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waited for that to die down. "I'm not unsympathetic," I
continued. "I used to be one of you. Well, better, but one of
you." That got me some derisive shouts, a few laughs. "I know
none of your editors will take no for an answer. So I'll give
you a break. In fifteen minutes this door will open, and you're
all free to come in. I don't guarantee you an interview, but
this idiocy has got to stop. My neighbors are complaining."
I knew that last would buy me exactly no sympathy, but the
promise of opening the door would keep them solidly in place
for a while. I waved to them, and switched off the screen.
I told the door to open up in fifteen minutes, and hurried
to the back.
A previous call to the police had cleared the smaller
group out of the corridor back there. It was not a public
space, so I could do that, and the reporters had to retreat to
Texas, from which they could not be chased out, so long as they
didn't violate any of the appropriate technology laws by
bringing in modern tools or clothing. That was fine with me; I
knew the land, and they didn't.
I came out of the cave cautiously. It was full night, with
no "moon," a fact I'd checked in my weather schedule. I peered
over the edge of the cliff and saw them down there, gathered
around a campfire near the river, drinking coffee and toasting
marshmallows. I shouldered my pack, settled all my other items
so they would make no noise, and scaled the smaller, gentler
slope that rose behind the cave. I soon came to stand on top of
the hill, and Mexico lay spread out before me in the starlight.
I started off, walking south, keeping my spirits up by
envisioning the scene when the hungry hordes poured through the
door to find an empty nest.
#
For the next three weeks I lived off the land. At least, I
did as much of that as I could. Texas or Mexico, the pickings
could be mighty slim in these parts, partner. There were some
edible plants, some cactus, none of which you'd call a gourmet
delight, but I dutifully tried as many of them as I could find
and identify out of my disneyland resident's manual. I'd
brought along staples like pancake batter and powdered eggs and
molasses and corn meal, and some spices, mostly chili powder. I
wasn't entirely on my own. I could sneak into Lonesome Dove or
New Austin when things started getting low.
So in the morning I'd eat flapjacks and eggs, and at night
beans and cornbread, but I supplemented this fare with wild
game.
What I'd had in mind was venison. There are plenty of deer
and antelope playing around my home, even a few buffalo
roaming. Buffalo seemed a bit extreme for one person, but I'd
brought a bow and arrow hoping to bag a pronghorn or small buck
deer. The discouraging word was, those critters are hard to
sneak up on, hard to get in range of, if your range is as short
as mine. As a resident of Texas, I was entitled to take two
deer or antelope each year, and I'd never bagged even one. I'd
never wanted to. You can use firearms for this purpose, but
checking them out of the disneyland office was a process so
beset with forms in triplicate and solemn oaths that I never
even considered it. Besides, I wondered, in passing, if the CC
would allow me such a lethal weapon in view of my recent track
record.
I was also allowed a virtually unlimited quota of
jackrabbits, and that's what I ate. I didn't shoot any, though
I shot at them. I set snares. Most mornings I'd find one or two
struggling to get free. The first one was hard to kill and the
killing cost me my appetite, but it got easier after that. It
was just as I "remembered" it from Scarpa. Before long it
seemed natural.
I had found one of the very few places in Luna where I
could hide out until the Silvio story cooled off. I calculated
that would take about a month. It would be a year or more
before the whole thing was old news, but I was sure my own part
in the travesty would be largely forgotten sooner than that. So
I spent my days wandering the length and breadth of my huge
back yard. There wasn't a lot to do. I occupied myself by
catching rattlesnakes. All this takes is a certain amount of
roaming around, and a bit of patience. They just coil up and
hiss and rattle when you find them, and can be captured using a
long stick and a bit of rope to loop around their necks. I was
very careful handling them as I couldn't afford to be bitten.
That would mean either returning to the world for medical
treatment, or surrendering myself to the tender mercies of Ned
Pepper. If you call up an old Boy Scout manual and read the
section on snakebite, it'll curl your hair.
Once a week I'd creep up on the entrance to my old back
door. By the second week there was no one there. I went over to
my unfinished cabin and counted the reporters camped nearby.
They had figured out where I was, in a general way. I'm sure
somebody in town had reported my stealthy shopping trips. It
stood to reason that, having abandoned my apartment, I'd show
up at the cabin sooner or later. And they were right. I did
plan to return there.
