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

 

Chapter 8

*Affliction is enamour'd of thy parts,
And thou art wedded to calamity.*

                   ROMEO AND JULIET

Had I a man's strength that night, and Drew my weakness, nothing on Klink would have prevented me from raping him. I actually tried to, but only ripped his—my—shirt before he shucked me off. After that, exactly as I would have in his place, Alan bound me hand and foot. I must have been a sight—naked, wild-eyed, and trussed like a kidnap victim.

My senior officers, first Komisov, then Philbrick, each extricated himself from the chaos outside long enough to look in on me.

"How is she?" Philbrick whispered. It was not the first time that I had been called a "she;" but Philbrick never had so referred to me in my presence. I would have resented it more, had I not been too far gone to care.

"Not good," sighed Alan. "Did you see Dr. Lowry?"

"No," grimaced Philbrick. "It's an orgy out there. We're restraining as many women as possible, but who'll guard the guards?"

"I don't know, sir."

Philbrick straightened up. "Carry on, Private. Make the major your priority. If we find Lowry, we'll bring her to you, too."

"Yes, sir."

Philbrick left abruptly and I thought that my reputation was going out with him. He had seen me tied like a rabid animal; what could induce him to return command to me again? I was ruined. I moaned in pain.

Alan comforted me, but his touch only added fuel to my fire. Understanding this, he whispered, "I'm sorry, Major."

I bit my lip and closed my eyes.

"Is—is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable?"

"Kiss me, please," I gasped.

There was a moment of silence before he said, "I shouldn't do that."

"I know you shouldn't! Do it anyway." "Try to rest."

"I don't need rest!" I cried. "I can't rest."

"We shouldn't do anything that will make things harder once you get better, Major."

"I may never get better," I moaned. "I may be like this from now on. What will you do then?"

"I'll take care of you—any way that I have to," he said.

#

I finally slept the sleep of exhaustion and awoke at dawn, still tied and my bladder killing me. I heard movement in the other room.

"Alan --!" I shouted, but stopped myself. I had never addressed the medic by his first name before and that slip bothered me to a degree which was ludicrous, considering all my other problems.

The young soldier slipped in through the door and eyed me warily. "Major? Are you feeling better?"

I looked at him hard, trying to read his thoughts. The respect and regard I detected in his expression encouraged me. "I've got to take a piss," I said.

"But what about -- ?"

"It's gone," I said breathlessly. "And if you let me loose, I promise that I won't try to seduce you."

"If I let you go, will you court martial me?" he asked wryly.

"That's the least of your worries." Suddenly, remembering that there was more to this nightmare than Alan and me, I asked, "What happened to us last night?"

He shook his head. "Whatever it was, it seems over now."

I laid back. If that sort of craving became long-term, it would drive a sufferer mad. "I'm glad it is," I said shakily, "but cut me loose now before I do something on my mattress that I'd rather not."

He did, then discretely withdrew. I took care of my needs and while I was dressing the medic called out that he saw Lowry returning to the infirmary.

"Let me talk to her first," I shouted back.

A few minutes later I found the doctor seated disconsolately on one of the infirmary beds dressed in just a robe. I guessed that she had eluded Philbrick's search throughout the whole night and that worried me.

The brunette glanced up, tired, dazed.

"Sebastian!" I exclaimed.

She closed her eyes with a tormented grimace. I sat down beside her and quietly held her hand.

"Rupe," Lowry smiled crookedly, "your bedside manner is getting better."

I returned a very brief laugh. "Handling emotional crises has never been my strong suit. It must be these new genes."

"At least you kept your jeans on.—You did, didn't you?"

I shifted uneasily. "Nothing happened.—no thanks to me," I added. "Bad night for you?"

"I don't know. I remember enjoying it while it was happening."

I got the story out of her in fits and starts. Half the time, Sebastian was laughing, and half of it, crying. The madness had come on her in the darkness, as it had come on me. The first person she'd seen was Alan Drew—and had reacted to him as I had. Unlike me, she eluded him in the tall trees.

Only minutes later, Lowry ran into a young soldier, Stan Kitterson, and ordered him: "Stand where you are, soldier!"

She pulled rank on Kitterson, as I had tried to pull it on Alan. The difference was that Kitterson had not been advised that he could, or should, ignore the commands of the medical officer. Also, how much resistance could a young man offer when confronted by a beautiful woman demanding sex? They made love in a grove until Lowry had drained him dry, and they'd slept entwined in one another's arms until dawn. The spell of lust had dissipated by the time Sebastian awoke and she fled back to the infirmary in panic, as if Kitterson had been her ravisher, instead of the other way around.

Alan arrived at that point and I turned Lowry over to the poor fellow while I went to find Capt. Philbrick. Ames was with the latter, a little chagrined, I thought, but otherwise in good condition.

Philbrick regarded me suspiciously, but once I'd demonstrated my coherence he started speaking freely. The other women's experiences seemed to have been similar to Lowry's and mine. Some found men willing to have sex, and some were constrained and confined. Some of the women who were tied slipped their bonds before the night was out and shucked their virginity anyway.

This was serious business and it called for another powwow. To my relief, Lowry had pulled herself together in time for the staff meeting.

The affair baffled us, but one peculiarity seemed particularly important. Five women—Hitchcock, Logan, D'Aubers, McKenny, and Bakshi—had not succumbed to the madness, unlike more than two hundred others. Hitchcock and Logan were known to be pregnant and that suggested a theory. Philbrick asked Lowry to scan the soldiers for—he used the word "anomalies," but we knew what he meant.

#

I waited outside the infirmary while Dr. Lowry examined the immune soldiers. Their readouts, as we feared, were positive. I felt sorry for the shocked soldiers. Motherhood had to be a staggering thing for anyone to face without preparation, but it was worse due to the strange circumstances of the 54^th. Lowry told the gravid troopers to rest and come back once they had time to sort out their situation.

They were the lucky ones; they'd become pregnant through the conscious choice to go to bed with somebody. Scores of their comrades had had no say in the matter. I asked Lowry what we could expect for the Group as a whole and she estimated that it was normal for about two percent of sexual encounters to result in conception, but it would be a week before our equipment could detect anything. I noted the paleness of her face as she said that.

I realized there was going to be a lot of anxiety around the camp. If it hadn't been for the grace of God and Alan Drew, I might have been having rock-a-by baby visions along with everybody else.

At the end of the day the doctor made her follow-up report to Philbrick.

"What we experienced last night," Lowry began, "was not normal. We're reduced to guessing again. I mean—" Strain was written into the woman's drawn face. "—I mean, I think that the—the Madness—was artificially-induced. If someone or something is affecting our basic drives, we have to ask, why? What's being gained and by whom?"

"Why didn't it affect the men?" I asked.

"Maybe it did," Philbrick suggested. "I've never seen a sorrier example of discipline and bad judgement in this outfit." "A long time ago, I identified an anomalous particle lodged in the medulla of each transformee," Sebastian reminded us. "It may have nothing to do with what's happened, or it might have everything."

"How?" the captain queried.

"This particle may be a receiver for an externally-originating impulse—one which affects human sexual activity. Whatever its nature, it was powerful enough to override almost all the usual inhibitions. But it's worse than that."

Worse? Wasn't it bad enough? I thought.

"As you've cited, Captain, the men were not normal, either. I have a theory. We know that human bodies, like many mammalian species, produce hormones known as pheromones. One of the most important functions of pheromones is to excite sexual interest in a prospective mate. Most legal and illegal aphrodisiacs use synthetic human pheromones."

She went on to explain that these airborne substances reached one's partner's brain through the respiratory system. Lowry thought that our transformees' pheromones had been artificially-enhanced and massively-released during the Madness—in a manner analogous to sweating when the temperature rises. That might explain why so many men behaved irresponsibly.

"But even if this speculation were true," the doctor continued, "we're still left with the question 'why?' Every time I think about the phenomena we've experienced so far, the more certain I am that we're being biologically and emotionally manipulated. I believe that someone or something wants us to produce the largest possible number of children within the shortest possible time frame."

Philbrick and I looked at one another, neither with surprise nor disagreement.

Sebastian pressed on. "Why were the pregnant women exempt from the Madness? It could be because their bodies are awash in the hormones of the gestation cycle. But why has this immunity been built-in, unless the desired end of the Madness has been achieved—pregnancy?

It fit. Our women were returned to us young, healthy, and physically attractive. The transformation process had halted when we were evenly divided, sex-wise. Were we the unwilling subjects of a breeding experiment? I gritted my teeth; it was too demeaning to contemplate.

The obvious question soon occurred to Philbrick: "Why would aliens want human children born here?"

"I'm getting on very thin ice," Lowry admitted, "the phenomena may not be human-specific. In fact, they're probably the reason the Asymmetrics avoided colonizing this world. Either the Assies couldn't disarm whatever is responsible despite their technology, or they've decided it would be too difficult or costly to bother. If our transformations are not of Assie design, and I don't believe that they are, other beings—or automated equipment—must be."

That made sense. If the phenomenon had attacked the Assie explorers as it attacked us, their people would have written Klink off as a place too problematical for settlement. On the other hand, what could be more natural than to use this mild and fertile world for another purpose such as a prison colony? Maybe the Assies even thought it would make a good joke on the enemy. Well, maybe—but I'd have liked to put a blaster to the head of the comedian who dreamed up this stunt!

"As to why an independent factor would want to accelerate reproduction of higher life forms, there are many possibilities," speculated the doctor.

"For instance?" I asked.

"For instance, the secret masters of Klink may be philanthropic and realize that our settlement couldn't survive if all-male.

"Or, the original inhabitants of this planet might have suffered the catastrophic loss of their female population—possibly through a sex-specific plague. If they faced extinction as a race, they might have created an elaborate process to transform males into fertile females on a massive scale."

"What about the—insanity?" asked Capt. Philbrick.

Lowry shrugged. "Maybe the native males had as much or more psychological resistance to assuming the female role as human males do. If that were the case, the survival of the species depended on overcoming it—and an artificially-induced mating frenzy could be one means to that end."

"Where are these people now?" I inquired. "If they're extinct, what made their plan fail?"

"That's a question for archeology," said Sebastian with heavy sigh.

"Why weren't we affected immediately after landing on Klink?" I asked. "It took about a month before the first transformations occurred."

"I don't know," Lowry admitted. "Maybe it takes a while for this planet to draw a bead on new arrivals."

The talk went back and forth, but we didn't make much more progress. It was clear that we lacked the capability to resist and so had little choice but to live with it and treat the symptoms to the best of our ability.

#

Would the Madness return? It was ironic that Sebastian and I had speculated how the circumstances on Klink gave women a natural superiority over men. The Madness more than redressed any apparent imbalance. If a woman—or, at least, a transformee with a bead in her brain—didn't play it sweet and cuddlesome with her man, he could put her through the Madness during the next cycle. Even a woman who was pregnant and temporarily immune to the phenomenon would still be dependent for other reasons. Gravid females always need help from outside, whether it's a government check or a husband. In a world of primitive agriculture and hunting, it wasn't going to be the government.

By the end of seven days, Sebastian's scanner discovered the expected new pregnancies. She found four, but only half the affected females had asked for a scan; the rest would rather not face the truth so soon. Four was already within the average that Lowry expected for the population as a whole. This caused the doctor to speculate whether the fertility of the affected women had been stimulated.

More perturbing to her, no doubt, was the fact that one of the new pregnancies was her own.

It bothered me to see my friend staggered by yet another unlucky blow. Lowry had taken as many emotional body blows as anyone else on Klink, and it was only her resilience, her determination to carry on, that sometimes made us forget. Nonetheless, she kept a stiff upper lip yet again while she broke the news to me—a lip so stiff that I wondered if she wasn't repressing again.

I certainly expected some of the women receiving the unsettling news to ask for termination, but none did. This seemed impossible and Lowry, analyzing her own feelings as well as her observation of others, speculated that the option had been programmed out of transformee psychology. Apparently, in certain important areas we had less free will than a lab rat.

Philbrick observed that many of our people were pairing up and conceiving children. There seemed to be no way to control it, and if the old model of our organization was falling apart anyway, it would be wise to anticipate it. The most obvious successor structure required sanctioning marriage between transformees and non-transformees. The idea still seemed vaguely unnatural, but the alternative was a sexual free-for-all.

Philbrick realized that in order for Klinkian marriage to serve its intended purpose, it had to be more than a mere reassignment of roommates. It had to operate under rules which the command structure, and the Group, were committed to enforce. It had to have ritual, because ritual gave mystique and importance to societal institutions. Also, public ceremony allowed for group-participation. In this case, group-participation would go far towards establishing the marriage partnership as the basic community building block.

Deciding to take such a daunting step, we furthermore needed to put forward a person empowered to perform and sanction marriages. Philbrick didn't want the latter job, and so he appointed Captain Ames as a Justice of the Peace. She also headed a committee of formerly-married soldiers, both male and female, to draw up the rules governing Klinkian matrimony.

The commission deliberated a week and proposed a logical list of regulations. The most important was a pledge that the partners must materially support one another to the best of their ability; the same consideration was also extended to children begotten by them. Mistakes would be made and matches would fail, but care was taken under the rules that the couple's children should suffer least. Desertion of mates or offspring without justification would result in stern discipline, as would adultery—since adultery bred quarrels and internecine strife was detrimental to the group's survival.

We also understood that the barracks system, which seemed natural in an all-male camp, had to end since communal living would not suit the needs of married couples or families with children. We therefore needed a great deal of new carpentry on top of all the other crucial things we had to accomplish in a short time.

In addition, the committee recommended that new mothers receive discretionary leave from routine duties, there being no day-care centers. Establishing the latter seemed out of the question; what was the sense of assigning someone the duty of raising another's children? What seemed logical at home came off as incredibly illogical on Klink. Almost everything we took for granted had been based on the needs of a high-technology labor force with a pervasive service infrastructure.

Like it or not, Klink would be a world of long hours of back-breaking physical labor, labor which men could perform best. The other work must naturally fall to the women, including child- rearing, which was itself a full-time job. Nobody necessarily liked this state of affairs, but what was the alternative? The only social structures that would exist for the next thousand years would be the family and the—well, let's call it "tribe" for want of a better term.

More marriages took place in the aftermath of the commission's report than expected. Since Hitchcock and Roberts had requested their nuptials long before anyone else, their wedding was held first. The muster stood by as Ames recited the simple ceremonial script she had written, based on what she remembered from weddings attended and movies featuring weddings: "Do you take this—" "Do you pledge to—" etc. etc.

Without intending it, Hitchcock's wedding had established a lasting custom—that of the bride taking her marriage oath under an assumed woman's name. For Hitchcock that name was Mary, of course—and over the following days we were introduced to Ellen, Lorena, Ilene, Racine, Dysis, Colette, and many others.

