, not a hero.

There was another idea offered—that we were being progressively changed into a population intended to serve a yet-unknown purpose of the hidden master race. They desired slaves, perhaps. As women—demoralized and physically weaker—we'd presumably be easier to handle. It wasn't long before even more unsavory speculations were made along those lines. It sounded like sci-fi porn to me and if the Assies or some indigenous race of Klink intended to reduce us to slavery, why return the future "slave girls" to their friends instead of putting them to work immediately?

An even more repulsive theory postulated that the Assies or another alien race was female-poor and needed breeding stock—a theory that Lowry firmly nixed. It was too far-fetched for his taste. Moreover, none of the women had returned pregnant.

Even so, his examinations turned up something strange—a tiny anomalous particle buried in the medulla of each transformee's brain. What could this tiny bead-in-the-brain mean? I demanded. Lowry had no clue and, with his limited equipment and inadequate staff, he was not going to perform brain surgery on physically healthy soldiers.

The only good news in those first few weeks was that Private First Class Mark Hitchcock, an early transformee, seemed to be pulling out of her traumatic phase. Undoubtedly, we had to thank Pvt. Harold Roberts for her rapid progress. Roberts stayed by Hitchcock's side night and day through many bad episodes, and eventually the transformee began to respond to TLC. Lowry was impressed with Roberts' results and made recommendations to other suicide-watchers to try similar methods.

While I knew she was recovering, Pvt. Hitchcock appeared at my hut asking for a duty assignment much sooner than I expected. She still looked somewhat out of sorts, but Lowry advised me that a return to a semi-normal routine might be the best thing to bring her up to snuff. A person functions best, he thought, when feeling useful and a member of a team. I couldn't argue with that logic and it was my hope that the women could soon be reintegrated into the life of the camp. If it didn't happen, we would swiftly become a large, paralyzed mental ward.

How strange it was to sit there, taking stock of a soldier familiar to me, but whom I could not recognize by appearance and hardly by mannerism. To the eye, Mark Hitchcock was a red-haired girl wearing a uniform ludicrously large for her. I anticipated that clothing would become yet another problem. Pvt. Hitchcock had been a big, barrel-chested male. Now he—she—was only some sixty kilos in weight and about l60-l70 centimeters in height, her sleeves and pantslegs needing to be rolled up to keep them out of the way. She also needed to bore a new notch in the middle of her belt to secure her pants, even given the added purchase of her transmogrified hips.

I intended to put Hitchcock to work at something light. K.P. seemed a logical choice, but Lowry advised me against imposing anything that smacked of "housekeeping." He worried that the transformees might react negatively to anything that smelled of "women's work." Instead, I decided to attach the recovering Hitchcock to a foraging detail, which would give her a good deal of exercise in the open air but yet require little heavy exertion. On second thought I added Roberts to the same group. We didn't know how the men would react working side by side to a transformee and having Roberts on hand to look after his friend's interests made sense. Hitchcock seemed satisfied with my decision and I dismissed her.

Watching her go, I remembered that it was Hitchcock who had led Lowry into a disturbing new theory. The transformee insisted that she recognized her face—her present female face—in the mirror.

That seemed impossible. Hitchcock looked nothing like her former self, a thirtyish, prematurely bald, black-bearded man. As with most of the transformees, there was not even a family resemblance between her old shape and her new. Lowry accepted the premise as worth investigating and encouraged Hitchcock to remember everything she could. Finally the soldier was able to say that she had often seen her present face in her daydreams when she had been a man. Mark Hitchcock was telling us, in essence, that he had been changed into "his" own fantasy girl!

#

At first, Lowry could not put much credence in such a bizarre notion. He and young Drew nonetheless tested the theory, going around to other transformees equipped with mirrors and carefully-crafted questions. Many women had never looked carefully at their own reflection and had to be carefully coaxed before they would do so. To Lowry's and Drew's surprise, many transformees reacted like Hitchcock, claiming that their faces looked familiar. But one, an Arab-American named Ulad Jami, was even more specific. She had, to her consternation, found herself looking into the face of a fantasy belly dancer whose undulating image she—as a he—had been assiduously masturbating to since high school.

Dr. Lowry thought that he was on to something, so he worked out a theory and ran it by me.

The mind of every heterosexual man, the doctor alleged, harbors the immensely strong image of a particular woman. This image may be known to him only as a masturbation fantasy or daydream lover, but she actually represents the deeply-buried feminine aspect of his own psychology. She is his intuitive, emotional side, his "inner woman," so to speak. Psychologists have long been aware of her theoretical existence and have referred to her as the "anima."

In a healthy, integrated male personality, this anima, as counterpoised to the animus, the inner man, provided the emotional depth and dimension that a male needed for achieving and maintaining friendships, for appreciating and loving his mate, and for enjoying his children. In the same way, women possessed an unconscious animus as a guiding principle in her need to persevere against odds, in approaching the world logically, and in striving for long-range goals. The anima in man and the animus in woman gave the two sexes some much-needed common ground, a capacity for sympathy and understanding that prevented the sexes from reaction to one another as two alien races.

In most Earth cultures, masculine logic and feminine emotion remained in eternal conflict. The more masculine a man was, or sought to be, the more he instinctively repressed and denied his anima. By young adulthood, a man usually accomplishes this to a great degree. That may be why women seem able to make new friends easily over their entire lifetime, while males were most usually capable of doing so only in childhood and youth. True friends were carried along from his early days, until they were inevitably attritioned away and he was left alone at the end. The adult male, though he might acquire what was called chums, buddies, comrades, and pals, rarely achieved deep camaraderie after the days of his youth. Topics of discussion regarding hopes, fears, or expectations, normally remained out-of-bounds.

Women, for their part, had their own hard battles with their animus, but there were fewer social sanctions against a woman behaving in a masculine manner, hence her overall reduced psychological tension. In fact, during the short-lived feminist era, some women had given unbridled reign to their harshest animus-inspired qualities without suffering social sanction. Although the feminists celebrated what should have been seen as a problem, they failed to make it a virtue. An animus-worship that trumped, even trampled upon, feminine instinct was ultimately seen as dysfunction with sometimes-severe consequences. Psychologists differed in their recommendations but, within reasonable limits, it seemed that a little repression was actually healthy for both men and women.

Lowry had drifted, but now he returned to his main point. He contended that a man's anima was held prisoner and engaged in an eternal struggle for its free expression. As clever and seductive as a flesh-and-blood female, the wily anima early on discovered the one escape open to her—the route of a man's libido. By nature, the male welcomed, even sought, the image of Woman, and into this needful void the anima cunningly flowed. Doing so, she attained a kind of freedom, but by entering into a man's libido the anima was forced to blend into the territory—lest she be discovered and expelled.

The inner woman, therefore, generally incarnated herself as a desirable fantasy image. She usually took the form of a young and sexually-alluring temptress or sweetheart. In fact, this image was so powerful that males seeking a mate in the real world instinctively measured the women they met not, as once commonly believed, against the standards of their mothers, but of their own anima. Basically, they were seeking certain qualities housed within themselves in the guise of another person.

I managed to follow Lowry's theory for a short distance. It was well known that a man possessed a side which, unfortunately, got in the way of his being a good soldier. One aim of basic training is, as I have said, to burn off that aspect of his personality, and so a young recruit was put through hell-on-earth. Drill deliberately sought to drive him past the imaginary boundaries set by his inner weakness, to require him to be "all that he could be." Whenever a soldier flagged, accepted any personal limit, a bawling drill sergeant, his surrogate father figure, was johnny-on-the-spot to call him a "girl," a "pussy," a "faggot," or a "woman!" That kind of treatment inspired the recruit to redouble his efforts to be a man. But Lowry suggested that, despite this conditioning, the "inner woman" was never killed off. She was locked away in the human unconscious—except for her libido image, which only intensified in compensation.

In the cauldron of the ultra-masculine military psyche, more than in the man on the street, the anima was transformed from what might have been a well-rounded persona into a 200-proof distillation of pure, ferocious, feline sexuality. In this form, the anima was always in front of a man's psyche, compelling him to seek her in the real world—to find her in women of immediate and obvious allure: strippers, hookers, b-girls.

But while Nature allowed the anima to be transformed, it was very rarely killed. In fact, according to Lowry, to actually kill her, or hermetically seal her away without a means of expression, would deal a fatal blow to a man's mental health. The loss of his emotional resources had to produce a troubled individual, madman—possibly a dangerous one.

I had always taken Lowry's ideas seriously, but I couldn't credit him in this case. That my men were trained, hardened fighters could be taken for granted. They had seen slaughter and been the agents of it; they'd felt friends die in their arms and taken life with their own hands. Tough and disciplined though they were, none of them were without feeling. Men had a full complement of emotion, I knew, but it was men's emotion. A male might have sex fantasies, but that didn't mean that he harbored a full-blown female persona inside himself. In fact, it probably meant the opposite.

After Lowry said his piece, I asked, "What are you driving at, Doc?"

As expected, Sebastian didn't have a worked-out theory, just a wild guess: "If you assume sufficiently advanced genetics, it's not hard to make a female from a male. You take away his Y chromosomes and clone his X chromosomes to replace them, or leave his Y's, but somehow mutate them to an X status."

I shook my head; it seemed that the good doctor had crawled out on the long limb of pure fantasy. There was much I could have said to set him right, but preferred not to be harsh; he was under as great a strain as I. "Surely there's more going on than genetic alteration," I suggested with a mild tone.

"That's true," affirmed Lowry, not picking up on my skepticism. "There's also morphing going on. My theory is this: Aliens don't know what human females look like, so they look for a pattern to follow. If these aliens telepathically tap into a male's mind, they'll readily isolate a powerful image of a healthy young female. This is the subject's central sex fantasy, or rather his anima acting as one."

I advised Lowry to keep his theory to himself. If word got out that our respected healer believed that the soldiers of the 54^th would transform into masturbation fantasies, the morale of the bravest would break like dry spaghetti.

#

The role call of transformees grew steadily—two a day, every day. Fortunately, another early transformee, Marduke, gave signs of recovery. I put her in Hitchcock's detail, hoping they might provide one another with sympathy and morale.

The worst blow was the loss of Dr. Lowry. The morning after his disappearance, the stretcher-bearers brought him back in the shape of a fine-featured, dark-haired woman who appeared to be in her mid- to late-twenties.

I studied Lowry's altered face with consternation as she lay unconscious in the infirmary. She looked like the sort of woman that I'd have expected Sebastian to conjure, assuming his fantasy theory was true—not a "dame," not a "babe," not the hormonal show girl and sex-sim types who were gradually making our camp look like a girlie revue. Sebastian Lowry looked like a lady.

"Anything I can do?" I asked Alan Drew.

"You're needed everywhere, Major Breen," came his slow, heavy reply. "I'll take care of—of Dr. Lowry.—But if you could, sir—"

"Yes?"

"I don't know the sergeant's friends and we're going to need to find a suicide-watcher for him—for her, I mean."

I nodded sympathetically and looked at Sgt. Gold on the other cot. I recalled that it had been the sergeant who had said something about sleeping beauties. But my concern for Gold had to take second place to that for our doctor. For my friend.

The truth to tell, no transformation up to that morning shocked me more than Lowry's. Perhaps I'd assumed that our physician would be immune, or at least be the last to succumb. It hadn't happened that way, and now I realized, on not just an intellectual level anymore, that there was going to be no one who could resist it.

No one.

I took stock. Olson's suicide left us with five hundred and thirty-six men—persons. In about two months, almost a quarter of our command had been transformed. In another six months—what?

I refused to look that far ahead.

While I considered our ongoing dilemma, another disaster struck. Herb Woolenska, a demolitions specialist, left his comrades without a word shortly after Dr. Lowry's fate became known. He had climbed the steep hill overlooking our camp and then, from its highest cliff, jumped to his death.

Again I felt what I felt when Olson died, but what bothered me most was that this time part of me understood Herb Woolenska.

#

We buried Woolenska the next day, and that night I did my best to block out the image of his simple grave plot. I had lost men in combat before, but suicides bespoke a fundamental failure on my part. I wished that I could talk about my troubles to someone, to let out what was eating on me, but that had never been possible except, to a small degree, with Sebastian Lowry. Now, he was gone.

Emotionally, I equated Lowry's transformation with his death. I visited his—or, as I might as well put it—her bedside several times each day, a generosity with my time which I never extended to any of the others. Though she recovered consciousness quickly, Sebastian suffered a trauma like the others. Somehow I had expected—or, at least, hoped—that the same doctor who had so carefully studied the phenomenon of trauma would prove more resilient than anyone else—that is, a little less human.