At the end of the third week there were still a dozen
people at the cabin. Enough was enough, I decided. So I waited
until long after dark, watching them forlornly trying to
entertain each other without benefit of television, saw them
crawl into sleeping bags one by one, many riproaring drunk. I
waited still longer, until their fire was embers, until the
surprising cold of the desert night had chilled the snakes in
my bag, making them dopey and tractable. Then I stole into
their camp, silent as any red Indian, and left a rattler within
a few feet of each of the sleeping bags. I figured they'd crawl
in to get warm, and judging from the screams and shouts I heard
about an hour before sunrise, that's just what they did.
Morning found them all gone. I watched from a distance
through my field glasses as I made my breakfast of pancakes and
left-over rabbit chili as they drifted back one by one after
having been treated by autodocs. The sheriff showed up a little
later and started writing out citations. If anything, the cries
were even louder when the reporters found out the price they
would have to pay for non-resident killing of indigenous
reptiles. He wasn't impressed at all by their pleas that most
of the snakes had been killed by accident, in the struggle to
get out of the sleeping bags.
I thought they might post a guard the next night, but they
didn't. City slickers, all of them. So I crept in again and
left the remainder of my stock. After my second raid, only four
of the hardiest returned. They were probably going to stay
indefinitely, and they'd be alert now. Too bad they couldn't
prove I'd sicced the snakes on them.
I walked up to the cabin and started changing my clothes.
It took them a minute or two to notice me, then they all
gathered around. Four people can hardly be called a mob, but
four reporters come close. They all shouted at once, they got
in my way, they grew angrier by the minute. I treated them as
if they were unusually mobile rocks, too big to move, but not
worth looking at and certainly not something to talk to. Even
one word would only serve to encourage them.
They hung around most of the day. Others joined them,
including one idiot who had brought an antique camera with
bellows, black cape, and a bar to hold flash powder, apparently
hoping to get a novelty picture of some kind. There was a
novelty picture in it, when the powder slipped down his shirt
and ignited and the others had to slap out the flames. Walter
ran the sequence in his seven o'clock edition with a funny
commentary.
Even reporters will give up eventually if there's really
no story there. They wanted to interview me, but I wasn't
important enough to rate a come-and-go watch, supplying the
'pad with those endlessly fascinating shots of a person walking
from his door to his car, and arriving home at night, not
answering the questions of the throng of reporters with nothing
better to do. So by the second day they all went away, gone to
haunt someone else. You don't give assignments like that to
your top people. I'd known guys who spent all their time staked
out on this or that celebrity, and not one could pour piss out
of a boot.
It felt good to be alone again. I got down to serious
work, finishing my un-completed cabin.
#
Brenda came by on the second day. For a while she said
nothing, just stood there and watched me hammering shingles
into place.
She looked different. She was dressed well, for one thing,
and had done some interesting things with make-up. Now that she
had some money, I supposed she had found professional advice.
The biggest new thing about her was that she was about fifteen
kilos heavier. It had been distributed nicely, around the
breasts and hips and thighs. For the first time, she looked
like a real woman, only taller.
I took the nails out of my mouth and wiped my forehead
with the back of my hand.
"There's a thermos of lemonade by the toolbox," I said.
"You can help yourself, if you'll bring me a glass."
"It's talking," she said. "I was told it wouldn't talk,
but I had to come see for myself." She had found the thermos
and couple of glasses, which she inspected dubiously. They
could have used a wash, I admit it.
"I'll talk," I said. "I just won't do interviews. If
that's what you came for, take a look in that gunny sack by
your feet."
"I heard about the snakes," she said. She was climbing up
the ladder to join me on the ridge of the roof. "That was sort
of infantile, don't you think?"
"It did the job." I took the glass of lemonade and she
gingerly settled herself beside me. I drained mine and tossed
the glass down into the dirt. She was wearing brand new denim
pants, very tight to show off her newly-styled hips and legs,
and a loose blouse that managed to hide the boniness of her
shoulders, knotted tight between her breasts, baring her good
midriff. The tattoo around her navel seemed out of place, but
she was young. I fingered the material of her blouse sleeve.
"Nice stuff," I said. "You did something to your hair."
She patted it self-consciously, pleased that I'd noticed.
"I was surprised Walter didn't sent you out here," I said.