 

* * * *

 

Chapter 9

*How all the other passions fleet to air
As doubtful thoughts, and rash-embraced despair,
And shuddering fear, and green-eyed jealousy.*

                         THE MERCHANT OF VENICE

The 54^th had to do a lot to become self-sufficient—enough to daunt the bravest soul. For example, amid the overwhelming richness of local flora, we still had to identify those species which might be cultivatable plants. We would also have to experiment with domesticating animals, and if successful, manage their breeding.

But man does not live by bread and meat alone. If our little outpost was not to fall into barbarism within a generation or two, we had to perpetuate our cultural heritage. I especially wished to preserve for posterity the history of our extra-stellar origin and our advent on Klink—along with the Group's memories of our former homes, families, our knowledge of other places and other ways.

As I contemplated the subject, I wondered how the children of Klink would perceive the strange role of the Assies in our history. Would they feel the same animosity towards them that their parents felt? Or would they see the aliens as benign figures of myth, as gods who led their ancestors along the Sky Path into the Promised Land? It would be up to the First Generation to prevent ignorance from descending. It worried me that we had so few books of value, and even these few would be lost in time, unless copies were made.

Above all, we had to see that the arts of reading and writing were passed on, as well as the fundamentals of arithmetic and geometry. I realized that knowledge could not flourish in a vacuum. Useless abstractions and empty forms are soon cast away; we needed to create a society that made practical use of the civilized arts. The groundwork had to be lain diligently if poetry and engineering were to flower again once the population increased enough to support it.

But what should our first step be? To preserve our books, didn't we have to learn how to make paper? Ancient Egypt had done very well using the stems of the papyrus, and the Romans, as advanced as they were, failed to improve on the millennia-old invention. Did Klink have anything like papyrus? Could we use fired mud bricks instead, like the ancient Mesopotamians? There was plenty of mud on Klink at least, but I shuddered to think of the entire Holy Bible arduously transcribed and preserved on bricks! One could build a church with a single copy!

But what about other civilized necessities, like clothes? It would be a shame if men reverted to wearing skins. Was there no shearable beast to provide us with wool? Was there no plant fiber to substitute for cotton? I had heard of primitive people on Earth deriving a supple cloth from boiled and beaten tree bark. Might there be a bark on Klink that we could similarly reduce to a durable fabric?

Inevitably, each problem I tried to brainstorm led to another and greater problem which had to be solved first—such as if a man needs to fetch a pail of water, he first must build a pail. Life on Klink would be an unending series of challenges to our wits and ingenuity. Did any of our crew have knowledge that would speed us along and ease our burden? Clearly, we had to accept ideas and contributions from the ranks and not leave everything to an overwhelmed and uninspired leadership.

#

I saw Sebastian every day, but she never alluded to the baby she was carrying. What did she feel about it? I wanted to be a better friend than I had been in the past, but what could I do for her? Did I dare trespass on something so personal?

A couple weeks after the Roberts-Hitchcock wedding, I went into the infirmary and discovered Sebastian wearing a look of dazed disbelief.

"You're smiling," I observed carefully.

"You wouldn't believe what happened, Rupe!" "What?"

"I was proposed to."

"By who?"

"Nobody special. Just the father of my child."

"Pvt. Kitterson?"

"The same. I guess he's feeling guilty, or responsible, or something."

"Well, he took his sweet time about stepping forward!"

Sebastian shook her head. "His offer was a carefully considered one. After all, Kitterson's not to blame; the aliens did this."

"You're very generous."

She shrugged.

"What are you going to do?"

"Well, I'm not going to marry Kitterson!"

"Why not?"

"I don't love him."

I stared open-mouthed.

"Love. You know what that is, Rupe. It's important when you're talking about marriage."

"Sure—" I stammered.

"Well, I don't feel anything when I look at Pvt. Stanley Kitterson."

"I suppose that's natural—"

She flashed me a crooked smile. "We left what's natural a few million light years back, old friend. Now we're talking chemistry."

Sebastian crossed to the table to pour a glass of juice from a small plastic tub. We were experimenting with a recently-discovered bush-fruit that we dubbed the "red berry," which had proven tasty, safe, and nutritious. "Want some?" she asked.

"Yes, thanks. It's hot outside." I took the proffered beaker. Only faintly sweet, the pink mixture must have been three-fourths creek water. Still, red-berry juice made a welcome departure from our usual ration of powdered coffee or tea.

"If it had been someone else, not Kitterson, I might have said yes," Lowry remarked suddenly.

That floored me. "You don't mean it!"

"I said 'might.' I'm not sure what I'm capable of feeling or doing yet, Rupe. Are you?"

I dodged her question. "Do you have a particular man in mind?"

"Don't embarrass me."

This answer intrigued me. I wanted to explore it more and so said, "Stanley's got a nice body, though, doesn't he?"

"I'm surprised that you noticed," she quipped. "Or maybe I shouldn't be."

Despite her evasion, I wasn't put off track. I wondered who in the 54^th could she find more interesting than Kitterson, and why.

A startling thought came to me. She could mean Alan Drew! They certainly worked closely together and had gotten to know each other very well. I suddenly realized that I had never heard a word of criticism come from one against the other.

The idea of these two forming a couple bothered me somehow. I suddenly saw a closed loop forming in front of me, my two best friends on the inside with me left in the cold.

"Klink calling Breen! How is it in the stratosphere?"

"Sorry," I said, "my mind wandered. You turned Kitterson down. You've got a Plan B?"

"No, and that scares me."

"You're scared about rearing a child alone, aren't you?" I hadn't intended to be quite so blunt about it.

She returned an uneasy glance. "It's hard, Rupe."

"I know -- ," I began, regretting that I had brought up the subject in the first place.

"No, you don't know! Not everything."

"Am I dumb or something?"

"No, of course not. But it's not just what goes on here on Klink. It bothers me that David and Wanda will soon have a baby brother or sister, and—" her tone grew shaky "—and they'll never know it. And, well, that seems sad to me."

David and Wanda were her—his—son and daughter on Earth. Sebastian's separation from them had long been an open wound.

"They think I'm dead," she went on in that same unsteady tenor. "Maybe that's for the best. It would have to hurt them more to know that their dad was alive, but that he—he could never come home!" Now Sebastian's voice began to break. "It would be hard . . . going back to them like this . . . even if it were possible. . . ."

I saw glittering beads in the corners of her eyes and reached out to her, wanting to comfort her, but she shook her head.

"I'm all right."

The physician steadied herself and we chatted for a while longer on other subjects—about her work, about my ideas regarding agriculture, about the three R's and paper- and cloth-making. Nonetheless, I drew the impression that her heart wasn't into any of the subjects on the table.

"Did what you and Alan Drew went through during the Madness cause any problems?" Sebastian suddenly inquired.

Now this was a question from left field! "Well, no," I responded warily. "Did he say anything to make you think that we were having problems?"

"I just thought it was possible," she shrugged.

"I suppose it could have caused problems—but it didn't!" I assured her.

She gave me a funny look. "Okay, it didn't. Sorry I asked."

Her sudden interest in Alan Drew had started ringing a bell in my mind. Why the odd question? Was Sebastian hoping for some friction between the medic and myself? If so, why? Maybe my relationship with Alan was inconvenient to her. Could she be jealous?

"Rupe, did I say something wrong?"

"Wrong? Of course not! Doc, what are you going on about?"

She gave me another quizzical look and abandoned the subject. Suffering from a sudden mood swing, I wasn't much company and so, after a couple more minutes of pointless conversation, I excused myself. While withdrawing I felt Sebastian's studying gaze burning into my back.

#

I had hoped that my periodic funks lay behind me, but I found myself downcast for the rest of the day and could hardly sleep that night.

I got up listlessly the next morning and chomped down a ration biscuit for breakfast. Even this simple act depressed me; how would we provide for five hundred people once our limited stores were exhausted? Were we going to be starving by this time next year?

I looked outside; it was overcast, which did not improve my mood. I went to my logbook and started a new entry to give myself something to do. Before I realized it, droplets were spotting the pages. I wiped the splashes off the open pages with my sleeve and then pushed the book away before I damaged it more. I couldn't forget my conversation with Sebastian. She was my friend, she was the most important man—person—in the whole camp. She had suffered so much, had done so much for others. Her happiness had to come first, regardless of the consequences for me. Yet I couldn't shake off a sense of profound loss. My eyes burned and I started thinking that it hadn't been lucky after all that Alan Drew had saved my life on Woolenska's Leap.

I lifted my head suddenly. The death wish had returned!

My mind raced; if I was suicidal, I needed help immediately. I had to be with my watcher!

I left my hut and crossed to Alan's barracks. The young medic was with two other soldiers and the three young men snapped to attention. "At ease," I said, then added in a low and tentative voice, "Gentlemen, could you give Pvt. Drew and me some privacy?"

I waited for the men to disappear, then turned toward Alan, only to find myself at a loss for words.

"Sir?" he queried.

"I'm sorry," I began awkwardly. "I mean, I'm having a rough time. I—could use some company."

He regarded me curiously and suggested, "If you're feeling depressed maybe we should take a walk together."

"If you think it would be a good idea."

Without answering, Alan lightly placed his hand on the small of my back and guided me outside. I found that while I had nothing much to say, I felt better being with—someone.

"I had a bad night," I admitted finally. "I don't think I slept two hours."

"You do seem keyed up, Major. I'd recommend exercise. Or would you rather go to your hut and catch up on your rest?"

"I don't want to be alone."

He returned a kind of sphinx-like smile, saying, "Why don't we follow the stream?"

I nodded. There is something about the human eye and ear that loves water—its sound, the feel of it running over feet and hands, the glint of its ripples under the sky. The sun had just come out and it was growing hot very quickly. We made for the coolness of the adjacent arbors, whose supple branches, like willow whips, bent so low that they swept the grass when the breeze stirred them. Once out of sight of the camp I relaxed.

"You were doing well," Alan remarked. "Did anything happen?"

"I was talking to Sebastian—" I began unwisely.

"Did you quarrel?"

"No. It's personal," I hedged.

"All right; don't tell me anything that you don't want to."

I was grateful to let the matter drop and we soon came to the "swimming hole," a broad, deep portion of the stream where the troopers liked to take their baths. The water was always cold because it issued from an artesian spring in the nearby hills, but a bracing dip would be a welcomed relief from the subtropical heat. I sat down; the shaded rock beneath me feeling cool through my denim. There were small brown animals playing on the rocks not far away, their faces fox-like, their gray pelts dotted with darker spots.

Some Klinkian animals were very wary, but others, like these, had no instinctive fear of humans. I supposed that they would acquire one in time; we had such ineffective hunting tools that we were unable to pass by easy prey, and that was sad. Klink, as we found it, reminded me of the Genesis story—of the harmony which prevailed between the first animals and the first Man and Woman. Then Sin arose and fear came into the world.

While I definitely desired company, I could put little of what was bothering me into simple terms. I thought that I shouldn't sit there like a dummy, though, and tried to make conversation. But the first time I opened my mouth I betrayed myself.

"You and Sebastian are very good friends, aren't you?"

"Yes, we are. Why?"

"No reason."

He looked at me keenly. "There must be a reason. You hinted that talking to Dr. Lowry depressed you."

"It's just that—"

He waited patiently for me to go on.

I took a deep breath. "—It's just that with people working together closely, they, well, they naturally tend to get—close."

"I suppose the doctor and I are close, on one level."

"What level?"

"The level of working well together!" His penetrating expression made me look away.

"What's this about?" he asked.

"It's nothing. It's just that Dr. Lowry hinted—just hinted—that she was interested in somebody—a man—but wouldn't say who it was."

"You've never been a busybody before."

I looked back at him in surprise. I wasn't used to being spoken to by a subordinate that way but, again, his statement was within bounds for a friend, or a medical advisor.

"I'm not a busybody. I was just wondering—"

"You were wondering whether something was developing between Dr. Lowry and myself?"

I gulped hard. Had I been so transparent?

"Well, you needn't worry—"

"I wasn't worried!" I broke in.

"You don't have to worry," he persisted. "Sebastian is my superior and my friend, that's all."

"That's all I thought you were!"

"Besides," he concluded, "I'm not that kind of a man."

His words struck me powerfully. In one sense I felt relieved by them, but in another, and for reasons which evaded me, disappointed. "No, I didn't suppose that you were! Really, I don't know how the men can be falling in love and even marrying each other. It's—illogical."

Alan shook his head. "I didn't mean that. I don't know what's logical or not anymore. What I'm saying is that I'm not the sort who could be interested in two people at the same time."

Two people? I stared in amazement; Alan's confession was even more appalling than Sebastian's. "You're interested in somebody?" I blurted. "—No, don't tell me! It's not my business."

He placed his hand lightly on my lower arm. "Of course it's your business, Major. Friends talk things over. You do consider us friends, don't you?"

"Yes, of course!"

"You might be the very person I need to advise me."

"Advice is cheap," I replied uneasily. Did Alan really expect me to advise him how to further his love affair? For some reason, my mood was sinking again.

"My problem is that I'm attracted to this—woman—but she's been having a rough time since her transformation and can't possibly feel the same way I do."

"Maybe you should try to forget her."

He smiled. "I couldn't do that—not unless she told me straight out that she could never reciprocate."

"Then why don't you be up front with her?" I suggested, hoping that he wouldn't take my advice too seriously.

"Two reasons," Alan replied wistfully. "I think that she's slowly becoming accustomed to being a woman and, if I'm patient, the day will come when she won't reject me straight-off."

"That could take a long time," I warned.

"Maybe, but there's a worse problem. She's of a higher rank. It's always been drilled into us as soldiers to respect the braid and never fraternize, but it's driving me crazy! I want to touch her, I want to hold her, I want to tell her how much I care."

"It sounds hopeless," I adjudged. "You'd better give it up! You shouldn't chase after a person—especially an officer—unless they give you encouragement."

"I see things that encourage me—many small, wonderful things. If I could only be sure that I'm not misunderstanding." This was getting worse and worse! I tried to guess who it was that he was talking about. Capt. Ames? Tritcher? Lt. Pitts? Any one of those supernally beautiful women might have captured the eye of a man. Drew must have spoken to all of them at length through his medical duties. I suspected Ames especially—she was such a cat—always trying to draw attention to herself!

"I can't give up hope," sighed Alan. "Not until I'm forced to."

He was so stubborn! Unfortunately, men like Drew usually got what they set their sights on.

"It seems like you've got it bad for this—lucky person," I observed.

"Lucky? It's a catastrophe! She's an officer; I'm nobody. We're friends now, but if I say the wrong thing at the wrong time it might be over!"