In the dark of night, I found myself trying not to think of transformees, of women, and especially not of Woman. Woman with a capital W, I mean. From an ideal of beauty and pleasure, to most men on Klink Woman had become the image of terror and loathing. She was the witch, the evil goddess, the Medusa. She was Circe. She was Scylla reaching out to rend; she was Charybdis swallowing entire crews. She was every image of fear and degradation that Mankind had every conceived in female guise. Forgotten was Mother, Sister, Wife, Daughter. I could almost wish there were no such thing as Woman in the entire universe.

Each night the phantasms of my unconscious mind invariably transformed into amazing shapes—and too often into the shape of a woman. Not Scylla, not Charybdis, but Another. I didn't know her name for she existed nowhere except in my own mind and, despite our close association over the years, I had never named her. Or, more honestly, I had given her a thousand names, but none that were a part of her; they were like the names that a script-writer might give to a character.—Which was appropriate, since the Nameless Woman had many starring roles in my fantasies: the sexpot saloon gal in the bustier, the show girl in feathers, the apache dancer with the slit skirt, the barbarian slave with the steel collar around her neck, awaiting the touch of her master—the latter role gratefully filled by me.

She was lovely, this Nameless One. Lithe, light of complexion, hers were breasts that a man longed to knead with eager fingers. Her slenderness filled out into bewitching hips and her black hair was a'jiggle with springy ringlets. At times she seemed to come so close to me that I could see my reflection in those gleaming aquamarine eyes. She was my personal Woman, she of the capital W. If she had been a vehicle, her motor would have raced, if a space ship, she would have jumped to warp. But she was not a machine, but every woman I had ever desired. She could transform effortlessly into a bikinied beauty on a beach, and then to a sultry lover in a mountain chalet, waiting on her man with a champagne glass balanced in each hand, her lips lifted for a kiss, her breath and her flesh as fragrant as the scented logs on the hearth. . . .

"Damn it!" I muttered and, with an effort, drove the Nameless One away—and kept her away by determinedly counting mathematical tables—until I dropped into a fitful sleep.

I awoke with a headache, but felt disinclined to seek relief in my bottle of ILW tablets. I could work even as my head throbbed and we had to go easy on our medical supplies; the truly sick might be in dire need of them someday.

Crossing the camp after breakfast, a delegation—a mob, really—engulfed me. I demanded to know what was on their minds and it became clear that Lowry's transformation had shocked them out of their wits. They had abandoned hope of defeating the phenomenon and demanded leave to abandon the camp, to escape from whatever had us in its sights.

I tacitly reminded them that our detached parties had suffered separate transformations and going a hundred kilometers hadn't helped the situation one iota. I speculated that it might be a planet-wide phenomenon. "Maybe not!" shouted a ring leader. "We can go out a thousand kilometers! Two thousand! You can stay behind with the women if you want!"

Their faces were like strangers.' Terror could turn otherwise sensible men violent, and so I maneuvered them, bleeding off a little pressure before it caused a blow-up.

"You may be right, soldier," I admitted impatiently. "I'll consider your proposal. If there's really a consensus for this, we should make it the first order of business at the next staff meeting. Just remember that detachment is a major undertaking, and it may have ramifications you men haven't considered. We can't approach such a serious matter slap-dash."

They didn't trust me, but they were as yet unwilling to call me a liar. Now that the situation had calmed, I pushed my way through the crowd, even yet half-expecting a blow from behind. But the men hadn't worked themselves up to outright mutiny as yet. Even so, that ugly outcome lay around the corner and, unless I played my bad cards very carefully, we were in for trouble. It wasn't lost on me that this was the first serious challenge to my authority and knuckling under to it would go a long way toward ending my ability to command.

Moreover, I firmly believed that flight would be counter-productive. When men were transformed along the trail of flight, what would the panicky mob of refugees do? Flee and leave the poor devils behind, to wake alone, traumatized and lost? Transformees needed watching, tending. Had we fallen so low? Was it dog eat dog now? Devil take the hindmost? Where was the esprit de corps of the proud 54^th? How could our band of brothers turn against one another even in these bad straits?

Given my headache and gloomy state, I was much less than my best when Dr. Lowry paid me a visit.

I had not been expecting this call. It had only been three days since her transformation, much too soon for a transformee to throw off her trauma. While Sebastian lay asleep on her cot, her face had been serene and my sympathy had gone out to her; now those same features were tense and hard.

"How are you, Doc?" I inquired evenly. It was strange calling this woman "Doc." Despite everything my mind knew to be true, my instincts read her as a stranger.

"I'm fine," Lowry informed me tonelessly. "This shape will take getting used to, naturally, but I've got work to do and I can't worry about it."

"You've been through hell, Doc," I said. "You don't have to do anything before you're ready."

"Don't fuss, Major!" she fired back.. "A man, a woman. What of it? Two arms, two legs, a head. There's not that much difference. The breasts get in the way, of course, and it's inconvenient having to drop one's pants to piss, but half the human race gets along that way, so I can, too."

I wasn't so sure. I thought that the doctor was repressing and psychology warned that repression isn't good. Then again, I was no psych. Was it possible that Lowry was showing the very resilience that I had hoped for? I doubted that—I even doubted that my caller was really Sebastian. She might still be a competent doctor—in fact I prayed that she was—but I could not convince myself that this edgy woman had anything to do with the cool, phlegmatic man of warmth and humor whom I had known for several months and only just begun to know well.

"If you really want to go back to work, you may," I told her. "But remember, doctors make the worst patients. If the going gets too hard, don't push. Knock off and let Drew take over. The company needs its doctor at h--, uh, his best."

Her chin jutted up. "You can't hurt me with pronouns, Major. I'll be fine."

Would she? Stress lines were clearly written into her cover girl features and I detected a neurotic tremble in her eyelids. The strain bottled inside the physician was betrayed at the corners of her grimly-set mouth.

With misgivings, I consented to her request and my visitor let herself out. Watching Lowry go, stepping along awkwardly in her huge shoes and baggy, over-long trousers, I was bothered that my former friend had only addressed me by rank during her visit and not by name. It had put distance between us and distance hurt. But her distance was merely a reflection of my own. Lowry was tormented, anyone could see that, and I doubted that she could be productive. Then again, work might be the best therapy—just as it had been for Hitchcock and Marduke.

I had to talk to Drew. There was no one else close enough to Sebastian to give me worthwhile advice.

* * * *

 

Chapter 3

Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly.

                                              AS YOU LIKE IT

The medic, Alan Drew, had had Dr. Lowry's confidence for at least as long as I'd known him. Drew also impressed me as sharp and competent. We threshed out the subject of Dr. Lowry, though the private would only reluctantly discuss his superior.

"I'm worried," he admitted. "She's pretending that she's all right, but she's—not."

"Of course Lowry's not all right," I said. "But can't she work through this better than—than most of the others? She's a doctor after all."

He shook his head. "She's not that different from the rest of us. What is it that you want me to do, sir?"

"Keep an eye on her. If she becomes a danger to herself or starts committing unacceptable medical blunders, you're the man best able to judge."

"If she suspects that I'm spying, it will poison our working relationship."

"It's not spying; it's evaluation and observation. For now, I want you to watch her, listen to what she says. If she needs moral support, be there for her. You're good with—these people. I've seen it."

"Thank you, Major, but it's no trick handling transformees. People have to remember that they're human and respond best when treated that way." He paused then, but his face told me he had something else to say.

"Yes, private?" I urged.

He sent me a sober glance and plunged: "I had an idea that I wanted to share with Dr. Lowry, but in her present state of mind, I don't know when I'll be able to broach it with her."

"What is it?"

"I'm thinking of a support group."

"A support group? For the transformees? Who'd be in it?"

"There's about a hundred and thirty transformees now. Some seem to be settling down and facing up to what's happened to them. I think the time has come when they can start helping one another."

His proposal made sense. In fact, that had been my idea when I put Hitchcock and Marduke together. "You may be right, Drew," I said. "Any specific recommendations?"

"Why don't we put the most recovered transformees together in a work group of their own and have them barrack together, too. They couldn't help but start talking and working through their problems."

"We should take this idea to Lowry," I suggested. "This sort of thing has to be her call and unless I relieve her, we can't go over her head. But if she agrees, we'll put the recovering transformees with Marduke and Hitchcock, and transfer them to some sort of useful detail."

Working together, we listed a dozen women who had ceased to be basket cases, including Halder and Capt. Ames.

"Ames is still having a rough time," I said, "and Hitchcock and Marduke would be hard-put to deal with her if she flew off the handle and started pulling rank. We'll have to give our unit leaders the medical authority to keep her in line."

"I agree, sir."

I regarded Drew with some annoyance, unsure whether to reprimand him or not for his chirpy reply. I wasn't used to having privates sign off on my recommendations, but neither did I want to wear the proverbial chip and reprimand him on insufficient grounds. Drew was irreplaceable, and dressing him down wouldn't be a good way to kick off our new project. My head aching, I let the matter go.

Drew and I did present the project to Lowry a little later—and a surreal experience that turned out to be! She either didn't understand or didn't care what we were talking about. Since it was clear that I wanted it, however, the doctor simply shrugged and delegated the implementation to Drew. That was the best we could get under the circumstances and so I started issuing orders.

The women on our list formed a furniture-making detail, since all the huts were in grave need of bunks, tables, and chairs. My greatest misgivings concerned Ames; the captain would be expected to work like an enlisted man supervised by privates. That couldn't sit well with her but, as it turned out, it never came to that.

#

The matter of the unrest was too important to ignore any longer. My staff meeting later that day considered suppressing the panicky men by force, but nobody was too keen on that. It would be like putting bottled explosives on the shelf. If the malcontents weren't allowed to leave by daylight, they'd probably decamp at night; we had no means to hold so many troopers determined to go AWOL. We hadn't even built a brig yet and it would be a bad idea to turn so many workers into imprisoned drones even if it were possible. It had to be better to lance the boil early and therefore I was willing to detach the restive men, thinking that once they realized that they couldn't escape the transformation plague by flight, they'd have no recourse but to return more tractable.

I placed my senior captain, Ted Crawford, in charge and appointed Lt. Morrow to assist him. The officer's orders were to discover whether any geographical limit to the phenomenon existed and, if not, to persuade the detachees to return.

I assembled the entire muster the next day and recounted the situation as I saw it, reiterating my doubts and my concern for the soldiers who would be transformed along the march. I assured the assembled men that if every reasonable precaution were taken to humanely care for casualties, I would not oppose the division of the unit.

In conclusion I said, "This is the only detachment we will be making. If you stay, it will be because you are committed to stick it out and obey your officers! If that isn't your intention, I recommend that you go with the others." Then, drawing a bayonet, I drew a line in the dirt. "Anyone who wants to join the detachment, step across this line."

The soldiers were looking at one another, muttering between themselves. Finally, fifty-three of them, a tenth of our number, crossed over. This included a disproportionate number of fleet techs, which was to be expected—the new men had not as yet melded properly into our battle group. It bothered me that there were so many who were willing to go; it made me feel like a failed William B. Travis. It hurt that a handful of dirt-poor Texas sod-busters had shown more backbone in the hour of danger than dozens of former fire-eaters from the 54^th. But the men of the Alamo faced only annihilation, not womanhood, and so I suppose that fact made all the difference.

"All right," I said, "now we'll need additional personnel to accompany the detachment as orderlies. It will be the duty of such soldiers to care for any transformees along the way and, as long as it remains feasible, return them to us here."

There was a good turnout of volunteers for this duty, including Hitchcock, Marduke, and several of the women whom Drew and I had been considering for our detail. The truth is, I couldn't accept as many willing people as offered themselves. In all, seventy-six men—soldiers—were detached. At my request, Private Drew led the auxiliaries and would remain with the detachment for as long as possible—just a few days, we thought. The camp needed him too much to permit a longer absence, since Dr. Lowry remained an uncertain commodity.

Through the next day, Crawford and Morrow worked hard organizing and equipping their detachment. We hoped that the separation would be temporary but, in the meantime, the camp would be well rid of the panicky element.

We continued to lose our usual complement of men—including Lipkin, who, ironically, was to be one of the detachees, and also—in a heavy blow to our command structure, Captain Tritcher.

Interestingly, Tritcher, who had been black, returned to us as a very fine-boned and pale-skinned elfin blonde. If it were not for their dog tags, I wouldn't have known which soldier was which. As this was the first occasion of a race change accompanying a sex change, I asked Lowry for an opinion, but she proved to be uninterested and unhelpful. To my mind, though, Tritcher seemed to be the exception that proved the rule—what was happening depended on a man's psychology, not his physiology.

Lowry had been dismayingly perfunctory in her examination of the latest transformees. Maybe this routine was becoming old stuff to her—or maybe, more disturbingly, it amounted to further evidence of her distressed state. I offered a careful nudge to remind her of her duty:

"You've been through this, Sebastian," I remarked. "Can't you give these men advice to help them along?"

"I don't have advice for anyone, Major," she shrugged.