"He'd figure because we worked together, I might open up to
you. He'd be wrong, but that's how he'd figure it."
"He did send me," she said. "I mean, he tried. I told him
to go to hell."
"Something must be wrong with my ears. I thought you
said--"
"I asked him if he wanted to see the hottest young
reporter in Luna working for the Shit."
"I'm flabbergasted."
"You taught me everything I know."
I wasn't going to argue with that, but I'll admit I felt
something that might have been a glow of pride. Passing the
torch, and all that, even if the torch was a pretty shoddy
affair, one I'd been glad to be rid of.
"So how's all the notoriety treating you?" I asked her.
"Has it cost you your sweet girlish laughter yet?"
"I never know when you're kidding." She'd been gazing into
the purple hills, into the distance, like me. Now she turned
and faced me, squinting in the merciless sunlight. Her face was
already starting to burn. "I didn't come here to talk about me
and my career. I didn't even come to thank you for what you
did. I was going to, but everybody said don't, they said Hildy
doesn't like stuff like that, so I won't. I came because I'm
worried about you. Everybody's worried about you."
"Who's everybody?"
"Everybody. All the people in the newsroom. Even Walter,
but he'd never admit it. He told me to ask you to come back. I
told him to ask you himself. Oh, I'll tell you his offer, if
you're interested--"
"--which I'm not."
"--which is what I told him. I won't try to fool you,
Hildy. You never got close to the people you worked with, so
maybe you don't know how they feel about you. I won't say they
love you, but you're respected, a lot. I've talked to a lot of
people, and they admire your generosity and the way you play
fair with them, within the limits of the job."
"I've stabbed every one of them in the back, one time or
another."
"That's not how they feel. You beat them to a lot of
stories, no question, but the feeling is it's because you're a
good reporter. Oh, sure, everybody knows you cheat at cards--"
"What a thing to say!"
"--but nobody can ever catch you at it, and I think they
even admire you for that. For being so good at it."
"Vile calumny, every word of it."
"Whatever. I promised myself I wouldn't stay long, so I'll
just say what I came here to say. I don't know just what
happened, but I saw that Silvio's death wasn't something you
could just shrug off. If you ever want to talk about it,
completely off the record, I'm willing to listen. I'm willing
to do just about anything." She sighed, and looked away for a
moment, then back. "I don't really know if you have friends,
Hildy. You keep a part of yourself away from everyone. But I
have friends, and I need them. I think of you as one of my
friends. They can help out when things are really bad. So what
I wanted to say, if you ever need a friend, any time at all,
just call me."
I didn't want this, but what could I do, what could I say?
I felt a hot lump in the back of my throat. I tried to speak,
but it would get into entirely too much if I ever started, into
things I don't think she needed or wanted to know.
She patted my knee and started to get down off the roof. I
grabbed her hand and pulled her back. I kissed her on the lips.
For the first time in many days I smelled a human smell other
than my own sweat. She was wearing a scent I had worn the day
we kidnapped the Grand Flack.
She would have been happy to go farther but it wasn't my
scene and we both knew it, and both knew I'd had nothing in
mind other than to thank her for caring enough to come out
here. So she climbed down from the roof, started back into
town. She turned once, waved and smiled at me.
I worked furiously all afternoon, evening, and into the
night, until it grew too dark to see what I was doing.
#
Cricket came by the next day. I was working on the roof
again.
"Git down off'n that there shack, you cayuse!" she
shouted. "This here planet ain't big enough fer the both of
us." She was pointing a chromeplated six-shooter at me. She
pulled the trigger, and a stick shot out and a flag unfurled.
It said BANG! She rolled it up and put the gun back on her hip
as I came down the ladder, grateful of the interruption. It was
the hottest part of the day; I'd taken my shirt off and my skin
shone as if I'd just stepped out of the shower.
"The hombre back in the bar said this stuff would take the
hide off of a rattlesnake," she said, holding up a bottle of
brown liquid. "I told him that's what I intended to use it
for." I held out my hand. She scowled at it, then took it. She
was dressed in full, outrageous "western" regalia, from the
white Stetson hat to the highheeled lizard boots, with many a
pearly button and rawhide fringe in between. You expected her
to whip out a guitar and start yodeling "Cool Water." She was
also sporting a trim blonde mustache.
"I hate the soup strainer," I said, as she poured me a
drink.