"Don't call yourself a nobody!" I admonished him. "In a couple years everything is going to be changed. You'll be a doctor by then, about the most important person around here. And you can be pretty sure that this separation into military ranks won't last forever. The people with special skills or insights are going to be the important ones. You have many talents and qualities that command respect."

"Do I? Like what?"

I drew in a deep draft of air, thinking hard and trying to answer honestly. "Well, you're steady, hard-working. You're intelligent and understanding. You've got taste, and talent. You're good at your job, and you have skills that we wouldn't want to do without. You're also a compassionate man with a fine—uh, bedside manner."

"Anything else?"

"Well, physically, a woman—if we had real women around here—would find you an attractive figure of a man—I imagine."

"I'm flattered."

"It's not flattery! -- And I'm not the only one who thinks so! No, I mean—" I felt my face getting hot. "It's, well—" Alan had a way of getting me flustered—this time much too flustered to go on.

"I'd like to take a dip," the young man stated abruptly, thereby taking me off the hook. "Would you care to join me, Major, or would that be fraternization?"

"Technically it would be—but everyone knows I'm crazy, so I can do anything I want."

"That's the wonderful thing about being crazy," he grinned.

Alan stripped to his shorts. I took off my sandals and cutoffs, exposing my own droopy drawers, but, unlike him, I kept my shirt on.

He jackknifed into the pool and I followed, feet-first. The artesian chill went right through me, but my inner thermostat quickly adjusted. We swam back and forth for a while, floating, dipping, paddling.

Before long, we emerged soaking wet and shook ourselves like dogs. I wrung my hair; it must have soaked up a pondful of water. Why had I kept it long all this while? I thought that it would make sense to get a short trim once I got back to camp.

"I hate this hair," I remarked.

"You shouldn't. It's—lovely."

I looked at him incredulously; it was not the sort of compliment that I was used to. Instead of rebuking him, I laughed it off.

We went out into the sun to dry. I felt better after the swim, but Alan's mood had altered subtly and his glance was making me uncomfortable.

"That really wore me out," I jabbered. "I think I should catch up on that sleep now."

"Can I trust you to be alone?"

"I don't want to kill myself. At least not today."

"I really hope not," he replied.

* * * *

 

Chapter 10

*Thou think'st 'tis much that this contentious storm
Invades us to the skin; so 'tis to thee;
But where the greater malady is fix'd
he lesser is scarce felt.*

                                                  KING LEAR

I slept poorly that night and kept to myself the following morning. In the afternoon, thick black thunderheads rolled in from the west and although we were used to Klinkian storms, this incoming blow looked like a mean one.

Standing outside my door, I watched people hurrying about, battening down, covering equipment. I thought I should shutter my windows, but my mood was much too low.

I was thinking about Alan, the tumult of the storm echoing my own confusion. Alan was in love with a transformee! Had he lost his reason? Transformees weren't women. How could a normal man be attracted to one? Or was Alan Drew simply less of a man than I believed?

Anyway, I knew what I was. Alone. I thought of Rupert Breen and missed him so much that the pain felt like a knife through my body. Rupert had been indomitable; he never allowed his loneliness to wear him down. When would I be myself again, inwardly at least? Where was my vanished inner strength, my lost self-sufficiency? When would duty and service again be enough—enough to fill my empty days with satisfaction and meaning?

Overhead, the sky had darkened to slate on which, I imagined, I could draw my innermost thoughts. What I found myself chalking down was a portrait of Alan.

That appalled me. Why couldn't I drive Alan Drew from my mind? Was it because I had tied the wreck of my life to his solid rock and was now afraid to be cast adrift again?

Lightning flared behind the treetops and the thunder roared with the voice of an angry forest giant. The boles near the camp shook violently and the harsh wind swept the storm's first stinging droplets against my cheeks like chips of ice. As the downpour grew more intense and lightning flashed and fired like heavy artillery, I stood there in place, quickly soaked to the skin.

Suddenly I saw someone running my way—big, broad-shouldered, powerfully striding. I didn't recognize him in his rainwear, but, as the man jogged closer, he raised the brim of his rain-plashed hat and I recognized Alan. Private Drew, that is. He looked askance when he joined me.

"Major! What's wrong? You should go inside!"

I didn't move, didn't reply. Alan waited a few seconds before he took my arm and dragged me indoors, not against my will, but without my help.

"Aren't you well?" he asked anxiously.

"I was thinking," I replied, as if mollifying not a living man, but a phantom in a dream.

He barred the door against the wind, then turned my way.

"You're soaking wet, sir. You should put on something dry."

"Don't you mean, 'ma'am?'" I quipped forlornly.

He looked at me carefully. "I'll call you ma'am if you'd prefer, Major."

I shrugged. Terms of address seemed unimportant. "You were watching me?"

"Everyone saw you still standing outside in the storm."

The hut was now shuddering from the wind. Alan went about covering my windows while I stood there. The lightning cast blue flashes through every crack while thunder pealed and rain beat the roof like drumming fists.

"Have a chair. Stay until the storm passes," I suggested, turning on the battery-powered lamp.

Alan took off his hat and sat down, but did not lose his worried look.

"I'm all right," I assured him. "I've always enjoyed storms. It's been too long since I've taken time to watch one roll in."

"That's fine, Major, but you could get a chill."

"Did you come over to be my doctor?"

"If you need one. But first we have to get you out of those wet clothes."

"Sure," I said indifferently.

He went to my trunk where he found my bathrobe and a towel. I started taking my uniform off in front of him. Why shouldn't I? He was a medical man, and I was his patient.

When I was nude, I accepted the towel from his hand to dry my face and hair. Then I held my arms to let him slip my absorbent robe over me. Listlessly, I knotted the sash, while Alan removed his wet-weather gear.

It occurred to me that I was being a poor host, and so took a rations tin from the shelf. Company on a stormy day was a good reason to splurge a bit.

"A biscuit?" I asked.

"Thank you, sir," he said.

"Someday we're going to have fresh bread," I remarked, "if only we can find something to grind into flour."

"I can't wait!" he responded.

I handed him half of the biscuit and poured red-berry juice into a couple of aluminum mugs. "Sebastian brought it over this morning," I remarked casually.

He accepted the cup, saying, "I've been wondering whether this stuff ferments."

I shrugged. "It depends on Klink's microbes. The things we don't know about this world would fill a library."

"Finding everything out is going to keep life interesting."

I tasted the first crumbs of my half-biscuit. "We might not like everything we discover," I warned, though I meant nothing in particular.

"We have to know as much as we can, especially about what's dangerous or unpleasant."

"Lots of things are dangerous and unpleasant," I whispered. "Most things, in fact."

"What's that, sir?"

I eased myself against the desk and raised my cup in toast. "To progress, to survival—and danger."

Alan likewise lifted his mug and took a sip. "It's very good, Major."

"My name is Rupert, you know. I'd like you to start calling me by it, at least when we're alone."

He returned a thoughtful frown. "I'd rather not."

I felt surprised and hurt.

"I mean, you don't look like a Rupert," he explained carefully. "I feel more comfortable with 'Major,' begging the major's pardon."

"Whether I look like it or not, Rupert's my name." "What's your middle name, sir?"

"Eberhart. I never use it."

"I can see why."

I scowled; nobody likes to have fun made of his name; but I understood his sentiment. "Maybe that's why Mark calls himself Mary, and Micah, Ruth, and. . . ."

"I suppose it is," Alan agreed noncommittally.

Shifting my position, my robe inadvertently parted, baring one of my legs from the toe nearly to the hip. The sight instantly registered in Alan's expression, though he deftly corrected it. I smiled secretly and carried on as if I hadn't noticed either the slippage or his reaction.

"You're in an unusual mood, Major," he observed. "Did you sleep last night?"

I shook my head. "I woke about five. How are things going with you?"

"What things?"

"The pursuit of your unattainable love, for one thing."

He smiled ambiguously, but demurred to answer.

"It's not fair that you're keeping me in the dark," I said with a toss of my head. "At least tell me what she looks like. She—she must be beautiful."

"If I described her you might guess who she is."

"That's the point."

"I might be embarrassed if you knew."

"Maybe I'd have an idea for helping you win her. I know my officers very well."

"And noncoms," Alan put in.

"She's a sergeant?"

"I didn't say that."

"I don't understand why you're being mysterious. If you're ashamed of having fallen in love with a man, maybe you shouldn't pursue this person!" There was more than a bit of acid in my challenge.

"She used to be a man—" he began defensively, then shrugged resignedly. "Maybe she still is, down deep. I don't understand any of this, Major, and I don't understand how I can feel the way I do, but I can't help it."

"Maybe you're lonely," I postulated.

He looked at me as if I were a code that he could almost, but not quite, decipher.

"She's—she's very attractive, as you say," he resumed. "I especially like her hair and her eyes, but it's much more than that. There's this incredible magnetism about her."

I nodded, waiting for more.

"When she was a man she seemed distant, cold. But I respected her—him—even then. She—he—was the sort of man who put the good of the Group before himself."

"If I were you, Private," I advised him superciliously, "I wouldn't waste my time with a cold woman."

He shook his head. "She's not really cold. I should have realized that shyness often comes across as aloofness, especially in a man."

Shyness? A clue at last! I tried to match the word to a person. Second Lieutenant Kaopoulis, maybe.

"I think it's her shyness that made my heart go out to her—" Alan continued. "Underneath, I think she's surprisingly innocent and easily-injured. When a man sees vulnerability in a woman, well, he naturally wants to protect her, to keep her from ever being hurt again."

"Do you think you could do that for her?"

"Nobody can be another person's suit of armor, Major, but I'd certainly try my best."

I was struggling to keep my voice steady, but hated this conversation. "She's a lucky—person—" I ventured, "to have a man like you interested, even if she doesn't know it yet."

"You don't think that she'd despise me—as overprotective and smothering?"

"The right kind of protectiveness isn't patronizing."

"What's the right kind?"

"Everybody has to fight his own battles, Alan. It's insulting not to trust a person to stand on his or her own two feet. But, then again, everyone needs someone, somewhere, to retreat to for reinforcements, for resupply. No one can go it alone all the time."

For some reason, Alan chose that moment to rise and step closer; now it was my turn to feel uneasy. I had the impulse to cover my leg, but didn't want to draw attention to the fact that I had been—what? -- teasing him?

"I've wanted to tell her what I feel for weeks," he said with strange intensity, "but I've been worried that if I speak too soon, it will probably destroy any chance that I have."

"Chance for what?" I asked with a slight quiver. "Do you really want to jump into bed with her that badly?"

"No—I just want to hold her, to tell her honestly what I feel, to share my time with her. What happens after that, we'll just have to see."

The more powerful the interest he expressed in his mystery woman, the more depressed I became. I fought hard to maintain my composure.

"Maybe you need a John Alden," I suggested.

"Are you volunteering, sir?"

"Possibly," I nodded with feigned benignity, but my thoughts flowed treacherous. If I could only find who Alan was fixated on, I might be able to keep him and her apart. What a selfish thing to be plotting! What sort of person was I? -- But I knew what sort—the sort who was fighting against loneliness, fighting with the desperation of a drowning man.

"I don't know now," he smiled. "John Alden was a washout as a go-between."

True. Legend said that Alden stole Priscilla from Miles Standish, the man whose troth he had agreed to plead. Love did not conquer all, but it often conquered honor. "John and Priscilla got mixed up in the male-female thing," I explained blandly.

"That couldn't happen here, I guess."

"Of course not!" I exclaimed. What was he suggesting? That I could fall in love with a transformee?

"Is there something wrong, Major?"

"It's nothing. It's just that, well, I've lost a lot of friends once they became romantically-obsessed. If that happened with us, I'd regret it. Besides, that girl of yours probably has some bad qualities that you're overlooking. I worry about you. If things go sour down the line, you won't be able to put it behind you and move on. This is a very small town."

"You may be right—there's one bad thing about her that I've found already."

"What's that?" I asked hopefully.

"She doesn't have sense enough to come in out of the rain."

I grunted disparagingly. "She sounds like an airhead—" Only then did the words sink in. I stared at him, astonished, and for a moment our linked gazes communicated volumes.

What he saw in my eyes told him that it wouldn't be forbidden to put his arms around his C.O. or to crush his lips against hers. It would be perfectly all right to clasp her to him as if she were the heroine on the cover of an old romantic novel.

#

We didn't jump into bed; that stuff is for kids. Admitting that we loved one another was itself like crossing a mountain range. I still couldn't believe what had happened. When had it happened? What did it mean? I was a person that a man could love? Was I in love myself—and with a man? Had I turned gay—or was I something else, something almost impossible to contemplate? -- that I had become not only a woman in body, but a woman of emotion who could love and be loved by a man.

Whatever I was, wherever this thing was leading me, I wanted to be careful. What would people think? Soldiers would never follow an officer whom they held in contempt. Also, I wanted to be careful about making a mistake, one that could change my life radically and force me into circumstances I never had to consider before—like Mary Roberts had to.

Reality had changed in a single hour! I had worried myself sick over some nameless rival and that rival never existed! I could have strangled Alan for putting me through such an ordeal, but instead of recriminating, we kissed desperately, clinging to each other as if this moment would be our last. We didn't say a lot, except breathless things like, "We shouldn't be doing this," or "This is crazy," and "What will people say?" but we were both singing sonnets, if non-vocally.

Later, sitting together on my bed, we finally came up for air long enough to discuss practicalities.

There were many to consider. How would the troopers react to a major, the commanding officer, taking a private for a suitor? For a lover? Alan's status might be raised a little, but he ran the risk of drawing resentment, envy, of being mistaken for an ambitious Lothario. For my part, I expected to be looked down on for granting "my favors" to one beneath "my station." But, everyone was beneath my station. That's what you got when you operated in a pyramidal hierarchy.

"We can't give you a promotion," I said, thinking out-loud. "It would send the wrong message. It's the old story of a good-looking subordinate sleeping his or her way to the top. I could resign my commission, though," I suggested.

He shook his head emphatically. "I want to give you the world, Major. I don't want to take anything away."

"Living is a trade-off," I sighed. "Anyway, no matter what we do, could you see me ever resuming command around here again?"

"I don't see why not."

I thought that his feelings were blinding him. "Even if I stop having suicidal depressions," I explained carefully, "there's no telling when we'll get another bout of Madness. Periodic insanity is not a good recommendation for command."

"It'll probably never happen again," he averred, though without much conviction.

"All I know is that Klink's secret masters seem to win every trick."

"Some of Klink's tricks are better than others," he whispered, as he slipped his hand into my robe and took fond hold of that thigh which had so captured his eye. . . .