So blunt, so cold. I missed the old Lowry a great deal just then.

As I started to leave, I caught sight of a book of Shakespeare's plays lying on the table. "Your book, Doctor?"

"No, Drew's."

I picked it up. In high school and college, I'd read most of Shakespeare's plays. Unfortunately, during my army career, I had been much more likely to peruse Clausewitz or Fuller. I opened the volume to a random page and glanced at a line spoken by Petruccio in "The Taming of the Shrew:

"I am peremptory as she proud-minded; And where two raging fires meet together They do consume the thing that feeds their fury: Though little fire grows great with little wind, Yet extreme gusts will blow out fire and all: So I to her and so she yields to me; For I am rough and woo not like a babe."

"Say!" I exclaimed. "Couldn't we put on a play for the camp? It might be therapeutic."

"Therapy is my department, Major," Lowry informed me, nervelessly, like a machine. "—And that reminds me. When you sent away my medic, you doubled my workload."

"I thought they needed him out there. Besides, he'll be back in a few days."

"Will he? Or will I have another useless, traumatized woman for a patient?"

I put down the book and left the infirmary without another word.

#

Daily, I noted the names of the vanished men and new transformees in my log. Every day more names; we were like a flock of sheep with the farmer coming for two of us each day with the gelding knife. I had never felt so helpless. We were fighting men with nothing to fight. We couldn't understand this assault; we couldn't run from it—though we were still, futilely, trying to fight, understand, and run simultaneously.

The departure of the detachment left a need for considerable reorganization, especially in reshuffling the squads and work details. After a light supper, feeling restless, I went outside to pace around the perimeter under the light of Klink's twin moons, working off my depressed state.

The planet was beautiful, especially on nights like this one—moonlight, the aroma of the vegetation, the trilling calls of the night-flyers, the wind in the trees, and a hundred little pipes, croaks, and squawks—most of whose makers we still had not identified. At first, we had been too busy to care, and then too preoccupied to think about our surroundings. Would we ever have the presence of mind to enjoy the simple things? Maybe when we were all—

I forced that thought out of my mind.

I continued my walk, my ears alert to the tranquilizing evening sounds. Suddenly, I heard a sound that didn't fit—it was coming from the infirmary, which fact set me on special alert. I drifted in that direction and the sound resolved itself into sobbing. At first, I assumed it was either Tritcher or Lipkin, but then remembered that both had been moved out and placed under their respective suicide-watches. Who was still in the infirmary crying as if in deep pain? I poked my head inside and realized that the weeping came from Lowry's room. Crossing to it, I put my ear to the door.

Yes, it was Lowry's sobbing. I heard her mutter a few distinct words, "God", "Please," and "Why?"

There was that damnable question again—"Why?"

Sebastian, emotionally at least, was in distress. I nearly knocked, but something stopped me. I didn't want to get involved in something so personal. I hadn't been asked to help and I was no psychologist, no clergyman, and not good at consolation even as a layman. In fact, my attempts to support Sebastian over the last few days had been rebuffed harshly. What should I do? Try to hold hands with my old poker buddy? Have her cry on my shoulder? She'd throw me out in a second!

But there was more to it than the fear of rebuff. To give proper solace, the comforter has to be at peace himself and, at that moment, I was empty; I had nothing to offer. Worse, I couldn't shake the idea that it wasn't really Lowry behind that door, but someone different, a stranger, with whom I had never felt any connection.

I don't remember making a decision to go but, the next thing I knew, my legs were carrying me away, stepping so softly that my boots couldn't be heard over my friend's subdued sobbing.

#

I dreamed of Olson's grave again that night, but this time a new name and epitaph was cut into her marker. It read, "Sebastian Lowry, physician. A good man and a good friend."

I awoke in a cold sweat. What had I done? Had I been insane? The doctor was in no condition to be left alone! I thrust my legs into my trousers, ran bare-footed to the infirmary, and, not pausing to knock, shoved open Lowry's door.

She lay there curled up on the bed, still fully clothed. On the floor nearby lay a syringe; I stared at it, then at her. Sebastian didn't move, didn't seem to be breathing. I plunged forward and turned her over.

Startled, the woman's eyes opened. "Rupe?!" she gasped,"—Wha?"

"Are you all right, Doc? I thought—"

What relief! I had thought for an instant that she was dead, and didn't dare explain.

Lowry said nothing for a moment, just rested on her side, her eyes closed. Then she whispered, "It started coming out last night."

"What did?"

"The grief, the fear—the loss of identity. The impossibility of facing this alone."

"I'm sorry," I said, my mouth dry, without daring to say exactly why I was sorry.

She shook her head. "I thought I was fine, but I wasn't. I was numb. When the shock wore off, the pain almost killed me."

I glanced at the hypodermic on the floor. "I almost killed myself," she whispered.

"W-What's in that thing?"

"Dicorahylaminophen. Instant death."

"Doc!"

Her head fell back upon the pillow. "I felt useless. I couldn't help anyone, I couldn't even help myself!" She let out a short, bitter laugh. "And, I wasn't all that keen on being a girl for the rest of my life."

She kept laughing, skirting the edge of hysteria, then began reciting, "There was a little girl, who had a little curl, right in the middle of her forehead... when she was good... when she was good...!" Sebastian closed her eyes.

I took her hand between mine and pressed it reassuringly. Lowry blinked at me and whispered, "Rupe, I was alone last night, more alone than I've ever been. I desperately needed to talk to someone; there was nobody, and I guess I went kind of crazy."

I glanced away. I almost asked her why she hadn't talked to me, but I didn't have the right.

"I nearly went to see you," she whispered, "but I had my pride, I guess. I'd been treating you so badly that I couldn't stand to eat crow. That left me with no one to talk to except myself and the room. They both agreed I should kill myself. But I suddenly realized that I was talking to God, too. I told Him that this was too much for me—that if He couldn't bring me back, he had to take away the misery and the pain, because if He didn't, it was going to kill me and—and—well—I didn't really want to die!" She glanced at the hypodermic on the floor and winced.

I squeezed her hand. "God or no God, you made it through, Doc. You're a strong SOB and you're going to be fine after this."

"I don't know. I hope so."

"I'll get Mason to stay with you, or somebody else if you don't like him—until you're yourself again. It won't be hard to get someone to stay with you. You've made a lot of friends."

She squeezed my fingers. "If I have, you're the best of them."

I sat there, suddenly unable to look into her face.

"There was a voice," Lowry went on.

"An audio hallucination?"

She laughed. Sebastian Lowry had always been a man of faith. That fact was not always obvious because he disliked sparring with skeptics.

"What did the voice say, Doc?"

"That I had to be brave. That this was the beginning of a new life for me, and while it would be different, it wasn't going to be bad. The voice called it a rebirth."

"Well, we've called it worse things."

"I guess that must have been a dream!" She said that without much conviction.

"Anything else?"

Sebastian suddenly sat up. "Yes. The voice told me that there's a reason for what's been happening—and that we'll soon know it!"

"Don't worry about voices, Doctor. It wasn't real."

"But you don't understand, Rupe! -- The fear went away as soon as the voice spoke."

I was glad that Lowry was feeling better without giving much credence to her mystical experience. I'll say just this—a dose of religion is a lot better than a shot of dicorahylaminophen in the arm.

Lowry eased herself against me, letting her head rest on my chest; automatically I put my arm on her back. Suddenly she seemed so much like any other emotionally-exhausted woman that it jolted me. I never supposed her gesture was sexual, but it definitely made me uncomfortable.

The doctor grew sleepy while I held her until, finally, I eased her back to the pillow and threw a sheet over her. The peaceful, innocent look, the one which I had seen on her first morning as a woman, had come back.

I waited by her bedside after that, hoping that Sebastian had defeated her personal demon and could start the climb back. There were many others who had much further to go than her. But I had a long way to go myself before I could be the sort of man or the commander that Lowry believed me to be.

#

Rawson and Lt. Chih were transformed a couple days later, with Rawson coming out like a star-club lap dancer, and Chih in possession of that delicate, toy-like beauty that Oriental taste esteems. I knew Rawson's friends and so quickly found her a suicide-watch. With a little inquiry, I found someone for Chih, too. Her new watcher was Zeev Yadin, a transformee whom Chih had himself stood by through some bad days and nights. Now she wanted to return the favor. Yadin seemed highly motivated and so, for the first time, I risked putting a traumatized soldier under the care of a transformee. Possibly, nursing a friend would be a better application of Yadin's time than making furniture.

That afternoon more disappearances, the next morning more women. It went on and on. In fact, it worsened. The third day after the departure of the detachment, Halder and Ames returned leading two more transformees. These had been the privates Stark and Big Bear. They hadn't gotten far before the curse of Klink caught them.

As it turned out, I was impressed by Ames' manner when she reappeared. The captain seemed to have finally emerged from her depression and, after a debriefing, I let her resume a sort of limited duty. If she did well, I intended to make her officer for what I was mentally calling the "women's battalion."

The following day Hardy and Marduke staggered in with two more transformees. The next day Hitchcock and Roberts returned with another pair.

Now that Hitchcock and Marduke were back, I talked to them about the support-group idea, explaining that it meant training the recovering transformees as carpenters. Marduke had been on the furniture-crafting detail before her transformation and so would make a competent instructor. They accepted the assignment with interest and good grace.

Drew and a man named Cotts were the last auxiliaries to return with transformees. Drew reported that the detachment was now too far away for any more traumatized transformees to be sent back. It appeared that Crawford and Morrow intended to continue on with the remaining group of 59 until they won clear or it became obvious to all that distance alone could not stop the transformations.

Evenings had become a mere hiatus between daily crises—afternoon disappearances and morning discoveries. I suffered from frequent headaches which Lowry diagnosed as stress-related. Oftentimes, these were accompanied by nausea and I would vomit and afterwards lay enervated for more than an hour. I was recuperating from one such debilitating episode when the doctor visited me. She seemed to have something on her mind.

"What's the trouble, Doc?" I asked warily. "All work and no play makes Jill a dull girl," she recited wanly. "I could use a game of cards, Rupe."

Sebastian was wearing her hair differently, I noticed—not just shoved back over her shoulders and neglected, but combed and tied in a ponytail. Good grooming was a sign of a positive state of mine, of course, but I wondered why more transformees didn't cut their hair short.

"What's your game?" I asked.

She dragged a chair up to my desk. "Five card stud."

I took the pack of cards from my footlocker and shuffled them carefully. We had to be reverential regarding our cards, since playing with makeshifts, as we would be forced to do in the not-too-distant future, would not be half as much fun.

"I've missed our poker games, Rupe," Sebastian remarked suddenly, then added more pointedly, "I've missed the friendship that we used to have, too."

"We're still friends!" I reassured her emphatically. "If I've done anything to make you think otherwise—well, it's this pressure!" I put the deck down. She cut.

"There's more to it than that," Lowry said, "but it's to be expected. I realize I don't look like the same person, don't sound like the same person, and I'm so knotted inside that I don't even act like the same person."

"You're the same. You have to be."

"Well, I suppose that's true," she shrugged. "—Okay, deal 'em."

We played hand after hand.

After a while, Sebastian got around to talking about things that bothered her. It seemed strange to be thinking of my old friend as a "she"—especially now that Lowry was speaking and behaving more like herself—himself.

"It's that sense of violation that gets you down," she said, with a grimace. "I've never been raped, but it's got to be a lot like what I feel."

"Where do you go from here?" I asked delicately.

She shook her head, causing her ponytail to jiggle; the gesture would have been charming coming from a girl back home. "I suppose I'll get used to it," the physician said. "Life goes on. I wonder if this planet has more tricks up its sleeve."

"I sure hope it doesn't," I remarked with heartfelt sincerity.

* * * *

 

Chapter 4

*Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.*

                            THE TEMPEST

One card session went a long way toward repairing our estrangement. Sebastian popped in the next day, but it wasn't to play poker.

"Pvt. Hitchcock is pregnant," she announced with a straight face.

I scowled across my desk at her. "Are you sure, Doc?"

"Even an army doctor could diagnosis this, Rupe."

"How did it happen?"

"The usual way.—And it must have happened a couple weeks before she went off with the detachment."

"Roberts?"

She nodded.

"That fool! I'll—"

"Easy, Rupe. Hitchcock asked me not to let you go after Roberts. This sort of thing has to be expected; put men and women together in a subtropical paradise and, abracadabra, you get babies. It's called the facts of life."

"This is insane! It's against the rules!"

She shrugged. "We've been writing new rules every day?"

"Of course, but for crying out loud—a baby! -- Well, it can be fixed, I suppose. No doubt Hitchcock wants an abortion."

"I'm not as sure as you are."

"What do you mean?"

"It was a very confused young woman who left my office a little while ago. She needs time to sort this thing out. She has to talk to the father, of course. Those two don't need a commanding officer putting his two cents into what is probably the most important conversation of their lives."