"So do I," she admitted. "I'm like you; I don't care to
mix. But my little daughter bought it for me for my birthday,
so I figure I have to wear it for a few weeks to make her
happy."
"I didn't know you had a daughter."
"There's a lot you don't know about me. She's at that age
when gender identity starts to crop up in their minds. One of
her friend's mother just got a Change, and Lisa's telling me
she wants to have a daddy for a while. Hell, at least it goes
with the duds." She had been digging in a pocket. Now she
flipped out a wallet and showed me a picture of a girl of about
six, a sweeter, younger version of herself. I tried my hand at
a few complimentary phrases, and became aware she was curling
her lip at me.
"Oh, shut up, Hildy," she said. "You being 'nice' just
reminds me of why you're doing it, you louse."
"Did you have any trouble getting out of the Studio?"
"They roughed me up pretty good. Knocked out my front
teeth, broke a couple of fingers. But the cavalry arrived and
got pictures of the whole thing, and right now they're talking
to my lawyers. I guess I got you to thank for that; the timely
arrival, I mean."
"No need to thank me."
"Don't worry, I wasn't going to."
"I was surprised it was so easy to get the drop on you."
She brought out two shot glasses and poured some of her
rattlesnake-hide remover in each, then looked at me in a funny
way.
"So am I. You can probably imagine, I've been thinking it
over. I think it was Brenda being there. I must have thought
she'd slow you down. Jog your elbow in some way when it came
time to do the dirty deed." She handed me a glass, and we both
drained them. She made a face; I was a little more used to the
stuff, but it never goes down easy. "All subconscious, you
understand. But I thought you'd hesitate, since it's so obvious
how much she looks up to you. So while I was waiting for that
window of vulnerability I made the great mistake of turning my
back on you, you son of a bitch."
"Bitch will do."
"I meant what I said. I was thinking of the male Hildy I
knew, and he would have hesitated."
"That's ridiculous."
"Maybe so. But I think I'm right Changing is almost always
more than just re-arranging the plumbing. Other things change,
too. So I was caught in the middle, thinking of you as a man
who'd do something stupid in the presence of a little pussy,
not as the ruthless cunt you'd become."
"It was never like that with me and Brenda."
"Oh, spare me. Sure, I know you never screwed her. She
told me that. But a man's always aware of the possibility. As a
woman you know that. And you use it, if you have any brains,
just like I do."
I couldn't say she was definitely wrong. I know that
changing sex is, for me, more than just a surface thing. Some
attitudes and outlooks change as well. Not a lot, but enough to
make a difference in some situations.
"You're sleeping with her, aren't you?" I asked, in some
surprise.
"Sure. Why not?" She took another drink and squinted at
me, then shook her head. "You're good at a lot of things,
Hildy, but not so good at people." I wasn't sure what she meant
by that. Not that I disagreed, I just wasn't sure what she was
getting at.
"She sent you out here?"
"She helped. I would have come out here anyway, to see if
I really wanted to put a few new dents in your skull. I was
going to, but what's the point? But she's worried about you.
She said having Silvio die in your arms like that hit you
pretty hard."
"It did. But she's exaggerating."
"Could be. She's young. But I'll admit, I was surprised to
see you quit. You've talked about it ever since I've known you,
so I just assumed it was nothing but talk. You really going to
squat out here for the rest of your life?" She looked sourly
around at the blasted land. "What the hell you gonna do, once
this slum is finished? Grow stuff? What can you raise out here,
anyway?"
"Calluses and blisters, mostly." I showed her my hands.
"I'm thinking of entering these in the county fair."
She poured another drink, corked the bottle, and handed it
to me. She drained her glass in one gulp.
"Lord help me, I think I'm beginning to like this stuff."
"Are you going to ask me to go back to work?"
"Brenda wanted me to, but I said I don't want to get that
mixed up in your karma. I've got a bad feeling about you,
Hildy. I don't know just what it is, but you've had an
absolutely incredible run of good luck, for a reporter. I mean
the David Earth story, and Silvio."
"Not such good luck for David and Silvio."
"Who cares? What I'm saying, I have this feeling you'll
have to pay for all that. You're in for a run of bad luck."
"You're superstitious."
"And bi-sexual. See, you learned three new things about me
today."
I sighed, and debated taking one more drink. I knew I'd
fall off the roof if I did.