#

After that, life was hell.

What an unaware babe-in-the-woods I had been! I had been falling in love with Alan for weeks, and all the while calling it something else.

And I was absolutely convinced that everyone knew I was in love with Alan Drew. I walked the camp not with confidence, but like a thief who senses the security patrols closing in.

Despite my anxiety, no one treated me differently, not even Sebastian who had proven herself so astute in the past. But I was different, inwardly, and that made the difference.

I should have been in bliss now that a gulf had closed between my mind and my emotions, but all I could think of was that other gulf which yawned open. Was I ashamed of my feelings? Would my apparent weakness cause people to lose respect for me—and would it diminish their regard for Alan? Did it matter? I momentarily imagined myself as one regarded as camp trollop, scorned, sniggered at—and decided that I didn't like that particular fantasy one bit.

#

Alan and I swam in the creek the next day, believing that since we had gotten away with it once, we might again. Another swim meant another wet shirt, of course and I went back to my hut to change, Alan escorting me.

As I took a dry tunic from my footlocker, my companion remarked: "You'd look sexy in that shirt."

"Oh?" I responded, not sure whether I liked being considered "sexy." There's nothing sexy about a service shirt.

"It can be, if you do things right," he clarified. "Just wear the shirt; make a tunic of it—like a lot of the women are doing."

Not taking him seriously, I slipped the blouse on. "Oh, sure! You want me to go around like Halder, or Marduke?"

"Why not? You've got prettier legs than either of them."

"You've got to be kidding! Those two are gorgeous."

"You're gorgeous, too."

The compliment made my face warm, as if a sunlamp was shining on it. "Go on! A shirttail looks awful over these dumpy drawers. And don't expect me to walk around bare-bottomed."

"No problem. Haven't you been watching the girls lately?"

"That's more your department," I quipped.

"They've rediscovered the venerable loincloth. Let me show you how to make one."

"I don't know about this," I hedged.

"You weren't so squeamish on Helene, Major."

I lifted my chin defensively. "There, we were only facing planet-busters and orbiting cannons."

Alan laughed, but wasn't to be denied. For the next quarter hour I became his clothes dummy. He took a bootstring and girdled it around my waist, then subsequently ran one of my large handkerchiefs between my legs, pinning it fore and aft. (Alan suggested that sewing it to the girdle would be better.) After a little folding and tucking, I suddenly found myself wearing a very serviceable bikini bottom. I regarded the result with misgivings. "Fun is fun, Alan, but I'm no sex-sim girl—"

"I always think of you as a sex-sim girl," he smirked.

The liberties the private was allowing himself were mind-boggling, but I had a bad case of the Drews. If I pinned his shoulders to the wall on this or any other excuse, it would hurt our relationship. Besides, I knew a few things about the psychology of men, both in and out of love, and so let him have his fun.

He looped a second bootstring around my middle, tying it in a slipknot belt emphasizing the narrowness of my waist, in effect creating a very short skirt out of the shirttail. Finally, he adjusted the tie, remarking, "Most women are wearing it with the knot a little forward on the right. Our C.O. has to represent the height of fashion."

"The beginning of Klinkian haut culture?" I remarked with a twitchy smile.

"I guess so. Anyway, you look fine."

"I feel like a chorus girl."

"Maybe you missed you calling."

"Hey --!"

He took my arm, suggesting, "Let's go outside, Major. I want everyone to know how beautiful my girl is."

I pulled away frantically. "Oh no you don't! Nobody's going to see me like this!"

"Come on, Commander. Ames will die of envy."

"Let her die anyway she wants to! I've got my pride—"

The dirty dog simply scooped me up, throwing me over his shoulder cave-man-like, then carried me to the door, which he proceeded to unbar.

"You idiot! This is assaulting an officer! I'll have you doing ten thousand push-ups! You'll be digging latrines for the rest of your life --! I'll—"

He put me down with a raucous laugh, then pasted a hard kiss to my gasping mouth. I pushed back and glared at him furiously, but my nonplus only incited him to greater mirth.

"Ease up, Major. I was only joking."

I calmed myself with an act of supreme will. He was such a clown—but I had always known that. It was part of that funny mix of things that attracted me to him.

"I wish you'd stop calling me major," I sighed.

* * * *

 

Chapter 11

*Love comforteth like sunshine after rain,

But Lust's effect is tempest after sun.*

                           VENUS AND ADONIS

Along with everything else, Dr. Lowry had to address a hysterical anxiety among the expectant mothers—namely that their babies might be born mutants with alien DNA or have other abnormalities. I easily understood how such fears originated—someone had played outrageously with our genetics and it was only a small mental leap from there to wondering whether they would give birth to monsters. All Sebastian could do was reassure her patients that she could detect no hint of abnormality in the fetuses.

Everything I learned from the doctor about the physical and dispositional changes accompanying pregnancy reinforced my decision to play it chaste. I found it hard to understand how a woman, even a real woman, could ever want to become pregnant or, once she had experienced it, that she would ever allow it to occur twice—but I thought it wise not to take a superior attitude on the subject. I had accepted a male lover; who knew what other attitude changes Klink had programmed into us?

It troubled Dr. Lowry that we had a paucity of pediatric-specific supplies. Forget the pharmaceuticals which we didn't have; we even lacked baby powder and faced a future in which our days and nights would be rived by the cries of chapped infants. Though we still had a little of the adult equivalent, its medicated dust, according to Lowry, would be too harsh for an infant's delicate lungs. Cornstarch would be the best solution, but—alas—Klink had no corn.

We were also bereft of much in the way of strong, absorbent cloth for diapers. To meet this crisis, I resolved to pursue my fabric-from-tree-bark theory as a personal project.

Accordingly, I sought the advice of everyone with botanical knowledge but, alas, none of our troopers had anything useful to suggest. Determined to do good nonetheless, I went about the area, sometimes accompanied by Alan, sometimes alone, taking samples of bark from every local species

After each day's search, I made a fire and subjected each specimen to boiling and subsequent beating, as I had read about primitive tribes doing long ago. I felt like a medieval alchemist conducting experiments on the basis of almost zero knowledge. As it turned out, however, no amount of boiling and pounding ever reduced any slip of bark I worked on into anything resembling cloth.

In less than two weeks I had ruled out every species of tree—a term we used to describe any large, trunked Klinkian plant—which we had so far identified. But I recalled seeing many trees growing on Woolenska's Hill, and so suggested another sample-collecting outing to Alan. He agreed—perhaps because my returning to Woolenska's Hill alone bothered him, or perhaps because he realized that the trip promised us a little welcome privacy.

Alan was unshaven when he called at my hut that morning.

"My razors are dull," he explained. "Some guys are shaving with utility knives, but I didn't want to turn my face into hamburger before meeting you. Anyway, I used to wear a beard in college before I got drafted."

I nodded resignedly. One by one, the amenities of civilization were falling away. But more disheartening than the prospect of the 54^th turning into a tribe of cave people was the thought of kissing someone who might soon have a beard like a 'Forty-Niner.

We hiked to the hilltop and, being very tired, sat down in the shade of a white stone outcropping to refresh ourselves from our canteens. Once out of the sun it didn't take Alan long to become frisky; he sidled close to me and took my hands in his. Fighting down my residual queasiness about intimacy with a male, I rested my head on his sweat-dampened shoulder.

Powerful memories came rushing back as we sat there quietly—memories of our last time on this bluff. The mere fact that I was breathing I owed to Alan. I owed him more than I could ever repay—and also believed that our shared experience had forged a bond stronger than Tosolian steel. In some civilizations, the act of saving a woman's life would make her the property of her rescuer—his slave even, if he wanted her that way. I had read a novel where—well, no use fantasizing about silly fiction. "Alan, what's going to become of us?" I asked suddenly.

"I don't know. It's best to take things slow."

"I guess you have your reservations, too."

He shifted my way. "I suppose. I wish I had the nerve that Roberts does—to be open about what I feel, no matter what anyone else thinks."

I looked at him annoyedly. "Do you think this business doesn't require nerve from the woman, too?"

"I suppose it takes even more," he conceded genially, adding, "You know, it's getting harder and harder to remember that you were our rangy, square-jawed commander."

"But I was," I sighed. "We've got to work through that fact, as hard as it is."

After a moment's reflection he asked: "What do you feel when you look at me?"

I gazed into his unshaven face, into those soft, powder-blue eyes, and replied with more lightness than I felt, "I like what I see—mostly."

"Mostly? Come on, level with me!"

I slumped against the white stone. "It's hell," I confessed. "How can the sight of any male affect me the way you affect me? I can't stand the idea of being laughed at for weakness, or being thought queer."

Alan's expression suddenly sobered. I realized too late how my words wounded him. "I didn't mean that the way it sounded," I pleaded.

He nodded somberly. "I know you didn't."

To make amends, I nestled closer. He mollified enough to put his arm around me and draw me in. His hug felt good, but an internal dichotomy told me that despite my pleasure I must be doing something Wrong.

After a while, Alan grew restless, suggesting: "Maybe we should check these trees."

Reluctantly, I eased myself up. "It's as hot as Antares up here, but I came prepared."

With that I unbuckled my belt and dropped my trousers. Alan's eyebrows went up, noting that I wore a loincloth instead of my usual baggy shorts. While he watched, I arranged my shirttails and, from my breast pocket, picked a second bootstring to bind my waist.

"Is this an attempt to seduce me?" Alan inquired with a big, wide grin.

"It's for freedom of movement," I said matter-of-factly, "and it's much cooler."

"You could sunburn those beautiful legs, Major."

I turned, exasperated. "Don't call me Major! It puts a distance between us, and—and I don't want us to have any distance."

"Like I said before, I'd rather call you Major than Rupert. It's too unfeminine. It puts another kind of distance between us, and I don't want that either."

"Don't be pig-headed, guy! On this planet Rupert will probably be considered a woman's name."

"I hope not!" he said glumly, then instantly brightened. "Say, I know—what was it that your mother would have called you had you been born a girl?"

The question caught me flat-footed. "I don't know," I equivocated.

"Come on now, Major, every woman who's ever carried a child always has both a boy's and a girl's name picked out. Your mother must have told you—mothers always enjoy humiliating their sons by telling them what their alternate name would have been. I would have been Diane, in fact."

"On this crazy planet, you could be Diane tomorrow!"

"I hope not—it would spoil a lot of possibilities. But don't change the subject."

"Like I said, I don't know!"

He took my hand and pulled me down beside him.

"What now?" I scowled.

"I'll show you what now!"

He started tickling my ribs.

"Stop that!"

"Not till you tell me what I want to know!"

I fought down the urge to shriek. "If I told you—you-you'd start calling me by it!"

"What's wrong with that?"

"It's not dignified!"

"Would it be dignified if I put you over my knee and paddled you till you came clean?"

I threw a punch at him. "Don't try it!"

He let me go. "Look, what's the big deal? All the women are changing their names."

"Not the officers!"

"Bull! Captain Tritcher is calling herself Jasmine now."

"She is?" I shook my head. "She looks like the king of Elfland's daughter; if I had her face and build, I'd call myself Eveleen, or Daphne, or something sylvan like that."

"Do you like those names—Eveleen or Daphne?"

"Don't even think of it!"

"Come on, sexy. If you don't tell me your girl's name, I'm going to pick one for you myself."

"Stow it, soldier!"

"You know, your hair looks like those Gypsy girls in the old movies. I think I'm going to call you 'Gypsy.'"

I bopped him in the shoulder. "There, that's what I think of your damned Gypsy!"

"Gypsy-Gypsy-Gypsy!"

I took another swing at him; he ducked it and grabbed me about the waist. Once he had my arms pinned, he started tickling my ribs again. I yelled wildly, struggled to get away, but he was too strong for me and I was breathless with laughter by the time my captor deigned to show mercy. For a while we reclined there, me on my back, him propped above me gazing into my face with a long stem of grass between his teeth.

"You hayseed!" I rebuked him.

"Show some deference, woman, or you'll get more."

"Don't call me a woman, you—man!"

His fingers were on me again.

"No, stop!" I laughed.

"Tell me what your girl's name is."

"No!"

He kept at it until I had enough. A person can only endure so much torture.

"—M-Mom said she'd had 'Katherine' p-picked out," I gasped, then added: "Don't ever call me that!"

"Kathy-Kathy-Kathy!" he hectored. Exasperated, I swung at him again. This time he caught my roundhouse, pulled me forward, and pecked me on the nose.

"Damn you!" I cried, "Show respect to your commanding officer or I'll have you court-martialed!"

He looked me straight in the eye. "You've got to decide whether you want to be loved or simply obeyed, Kathy.—Besides, who'd ever convict me for tickling the sexiest girl on the planet?"

"I said, don't call me Kathy! And don't be complacent—officers are bad asses and they'll nail you if I asked them to. Besides—Ames is much sexier than me."

"No, she's not."

"Give me a break!"

"I don't think that there's anybody on Klink sexier than you."

I had to admit, he had the knack for mollifying me.

I finally got around to asking Alan whether he had felt Dr. Lowry's pheromone effect that night of the Madness.

"And how!" he exclaimed. "It was the hardest thing I ever did, not touching you."

"You could have touched me just a little," I suggested.

"You're crazy!"

"Do you know anyone who has a better reason to be?"

Instead of answering, he kissed me. I knew then that it was going to be hard smooching with someone wearing a beard. Worse, he tried to sneak his tongue between my teeth.

I squirmed away with a wry face. "You're moving too fast!" "Too fast? At the rate we're going, Rip Van Winkle would wake up before he missed anything. What sort of sex life did you have in your last incarnation, Kathy?!"

"A sex life very different from this one!"

"Well, at least you're learning to answer to your name!"

"Oooh!" I cried, shoving him furiously.

He took that as a challenge and his hands were suddenly all over my body, working his hands into my shirt. I gasped as he fondled my breasts; not long before, I had been embarrassed to have that pair of jugs pushing out in front of me, but their possibilities in lovemaking seemed to be fantastic!

I also was becoming aware of how easy it was for a woman to be persuaded by someone she really cared about to go too far, despite any apprehension regarding the well-attested consequences.

#

What to do? By being so stubbornly virginal I felt that I was cheating Alan.—And I guess he felt the same way, because he suddenly asked, "How did men control themselves before contraception?!"

"They didn't. They sired a lot of bastards.—Except that I read a few used sheep guts for condoms, like Casanova."

"Did it work?"

"He only had one bastard—at least only one that he knew about.—Not a bad record, considering his life style."

Alan's stare became intense and serious. "Our children wouldn't be bastards, Kathy. I'd marry you in a minute."

Children? The idea was mind-boggling.

"Did I say something wrong?" he asked.