"I have responsibilities, Sebastian!"

"Parents have responsibilities, too, and they're important ones."

"What are you driving at?"

"I'd like you to go slow on this, Rupe. You've got to understand the kind of emotional bond they have. Roberts helped bring Hitchcock out of the lowest psychological hell that a person can sink to. Looking back, I don't find it all that surprising that they did what they did."

"What would you recommend?!" I inquired annoyedly. With my other problems, I didn't need Sebastian acting like the garden-variety know-it-all woman.

She set her features into a thoughtful moue. "I think the best thing is to do nothing for a while. Roberts and Hitchcock are going to be padding through hell for the next few days, even if you don't get on their case."

"Damn! -- Who would have believed this? -- Or do I sound too naive?"

She put her palms on my desk and leaned forward. "We were both naive. Up to now I've been thinking that transformation was limited to physical changes. Now I'm not sure."

"I don't like the sound of this, Doc."

"Do you think I do?" She looked me right in the eye. "—Rupe, do I seem different to you."

I gave a short laugh. "You sure do! You look—"

"I don't mean the way I look. Do I behave differently."

"I don't know. You've been through a lot. You're still Sebastian—I know that much."

"Well, I hope I am. But I've been thinking a few things lately that I'm sure Sebastian wouldn't."

"What?"

"Like, for instance, about how nice these yard dogs around here would look in formal suits."

"Forget it, Doc. There's obviously more in your head than black ties."

"Yes, but what if there's been an overwriting of certain files in our personality, while the rest of the program stays the same? What else could explain a guy like Hitchcock accepting a male lover so quickly?"

"How do you explain Roberts?"

She shot me a painful grin. "If it looks like a duck, talks like a duck, walks like a duck. . . ."

I was getting another headache. "I hope you're wrong," I said weakly. "I really do."

"I wouldn't be surprised if this thing doesn't go way beyond Hitchcock and Roberts."

"We can't let that happen!"

"Don't overreact, Major. It may not be so bad."

"Not bad? This is an army camp! Can you imagine having it full of babies crying day and night! Soldiers tied down caring for them?"

She shook her head. "What are soldiers for, Rupe, except to protect the families back home? I had a family, and frankly, it kills me to think that I'll never see them again—especially the kids. If you'd ever been a father, you'd know that there's a lot more to babies than crying. There's magic in every one of them; you have to experience it to understand.—And, anyway, the situation is only temporary."

"What's temporary?" I asked warily.

"Babies grow to be men and women. Think of them as future recruits."

"This isn't funny!"

"The day we stop laughing, is the day we'll go crazy, Rupe. How can you prevent people from getting together? -- Do you really think we should?"

"I don't follow you."

"All I'm saying is that there were families before there were armies. There were communities before there were military camps, and the world got along fine."

"We call that the Old Stone Age, Doc! And we're not a community. We're—Oh, hell, I'm out of my depth. I'd like to knock some heads, but I've never hit a pregnant woman in my life!"

She leaned forward resolvedly. "We have to talk to the men, Rupe—the men of both sexes—and let them know that from now on actions are going to have consequences. If soldiers are going to be choosing partners, they have to expect children—and they'll have to take responsibility for them."

"That's leading us into a quagmire, Doc. Go too far in and we won't be a military unit anymore."

"What else can we do? Forbid sexual liaisons? That's like forbidding alcohol or stimmers at an army base. You know how much good prohibition does when it gets in the way of basic needs. And here you're talking about an addiction that's older than alcohol, and a whole lot older than stimmers."

"What about contraception?"

"No got. I could do tubal ligations and vasectomies, but don't expect me to force anything like that on unwilling patients—And, really, the problem will probably take care of itself in a couple months. Considering our rate of transformation, there soon won't be anyone left to—"

She couldn't miss the pain that came to my eyes. "Sorry, Major."

#

I called a staff meeting and had Dr. Lowry explain the problem. After a lot of uncomfortable officers mumbled out their opinions, I told them we'd be treating Hitchcock's condition as a medical problem not requiring discipline. In fact, I thought we ought to consider her condition a kind of discipline in and of itself. After that, I called a muster and had Dr. Lowry, for the third time, explain the situation. She warned the troops that sexual relationships were not recommended for the obvious reason that they carried very important, very long-term consequences. Even while I watched it, I thought I was witnessing one of those critical moments in history that changed the outlook of entire civilizations. I could tell from the troopers' bemused reactions that none of the presumed-guilty ones had entertained the remotest thought that they might have been courting parenthood. The women looked especially thunderstruck, while the men mostly seemed irritated and cheated.

Then I stepped in to lay down the law. I told the troops that we couldn't walk blindly down the path of least resistance. It would mean physical incapacitation for some of our people for months at a time, and also diverting labor from the necessary work of survival. In conclusion, I said that all sex was forbidden until further notice, under penalty of discipline.

Lowry shook her head, clearly not in total agreement with me, while the mood of the troops seemed a mixture of disgruntlement and puzzlement. I let them fall out then and went back to my hut, wondering how I was going to enforce my order against the strongest impetus known to man—and woman.

The next day, shortly after the noon mess, Harold Roberts stopped by my quarters.

"Sir," he explained himself stiffly, "I'd like permission to marry Pvt. Hitchcock."

"Are you trying to be funny, soldier?" I frowned.

"No, sir! Mary—I mean, Mark and I—"

"Mary?"

"It's a nickname, sir!" he clarified himself uneasily. "It doesn't feel right calling the girl in your arms Mark."

"I suppose it's not very romantic, either."

He swallowed hard and went on: "As I was saying, sir, Pvt. Hitchcock and I have talked and we think marriage would be the best thing."

"Best for which one of you?"

"Best for the child, I mean, sir!"

"The child?" There was no child; at least not yet.

"May I speak freely, Major?"

I threw up my hands. "Please!"

"Sir, in a couple months I might be a woman myself, but I'm a man at the moment and—well—I want to be the man that I was brought up to be. That means doing what's right. I think I'll be able to live with myself better if I did the honorable thing now. And, besides, I'd like to have a son—or daughter—with my name. It's probably my only chance to be a father."

It must have been his sincerity that kept my reply moderate and measured. "I can almost understand your reasoning, soldier. But no one here has the authority to perform marriages."

"Begging the Major's pardon—" Roberts began hesitantly.

"Yes?"

"I mean to say, sir, that—that it seems to me that any small town back home can elect a justice of the peace to perform legal marriages, so why can't we do the same?"

"We're not a town, Private," I reminded him testily, "and we don't have elections!"

"I know, sir, but I was thinking that you could—appoint someone."

I paused, trying to make head or tail of the whole crazy situation. "I suppose we could improvise anything we had to," I adjudged, "but would our actions be legal and valid under the laws of the Alliance?"

"Sir, it seems to me that the Alliance has its problems and we have ours."

So we did. "I think I'd better talk to—Mary," I said.

#

I walked to Hitchcock's barracks and found her commiserating with several of her transformed friends.

"At ease," I told the girls as they threw themselves into attention. Then I addressed the pregnant private: "How are you doing, Hitchcock?"

"Very well, sir!" She sounded a little shaky.

"Would you like to sit down?"

"No, sir, I'm fine.—Just a little nauseous now and then."

"I see. Do you know that Pvt. Roberts spoke to me a few minutes ago?"

"Yes, sir."

"How do you feel about—his idea?"

Her glance lowered. "It's my idea, too, sir. But I suppose it does sound strange."

"You could—terminate," I suggested tactfully. The girl jolted. "I—I don't think I'd like that, sir."

"Many in your position would, soldier."

"I'm sure that's true, sir!"

"I'd not trying to make you do anything you don't want to," I assured her, "but are you sure you know what you're getting into?"

"No, sir, I really don't. But now that it's happened, I guess we have to make the best of it."

"You have to think of your own welfare."

She shook her head. "It isn't my welfare that's important, Major. Hal has a stake in this, too. He stood by me and helped me when I really needed somebody. I owe him something."

"Do you owe him a baby?"

"Well, sir, it's not my choice anymore. The baby is coming, and anyway, I always thought that I'd like to have a couple of kids someday. If I'm still going to be a parent, this is the way it has to be. Isn't that right, sir?"

"I suppose it is," I conceded flatly.

"There's one thing I've been concerned about, though."

"Dr. Lowry should be able to meet your pediatric needs," I assured her.

"No, it's not about the care, sir. It's about milk."

"Milk?"

"Yes. Babies need lots of milk. We don't have any and—well, that could be bad."

The room was very quiet for a moment, then Marduke's laughter pealed. The other women caught on and they joined in.

"What's so funny?!" demanded Hitchcock. "I don't want my son to starve to death! It's not like we've got a herd of cows around here!"

"We'll have at least one cow!" cackled Marduke. "That should be enough."

Hitchcock still didn't seem to get it. My headache was coming back and so I decided to retire and let Hitchcock's ho-ho friends cue her in in their own good time. I bade the troopers good-bye and felt relieved to be out of there.

I returned to my hut and sat at my desk, wondering if I dared let the men of the 54^th start marrying one another. I knew damned well that it wouldn't stop with Hitchcock and Roberts once the ball started rolling. I would have had to be a psychiatrist to lead the Group through the approaching minefield—but I'd been trained as a soldier; that was the only life I knew. I simply had no answers for the oddball questions which cropped up daily.

And besides the new uncertainty, there was always the old certainty—that we would have two more disappearances at any minute. Then, in the morning we'd have two more—

#

So tired. I reached to steady myself against my desk, but my arms groped empty air. I suddenly realized that I was lying on my back and opened my eyes. The ceiling seemed to be turning broad gyrations. What was wrong with me? Had I fainted and fallen to the floor? No, my groping fingers told me that there was a cot under me. Someone edged up from the side. I blinked hard; my vision was fuzzy; I could only make out a white coat.

"Rupe," she said.

Sebastian.

"Take it easy, Rupe. We'll get you through this."

"Through what?"

My voice sounded thin and resonated strangely in my chest cavity. My hand went to my throat, but instead of the Adam's apple and familiar bristle, I found soft, taut skin like I hadn't felt since my early teens.

Terror shot through me; my hands leapt to my chest—

And then I screamed!

When I next came to, Lowry had her arms around me. "Easy, Rupe! Easy! It's not as bad as it seems. I've been there. I know."

"Lowry --!" I mewed but couldn't bear to hear that alien pitch sounding from my larynx. I turned my face away, knowing that Lowry could do nothing for me and that there were no cures for this. Transformation was forever.

"It's not so bad," Sebastian reiterated urgently. "It's strange at first, but you can beat it. People are beating it every day. You're a fighter, Rupe."

I faced toward her; her face was slick with sweat and looked strained.

"If you want to shout or swear, it's all right," Lowry was saying. "Don't hold what you're feeling inside or it'll floor you. Cry if you want to. Get those emotions out. You were a human being before you ever were a commanding officer, Rupe. There's no reason to be ashamed."

"Were?" I echoed croakingly.

"You're still our commander!" she corrected herself hastily. Then she tempered her shrillness a little: "And you're more than that. You're my friend. You can depend on me to help you."

I turned into the pillow again when I suddenly realized that we were not alone. Drew was moving about the room, tending to another patient. Yes, there were always two patients, I remembered. This time I didn't want to know who the other one was. I couldn't take any more.

Suddenly, I began to wonder what I looked like. None of the other men had become ugly, but still I dreaded to see my face. My trembling fingers went to a tickle on my cheek and grasped a tuft of strange-feeling hair. It was very long, even though I 'd worn it cropped short that morning—or what still seemed like that morning to me. I pulled the lock so I could look at its color and texture. It was black, not my familiar sandy brown.—And it was twisted with a strong natural curl!

I screamed again, then realized that Lowry was hugging me to her breast. I didn't want to be held that way—it wasn't the way one man should hold another—but I couldn't focus enough to tear loose. Tears burned my eyes.

Now the Terrible Thing had happened. What was left of my life?

The answer: "Nothing."

As Sebastian cradled me, one question tormented me. Why had this happened? Why had the all-powerful, all-knowing intelligence that haunted Klink done this to me? Why had it put its godlike power so determinedly against one miserable human being, and why did it waste its incomprehensible omnipotence to destroy an insignificant nobody?

"Why?!" I sobbed, and then darkness overcame me once again.

#

I dreamed that I was standing with my back turned against an immense void which gaped behind me. I could neither run from the abyss, nor turn to confront it. I heard nothing from any direction, and saw nothing—not even a shadow. I felt no breathing on my neck, but I knew something was there—and very close. Suddenly. . . .

I felt wasted, hung over, and then all the horrifying memories surged back. I touched myself fearfully, hoping that my last awakening had been a nightmare, but—

Lowry squeezed my wrist. "Rest is the best thing for you now, Rupert. I know how tough it is, but we'll have you up and around in no time."