"I want to thank you, Cricket, for coming all the way out
here to tell me I'm jinxed. A gal really needs to hear that
from time to time."
She grinned at me. "I hope it ruined your day."
I waved my hand at the desolation around us.
"How could anyone ruin all this?"
"I'll admit, making all this any worse is probably beyond
even my formidable powers. And I'll go now, back to the glitter
and glamour and madcap whirl of my life, leaving you to
languish with the lizards, and will add only these words, to
wit, Brenda is right, you do have friends, and I'm one, though
I can't imagine why, and if you need anything, whistle, and
maybe I'll come, if I don't have anything else to do."
And she leaned over and kissed me.
#
They say that if you stay in one place long enough,
everybody you ever met will eventually go by that spot. I knew
it had to be true when I saw Walter struggling up the trail
toward my cabin. I couldn't imagine what could have brought him
out to West Texas other than a concatenation of mathematical
unlikelihoods of Dickensian proportions. That, or Cricket and
Brenda were right: I did have friends.
I needn't have worried about that last possibility.
"Hildy, you're a worthless slacker!" he shouted at me from
three meters away. And what a sight he was. I don't think he'd
ever visited an historically-controlled disneyland in his life.
One can only imagine, with awe, the titanic struggles it must
have taken to convince him that he could not wear his office
attire into Texas, that his choices were nudity, or period
dress. Well, nudity was right out, and I resolved to give
thanks to the Great Spirit for not having had to witness that.
The sight of Walter in his skin would have put the buzzards off
their feed. So out of the rather limited possibilities in his
size in the disney tourist costume shop, he had selected a cute
little number in your basic Riverboat Gambler style: black
pants, coat, hat, and boots, white shirt and string tie,
scarlet-andmaroon paisley vest with gold edging and brass watch
fob. As I watched, the last button on the vest gave up the
fight, popping off and ricocheting off a rock with a sound
familiar to watchers of old western movies, and the buttons on
his shirt were left to struggle on alone. Lozenges of pale,
hairy flesh were visible in the gaps between buttons. His belt
buckle was buried beneath a substantial overhang. His face was
running with sweat. All in all, better than I would have
expected, for Walter.
"Kind of far from the Mississippi, aren't you, tinhorn?" I
asked him.
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"Never mind. You're just the man I wanted to see. Give me
a hand unloading these planks, will you? It'd take me all day,
alone."
He gaped at me as I went to the buckboard which had been
sitting there for an hour, filled with fresh, best-quality
boards from Pennsylvania, boards I intended to use for the
cabin floor, when I got around to it. I clambered up onto the
wagon and lifted one end of a plank.
"Well, come on, pick up the other end."
He thought it over, then trudged my way, looking
suspiciously at the placid team of mules, giving them a wide
berth. He hefted his end, grunting, and we tossed it over the
side.
After we'd tossed enough of them to establish a rhythm, he
spoke.
"I'm a patient man, Hildy."
"Hah."
"Well, I am. What more do you want? I've waited longer
than most men in my position would have. You were tired, sure,
and you needed a rest . . . though how anybody could think of
this as a rest is beyond me."
"You waited for what?"
"For you to come back, of course. That's why I'm here.
Vacation's over, my friend. Time to come back to the real
world."
I set my end of the board down on the pile, wiped my brow
with the back of my arm, and just stared at him. He stared
back, then looked away, and gestured to the lumber. We picked
up another board.
"You could have let me know you were taking a sabbatical,"
he said. "I'm not complaining, but it would have made things
easier. Your checks have kept on going to your bank, of course.
I'm not saying you're not entitled, you'd saved up . . . was it
six, seven months vacation time?"
"More like seventeen. I've never had a vacation, Walter."
"Something always came up. You know how it is. And I know
you're entitled to more, but I don't think you'd leave me out
on a limb by taking it all at once. I know you, Hildy. You
wouldn't do that to me."
"Try me."
"See, what's happened, this big story has come up. You're
the only one I'd trust to cover it. What it is--"
I dropped my end of the last board, startling him and
making him lose his grip. He danced out of the way as the heavy
timber clattered to the floor of the wagon.
"Walter, I really don't want to hear about it."