"Are—are you proposing to me?"

"I suppose I am."

I bit my lip. Marriage? Wifehood? Possible motherhood?

"Major?"

I rolled away, shaking my head. "This is crazy, Alan. If I became a man again tomorrow, this would seem like weird dream."

"A sexy dream." "Okay, a sexy weird dream."

He reached out but I eluded him and got up. "We'd better buckle down and examine these trees," I proposed, eager for a subject which I could handle better.

He sagged backwards against the stone. I could almost hear him thinking, "Women!"

Well, there was no help for it. I turned toward a hilltop grove to see what I could find. I recognized some species in it, though most had no names yet. I suddenly fantasized myself as Adam, naming the animals, or, at least, the trees. To the human mind, names are important things; every living creature, object, or artifact has to have its own name. But aren't names an illusion? For millions of years Klink's trees had grown very well, oblivious to the fact that they were nameless. Also, calling me Kathy or Rupert changed nothing about the person that I was inside.

Alan and I took samples of any bark that appeared unfamiliar, but none of them inspired us with hope that we were close to finding a source of cloth. Getting warm and tired again, we returned to the shade of the white-rock outcropping.

Only now did I take a good look at the stone. I pushed my thumbnail into it and noticed how soft and greasy it felt. Suddenly I had an idea and asked Alan for his knife.

He obligingly handed me his utility blade and I dug its point deeply into a joint, prying off a big flake. Once I held a sample in my hand, I found that I could easily cut the stone, even chip off bits with my nails.

"What is it?" the soldier asked.

"I think it's talc!" I exclaimed. "Do you know what this means!"

Laughing, almost cheering, Alan read my thoughts:

"Baby powder!"

#

Sebastian was pleased with our discovery and I felt elated that I had finally made a positive contribution to Klinkian civilization. In ages unborn, people suffering from chapping and heat-galling, or from the tearful cries of unhappy babies, would thank me. Afterwards Alan kidded me that posterity would erect a statue to "Rupert Breen, Discoverer of Baby Powder!" -- But that would never happen unless we discovered writing paper to record discoveries as earthshaking as mine.

That night, still euphoric, I took a walk and, gazing skyward, noticed that the moons were at their point of conjunction again. The silvery orbs seemed separated by less than the thickness of a playing card. A disquieting thought fluttered through my mind.

I recalled that the moons had also been going into conjunction when the first transformations occurred, and again as the Madness struck. Both events had to do with sex and there seemed to be a disturbing symbolism in the position of the orbiting bodies. To a primitive mind the conjunction of the moons might have suggested heavenly entities mating. Did Klink time its weird phenomena to the phases of its moons?

A single coincidence does not make a rule of science, true, but I hurried on to knock on Alan's barracks-room door. "Gentlemen?!" I called from without.

Recognizing my voice, the medic met me at the threshold.

"Major, you wanted to see me?" he queried respectfully. His mates were within earshot and we were both still trying to be cagey about our affair.

"I was hoping I could see you tonight, Kathy," he whispered once we were off by ourselves.

"That's nice," I said, "but I had a special reason."

"What's up?"

I explained, but he didn't seem to take the matter of the moons too seriously. In fact, even to me my idea had begun to sound like astrology and, hence, foolish.

"Well, as you say, the conjunction is tonight," Alan remarked noncommittally. "I guess we'll have to wait to see if anything happens."

"I'd feel better if I didn't have to wait alone."

He smiled and his hand, already resting lightly between my shoulders, guided me to my door. Once inside the hut, I snapped on the lamp, brought out the cards, and we played a series of poker hands. It was hard to keep my mind on the cards, and it was the company, not the moons, that was preoccupying me.

* * * *

 

Chapter 12

*But virtue, as it never will be moved,
Though lewdness court it in a shape of heaven,
So lust, though to a radiant angel link'd,
Will sate itself in a celestial bed. . .*

HAMLET

It was getting late and the lamp's solar battery was dimming for want of a recharge. I'd begun to feel silly about my alarmism when a strange shiver ran through me, like a taut cord plucked deep in my psyche.

Alan looked up from his cards. "Major?"

"It's starting again!"

Alan sprang up and grasped me close; he meant well, but his embrace threw fuel on the very fire that I was struggling to suppress.

"Kathy! What can I do?!"

"Don't let go of me!"

Alan realized that he had only one recourse and so dragged me to the bed where he started tying me down as before, over my raving protests.

How I fought, knowing the long hours of torture that lay ahead! Alan only bound my hands to the frame of the cot this time, while steadying my kicking by holding my knees. I withstood my raging need as long as I could, then cried: "Fuck me!"

"Kathy, I love you so much," Alan declared, "but you don't really want that!"

"Drew!?" a woman pronounced suddenly from the door; Sebastian was standing there and I knew that she must have heard Alan's avowal of love, but, in my state, I didn't care.

"D-Doctor," stammered Alan. "Are you all right?"

"The whole camp is going up," she said urgently, "except for the pregnant ones. How's Rupe?"

"It's bad. I can't leave her alone tonight."

Dr. Lowry nodded. "There's not much anybody can do, but I have to help Philbrick monitor this thing. You do whatever you can—whatever you have to—to pull the major through." "I will," he promised.

As Sebastian vanished, I envied her! If being pregnant was the antidote for this torment, I wanted to be pregnant!

As my time in hell passed, I was only conscious of my own feverish tumult and hardly grasped the magnitude of Alan's dilemma. Everything he might have tried to ease the suffering of a patient or friend—a kiss, an embrace, soft words—would only have incited my incendiary need.

He watched me agonize for what seemed like hours; then, with grim resolve, he commenced unbuckling my belt, stripping me from the waist down. My breathing went into abeyance, anticipating his follow-up.

While holding one of my thighs pinned, Alan slipped a finger between my nether lips, causing me to gasp at the boldness of the act, and also the physical sensation. He next commenced agitating his digit against my sensitive inner lining and I moaned.

"Does this make it better or worse?"

"Don't stop!" I rasped, too far gone to be ashamed.

My vulva became wet; I felt like there was a tungsten bulb between my legs, glowing ever brighter and hotter. My body broke out in a slick of perspiration. Beads ran down my flesh, tickling me, cooling me in the draft. The sheet under me grew progressively more damp.

He persevered; I felt the muscles of my thighs quiver like jelly and my vagina expanded and contracted in small spasms, alternately hugging Alan's fingers in welcome, and relaxing to invite them deeper still. My clitoris felt hard and stiff, giving the illusion of possessing a male erection while warm pulses were speeding from the center of my being to my shoulders and toes. My breasts became twin pyramids of blood-suffused excitement, their nipples chaffing against the coarseness of my shirt.

After a period of build-up, release came—an overwhelming surge, from scalp to soles, like a warm wave across a pool. The torrent scudded me into its swirling backwash and I suddenly went limp with relief.

"Are you better now?" Alan asked hopefully.

"I don't know. Don't leave me!" I murmured.

Despite my best hopes, my craving mounted again after the briefest respite. "It's coming back! Do something! Please!"

"I don't want to take advantage of you!"

I began to sob, to wildly tear at my bonds and then, exhausted, pulled my knees into a fetal position.

Maybe it was either Alan's desire to help me, or the pheromones assailing his resolve—probably both—but he suddenly changed position, urged my knees apart, and I beheld him through the V of my open thighs, bowing his head as if humbling himself in prayer.

"Y-Yes!" I yelled as his tongue touched me electrically. Yet, as much as I wanted it, the act of cunnilingus served only to turn up my sexual heat, like cranking up a burner on a cooking range. Possessed by a rampant erotic madness, I again attempted to tear the bonds from my hands, until my wrists burned and my shoulders ached.

As his mouth ministered to me, I could feel my juices flowing once more; blood pounded in my temples and my breath came in short, ragged gulps.

My incited pelvis ground my sex against Alan's mouth as I got what felt like fellatio, except that it evoked a wider, more all-encompassing response. His actions drove me helplessly into a second orgasm and I shrieked at the top of my lungs as a wash, stronger than the last, sloshed through me like a tsunami.

I finally sank back, tamed and softened like heated and beaten metal. Alan finally drew away, allowing my mind time to clear. "I shouldn't have done that," he said roughly, as if his throat was parched.

"No, it was good."

"How—is it now?"

"Better," I whispered, "but—oh, God, it's coming back!"

Alan groaned, unsure what to do.

In mere moments, the desire had rebuilt itself enough to have grown uncomfortable. "Please," I pleaded, "I have to touch you."

"You shouldn't. You could lose control. . . . I could, too."

"Please!"

His sense and compassion must have wrestled in desperate urgency.

"Please. . . !"

Resolvedly, his hands went to the cords that bound my wrists and in a minute I was free.

I got to my knees and threw my arms around him, trying to drag him down on myself. I frantically fumbled open the buttons of his shirt, then crushed my mouth against the blond hair of his bared chest. I wanted to kiss every square inch of his body.

"Please, Kathy. I'm your medic."

"You're my lover!"

Reluctantly, Alan permitted me to press him to the cot while I painted his torso, arms, neck, and shoulders with kisses. I soon began to tongue-bathe him, too, my saliva flowing like a fountain. I savored his human flavor, the salt of his perspiration.

Images of the women whom I had been with, filled my mind just then. In a strange way, they had prepared me for this hour. I had not only received pleasure from their ministrations, but also, in a sense, instructions in giving it to another.

My hands went to Alan's belt; he tensed, but let me strip him to his briefs. I afterwards lavished my kisses on his legs, tracing a trail of osculations over his knees, along his shins, down to his feet. I especially kissed his feet, assailing them as if I were the most abject of oriental odalisques.

I subsequently repaid the tickling that Alan had given me on Woolenska's Hill and he shivered as my tongue teased at his feet, his fists clenching large handfuls of the bedclothes reactively, his heels digging into the tick. I culminated my pedal assault by putting his big right toe into my mouth and sucking it with long, deep pulls. I persisted at this because it met a stinging need within me, the need to have him inside me—but it was not nearly enough.

I looked up; Alan's erection, constrained by his skivvies, had tented the material strongly. A feral urge swept through me as his manhood proclaimed itself like a shrine calling for worship. I had been taught well by my previous lovers, and so I had the confidence to put one knee on the bed and pull his shorts down. As if in afterthought, I doffed my shirt, its piping an unwanted reminder of my superior rank. I wanted nothing to mark me as more than his equal, more than his possession.

Despite his excitement, he tried to hold me off. "You'll hate me tomorrow if I let you."

"I'll go insane if you don't," I warned—and, at that moment, believed it, too.

With parted lips, I captured the crown of his manhood and stroked its sensitive under-side with my harlot tongue. His pelvis shifted in response and he loosed a keening breath through his teeth. I had supposed that a penis would have a bad taste, but it did not—a fact which made performing my first fellatio all the easier. I took in as much of him as I could, then applied friction by bobbing my head up and down while swishing him with my firmed-up tongue. Fantasies of my male self making love to the Nameless One returned while I worked, but he was me and I was her. For perhaps the first time, I was completely and utterly her.

My hands clenched the lower part of his manhood, their heels resting in the forest of his pubis. I could feel his organ swelling larger within the confinement of my mouth the more I excited it. Encouraged, I began working the point of my tongue against its tiny slit, as if trying to enter it.

Alan's moans let me know that I was experiencing everything that I hoped. Alan could no longer constrain himself and the hundreds of millions of spermatozoa that defined his virility, suddenly rolled over one another in a mad rush to freedom, filling my mouth with a tumultuous burst. I coughed, swallowed reactively, but in my state felt no repulsion.

The culmination now brought on my own orgasm; I spasmed and savored my throes with a demented cry of exultation before falling aside to gasp for breath. By the time the aftershocks of our mutual release had quelled, Alan was sunken breathlessly in the tick and I had rolled across him, my head pillowed on his hard, firm abdomen, my hand on his hip.

#

A dedicated care-giver, Alan stayed with me throughout the dark hours. Never properly conquered, my infernal need fiercely rebounded again and again, like Antaeus, but each time it waxed less pitilessly because my Hercules and I met it dauntlessly, feeding it together. Then, sometime in the night, driven beyond my limits of endurance, I passed into slumber.

When I awoke in the half-light of dawn I saw Alan asleep on the floor next to my narrow cot. The buzzing bee of shame stung the instant I set eyes on him and I sprang up to flee, but Alan was awakened by the rustle I made.

"Kath—Major!" he exclaimed.

I froze, unable to turn and look at him. What was he thinking? What should I think about myself?

Tears burned my eyes.

"Don't," he said in a gentle if strained tone. Then, rising, he put an arm around me and stroked my snarled hair.

"Don't hate me!" I mewed, knowing that I had betrayed and demeaned him by making him do things he knew were wrong.

"It's all right, Kathy. That wasn't you last night. I don't know if it was me either."

I broke down entirely and he held me close, my wailing subsided.

As the light grew stronger, we belatedly remembered our responsibilities and thus, with a supreme effort, pulled ourselves together. Hurriedly dressing, we ran to the infirmary to get Lowry's report and found Philbrick already there. Simultaneously confronting the two people whose esteem mattered most to me, I hardly dared glance Alan's way lest a guilty look incriminate us. Irrationally, I swung toward the mirror on the wall, worrying that my aspect betrayed how I had passed the night. Fortunately, I only appeared disheveled and red-eyed. I saw Lowry's reflection looking at me. I shivered; how much did she suspect?

"I hope you're all right, Major," Philbrick remarked.

I turned sharply. "What do you mean -- ?" Then, I forced myself to settle down. "Report," I said, forgetting for a moment that I was not his active commander just then.

Lowry answered for him. The second Madness had been very like the first, except that this time we had more than a dozen sane women to help our men resist the passionate advances of the females. This they were glad to do—especially when the man involved was their husband or lover. The males, better prepared this time, displayed sturdier discipline, too.

The Madness had revealed a couple new pregnancies, obviously occurring between the first Madness and the second. We knew we could expect more pregnancies now, since considerable sex had occurred, despite the command's efforts.

When I told Lowry and Philbrick about my moon-conjunction theory, neither scoffed. Two incidents might represent a coincidence, but three amounted to a subject for serious inquiry. Now we had to address the knottier question: If the moons were linked to Klink's sexual phenomena, how and why?

#

Needing rest after a harrowing night, I returned to my hut alone and flopped onto the cot. I slept for an hour and a half before waking, and realized that the next time I stepped out that door I had to face the world as a changed being.

Also, as little as I liked it, I had to face Sebastian.

I reached the infirmary door feeling like a guilty cadet about to call on his superior for a reprimand. I found Dr. Lowry in bed with her sleeping-room door open—which caused me to wonder whether she was only exhausted by her all-night activity, or whether pregnancy was taking its toll. "Come on in, Rupe," my comrade beckoned wearily. At least she hadn't called me 'Kathy.'