"No—no. . . !" I mumbled, not wanting to be up and around. I wanted to escape to the darkness, lose myself in the abyss—live and die alone—unseen, unremembered, my bones rotting to nothingness. I wanted no grave—I wanted nothing remaining to remind people that Rupert Breen had ever existed.

Lowry left me momentarily and returned to place a bitter drink to my lips, which I tried to reject. She was not to be refused, however, and I soon forced it down. The doctor remained faithfully by me after that, until I once more slept.

#

"What are you doing?!" Lowry demanded as I pulled on my oversized britches.

"What does it look like, Doc? I've got work to do!"

"You'll do nothing but rest! You're not fit for more!"

"You went back to the grind after three days," I reminded her.

"And that was stupidest thing I ever did. It almost killed me. It'll kill you, too!"

"I don't need a mother hen."

"You need time and rest. Yell, cry, scream, beat your fists against the wall, but don't pretend that nothing has happened! Let Capt. Philbrick run the camp for a while."

"You're saying I've got nothing left to give?"

"No, that's not it."

"What happens when Philbrick becomes a -- ?" I couldn't say it, not even now.

"Someone will step in for him. Hopefully, it will be you."

"It will be me—and it'll be today!"

"Oh yeah? And what are you going to do when you crash? And believe me, try to fly too soon and you'll crash hard."

"I'm fine, Doctor. Get off my back!"

She shook her head. "You're the walking wounded. You're a basket case and don't even know it."

"I know what I need to know!"

She took hold of my arm. "Psychologically, you're on thin ice, Rupe. In a day or two, certainly in less than a week, it's going to break and you'll go down—deep. Good God, don't you think I know what I'm talking about!? Have you forgotten what I almost did to myself?"

I shrugged. "I've got two arms, two legs, one head. What more do I need?"

Sebastian still held onto my sleeve. "Rupe, don't do this. I can help you. Hitchcock and Marduke can help you."

"Am I supposed to make furniture with Pvt. Hitchcock for my commander?"

"You thought it was good enough for Ames—"

"It's not good enough for me! I'd rather be dead than a laughingstock!"

"You think you can take it? Well, let's see!" Lowry picked up a mirror from the table behind her.

"What's that for?" I asked, as jumpy as if it were a gun.

"If you're really on top of this thing, you can look at your face without breaking into a cold sweat."

I shivered inwardly, remembering a time like this one, when I was a kid and my cousin had brought a horror comic home with a cover that terrified me—the picture of an earthman turned into a hideous mutant. I couldn't look at it, and whenever I closed my eyes that ugly picture was all I could see. The next day my mother wondered why I was being difficult about going to my uncle's place and after she'd dragged me there, I wanted to stay in the kitchen. I didn't want to go to my cousin's room where his new comics were lying face-up on the dresser.

Joe was a smart guy and it didn't take him long to figure out what was spooking me. Since he was a jackass at that age, Joe wanted to see me get scared and cry. For a joke then, he dragged me into his room and made me look at his new comics. I controlled my fear and looked at the grotesque illustration, betraying nothing, pretending I didn't have a clue to explain his—Joe's—strange behavior. I simply said, "Yeah, what?"

Maybe I had successfully shucked him, because now he wasn't so sure that he'd read the situation right—and since he couldn't get a rise out of me, he dropped the subject flat. Between sports and girls, he had better things to do than hang around home and torture a six-year old. But for years afterwards I always probed his box of comic books warily when trying to find something to read, unwilling to be confronted by that awful picture. Even as a teenager the sight of it still repelled me.

"Give it here," I told Dr. Lowry, taking the mirror from her hand.

Now I steeled to disassociate myself from what I would see in the mirror. It would be someone else's image, not mine. I regarded the reflection of a clear-skinned, pale Celtic face—aquamarine eyes full of suffering, a slender neck, and heavily ringletted black hair. It was all I could do to keep my face calm and not tear away.

It was The Face, the face of the Nameless One. Her mouth was a pinkish bow; the nose small and slightly upturned.

"Yeah, what?" I remarked, as if Lowry was behaving out of her tree.

"Bullshit!" she said.

#

I kept dressing. My last belt notch would not hold up my pants. What had Shakespeare said?

"Now does he feel his title hang loose about him, like a giant's robe upon a dwarfish thief."

Why had I thought about that? I was no thief. No pretender. What I was, I was by right. Pretense had nothing to do with it!

"At least let Drew go with you," pleaded Lowry, "in case something happens."

"What could happen?" I asked irascibly.

"We could lose you, Major; we really could."

"Doctor, I need to get back to my routine or I'll—" I rephrased that: "I need to keep busy—especially now. The men need to know that their C.O. is fit and on top of things."

"But you're not!"

Ignoring her, I started toward the door, but then suffered an anxiety attack. I suddenly wondered whether Lowry was thinking about invoking her medical authority to relieve me of command? She was my friend, and so that would be an act of incredible treachery. Even so, I couldn't trust that she wouldn't go that far, and so I walked swiftly away before she thought of it.

Once in the open air, my confidence did not stiffen as much as I'd hoped. Instead, I was afraid that my men wouldn't know me, that I would have to explain who I was, and why I claimed the right to command them. Instead, the brutal fact turned out to be that everyone knew who I was and they stared at me, especially when they thought I couldn't see. I felt like Klink's newest monster every time I returned a salute.

"Tuong," I addressed the Korean-born sergeant in my path, "where can I find Captain Philbrick?"

He seemed embarrassed; his almond eyes darted left and right, but refused to fix squarely on me. "In his quarters, I think—sir."

That stumble at the word, "sir" and his nervous glance swept my face. Nonetheless, I tried to ignore the stare and stammer and turned toward the row of officers' huts. I found Philbrick conferring with the lieutenants Stokes and Evans. Ames was there, too, since it was her hut as much as Philbrick's.

The officers snapped to attention. "At ease. Report, Captain Philbrick," I said. "What's happened over the last three days?"

Like Tuong, Philbrick had worried eyes and tried to avoid looking directly at me. "No word from the detachees, s-sir!" There was that damnable stumble again, but the captain hurried past it. "Perhaps Dr. Lowry mentioned that Pvts. Brouwer and Marietta were—transformed—the day after Gonzales and—"

"And me? Yes, go on," I urged him stiffly.

"And yesterday it was Petoska and Bakshi. That makes 237 transformees our of a current muster of 475."

The report trailed off there and I sensed that the officers wanted me to go away, like a family rejecting a disgraced member. Ames' expression bothered me most. What was she feeling? Pity? Jealousy that I still presumed to command though I'd kept her on suspension? Was she smugly satisfied? Did she think I'd gotten a deserved comeuppance? Suddenly, the cramped space left me short of breath and my shoulders began to shake.

"Major—are you all right?" queried Philbrick, raising his hands almost enough, if not quite, to take me in hand.

"Of course!" I barked, or tried to—my reply sounded like an off-key piping. I stepped away from him, mumbling, "I need to rest. Carry on, Captain!" I turned to go.

Ames pursued me to the door. "Major Breen?"

Turning with gritted teeth, I said: "Captain Ames?"

"Sir, is there anything that I—that I can do? Would you like to talk?"

"I don't know what you mean, soldier."

I supposed she wanted to give me a pep talk or, even worse, sympathize. My icy glare warned her off.

"I mean—nothing, sir."

"Very good," I nodded—and left.

* * * *

 

Chapter 5

*When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate.*

SONNET XXIX

Back in my quarters, I opened my log book to jot down the names of the new transformees, but realized that I couldn't remember who they were. Try as I might, I couldn't organize my thoughts—an appalling feeling, like being high on stimmers. As I sat there confused, my hands began to tremble; I dropped the pen and, trying to pick it up again, kept dropping it, until it rolled over the desk edge and fell to the floor. At that point, I gave up and let my head sink to the tabletop while I drew deep, ragged drags of air.

"Excuse me, Major Breen."

I looked up; Drew was looming in the door.

"Come in, Private," I whispered hoarsely, hunching forward to hide my quaking hands under the table.

"Dr. Lowry's asked me to look in on you."

"Lowry should worry about more important things," I grumbled.

"I don't think so, sir."

"Are you trying to be impudent, soldier?!"

"No, sir. I only mean that it's her duty to give our commanding officer all the attention he deserves."

"I don't need that much attention. And why didn't—the doctor—come here her—himself?"

"I assume that she, -- he—feels that you might feel more comfortable if your attending medic was—"

"Was what?"

"A man."

I felt stung, but didn't know why. "All right, go back and tell Dr. Lowry that you saw me, and that I'm perfectly fine!" I wanted to get rid of Drew, especially since the shaking in my hands was worsening. Did Drew realize what I was concealing? He seemed to be watching me keenly.

"Is there anything else, Private?"

"Neither the doctor nor I think that it's good for you to be alone for the next few days."

"Are you volunteering to be my suicide-watch?" I asked coldly.

"With your permission, sir."

I threw my log book at him. "Get out of here!"

Drew dodged, cast back a worried glance, and withdrew.

Instantly I regretted losing my temper. Drew would report me to the doctor and it would look bad; she might not understand the degree to which I had been provoked. The inconsequential incident might give her the excuse she needed to remove me from command, making me a patient, a virtual prisoner!

I struggled for breath. The walls felt close-in. I opened my collar, sucking down rapid breaths. My head throbbed and I was growing nauseous, weak. I staggered to the empty rations drum that served as my nighttime chamber pot where, since I had had little solid food for three days, I vomited mostly regurgitated water. The worst of the nausea soon passed, but when I could finally stand I remained very unsteady on my feet.

I thought about checking in at the infirmary, but I didn't want Lowry to see me in such a state. Another part of me wanted someone's—anyone's—company, but a C.O. couldn't lean on a subordinate. I hadn't been there for Lowry when she needed me. Now I was alone myself.

My headache wasn't getting better, and so I put a couple tablets of LWI in my mouth and crushed them between my teeth. The bitter chemical choking me, I staggered to my canteen and guzzled a couple mouthfuls of water. That ended the coughing and I managed the few steps to my bed, which I fell into like a statue. I drew a towel over my eyes to shut out Klink's bright noon light, wanting desperately to sleep.

Instead, I lay in a semi-trance for a long while before I heard tapping at my door. My head felt hot and tight as I gasped, "Come in."

"Major Breen!" Philbrick blurted excitedly. "One man has disappeared!"

I couldn't understand his uncharacteristic dramatics. "We expected it, didn't we, Captain?"

"Sir—only one man has disappeared—not two!"

"One? Are you sure?"

"I've taken roll! Every man, every transformee, has been accounted for, except Culligan."

"Why only one?" I mumbled.

"I don't know, sir! Do you suppose it means something?"

For my answer, I dropped back against my pillow and lay there in silence until he gave up and stole quietly away.

#

After a nearly-sleepless night, I rose and joined the searchers. We soon found the feminine incarnation of Marcus Culligan—who had become a younger incarnation of Lola Carlita, a Latin sex-symbol back in the days when Culligan had been a hormonal teenager wasting his money on adult sex-sims. But why had his been the only transformation? Any change in the familiar pattern could mean something significant.

Lowry had no theory and, disappointed, I said something sharp and angry.

"This isn't like you, Rupe," she replied with an even temper. "You're driving yourself too hard. Take a break."

I didn't want sympathy; it was salt in a festering wound. I stormed out of the infirmary but I had another fit of shaking outside and so, afraid of being seen, hid in a grove of trees until I bucked up.

I had to carry on despite my nervous condition, so I decided to inspect Capt. Komisov's work. The officer filled me in on his men's latest soil and water analyses, but it was clear there were no interesting developments since the last time. Maybe that was why my mind wandered and I grew confused over details, repeating the same questions over and over.

Komisov began to eye me strangely and I grew angry. Why was everyone staring, treating me like something strange? Mine was only a physical change and it in no way affected the person I was. Half the camp had suffered what I suffered, so why should they gape? They would be women themselves in a few weeks, and it would serve them right!

I stalked furiously through the center of camp, ignoring people who tried to address me. There were many transformees among them. What were they thinking? That I was like them? Well, I wasn't!

And what about the men? Why were their expressions so strange? Did they believe that I was unfit to command? Damn them!

The trembling returned, forcing me to retreat to my hut before anyone noticed. This time I didn't reach my bed before collapsing to the floor like a stringless marionette. I crawled laboriously to the cot, covered my face with a pillow, and curled into a fetal position.

It was hours later when someone shouted "Major!" I opened my eyes and cast away the pillow. I saw that the sun had sagged low in the west.

Philbrick again.

"What is it now, Captain?!" I asked blearily.

"The disappearances—" he babbled excitedly.

"Who now?"

"No one, sir! No one!"