"What's on your mind?" she asked.

"You didn't mention what happened last night."

Sebastian regarded me keenly. "I didn't suppose you wanted me to bring up your love affair at a staff meeting. Are we going to have to worry about serious—aftereffects?"

"No!" I exclaimed, flushing hot. Then, collecting myself, I said, "But it would bother me a lot if you started looking down on me."

She gave a weary grin. "What are you talking about? Can anything be worse than what I did last month?"

"I don't know," I replied contritely. "What I did was bad enough."

She sat up and extended me her hand. I accepted it and seated myself beside her.

"Rupert, don't be embarrassed. People are taking lovers all over the place and we've got to accept it. Somewhere along the way you picked up the idea that you're made of steel. Nobody believes that except you."

"I wish I were a little less human."

"But you're not, and that's a good thing—believe me."

"What should I do?"

She took my hand and squeezed. "I say hold on to that guy. He's a prize. In fact, I admire your taste in men."

"I can't believe we're having this conversation!"

"Am I to understand that you're calling yourself Kathy now?"

"You know how it is," I hedged.

"It's a good name. You look like a Kathy."

"Oh, great! I'm a Kathy!"

"Don't sweat it, Rupe. I'll probably change my name one of these days. If I have a son, he can be Sebastian."

"You could call him Stanley instead," I quipped with a crooked smile.

"Oh, please!"

I put an arm around her, saying, "I'm sorry you don't have anybody yet, Sebastian. It's hell when you do, but I think it's even worse when you don't."

"I'm keeping my options open," she assured me. "I'm such a good catch that I can afford to be particular."

We both laughed and then moved on to other topics—topics which weren't quite so sore and personal.

Lowry ventured the theory that the moons may have been sacred to an indigenous race, which either still lived unseen or was now extinct and represented by nothing more than automated equipment left behind. As I had theorized earlier, the "mating" of the moons of Klink may have represented the sexual cycle in their culture, a kind of St. Valentine's Day love-fest that comes a lot more than once per year. The Klinkians could easily have timed their sex- and sex-drive-altering equipment to follow the lunar cycles.

I thought hard about that proposition. Exactly how much time did we have until our next little plunge into Hell? We'd have to ask one of the techs to work out Klink's lunar ephemeris.

It was at that exact moment that our appreciation of Klink changed forever. Alan burst into the infirmary, crying, "Major! Doctor! Crawford and part of the detachment are back.

"—And they have strangers with them!"

* * * *

 

Chapter 13

There's place and means for every man alive.

                 ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL

The strange clothes worn by some of Crawford's party impressed me first—a kind of off-white, pull-over tunic—not solely a female garment, because one of the men, one of the strangers whom Alan had noted, wore one, too. Next, I noted a couple of short-haired, quadrupeds tethered behind the returnees—pack animals.

To my relief, Crawford still wore his familiar, craggy shape. On the other hand, I recognized none of the women—correctly assuming that they were transformed soldiers, with the probable exception of a pair who were elderly. So far, I knew, none of our men had transformed into old women. There was also an elderly male stranger, the one in the tunic.

Philbrick, arriving belatedly, saluted Crawford and the two of them grasped hands in camaraderie. "Ted," blurted the former, "it's been four months! Where in hell did you find other human beings?"

"There's a whole village of them, Ben—more than one, in fact! I have to talk to Major Breen."

I stepped forward. "I'm Major Breen, Captain," I informed my subordinate tonelessly.

Crawford swung my way, surprise writ large on his face. I sighed silently; authority figures were supposed to be like bronze statues—constant, unchangeable—admirable adjectives which never fit reality.

"I turned command over to Captain Philbrick," I explained. "—For health reasons."

"Yes, Major," acknowledged Crawford with a sharp salute.

I glanced uncomfortably toward the remainder of his party. Crawford took the shift of attention as his cue to begin the introductions, commencing with the three strangers: "This is Casimir," he explained, nodding at the unknown male, "and this is Irina and Natalya." These latter were the elderly women. "They were originally from the Protos II agricultural colony, which was Ukrainian. Only Casimir speaks English."

"You're very welcome," Philbrick greeted the newcomers with a cordial handshake.

"Thank you, General," Casimir responded, his English thickly-accented.

"I'm Captain Philbrick," our commander corrected the man's error.

Moving swiftly ahead, Crawford reintroduced us to our transformed comrades, then, given leave by Philbrick, Ames stepped forward and welcomed back the women—most of whom looked uneasy under all the attention. The female captain ordered the new transformees to fall in behind her and led them away for debriefing. The returnee males and the three Ukrainians remained clustered behind Crawford.

We had long suspected that Klink held other human prisoners besides us, but here at last was proof. Wanting to ask a thousand questions, I invited my senior captain along with Philbrick and Dr. Lowry into my hut to confer. Then Crawford quickly filled us in on what had befallen his detachment since we had last seen it.

As anticipated, the daily disappearance of men had proved to be the bane of the journey. Wherever a pair of troopers vanished, Crawford always left volunteers to wait for their reappearance. At first, the auxiliaries were instructed to escort the transformees back to our base camp, but even before the end of the first week increasing distance had rendered that option impractical.

Subsequently, Crawford's volunteers had to bring the transformees forward with all possible haste. But transformation was not his only problem. The detachment remained fear-ridden; Crawford was forced to walk a narrow line, not yielding to his subordinates' panicky whims, while yet trying to avoid conflicts that might provoke a blow-up.

Before too long, the captain had exhausted his stock of auxiliaries and so chose to remain behind with the last of them himself, letting Lt. Morrow take the main body forward. Crawford gave instructions that when men were transformed thereafter, they should wait along the marked trail until he and his group, advancing from the rear, arrived to assist them. It was a risk leaving traumatized people on their own for any length of time, but the captain had no choice.

Thereafter, encumbered by a growing number of traumatized women, Crawford proceeded in the wake of the detachment at a deliberate pace, watching for the stakes left behind by Morrow to indicate where additional soldiers had disappeared. During his progress, Crawford's group was steadily augmented by volunteers coming from the rear with earlier transformees.

After a few days, Crawford's band reunited with the main detachment. These, he discovered, had given up, demoralized by their inability to find a geographic limit to the transformation phenomenon. Morrow had persuaded them to cease their pointless meandering and wait until Crawford came up.

Once he did, Crawford reorganized the camp and waited for the last stragglers to join them. Then the detachment just hunkered down and endured, its officers waiting until the men realized that they had no option but to return to the main camp. To their surprise, once they'd been out in the wilderness for nineteen days, the transformation phenomenon ceased, the sex-ratio having been equalized.

Not exactly understanding what had happened, but grateful for it anyway, Crawford was about to lead his detachment back toward our camp when his foragers found signs of unknown human life. This spoor was carefully followed, and the captain's scouts discovered four strangers—Earthers—two males, two females. These spoke only Ukrainian but were decidedly friendly. Crawford quickly grasped that they came from a village of their own and so the entire detachment accompanied the Ukrainians to their home, reaching it after a few days march.

The settlement, one of five in the area, was established seven years earlier by the evacuees of Protos II. Like the 54^th, the Ukrainians had soon become acquainted with the phenomena of transformation and the Madness. Fortunately, because they already had a high proportion of natural-born females, the occurrences of transformation, while startling and mystifying, did not devastate their community psychology as it had devastated ours.

Though transformation still afflicted the villagers occasionally—whenever a population imbalance toward the male side arose or when too many men inadvertently congregated at too great a distance from a sexually-balanced enclave—the Ukrainians had learned to minimize it by traveling in sexually-balanced groups.

There was still a lot that the Protos II colonists didn't know for certain, but they had learned that only transformees were affected by the Madness—though those who were pregnant or suckling infants were immune. Interestingly, the colonists had never observed a transformation until a boy had gone four or five years beyond puberty—and, prior to youngsters achieving this age, Klink's phenomena seemed not to include them into the equation at all. Similarly, no transformee seemed to simulate a girl younger than about sixteen. Natural-born women, it had become clear, were never transformed, neither into males nor even into more nubile women, and males who wandered alone or lived as hermits also remained unchanged. During their years on the planet, the colonists had not seen any transformee revert to his original sex.

I took in this last bit of intelligence with a sharp sense of disconsolation. Though I'd assumed that I'd have to face the rest of my life as I was, this confirmation dashed any residual hopes. On the other hand, the news that normal children were being born to transformees would surely set our worried mothers-to-be at ease.

Regarding other matters, the Ukrainians, like us, had not been revisited by the Assies since landing. The colonists did occasionally encounter other parties of human evacuees and POWs and, whenever possible, they exchanged goods and skills, but had found that it was the civilian groups who had the most to offer. Soldiers were good at short-term survival, naturally, but were generally devoid of skills that communities needed to thrive over the long term. The problem was that soldiers were mostly young and had limited education and life-experience.

The arrival of Crawford's party naturally caused great excitement in the villages. Their hospitality was effusive, and the Ukrainians knew how to deal sympathetically with the transformees. Crawford informed his new friends of the fate of the 54^th, and the community leaders debated the best means of extending aid our way. When the first Madness struck, the villagers saw to it that the transformees did not suffer more than was absolutely necessary.

Crawford discovered that the villagers had domesticated wild plants and animals, and also had acquired new ones from older human communities on Klink. It was a European Union group which had provided the beast that the Ukrainians rechristened the "byerblyood"—the species of draft animal now grazing at the edge of camp. At this point, Crawford mentioned that the sex-change phenomenon never affected animals—not even the dogs and cats that accompanied the colonists from Protos II. Go figure!

The adoption of some thirty new mouths to feed had put a strain upon the villager's food supply, but they farmed the visitors out as widely as possible and took shorter rations themselves. Fortunately, the additional labor provided by the detachment would eventually increase the next harvest somewhat, but the payoff was months away.

Because of the grievous burden that their visit was imposing, Crawford only waited until the detachment was well settled-in, then selected the fittest of his people for a return to our camp. At that point, of course, a significant number of his women were still seriously traumatized and could not advisedly travel. Then, too, the generous villagers had offered both males and females the chance to be schooled in a large array of rustic skills that we would need in the future. Because not all of our people could be brought to the Ukrainians for training, the village council had voted to send three of its accomplished elder citizens back to us along with Crawford. #

Now that he'd returned, Crawford accepted command from his junior, Philbrick, and as his first act in his new role requested that I, Lowry, and Komisov (who happened to speak a little Ukrainian) take charge of our visitors. After explaining our assignment to the newcomers, we stowed their packs, broke out rations for their refreshment, and escorted the three into a shady grove for rest and debriefing.

Casimir was a small, wrinkly man with white hair, but still admirably spry. Irina, a woman of about fifty, was plump and motherly, while Natalya, leaner and a little older than Irina, gave the impression of keen practical intelligence.

After the initial courtesies and homilies, our conversation turned inevitably to the subject of the types of assistance our communities could exchange. The women's enthusiastic flood of words had to be interrupted frequently by Casimir, lest they race too far ahead of his plodding efforts to translate.

It didn't take us long to realize that the villagers offered us much more than we could ever reciprocate. What they needed most was drugs, medical knowledge, and training. The planet had so far revealed very few diseases which affected humans, though there were minor infections which the colonists had brought with them, or picked up from other exiles, and these persisted in the population. Beyond this, there was the occasional accident and degenerative illnesses—such as heart disease and cancer. But, most of all, they were interested in reducing their birth-related losses.

Interestingly, of all the women, transformees suffered the fewest childbed complications and miscarriages, and fewer of their children were afflicted with birth defects. Apparently, Klink knew how to build a topnotch childbearing machine.

Because of our own needs, Dr. Lowry explained that she could not visit the Ukrainian villages soon. We would, nonetheless, share whatever drugs and medicines we could, though these were scant and precious. Sebastian went on to conjecture that Alan might profitably spend time in the villages instructing our new comrades in first aid and battlefield surgery. I grimaced; if my lover was planted amid a bevy of natural-born women I feared that I might end up looking second-best. Therefore, if Alan ended up sent away on assignment, I was determined to go with him.

That we could offer so little to these generous people made us feel like mendicants. In addition to material things they could give us, such as livestock, there was the knowledge of self-sufficient crafts that our visitors offered to share. Casimir was a farmer with a knowledge of how to coax yield from stubborn land, while Natalya was primarily a midwife, and Irina a woman of many useful domestic skills. Our "girls," the latter said, must begin to learn about supporting our "village" with food preservation, gardening, making yarn, as well as weaving.

I smiled, knowing that "woman's work" wouldn't sit well with the transformed soldiers. Nonetheless, in a subsistence economy, men's strength, speed, and endurance were best applied to tasks such as hunting, plowing, and lumbering. Women, physically weaker and often burdened with children in constant need of supervision, naturally assumed the work of processing raw materials in the home. When you thought about it, there was nothing undignified about this sort of mutually-supportive division of labor. In fact, it was scarcely to be avoided.

The Ukrainians told us that the detachees who still remained at their villages would return in the spring. By that time they would have skills to take the place of the volunteer Ukrainian teachers—teachers who would be joining us in a few weeks. It amused me to think that so many of our formerly troublesome and near-mutinous detachees were away at "college" learning to be model housewives.

"Most important," Casimir translated for Natalya, "we came because we wanted to help the young mothers."

I perked up at this remark. "You were so certain that we'd have mothers that you came all this way?" I asked, knowing that before the detachment departed not even Hitchcock's pregnancy had been discovered.

Natalya laughed and Casimir translated: "Dear little dyovawchka, there are always many, many young mothers wherever you soldiers are!"

Sebastian looked so chagrinned she caught the midwife's eye. The latter moved over next to our doctor and proceeded to feel her breasts, her belly, and hips. The Ukrainian woman glanced back at her comrades and cheerfully announced: "Byepyemyennaya!" Sebastian flushed, guessing correctly what the word meant. To my eyes, the physician's delicate condition had not begun to show at all.

Next the midwife turned her exuberant attention my way, her fingertips playing lightly over my body as they had over Sebastian's. Her thoughtful expression brightened, and she tripped out a long string of incomprehensible syllables.

"Natalya says that you are not pregnant now," explained Casimir, "but thinks that when you are you shall have an easy time of it. Your pelvis is good and your babies shall have room to grow; also, she thinks your breasts shall make much milk."

I swallowed hard, tried to keep from scowling, and told Lady Natalya that this was very good to hear. The woman, in response, hugged me as if I were her own child. Ukrainians, as we were beginning to learn, tended toward demonstrativeness.

In the course of that same conversation, we also discovered the colonists' name for Klink. "We call it, 'Ray,'" Casimir remarked. "In your English, 'Eden.'"

I nodded, contemplating the irony. Eden had been the mythic garden country where God had made the first woman from the body of the first man. It was such a logical designation that over the next few weeks we accepted Eden as the best name for the planet, while "Klink" was demoted to being merely the name of our camp.

The exchange had been so intriguing that before we realized it twilight had darkened into night. We escorted our guests to the huts set aside for them, at which point the Ukrainians bade us to tarry for a moment until they returned. To our surprise, they quickly reappeared with gifts. Casimir presented Captain Komisov with a bronze dagger, while Natalya gave Sebastian a large shawl decorated with vegetable-dyed crocheted flowers. Irina gave me a tunic much like the one she, Natalya, Casimir, and some of our returnees wore.

We accepted these gratuities gracefully and the Ukrainians sent us on our way amid another barrage of hugs and kisses.

#

Walking with Sebastian to the infirmary, my friend started jabbering about a new idea for eradicating infectious diseases on Eden. "If no one incubated an active contagion, such as flu," she explained, "flu would utterly vanish. As long as the population remains small, circumstances present us with an incredible opportunity."

Well, that might be true, but I had more immediate matters on my mind. For that reason I cut short my friend's excited chatter by asking her to wait a quarter hour before sending Alan to my hut. She flashed a wondering smile, but simply nodded and asked no questions.

Still thinking about those Ukrainian girls that Alan might meet, I changed my clothes, arranged my hair, threw on my robe, and waited. When Alan arrived he looked a little unsure of himself—and maybe a little unsure of me. Much to my relief, he began our conversation nonchalantly, asking about the interview with the Ukrainians. Perhaps he hoped I had merely sent for him to fill him in on that subject. After giving him a quick summary, I pointedly mentioned that I had received a gift.

"What would that be?" he asked with an intrigued smile.

I opened my robe and let it drop to my feet, dramatically displaying the Ukrainian tunic. "How do you like me in peasant-girl chic?" I asked nervously.

Alan gave a breathy whistle. "You make one hell of a fine peasant girl, Kathy!"

"Thanks—I guess."

"—Except for one little thing."

"What?"

"That hem could be higher."

That irritated me. "The hem's high enough!" I flung back, but immediately softened my tone: "You really don't want me giving those baboons out there everything I'm giving you."

"I sure don't!" he exclaimed, letting me know that I had put my foot into my mouth yet again. I faced away from him, my cheeks flushing hot, but he stepped up, placed his hands on my bare arms, and turned me about. I glowered up into his face, trying to let him know how much he'd peeved me. If he knew he didn't show it, for he smoothly drew me to him, engulfed me in the warmth of his embrace, and whispered: "After last night, I was expecting a bawling out and a court-martial—for contributing to the delinquency of an officer."

I nuzzled the hollow in the center of his deep chest, my stature and his making it a perfect fit. "Rupert Breen might court-martial you," I said lightly once I'd come up for air, "but I'm just his dizzy sister Kathy."

He put is index finger under my chin and raised it until I was looking into his eyes. "That's who I want you to be," he said with a smile, then gave me a peck on the nose.

* * * *

 

Chapter 14

*For I am he am born to tame you, Kate,
And bring you from a wild Kate to a Kate
Conformable as other household Kates.*

            THE TAMING OF THE SHREW

A few weeks and one Madness later, our camp welcomed eighteen more visitors from the Ukrainian villages. Intending to act as instructors in home crafts, animal husbandry, and agriculture, they even brought along livestock—small animals which could be raised like rabbits, flyers with clipped wings to be bred for meat and eggs, and several more of those miniature, camel-like beasts that the Ukrainians called the "byerblyood."

Though not a pupil myself, I spent much of my time working with our guests. Irina quickly located a patch of "pahlatnaw," a native plant which the Ukrainians had learned to grow for fiber. When the seeds ripened in autumn, we would gather them for springtime cultivation. Pahlatnaw, our guests informed us, was the source of the light-colored cloth that the Ukrainians wore. Now that we had a raw material for yarn, we required looms for its weaving. Marduke's carpenters did yeoman work constructing several of these under Irina's supervision.

One problem confronting us was that none of our women liked the domestic chores to be expected of them. It wasn't that these duties were outrageously disagreeable in themselves, nor even very different from work routinely expected of the soldiers since basic training. It was the notion of accepting a role which many still psychologically resisted. Fortunately, our expectant mothers were somewhat more obliging; it had dawned on them, if not yet on the others, that they would need many new skills if they were to confidently rear a needful infant.

While I understood the rejectionist sentiment, what was the alternative? If we tried to join the men at heavy labor, erecting additional huts and sheds or grubbing land, we would only have proved that we actually were weak sisters and other important work would have gone undone. It seemed to be a problem not easily solved. I envied the future girl-children of Eden, who would grow up without their mothers' ambivalence toward "women's work."

Crawford finally issued an order requiring the troopers to accept their assigned craft-training, like it or not. His stern decision resulted in considerable grumbling and indignation, but I appreciated the need for it and did my best to smooth things over. Counseling was not a role which I had much practiced, but under the straits of necessity I discovered an aptitude for it.

Besides jawboning the women, I learned the basics of weaving—thereby mollifying the dissidents by example. The best one can say of weaving is that it allows a person's mind time to wander. No wonder that history continually referred to women at the loom—it takes time to make even a single diaper-sized item. But as the months passed and the waistlines of our comrades grew, we were conscious of the importance of our work.

While many of us studied, a few engaged in teaching. Dr. Lowry began training four colonists in medical procedure. One of these, a personable Ukrainian who had been a veterinarian on Protos II, possessed a solid background. To everyone's amusement, he took to our lovely young doctor from the first day and every time Sebastian turned around the man was there at her elbow—and neither tact nor bluntness put him off.

Another Mad Moon—as we now called this roughly-monthly affliction—came and went—and it was the last straw for me! I was sure there had to be some way to deal with Eden's curse without surrendering to it. Inspired by past reading, I decided to take a page from the lurid book of Casanova.

Accordingly, I appropriated a few entrails from the carcass of our first butchered byerblyood and proceeded to boil them sterile. After that, I cut them to length and sealed one end, first by tying it off, then searing it with fire. Full of anticipation, I presented my creations to Alan. He seemed to share my enthusiasm for empirical experimentation, and we embarked on the study together.

I was jittery when the moment came. While the two of us had engaged in a lot of foreplay, the idea of offering a male lover coitus still gave me pause. It implied submission, a rite of passage into a sort of life which I was instinctively reluctant to enter. Yet, if I wasn't willing to give 100% of myself, Alan might find another who would.

My guy began his lovemaking by running his fingertips lightly across my breasts. My nipples stiffened instantly at the touch, tingling with tiny pin-pricks. Sensing my excitement, Alan buried his face in my hair, nuzzling my scalp. He loved my curls, so I'd kept them longish, though they were a terror to wash and comb.

"My Gypsy," he whispered, spreading kisses across my forehead, temple, and cheeks, savoring the scent I wore—flower petals soaked in distilled spirits, a concoction of Natayla's. He took little nips of my ear lobe, gradually making my body ache with a building need.

But I was too overwrought to be much more than passive. Alan's weight pressed me deeply into the narrow cot, his muscular arms engulfing me. My breasts flattened against his chest and my lips against his mouth. I released a small cry as I felt his index finger probe between my thighs. I reflexively writhed and, obeying an unconscious dictum of Nature, spread my legs wide in submission and invitation.

At last Alan, his lips still fixed on mine, took his penis in midsection and rubbed its tip along the length of my vulva. A shudder ran through me and after a couple minutes, sensing that the moment had come, Alan inserted himself carefully. I gasped; this was the moment of crisis that I had feared and delayed for weeks. What would it feel like? How would it change me? Only my intense trust in Alan kept me from thrusting him away and bolting for the door.

He grew harder and larger in the process of entry, of merging with my being, until our four thighs pressed flush. A thrill raced through me and registered outwardly as a convulsion. He savored my capitulation for a moment, then began to move inside me. I couldn't believe what I was feeling, so far outside it was of all my past experience. At first, I wasn't sure whether I liked it or not, but he brought me along slowly, his great tool like a fire-maker's, coaxing flame from the merest smolder of dry thatch. At first he was deliberate and slow, his movements evoking moans and mews from me. But Alan's lovemaking waxed ever more intense, more kinetic, as he went along—and I couldn't help but rouse to his overwhelming strength and control—of both himself and me—and admire his endurance. I unconsciously clenched his slick hips, not to resist his movements, but to assist them; my legs locked desperately behind his knees, to keep him at his work—as if abandoning it had ever crossed his mind!

The increasing pitch of pleasure charged me, changed me, turned me from stiff, cold clay to warm, sticky putty. Up to that point, I had been pretty much lying there like a log, but my anima fully took over and I began to respond to him in earnest. My intellect wasn't so far along, unfortunately, and in fear-reaction I tried to suppress the warm, buttery feeling which was flowing from my limbs and breasts down to my loins.

Poor frightened virgin—you won't get away! Mother Nature had me exactly where she wanted me, and after all the time she had expended in coaxing me in bed with a man she wasn't going to let me slip the hook. The dam burst under the pressure of the buttery flow and its hot rush coursed through me like an arroyo in flash flood. I let out a moan and bear-hugged him with all my strength.

My release was the trigger, but Alan held the gun. His spasm came as a shock and, afterwards, we lay panting, arm-in-arm, overcome by euphoria.

"I can't get enough of you" he whispered a few minutes along.

"I've got plenty more byerblyood guts," I reassured him, nestling closer.

"There aren't enough byerblyood guts in the world for the way I feel about you."

I smiled, closed my eyes, and slept peacefully against him. If this was part of being a woman, the future didn't seem half-bad just then.

#

I took a good, hard look at myself in the morning. Who was this clear-complected young woman reflected in my shaving mirror—she with the aquamarine eyes and the cascading midnight curls? Was she nothing more than a two-dimensional fantasy dreamed up by a sexually-frustrated teenager and brought to fruition in the mind of a lonely career soldier? Were those feelings, desires, and drives which moved her genuine? Was she an alien creature imposed on me or was she my twin? Was she just an emotional expansion of myself? Had she existed only these last few months, or had she always been with me in spirit? Were those qualities which defined her newly-minted, or were they my long-repressed second nature?

I sighed with resignation, but without understanding, and tried to give the woman in the mirror some sound advice: "Your emotions are out of control, Gypsy. You trust too easily. You take risks. You could get hurt."

She wasn't listening. She had stars in her eyes.

#

Alan and I experimented with our byerblyood entrails every day, until the supply went bad. I saved one makeshift condom in a bottle of distilled spirits as an antidote to the torture of the next Mad Moon.

Alan kept proposing to me, but I couldn't agree to marry him—not as long as I was unwilling to commit to the logic of marriage in every way. Taking a lover served as an emotional and physiological safety value and it came easily. Accepting wifehood, on the other hand, was tantamount to promising to be something that I was not yet prepared to be. Worse, the idea implicit in marriage, the establishment of a family, was so alien a concept that my instincts revolted against it. But there was more to my reluctance than that. There was a sense of inadequacy. A mother had to be someone pretty terrific; I couldn't believe that I was good or smart enough to make the grade.

When the Mad Moon came, our fifth, numerous other women about the camp went crazy as expected but, to my surprise and horror, I wasn't one of them.

At first, we couldn't understand it, didn't want to understand it. When the terrible truth could no longer be denied, I was thunderstruck. Alan held me close, tried to reassure me, told me that he would love and care for me always, no matter what happened.

But not only was I frightened, I was infuriated. To have my life turned on its head by something as trivial as condom failure! Damn those rotten byerblyood guts! I had been cheated, double-crossed by Fate. I talked urgently to Sebastian the next morning.

"Why didn't you ask my advice before you went into the condom-making business?" she admonished me sternly. "Even the best materials have a sixteen percent failure rate. Using a makeshift is like playing Russian Roulette."

"I don't need this!" I protested.

"All right, Rupe, no use getting unstrung until we know the worst. Get under the scanner."

She checked me, shook her head, then wished me her hearty congratulations.

"Is that all you have to say?!" I snarled.

"What else should I say?"

"Tell me what to do!"

"Take things easy, eat well, and get plenty of exercise."

"I don't mean that!"

"Suppose you tell me what you do mean!"

I looked away. There was nothing more to be said.

"Pregnancy is only phase one," Sebastian commiserated. "In nine months, when you hold that little bundle of joy in your arms, your problems are really going to begin."

"Thanks a lot!" I growled, swinging to my feet and grabbing my uniform.

Soon anger faded and worry returned. I felt staggered but, once I settled down, I realized that I was much better off than those women who had been shanghaied by the Mad Moon. I was pregnant because I had made love to the man of my choice—and not once but many times. Even so, how could I resign myself to motherhood when I had never given serious thought to becoming a father?

On the positive side, from here on Alan and I could make love any way we wished, as often as we wished. Thus, though in bondage to my biology, I also found a kind of liberation—or, at least, a freedom to indulge my proclivities with abandon. We started playing love games—make-believes that I hadn't permitted before, except in my daydreams when I had been a man. As a woman I had been afraid to go too far. But pregnancy was as far as a relationship could go; anything short of that was tame.

During the following weeks I acquired some insights which had always eluded me before. As a man I had marveled at a woman's capability to bear a child, but from my current perspective that seemed nothing compared to the sorcery which a man effected over the woman who loved him. I found myself nursing an awe of Alan, and, indeed, of the whole male-based creative power.

But sorcery was one thing and everyday practicalities another. We agreed after a week that there was no longer reason to put off asking Ames to arrange our marriage.

To my exasperation, Ames decided that the major's nuptials had to be the best wedding ever. Besides, she said, we were long-overdue for a party honoring our Ukrainians friends. No sooner had the news of my impending matrimony spread around camp than people began to speculate whether or not their major was knocked up. "Is she or isn't she" even became the subject of a drawing.

All right, it was a circus. I would have preferred a quiet ceremony, but Ames wanted an elaborate program featuring song, dance, Shakespeare, and comic skits. And she also wanted to hold that oldest of army traditions—a drag show. Of course, that was only a euphemism for Camp Klink's equivalent—a girlie show.

When the Ukrainians heard of our upcoming espousals, they treated the earth-shattering news as something to gladden the heart, but nothing out of the ordinary. I didn't like to have the whole thing trivialized, but what was worse, I couldn't hide from Natalya the fact that I had become slightly "byepyemyennaya!" On the other hand, now that my condition was up front, I felt free to pump her for advice about pregnancy and the care and feeding of a child.