#

I called in my officers. Transformation had nearly halved our staff. Ames and Lowry had recovered sufficiently to join us. Of my captains, Philbrick and Komisov were still sound, but the transformed Tritcher remained on suspension, while my senior subordinate, Crawford, was absent, his fate unknown.

"What does it mean?" I demanded.

"Maybe the enemy has decided to cease his attacks, sir," conjectured Komisov.

"Why? We're as helpless as ever! This process has been as predictable as a machine until now. Why the change?"

"I've been thinking, Major. . . ," Lowry began.

"Oh, so now you're thinking?!" I mocked.

She ignored my insult and continued evenly: "The transformation yesterday brought us to 50% women and 50% percent men, with the odd individual going to the female side—Culligan, I mean."

"Yes, yes. . . !?" I said, "what's the point?"

"Yesterday, there was only one disappearance, and today there have been none, though hours overdue."

"What are you driving at, damn it?!"

"Maybe the intelligence or force assailing us is satisfied with a sexual balance of 50-50 --" suggested the doctor.

"Why?!"

"It's just an idea but—

"But what?"

"I can only guess."

"So what's your guess?!" I asked sharply.

"It might be that unisexual communities are taboo on this planet and so it—someone—changed the proportion to suit his own taste."

"This isn't a community! We're a military camp!"

"Yes, sir," Sebastian humored me. "But an alien mind with godlike powers might not have cared about that. Then, again—"

"Then again, what?!"

"Then, again, this sexual balancing act might have been intended to prepare us for some specific purpose."

"We've been speculating on that since the start!" "I'm suggesting, sir, that there may be a—function—that a—group—half male and half female might best serve—which an all-male or all-female group couldn't satisfy."

"What purpose?"

"I was thinking about Roberts and Hitchcock."

"I don't follow, Doctor."

"It's possible that we may be expected to become a breeding population."

"Shit!"

#

I accompanied Sebastian to the infirmary, half mad with frustration. It was incredibly frustrating to realize that had I been able to win the transformation lottery for just three days more, I still would have been myself! The odds had been seven out of two-hundred and forty-five in my favor, and I lost! I lost it all, and I lost it forever!

"Major—Rupert—you don't look so good!" Lowry observed tactfully, placing her hand lightly on my shoulder. Not liking patronization, I pushed it away.

"Get to the point, Doctor! You think that this could be a breeding experiment?"

"It's just a guess." She gave a laugh which was both bitter and brief. "Call it woman's intuition."

"Lowry!"

"Ease up, Major. There's nothing much to do except maintain morale and make scientific observations."

"We have to show the enemy that we're not going to be guinea pigs for their fucking experiments!"

"I like the way you phrased that," my companion noted with a doleful smile.

I balled my fists. "Can't you ever be serious?"

She shrugged.

"Sex has to be absolutely forbidden," I pronounced. "I think your theory is a crock, but if it's not we can't do anything that the enemy might interpret as cooperation."

"Prohibition won't work. At least not for long." "In this case I think it will."

She shook her head. "In a few more months, with loneliness and sexual frustration building, with the women reconciling themselves to their fate and the men feeling more secure—"

"What are you trying to say?"

"I'm saying that pairing is going to look like the path of least resistance—"

"Damn it Lowry—" My voice cut off.

"Major, what's wrong?"

I started to shake—and this time Lowry was right there, taking it in.

The spell was bad, very bad. I sank to my knees, my vision a field of spots; the air shimmered with them until I covered my eyes. The next thing I knew I was in bed, fighting to rise.

"Lie down, Rupe! You blacked out. You're not well!"

"Like hell I'm not!" I slipped around her and scrambled to my feet. Sebastian stood back and faced off with me, her mouth tight and her glance determined.

"I've been derelict, Major. I let you subject yourself to pressures which are obviously too great for your condition. You need rest, you need quiet. You have to go on medical leave."

"Don't say any more!"

"I have no choice but to relieve you, Rupe. I'll tell Philbrick to take command until you're on your feet."

"I'm on my feet already!"

"Face the facts! You're wound so tight that your spring is about to break. It's to be expected. You've changed into your favorite sex fantasy and it's driving you crazy."

"Don't call me crazy, Doctor!"

She paused and I sensed wheels turning behind her worried, fashion-model features. "Are you willing to take the mirror test again!"

"Are you still on that kick? Go ahead! I could look into it all day because I know the face I see isn't mine and it doesn't mean a thing to me."

"It's your face—and it'll be yours for the rest of your life. If you're still pretending otherwise, your disconnection is worse than I thought!" She placed her hand behind my back and nudged me toward the infirmary "mirror"—a polished metal sheet suspended on the wall.

"Look," she said.

I didn't want to, but I had toughed out this rubbish before and could do it again. Confronting the reflection, I saw the Nameless One for the second time, but she was an even worse mess now! -- her hair in snarls, her complexion sallow, dark rings lined her eyes, and her expression resembled a beaten dog's. That big slouching cap looked ridiculous and her sagging, over-sized uniform suggested a sickly child.

"If you wouldn't let yourself go, you'd be a lovely woman," observed Lowry with a hint of acidity.

"Don't say that!" I rebuked her, trying to turn away from the mirror. She suddenly clamped her hands on my shoulders and directed me face-front again.

"She's a very pretty woman, you know. But what makes her tick?"

"That's none of your damned business!"

"Maybe I can guess. Is she into filmy negligees and hot tubs or isn't she? Bikinis and volleyball at the beach? Scandalous doings in ski cabins? She's the kind of girl you've always wanted, isn't she?"

"I said --!"

"I know what you said, and you're not being honest! Tell me what you know about that girl."

"I don't know anything. She doesn't exist!"

"If a dick like you dreamed her, she must be good at only one thing."

Furious, I tried to tear away, but Sebastian twisted my arm behind my back, hard enough to give me pain.

"Lowry! Are you nuts?!"

"You're going to look at yourself until you can talk calmly about who and what that girl represents, or until you admit that you're not fit for command."

I could have slammed my boot heel into my tormentor's shin and broke her hold, but it was crazy to come to physical blows with my attending physician. Even so, I felt another surge of panic and closed my eyes.

"Come on, Rupe, describe her. Can she carry on a conversation, or is she a total airhead who does her best talking on her knees? What does she wear to bed? Does she like to sleep naked? Does she like men?"

"What are you doing, Lowry?!" I gnashed.

"I'm introducing you to yourself. You two are going to be shacked up together for a lifetime, and you're going to have to make friends."

"Damn you, bitch!"

I struggled in earnest and the doctor did her best to hold me. I didn't want to hurt Lowry, but I had to stop her mouth, stop her from talking about things that I couldn't bear to hear.

"Lowry, let me go or I'll kill you—"

"Sure! And you're crazy enough to kill innocent people. No one would hang you for it; you're certifiable! That's why I can't let you go, Rupe. You're a danger to yourself; and you could be a danger to other people, too."

With a shriek, I put my foot against the wall and pushed, throwing her back. She fell against a table and I whirled, ready to tear at her with my bare hands. But I didn't see the scornful face of a foe—just the stunned, worried expression of a physician and friend whose desperate, improvised treatment had failed.

But what sort of treatment had it been?

"I'm sorry, Rupert," she began haltingly. "Sometimes you have to re-break a fracture to set it right—"

I wasn't listening. I was no longer violent, but was beginning to tremble again. I had to get away.

I staggered to the door like a drunkard and stumbled outside.

"Rupert! Don't go!" Lowry cried behind me.

I walked swiftly away, with only the tattered rags of my dignity preventing me from running blindly.

Once out of Sebastian's sight, out of everyone's sight, I raced wildly away. I didn't know where I was running until I saw the foot of Woolenska's Bluff ahead, and knew to what fate my legs were carrying me. #

Somehow I climbed the rocky incline—sometimes clambering on all fours. I didn't see the way ahead; all I could see was the face of a snarled-haired girl with unhealthily circled, aquamarine eyes. I tried my strength to its limit—the strength of this woman's body. From time to time, sheer exhaustion forced me to lie belly-down on the sun-heated stones to catch my breath. Whether such pauses were long or short, I didn't register.

Then, lungs burning, limbs aching, I rose and pressed on. I found myself high over the camp, which looked small and orderly, like rows of toy huts in a child's sandbox. I was possessed of a strange detachment. What was the camp to me? A place. The camp was no one's home—certainly not mine.

I peered into the powder-blue sky, piled high with cumulus clouds like ice-cream castles. Where was my home? Where did I belong?

The truth was I had no home—only a place, a job, a duty. Without my place, without my duty, I was nothing. If I died now, who would regret it?

A foolish thought. To the 54^th, Major Rupert Breen was already dead even if he lingered where he no longer belonged, like Jacob Marley's ghost. But unlike Marley, he didn't have anything wise to contribute, no knowledge of how to live a better life. Maybe it was time to lay the ghost, to go where the dead belonged. Let no one fret over my grave; let no one be sorry that I was gone.

I inched my way up the incline and, finally, dragged myself onto the table rock at the summit of Woolenska's Hill. Utterly spent, lungs aflame, my breath came in hot pants. I shoved a mass of greasy snarls out of my face and rested my forehead on the warm bedrock.

Suddenly I felt ashamed. What was I doing here? Was I going to kill myself? Others had found the courage to endure—Ames, Lowry, Hitchcock, Marduke. Was I like Woolenska, giving up, or Olson, too distraught to reason? Was I a coward?

Warm teardrops pattered the dirty hands on which my chin rested.

Tears!

I could die, and gladly, but not as a weeping, hysterical woman!

Self-pity didn't lighten my grief one bit. Lowry had reached out to comfort me, as Drew had, but my pride couldn't accept compassion. My body again quaked, this time with hard, choking sobs. I rose to my feet at last and all around me trees, bushes, and boulders whirled as if I suffered from vertigo. My legs were weak, aching from the climb; I had demanded much from this skinny body, but my demands were over. I understood what I must do. Sucking a raw breath to energize famished lungs, I staggered toward the overlook—

The overlook from which Herbert Woolenska had launched himself into eternity. . . .

* * * *

 

Chapter 6

*Would I were dead! if God's good will were so;
For what is in this world but grief and woe?*

KING HENRY VI, Part III

As I inched closer to the brink, I sank down on hands and knees. Why did I bother? Was I afraid of falling to my death? What else had I intended? But the desire to live is a terrible, tenacious thing, and it takes all of human will to suppress it, even for a moment.

I cast one more look at the world, supposing it would be my last. Rocky pinnacles and forests rose as far as the eye could see, hills and ridges stretching jaggedly to the horizon, dwarfing the little bluff to which Woolenska had given his name. The familiar earth- and vegetation-colors, softened by haze in the distance, make the landscape resemble a painting by a Nineteenth-Century master.

I gazed at the broken rubble on which I would fall, blinking away the blur of saltine tears. I regarded the graveyard with its two tiny markers, the ground where Olson and Woolenska lay—and where I, too, must lie tomorrow. No one was to blame for that—nothing except blind fate, and my own lack of courage.

Tears had cast a veil over my sight and mucus filled my nose. I wanted to live, and I wanted to die, but could only do one or the other. I couldn't go back, nor did I desire to explore what lay ahead. My emotions, pent up for so long, ran from me like a rushing stream. I again sank to the stones, lying belly-flat against the ledge, cradling my head on my forearms. I could still see the place where I would die. . . .

#

Suddenly, behind me, I heard the gravel crunch.

"Easy, Major," said a man. "Don't move."

I glanced back. Drew! I felt horrified that he should see me so—face wet, nose running, eyes red and swollen. The medic looked rough-used himself, sweat-soaked, winded, his stride slow and lame, as if he had come far without once pausing to rest.

"Careful, Major. Please.—Come back from there. It's a long way down."

He was talking to me as if I were a child—or a woman! Again I felt the wild impulse to throw myself over the dizzying drop.

Drew inched closer, fearing, I supposed, that any sudden move on his part would make me take wing like a frightened pigeon.

"Don't come any closer!" I commanded.

He paused to extend his hand to me, a hand gray with calciferous silt, and red where he had cut his knuckles climbing.

"That's an order, solider!" I yelled.

Lowering his arm, he said, "Then you'll have to come to me, Major Breen."

"Return to the camp, Drew. I want to be alone."

"I can't. Dr. Lowry told me to bring you back. She says you're not yourself and that I should disregard your orders if you refuse to come."

"Lowry has no right!"

"Of course she has the right, Major. It's for your own good."

Frustrated, I retreated a few additional inches toward the precipice.

"Don't, sir! Don't do that!"

"Lowry's the one who's not herself!" I accused wildly.

"Please, Major. There's no disgrace in what's happened to you. We only want to help."

"How can you help? By making me a prisoner?"

"We just want to keep you safe until you can think things over more clearly. There's no reason to die."

I flared, angry with myself for arguing with a mere private. Nonetheless, the resultant flood of adrenaline gave me the strength to stand. I swayed precariously over the edge—

"Major!" Drew ejaculated.

but caught my balance.

"Leave me alone!"

The medic moved a step backwards. "All right, sir. We'll both stay here and talk."

I searched his anxious blue eyes, trying to find mockery in his address of "sir."

"Let it go, Drew," I whispered. "I've sunk too low. I can't bear the disgrace."

"It's no disgrace. No one can help what he looks like."

"That's Psych 101 talking!"

"No, it's a soldier talking to his commander—a man whom he views with regard and respect."

I was no commander, I was no man. I couldn't make a private obey my simplest order. I had lost my command. I had lost my place. I had lost the sense of who I was. It was as good as losing my life. I shifted my weight in the excitement of the moment and my foot slipped . . . .

. . . .There was nothing below me. . . .

#

With an action more rapid than thought, I caught a tree root projecting through a fissure and held on for all I was worth, my legs dangling over a bottomless void. I saw my personal biography like a thousand fleeting snapshots of futility and defeat.

Above me, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Drew's arm waving.

"Thank God!" he shouted.

I said nothing, rendered mute by shock. He reached toward me, but his grasp ended a foot short of my clinging hands.

"I can't reach you, Major. You'll have to climb higher!"

My thoughts raced; I could prop my feet against the rock face and spring upwards. That would give me a few inches—but if Drew missed me, I would probably lose my one-handed grip. I had only that one chance, a chance lasting only a second before I'd fall to my death. . . .

Time seemed suspended; my mind roiled. I wondered whether I should accept Drew's offer, or end my existence as I had intended.

Death seemed easy, almost as if Old Grandfather Time were extending loving arms my way. I could relax my grip and let Death catch me; even Drew would not know whether I died by choice or fell. I need not bear the infamy of suicide, and yet could escape the mockery my life had become.

"Major—please," the young man pleaded. "You have so much to live for. Can't you see it?"

No, I didn't see it, but, for some reason, or for no consciously-worked-out reason, I braced my toes against the rock and made a desperate leap—an all-or-nothing toss of the dice that meant life or death—

Drew's strong fingers locked with strength around my willowy wrist!

#

I was amazed that he could hold me, forgetting that my weight had recently been reduced from nearly a hundred kilos to only sixty or sixty-five. The soldier could gain little purchase on the ledge, and so he resorted to scuttling backwards on his belly. Like a sun-warmed lizard, he used what irregularities the stone offered for leverage, but mostly depended on friction and his greater weight to support me against the inexorable force of gravity.

Being dragged over the rock hurt my breasts, but when my belly, legs, and then my toes were drawn over the lip of the precipice, I knew I was saved—had returned to life like a lost soul reincarnated—but could any human being have felt less joy at his salvation?

Releasing my wrist, the young trooper swung to my side and carefully turned me over on my back.

"Are you hurt?" he asked concerned.

"You shouldn't have—" I stammered.

"I had to."

I closed my eyes. Drew had done his job; he would have done no less for any human being, even a felon condemned to die before a firing squad.

"I want to help you, Major."

My eyes and my nasal cavities were burning. I couldn't speak.

"If you feel like crying, that's all right, sir," Drew assured me with doctor-like compassion. "There's a lot of pain inside you, I know. This is the best time to let it out; no one can see or hear you."

I didn't want to do anything unmanly in front of a witness, but my life had become a twisted, irrecoverable wreck!

Drew squeezed my hands empathetically, then, to my surprise, scooped me into his arms and carried me to the shade under some small trees, where he eased me to the ground again. Before I realized it, my cheek was pressed against his shoulder, my arms wrapped tightly about his neck as I broke down utterly.

"I don't want to be like this," I heard myself saying.

"I know," he whispered. "I wouldn't either, but we'll get you through it. You can count on us."

After a while my sobbing ceased and my breathing came quieter, more even.

"I'm a woman -- ," I choked, trying hard to understand what that meant.

"Yes you are, Major," Drew replied with a low, thoughtful drawl. "So what are you going to do with the rest of your life?"

I was taken aback and stammered, "I don't know."

"Of course you don't, sir. But soon you'll know, and after that you'll be all right."

I shook my head. I couldn't be all right. Never again.

#

When I tried to squirm out of the young soldier's grasp, he let me go.

"We should climb down," suggested Drew. "Do you feel strong enough to walk?"

"I don't want to go back," I said, unable to look him in the eye.

"You have to. The only other place you can go is over that ledge, and I don't want to see that happen."

I shook my head, but did nothing to resist as Drew helped me rise and then stood back to gauge my strength. "Good, now let's go," he coaxed.

Then, steadied by his strong arms, we descended the slope. Many times, I had to stop to rest and sometimes Drew was practically carrying me. By the time we reached the bottom, I was completely used up and he took me into his arms and toted me along. I couldn't even protest, I was so exhausted, so despondent, but as we neared the grove which was the last barrier screening us from the full view of the camp, I got anxious.

"Put me down! I can't let them see me like this!"

He complied at once and I was relieved to find that my legs felt fairly firm when they touched the soil.

"Are my eyes red?" I inquired hastily.

"No, they're quite—" Whatever his intended observation, he abandoned it.

"Drew, please," I asked, deliberately not making it a command, "don't tell anyone what happened."

"I have to tell Dr. Lowry."

"Nobody else!"

"It'll be our secret," he promised.

#

I avoided looking at the men—and the women—along the way to my hut. Did they know what had happened? Had I been seen racing for the hill like a lunatic? Had anyone turned their binoculars upon Woolenska's Leap? That Drew had been sent to bring me home? I would lose all respect if it became known that I had nearly committed suicide.

Drew put me to bed; I grew drowsy very quickly and slept. When I woke, Lowry was seated beside me.

"We've got to stop meeting like this," I murmured.

She smiled. "If you can joke after what you've been through, Rupe, your prognosis is excellent."

"'Excellent,'" I echoed without much enthusiasm. "I'm alive, sure, but what kind of life is it going to be?"

"That's what I still ask myself every time I wake up in the morning," the physician grinned. "When I stop asking it, I'm sure I'll be dead."

When I didn't reply, a new thought ridged her brow. "Rupe, I'm as sorry as I can be. I never should have talked to you that way.—At least not without a couple of husky orderlies on hand to keep you from running off."

"It's all right. I suppose shock therapy is the least that I deserve."

"What do you mean?"

I looked away. "If I told you, we couldn't be friends anymore."

She put her hand on the blanket covering me. "That's not going to happen, Rupe. Whatever's bothering you, it can't be so bad. I know you. You're the most decent—person—in the service. I'm proud to know you."

"You must have met some real scum buckets."

"Buddy, what is it?"

I swallowed hard. "I let you down."

"Me? When? How?"

I told her. I don't know why I had to tell Lowry my guilty secret, but it was something I needed to do. I had to let her know what sort of person I was before she did anything else to help me.

She grew silent; I looked at her, thinking that her face was paler than usual.

But there was no anger in her expression, just bruise.

"Neither of us is very good in the feelings department, are we?" Sebastian observed ironically.

"I guess not."

I reached out and touched her hand. "Can you forgive me?"

"Rupe, I've made mistakes, too—like making my best friend and most important patient go suicidal. I'd say that we're about even."

I shrugged resignedly, knowing I had done far worse.

"Now, cheer up," she went on. "What's happened—what's happened to both of us—is damned strange, but it isn't terminal. It's mostly a lifestyle problem, and we're not alone."

"No, we have a whopper of a leper colony here."

"Hardly that."

"Can't we go on as if not much has happened? Do we have to make a big thing of sex?"

"Sex is a big thing, Rupe. Wait until you're having your first period. Wait until you look at a soldier and start thinking -- . Well, never mind, you get the picture."

"You're still doing that?"

"It seems to go with the territory, but I'm trying to control it. The important thing for one's self-respect is not to give in."

That's right, don't give in, I thought. Chastity wasn't so onerous. Monks did it. Anyway, I couldn't imagine myself attracted to a male, despite Lowry's warnings to the contrary. I'd probably end up a lesbian. What a fate!

I changed the subject: "Doc, you'd better be off. I don't have the right to keep you from your work."

"You're part of my work, Rupe! There's no way I'm leaving you unattended after so serious a crisis."

"I'm stuck with you then, I suppose. How long did I sleep? Are there any new problems today?"

"That's none of your business," she said with a smile to reassure me.

#

Two days had passed with no new disappearances and Lowry's prediction seemed to bear out. If her theory held water, our situation, our future prospects, had changed—radically.

"Maybe we have a chance to reverse this thing," I ventured. "If someone wants Klink to have a half-and-half population, it might work in the other direction, too. If we collect all the women together maybe they'll start reverting!"

Sebastian's forehead wrinkled. "I've thought about that, too, Rupe. But even if it worked, it would be like trying to lengthen a rope with a piece cut from the other end; it doesn't get us anywhere. If we're going to be 50-50 no matter what we do, what's the difference which half is which? What we have to do is make sure that there are no new transformations. We've got a tall order surviving on Klink without this crazy distraction."

"I suppose you're right," I replied glumly, though it certainly seemed no small matter to me to which half of the human race I belonged. "That means we have to make sure that no men are isolated from female association. We've got to look over our records and estimate about how far a man can go from camp without transforming—What are you grinning about, Doc?"

"It sounds like women are going to have a lot of power on this planet. If men don't cooperate, welcome to the sisterhood!"

I'd read too much history to agree. "Women's power is always an illusion, Sebastian. It exists only when men refuse to use force. That means you have to make nice-nice to the guys or else you're going to create an ethic where it's all right to bash you."

"Haven't you heard of those old-time matriarchies?"

"Sure, I've read about them. Matriarchies are a crock. They never really happen. Men simply rule behind a female facade, Sebastian. Strength is going to rule, whether the rulers are courtly knights or street gangs."

"Sounds pretty grim."

"It doesn't have to be.—It wasn't before the feminists killed chivalry. You have to zero in on the best qualities of manhood and reinforce them. That way you get a knight and not a hoodlum. It's a child-rearing process."

"Well, we can't be knights, Rupe, so where does that leave you and me?"

"I haven't a clue," I admitted. "Anyhow, I'd rather think about other things. What did Philbrick say?"

"About what?"

"About relieving me, damn it!"

"Philbrick understood."

"Oh, he'd understand, all right! He knows a nutcase when he sees one!" I took a deep breath. "—Okay, I have no duties, no responsibilities, no conceivable function in life. What am I good for?"

"We'll have to play it by ear," she said.

* * * *

 

Chapter 7

*There is something in this more than natural,
if philosophy could find it out.*

HAMLET

Transformation trauma was a roller coaster; sometimes a person was up, but most of the time he was so far down that he wished he were dead. Any death-wish is dangerous, though, and because Drew and Lowry couldn't watch me all the time, they brought in others—usually Halder or Cotts—to pick up the slack.

During the worst of it, I could barely sleep four or five hours on a good night. The depression felt like a physical ache, permeating every corner of my body. An interminable, grinding despair accompanied it, the fear that life could never again be meaningful, purposeful, or even tolerable. I asked myself endlessly: "Who am I?" "What am I?" "Why am I living?" And most of all, "Why me?"

When I was feeling up, I could at least read. Unfortunately, worthwhile material was scarce, outside of Drew's Shakespeare and Lowry's Bible. Before long, Sebastian encouraged me to get off my back and begin a regimen of daily walks. I don't remember those first excursions, except that it seemed an ordeal just to place one foot in front of the other. I was always accompanied by someone to look after me. It wouldn't do to have Major Breen climb Woolenska's Hill again.

As my spirits improved, I once again enjoyed playing cards with Sebastian. When we felt like having a foursome, we brought in other players, usually Drew and Ames. The blonde captain did her best to be my friend, but something—maybe our respective ranks or our past association—proved to be an obstacle to true intimacy.

The camp operated smoothly enough; I'd given Philbrick the understanding that I expected him to run it as he saw fit and assured him that I wouldn't allow anyone to come to me and go over his head. He nodded without replying, but I knew he appreciated my pledge.

As he gained confidence, Philbrick directed the camp more in his own distinct style. Early-on, he made decisions that wouldn't have occurred to me—decisions which, in fact, I probably would have rejected.

After we hit Klink, I'd run things by the "Book." I wasn't an unimaginative martinet, but I wanted to give the Group a sense of stability, a center, a focus. The Book wasn't perfect, but, at least, it let everyone know where he stood. Philbrick, on the other hand, was an experimenter. His most noticeable change was the relaxation of the uniform requirements. Because no clothes fit the women, he set up a committee charged with finding ways to make the transformees' clothing more comfortable and utilitarian.

Capt. Ames chaired the uniform committee which approved the new dispensations. I suspected that she had influenced Philbrick to authorize them. Philbrick was Ames' hut mate, her long-time friend, and—I suspected—her current lover. I wondered about that last possibility sometimes and didn't think that it served as a good example, but I neither confronted them nor sought gossip.