#

Irina made me a veil of bug-netting and Casimir requested the privilege of giving me away. I invited Sebastian to be my best man—or, I should say, my maid of honor. All that was left at that point was to tie the knot officially.

On the morning of the big day, Natalya helped me prepare, arranging my hair, adorning my gift-tunic with flowers, scenting my flesh with perfume, and finally applying some simple makeup to my face (mainly talcum powder and red-berry stain for lipstick, with a bit of vegetable-oil-and-malachite eye-liner). I felt silly, but if I wasn't willing to act the bride all the way, I might as well marry in my uniform—which would have embarrassed Alan. There was no point spreading the mortification around; I was toting such a load of it that a little more couldn't hurt me.

Alan himself got a clean shave that morning from Pvt. Sandrino, who seemed to be turning into the village barber.

With butterflies in my stomach, I was led before the officiating Captain Ames on Casimir's arm. Alan was there at the side of Pvt. Harrison, his best man, both of them dapper in their best togs. Sebastian pushed a bouquet of white and violet flowers into my arms and my husband-to-be took my hand while I stood there more or less dazed.

Ames commenced the "We are gathered" part, but I wasn't listening until she got to: "Do you, Katherine Breen, take this man, Alan Drew, to be your lawfully-wedded husband, to have and to hold, to love, honor, and cherish, until death do you part?"

I set back my shoulders and said that I did. Alan recited his vows with somewhat less desperation.

"I now pronounce you man and wife. You may kiss the bride."

The battle group still had some photographic film, so wedding pictures were taken. When I looked at the prints immediately afterwards they made me cringe—like viewing the evidence of one's own fiendishly-contrived initiation. But it was not many days before I was regarding them in a very different light—as irreplaceable keepsakes to be preserved with the greatest of care.

Afterwards we partied. The Ukrainians led us in a frenetic dance that they called the "prizawek," and we retaliated by roping them into a square dance. Only a single round of "vinawe," as the Ukrainians had named their fermented beverage, was served before the main show began—the supply of it being much too limited for more.

As far as the performances went, the Ukrainians, who loved to sing and dance, gave the 54^th a tough act to follow. Our guys put on a series of celebrity impersonations, some pretty good, some absolutely awful. Cheers went to our "chorus line," some of our girls taking a fling at the can-can.

With the help of a couple of Ukrainian ladies, Ulad Jami, now called Sonja and married to Nathan Michaels, had thrown together a belly-dancer outfit; her earnest undulations almost did it justice and, anyway, the scantiness of it was appreciated by the untransformed males.

Following Sonja's performance, three comic scenes from Shakespeare were enacted—including the famous quarrel between Kate and Petruccio from THE TAMING OF THE SHREW. After that, a local writer presented an original skit involving a wife hiding her lover when her husband comes home unexpectedly. Shakespeare was scarcely put to shame.

The showstopper had to be Ames' act. Billing herself as "Melissa," the captain emerged dressed in her best uniform and ground out an enthusiastic striptease. (Her fantasy girl had been an ecdysiast, which he hadn't guessed before.) Some officers looked uneasy as Melissa did her thing, but the privates loved it. Still, I wondered how Ames expected to function as a figure of authority after such an exhibition. I also wondered what Crawford would say to her or, for that matter, what her lover, Philbrick, thought.

Next it was Alan's turn. A born ham, he had volunteered to sing some of his old-time songs for the crowd. I squeezed his arm to encourage him but, to my surprise, he took a firm hold of me and dragged me with him to the stage. When he let go I attempted to run for cover, but Alan would have none of that. He set me on a stool and then drew another for himself.

"Just sit there, honey," he told me. "I'm going to serenade you."

"Wait till I get you home, you snake!"

"Ladies and gentlemen," Alan addressed the assembly, "I guess you don't need to be introduced to our other guest of honor, Major Rupert Breen. But, excuse me, we've got to get used to calling her Major Kathy Drew now. Anyway, I want you to know that this little lady has gotten to be a big part of my life, and that she's getting bigger every day!" The mob tittered evilly; I could have punched Alan out! "When a man loves a woman as much as I love Kathy," my new spouse went on, "plain words can't say it all. A fellow has to have poetry. Here's a song that expresses how I feel about the person who means everything to me. It's called 'The Heather and the Broom.'"

He balanced his instrument—a sort of guitar that one of the Ukrainians had been teaching him to play—on his knee and, smiling my way, began strumming. His song was the one that I'd heard him practicing all week:

"I come from the land Of the primrose and ling. I saw the fleet falcon And heard the lark sing. I mimicked the warbler And whistled its trill; I watched the clouds drifting As I climbed up the hill.

"You loved me so kindly You loved me so well, You showed me the magic You could weave with your spell. Your grace stilled the storm, Your kiss quelled my woes, And your eyes mirrored the gleam Of the stars as they rose.

"We journeyed together Through seasons of love, As proud as the eagle, As calm as the dove. We felt our joy growing Through trials forlorn; I stood by your bedside When our child was born.

"You loved me so kindly You loved me so well, You showed me the magic You could weave with your spell. Your grace stilled the storm, Your kiss quelled my woes, And your eyes mirrored the gleam Of the stars as they rose.

"We'll pale like the hoarfrost That withers the rose. We'll fall like the leaves do When life finally goes. But remember, my darling, The heather and broom, Whose beauty in springtime Shall spread o'er our tomb.

"You loved me so kindly You loved me so well, You showed me the beauty You could weave with your spell. Your grace stilled the storm, Your kiss quelled my woes, And your eyes mirrored the gleam Of the stars as they rose."

As he sang the last reprise, my eyes misted. His song had driven home the surety of loss and bereavement—the certain fact that one of us would have to go on alone one day. Such was the mortal's fate and it could never be avoided. Notwithstanding, I vowed then and there not to let a single day of the life we shared be wasted—especially not these precious days of our youth.

His serenade finished, Alan gave me a hug and the crowd clapped quietly in empathy.

I thought the act was over and so stood up, but Alan nudged me back into my seat and addressed the audience again, saying:

"I can't sing more sad songs—I'm too happy. But there's an old tune that'll fit this occasion much better. I've written new words to it and I hope that all of you, and especially you, Kathy, will enjoy it. I call it, 'Major Breen.'"

'Major Breen'? My ears pricked up. This sounded like a dirty trick set to spring and I braced myself for the worst.

"Tra-la-la-la-la la-la-la Happy Birthday, Major Breen Happy Birthday, Major Breen!

"Tonight's the night I've waited for, Because you're not our C-O anymore; You've turned into the loveliest gal I've ever seen. Happy Birthday, Major Breen!

"What happened to that stiff hard case? Our camp commander now wears paint on her face. I can't believe my eyes You're just a soldier's dream! It must be magic, Major Breen!

"When you were on our backs, You were worse than ague. Then when we hit Helene, We thought we'd have to frag you.

"Every night and every day, You made us toe the line. But Fate's gone and changed you, Life's rearranged you, From now on you're going to be mine!

"So, if I smile with sweet surprise It's just because you've filled out Right before my eyes. You've become the only woman I could love, Thank you angels high above!

"If I smile with sweet surprise, It's just because you've filled out Right before my eyes. . . ."

The music trailed off and Alan finished his song softly and a cappella:

"You've turned into the prettiest girl I ever knew . . . ."

I'll never forget the look in his eyes just then.

". . . Let me tell the world I love you—Kathy Drew."

I let Alan draw me close and, with the whole world watching, we kissed a kiss that shut out everything else in the universe—everything, that is, except ourselves.

* * * *

 

Epilogue

True hope is swift, and flies with swallow's wings;
Kings it makes gods, and meaner creatures kings.

KING RICHARD III

With only a few more pages in my journal, I must bring this memoir to its close. But my decision to end it is more than a matter of mere writing material. Were I to go beyond this point, my narrative would cease to be the story of a man of Earth named Rupert Breen, and become, albeit seamlessly, that of Katherine Drew, a woman of the planet Eden.

It's not that I believe that Katherine's life must be an uninteresting one—far from it. I have, in fact, begun recording the chronicles of the 54^th on clay tablets, using a space-saving shorthand which I worked hard at developing. But Kathy's story would be impossible to present except as a diary because, unlike Rupert's life, Katherine's has only begun to unfold—at least I hope that that is true.

I shall now summarize the more important events of the last few months. Except for several detachees who chose to marry and remain at the Ukrainian villages, all of our people have returned to us. Klink is one of several hamlets in this area now, since Casimir convinced us that it would be wise to establish numerous small settlements, thereby shortening the men's journey to the fields each morning. It takes many large fields and a wide hunting ground to provide for over five hundred people.

A new spring has come and, though it seems as if they arrived only yesterday, most of our Ukrainian friends have departed for home. Among those who have remained behind are Casimir, Irina, and Natalya. These three have no families to return to and, perhaps, they understand how much we still need them. They have become the grandfather and grandmothers to all of us and we consult them frequently—whenever the wisdom and good sense that comes with a long life is needed. One can scarcely believe how often that is.

Another Ukrainian staying with us is Mikhail Chatilov. Widowed childless after five years on Eden, Mikhail has dearly wanted a new wife and family. His efforts won the hand of one of our women, she who now calls herself Rachel. I have to confess that I played a matchmaker's role in this case, advising Mikhail on the subject of his beloved's tastes and how to get on her good side. My intervention must have helped, for his courtship flourished despite its very rocky start. It was hard to suddenly start calling Sebastian Lowry 'Rachel Chatilov'—but, no doubt, she has found it equally difficult addressing me as Mrs. Katherine Drew. Regardless, I think the match will be a good one for Rachel. She has so far voiced no complaints about her partner, either as a companion or a father.

Yes, a new Sebastian Lowry is now with us. I think, and I pray, that this gift of Eden will help heal the wound that Rachel has endured since the loss of her original family. And, between her husband, her infant, and her work, she will have little time to grieve for the past.

But, the first child born in Klink was Lucy Roberts. Mary and Harold still hope for a son and have decided, should they have more than one, that the first should be a Roberts and the second a Hitchcock—otherwise the name of Hitchcock would disappear forever and that would not be fair. Alan likes their plan and suggests that we follow their example. The idea of having more than one child no longer seems so daunting and so, God willing, there may yet be a house of Breen established on the planet Eden. I might also add here that Mary's little girl has never yet lacked for milk, though her mother once feared her starvation.

Melissa got pregnant lately and she and Philbrick were married. Crawford seems serious about a Ukrainian woman named Nadezhda, whom he met during his stay at her village. By the way, Alan and I passed some months in the Ukrainian hamlets training their best and brightest in medical procedure. My technical role was "official liaison," but in reality I acted more often as Alan's nurse-assistant. As a result, I learned more about medicine than the students whom Alan had come to teach.

Living away from the battle group was an education in other ways, too. For one thing, it was the first time since my own childhood that I've been able to observe and interact with youngsters of all ages. Sebastian was right; there is an undeniable magic in children, one which must be experienced to be appreciated. I also learned a lot about how real women think by means of sharing in their society from day to day. Yet I still feel more comfortable in the company of men.

Alan attempted to realize Sebastian's—Rachel's—program for eliminating infectious illness on Eden. We may have made progress in this regard but despite all we do, who knows when the population may be reinfected by new exiles dropping from space? I have suggested to Rachel that if we successfully eliminate pesky but non-lethal diseases, our descendants might totally lose their resistance. My worry would then be that if these strains were later reintroduced to Eden from space they will take a heavy toll. She is now considering the risk factors of her program very carefully.

Alan and I are now back where we belong. Despite my fears, he was not lured away by any Ukrainian temptress, though some of them must have tried. There is much that binds us together after all, not least of which is the child whose tossings and turnings I feel within me even as I write these words. Soon, very soon, I shall behold my son or daughter, and then I shall know that pride of the life-giver—that same pride which has decided the course of so much human history.

Even were I not facing imminent child-rearing, there would be no lack of things to do. Although I have no doubt that Crawford would return command to me for the asking, the privileges and burdens of rank no longer hold any special appeal; life seems full and rich enough without them. Anyway, Crawford fits the image of an all-purpose "tribal chief" better than ever I could—at least, the way that things have worked out.

I hear hail-fellow voices and laughter around me. Yet it is never far from my mind that sorrow may instantly turn joy into mourning. Our cemetery so far holds only two graves, but with the march of time there shall be more—many more. The closer I come to bearing life myself, the more conscious I am of death's overawing shadow. The more my contentment grows, the more I recognize that sadness and separation is the inescapable destiny of all mankind.

When I visit our little graveyard, as I sometimes do, I think of the future families of Eden—the Breens, the Lowrys, the Chatilovs, the Hitchcocks, the Drews, the Roberts, and many others, but I regret that there shall be no Olsons, no Woolenskas. These two young people didn't have to die—not so soon, so foolishly, so uselessly. They never knew, and none of us was as yet wise enough to tell them, that they feared only the unknown. It is an awesome thing, the unknown, but while it must be faced, it never should be feared. The unknown which destroyed these fine young soldiers turned out to be nothing more terrible than the gift of immortality.

I speak not, of course, of the immortality of the individual. The tomb must eventually receive the whole of the 54^th, since, as Xerxes once lamented, the greatest of armies quickly turn to dust. It is not armies, but families which are eternal. My generation shall pass away, as have others before it, but we will yet live on in our children's flesh, and in their memories. Perhaps, if we live well, we shall also be remembered well.

None of us expected to leave a legacy when this strange adventure began. We of the 54^th had been sterile seeds fallen upon dry and barren ground. But, as if by magic, that has ceased to be true; we have become the seedlings of a mighty forest that is yet to be. We have, in fact, discovered ourselves in the midst of a miracle—the miracle of Man in partnership with Woman.

Today we plant, but who knows the name of the harvest? Not four thousand years separate the farmers of Jericho from Earth's colonies in the stars. In the passage of another four thousand years what will the seeds of Eden yield? Villages, city-states, kingdoms, nations? Another empire in the sky? The possibilities are too awesome to contemplate.

I, Katherine Drew, Rupert Breen, or whatever name I call myself, wish that I might live those four thousand years to see it happen before my eyes. Sadly, my fellow castaways and I may do no more than lay the foundations upon which others must build. There is much we can do in the short span granted us, and much that we must do. But we should never forget precisely what we are building and whom we are building it for.

Now my log is nearly full. Let me end the story of Rupert Breen with this single thought:

Nothing that we dream, nothing that we aspire to, nothing that we achieve, has any purpose—not unless it extends beyond ourselves, not unless it seeks the well-being of future ages, not unless it strives to reach out and clasp the hand of Destiny. . . .

It is nothing at all—unless it is for the children.

THE END

 

© 1996
The above work is copyrighted material. Anyone wishing to copy, archive, or re-post this story must contact the author for permission.