Before long, the transformed troopers were cutting away extraneous material, especially floppy, dragging pantslegs and over-long sleeves. Cutoffs became a common sight and, off duty, women were even allowed to go about clad in shirttails and drawers. To my mind, the latter fashion made them look like one-night stands the morning after.

Though the changes in the dress code gave me new concerns about discipline, I did not intervene. At least one innovation had my approval—the design of new footwear. Mr. Chesterton, one of the fleet techs, got the idea of stripping the Carodite insulation sheets out of the useless drop pods and cutting tough soles for shoes from it. With the addition of straps fore and aft, the space-farer produced sandals which were far more comfortable than the oversized army boots that transformees had been condemned to wear beforehand.

#

In fact, I now wore the new sandals for my daily exercise, during which Drew was my most frequent suicide-watch. Very quickly, our relationship became more than strictly professional, although fraternizing with a serviceman ran against the very Book that I valued so highly. But, the truth is, rank can be a lonely thing. If one ever needed to abandon ceremony, now was the time for me.

It may seem ironic that I should let Drew get close to me since, like Lowry, the young soldier knew my weaknesses, knew my breaking point—and a person isn't always comfortable being around someone who knows his limits. But looked at another way, our relationship may not have been so unlikely. Part of being a friend is letting down the mask, admitting that you have shortcomings, failings. I couldn't do this in front of my officers, but the medic's manner, or his personality, encouraged me to open up. Anyway, I had to have help to cope.

Over a couple weeks, I gradually accepted that Drew's camaraderie was genuine. For his part, the medic seemed to gain confidence that I would not suddenly about-face and treat him like an orderly. We talked about our respective backgrounds quite frankly. I learned that Drew was from Missouri and had attended the University at Rolla, where he studied pre-med. He was well read and sorely missed his library of English literature on Earth. He also enjoyed classic songs, many of which he had memorized.

Drew had never intended to be a professional soldier and he had been unenthusiastic when drafted straight from college. Previously, he had looked forward to attending the University of Illinois in Chicago—specializing in prostatic surgery and research. Now his goal was to learn as much advanced medicine as he could from Doctor Lowry.

I laughed up my sleeve and he asked me why. I explained that it was because I suddenly recognized that I would never have to worry about prostate problems in my latter years. Silver linings, and all that.

As the days passed, we became quite chummy. I even persuaded Drew to sing some of those old-time songs of his. He had a strong, melodious singing voice and I grew determined, if we ever put on the company show that I had envisioned, to get him to perform.

We shared a love for Shakespeare and we talked over my idea of staging a play. He suggested that I would make a good Portia. I demurred; I was no actor and, personally, I never liked Portia as a character.

"'The Merchant of Venice' seemed to go sour at the point where Shakespeare let Portia carry her hoax on Shylock too far," I told him. "Harsh as his intended vengeance against his merchant-rival had been, Shylock had stayed within the letter of the law. Portia's impersonation of a justice was clearly a felony."

In the Twenty-First Century, judicial tyranny, along with a lot of other ruling-class abuses, had triggered a second American revolution. History's bitter lessons taught us that the greatest threat to democracy, Assies included, was the Ivy-League-educated in mandarin robes.

Drew was amused by my literary criticism and said that if I didn't like Portia, the second best role for me had to be Doll Tearsheet, who was always honest about what she was. "You idiot!" I cried as I slugged him in the arm, and then we shared a good laugh. Afterwards, in bed, I realized how unwise I had been to let a private get away with such a liberty.

As my strength and confidence returned, my walks became more purposeful. I no longer suffered from headaches or shaking spells. Relieved of routine duty, I was anxious to contribute nonetheless. For some reason, perhaps from the long agricultural tradition in my family, I grew preoccupied with the discovery and cultivation of Klinkian edibles.

I estimated our emergency rations would last for about another year, but were we facing old age and death on Klink? I encouraged Lowry and Drew to devote as much of their time as possible to testing what the foragers found as potential food substances.

The foragers also had been honing their hunting techniques, making snares, deadfalls, and experimenting with bows and arrows. The meats of many of Klink's mammal-like and bird-like animals proved nutritious, though one family of rodent-like creatures seemed to have a distinctly disagreeable gastric effect on humans. Local plant matter was, as on every world, tricky. We lacked test animals (at least any with Earth-evolved physiologies), so while Lowry's or Webb's tests might screen food for toxins (taking careful note of what might turn out to be useful chemical substances), we nonetheless had to conduct a series of human experiments, starting with the consumption of very small amounts of plant matter under close observation. We had some sickness, and sometimes what seemed to be allergies, but no fatalities.

#

After about an Earth month in my transformed shape, I seemed to be spending more days "up" than "down." Dr. Lowry rated my recovery as very good, though I realized that it was nowhere as swift as her own had been. I wondered at that. Had Sebastian possessed more spiritual reserves than the rest of us, or had it helped that she'd started as the least macho man in camp and had less far to fall? Nevertheless, my constant harping on the future problems of the camp convinced her that I was mending well.

I gave a lot of thought to the subject of long-term survival. It seemed clear that we would soon have to turn our primary focus to establishing a viable agriculture—and pulling that off successfully seemed a daunting prospect. We didn't even know what crops to select. Lt. Webb, one of Komisov's best technicians, had been pursuing a course in soil conservation in alien xeno-ecosystems before he was called to active duty. Non-military skills such as his had become precious. Faced with nothing to fight as soldiers, we had little choice but to evolve into good farmers. Like old Roman heroes, we had to hang up the sword and get behind the plow. But first we had to reinvent the plow.

About that time, Lowry discovered another pregnancy, Pvt. Logan's. I took the news without undue excitement. I had ordered the curtailment of sexual relationships, but people had become more furtive on the subject than enthusiastic. Now, at least, it was up to other minds to deal with such problems. As it happened, Philbrick chose merely to reiterate the order which I had issued earlier without belaboring enforcement.

It wasn't enough and we knew it; people weren't turning in their friends for having sex, and the officers acted chagrined about poking around to detect liaisons. In fact, I suspected that the directive had already become a dead letter.

Interestingly, Logan, like Hitchcock did not consider termination. Naturally, it was her own business, but I worried about the viability of the 54^th as a military unit—even as a unit of men and women—if we became saddled with a large number of children. Speak of army brats!

But I had other things to occupy my mind—like my first onset of bloody cramps. I hated the discomfort and the mess but what could one do except sigh and bear it? Between babies and periods, it was small wonder that feminine psychology had evolved differently from the male's. I asked Lowry if she had anything to stop a person from menstruating and she recommended pregnancy. I didn't ask twice.

#

I had been sleeping soundly, but awoke covered in sweat, agitated by the fading images of an erotic dream. For the first time in a dream I had not been a man, but a woman. More than that, I'd been a woman with a man and—oh, hell!

But even waking did not make me feel right. A craving gnawed me, as palpably real as hunger or thirst; I found myself getting out of bed, not bothering to dress. I had on an oversized T-shirt barely long enough to keep me decent as I hurried into the bright moonlight. The night breeze did nothing to cool my ardor. Where was I going? What was I looking for?

Had I been more myself I would have heeded the raucous chaos in camp. I saw women dashing about chasing men, or being chased by them, including a naked Sgt. Gold.

I spotted Philbrick struggling with Ames in front of their hut. He broke her grasp and shoved her into the hands of another man, who held her fast as she kicked and swore. Philbrick, now disentangled, started bawling orders to everyone within earshot.

I wasn't listening; I was myself an addict searching for her substance. I thought I was going crazy and knew that I had to find Lowry without knowing why. But as I ran barefoot into the infirmary I found myself face to face not with the physician, but Alan Drew.

"Major!" the young medic blurted. "Have you seen the doctor?! She got excited like the other women, then ran off. She's—"

He gave me a hard stare. My wild, feral look must have alarmed him, informed him that I was as badly off as Lowry. Now, at last, I understood what I'd been seeking.—Panicking, I turned on my heels and fled.

#

Alan followed swiftly after me. The medic, benefiting from his longer stride, gained. Suddenly my bare foot came down on something pointed and I stumbled to a stop with a cry of pain. Alan was on me instantly, gripping me as if my life were in danger. I fought to get away but, before I realized it, I was struggling more to hold onto him than to escape.

"Major!" he gasped, "What's happening to you—to all the women?!"

I released an incoherent growl, wanting to feel him, to explore his hard muscles, press his Apollonian angles against this flesh of mine. . . .

While he was trying to control me, I realized that I was fantasizing rape and enjoying it! I cried out in sudden dismay and collapsed to my knees.

"Major!" Alan exclaimed, taking me by the shoulders, holding me so firmly as he brought me up that I could neither come closer nor pull away. "What is it?!" he demanded, sounding angry -- men always sound angry when they're excited, so I wasn't intimidated.

"Hold me," I whispered.

"Maj--?"

"Hold me."

His face, lit by the moonlight, pleaded, "What is it? -- What?!"

I pressed my cheek against a hand which held me. The strength that I sensed in Alan Drew was like the perfume to a honeybee and a hot rush of emotion left me breathless. But I needed more than to be merely held; I wanted relief of a radical kind—and knew this man could give it to me.

"Make love to me," I rasped.

"Major!"

"I need it—Alan. I'm going mad!"

"There's something wrong! We've got to understand it. We can't give in."

"I can't stand the torture!"

"You have to, Major. You're strong!"

The night breeze, sweeping my tear-streaked face, chilled me without dousing my inner blaze. "At least kiss me!"

"It's not what you want!"

"I know what I want!"

His grip was hurting my arms. "No! You don't!"

"I order you!" I shrieked.

Alan gritted his teeth defiantly. "You can't give that order. Come back to your hut with me."

Powerlessness! I hated it. Wailing, I struck him with my small, balled fists. He ignored my paltry blows and scooped me into his arms as though I were weightless, and carried me back. All the while I was pressing my body against his, planting wet kisses on his shoulder.

Alan endured my advances and I was deluded enough to think that he enjoyed them. My body trembling with the anticipation of the two of us alone, I started to kiss his face and he could do nothing to stop me, other than shout.

There were plenty of other shouts just then and a great deal of movement, but I was beyond caring. Nothing was real, nothing except the male clutch that enfolded me. Though out of my mind, I was self-aware enough to grasp that acting this way would destroy our friendship. What could Alan feel for me from this moment onwards except contempt? I ceased my demented assault and collapsed into myself, the loneliest, most forsaken of human beings.

My escort veered from his direct route and I next heard the liquid rush of the stream bubbling over its rocky bed. I looked at the water, puzzled.

In a flash I realized his plan and cried out in vain as he submerged me into the creek. How useless to struggle; I could not resist the strength which rules the world.

Numb and shivering, I clung to him fiercely when he drew me out, desperately needing his warmth. Then, with a mutter I couldn't understand, Alan carried me away to my hut and set me on my feet next to the bed.

I staggered, but he steadied me, then helped me peel off my tee, leaving me naked before him. Despite my frigid dunking, I was aroused enough to jump at him, and only the knowledge of his strength made me forbear. He took one of my shirts from its peg and used it to dab the excess water from my gooseflesh. After that, he stepped around me to pull back the blanket on my cot. Instantly, I dove beneath it, shivering violently. Alan swiftly covered me and tucked me in. While slowly recovering from my chill, I watched Alan taking off his own wet things. The sight of his bare pecs, classically Greek, was like food set before the tortured gaze of Tantalus in Hades.

"Can I use some of your clothes?" he queried evenly.

"Y-Yeah," I chattered, "anything."

He selected a shirt and pair of pants. Seeing him in my clothing struck me. How well they fit him, and how poorly they fit me. I found myself fantasizing again and in the dreamlike shadows of my hut, Alan became the officer, while I was only the nameless girl he brought home from the off-base bar. He would join me under the covers in a moment, use me hard, unsympathetically. I would warm to him, but he would not warm to me. In the morning, when I tried to get close to him again, he would push me away and press money into my hand—

I turned my face into the pillow, certain I'd gone insane. I had betrayed Alan and all that had been good between us I had ruined. I had offended, disappointed, demeaned him with my groping, with my crazy order. From now on we would only be medic and patient, officer and trooper. Our friendship was dead, killed by the madness that had taken hold of me in my sleep. I was so unhappy that I hid my face under the blanket, my eyes burning.

At that moment Alan sat on the edge of the cot and asked, "How are you feeling now, Major?"

"Awful. Forgive me."

"There's nothing to forgive."

I peered from beneath the bedclothes, wanting to reach out, but not daring to do more damage. He put his hand on my shoulder and, encouraged, I slipped my own hand from under the blanket and took his. He didn't pull away, so I lifted his fingers to my lips and placed a light, plaintive kiss on them. . . .

* * * *

 

(continued in part 2)

© 1996
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