"Hildy, be reasonable, there's no one else who-"
"This conversation got off on the wrong foot, Walter. Some
way, you always manage to do that with me. I guess that's why I
didn't come right up to you and say it, and that was a mistake,
I see it now, so I'm going to--"
He held up his hand, and once more I fell for it.
"The reason I came," he said, looking down at the ground,
then glancing up at me like a guilty child, " . . . well, I
wanted to bring you this." He held out my fedora, more battered
than ever from being stuffed into his back pocket. I hesitated,
then took it from him. He had a sort of half smile on his face,
and if there had been one gram of gloating in it I'd have
hurled the damn thing right in his face. But there wasn't. What
I saw was some hope, some worry, and, this being Walter, a
certain gruff-but-almost-lovable diffidence. It must have been
hard for him, doing this.
What can you do? Throwing it back was out. I can't say I
ever really liked Walter, but I didn't hate him, and I did
respect him as a newsman. I found my hands working
unconsciously, putting some shape back into the hat, making the
crease in the top, my thumbs feeling the sensuous material. It
was a moment of high symbolism, a moment I hadn't wanted.
"It's still got blood on it," I said.
"Couldn't get it all out. You could get a new one, if this
has bad memories."
"It doesn't matter one way or the other." I shrugged.
"Thanks for going to the trouble, Walter." I tossed the hat on
a pile of wood shavings, bent nails, odd lengths of sawed
lumber. I crossed my arms.
"I quit," I said.
He looked at me a long time, then nodded, and took a
sopping handkerchief from his back pocket and mopped his brow.
"If you don't mind, I won't help you with the rest of
this," he said. "I've got to get back to the office."
"Sure. Listen, you could take the wagon back into town.
The mule skinner said he'd be back for it before dark, but I'm
worried the mules might be getting thirsty, so it would--"
"What's a mule?" he said.
#
I eventually got him seated on the bare wooden board,
reins in hand, a doubtful expression on his choleric face, and
watched him get them going down the primitive trail to town. He
must have thought he was "driving" the mules; just let him try
to turn them from the path to town, I thought. The only reason
I'd let him do it in the first place was that the mules knew
the way.
That was the end of my visitors. I kept waiting for Fox or
Callie to show up, but they didn't. I was glad to have missed
Callie, but it hurt a little that Fox stayed away. It's
possible to want two things at once. I really did want to be
left alone . . . but the bastard could have tried.
#
My life settled into a routine. I got up with the sun and
worked on my cabin until the heat grew intolerable. Then I'd
mosey down into New Austin come siesta time for a few belts of
a home brew the barkeep called Sneaky Pete and a few hands of
five card stud with Ned Pepper and the other regulars. I had to
put on a shirt in the saloon: pure sex discrimination, of the
kind that must have made women's lives hell in the 1800's. When
working, I wore only dungarees, boots, and a sombrero to keep
the worst heat off my head. I was brown as a nut from the waist
up. How women wore the clothes the bargirls had on in a West
Texas summer is one of the great mysteries of life. But, come
to think of it, the men dressed just as heavily. A strange
culture, Earth.
As the evening approached I'd return to the cabin and
labor until sundown. In the evening's light I would prepare my
supper. Sometimes one of my friends would join me. I developed
a certain reputation for buttermilk biscuits, and for my
perpetual pot of beans, into which I'd toss some of the
unlikeliest ingredients imaginable. Maybe I would find a new
career, if I could interest my fellow Lunarians in the
subtleties of Texas chili.
I always stayed awake for about an hour after the last
light of day had faded. I have no way of comparing, of course,
but it seemed to me the nightly display of starry sky was
probably pretty close to the real thing, what I'd see if I were
transported to the real Texas, the real Earth, now that all
man's pollution was gone. It was glorious. Nothing like a Lunar
night, not nearly as many stars, but better in its own way. For
one thing, you never see the Lunar night sky without at least
one thickness of glass between you and the heavens. You never
feel the cooling night breezes. For another, the Lunar sky is
too hard. The stars glare unmercifully, unblinking, looking
down without forgiveness on Man and all his endeavors. In Texas
the stars at night do indeed burn big and bright, but they wink
at you. They are in on the joke. I loved them for that.
Stretched out on my bedroll, listening to the coyotes howling
at the moon--and I loved them for that, too, I wanted to howl
with them . . . I achieved the closest approximation of peace I
had ever found, or am likely to find.
I spent something like two months like that. There was no
hurry on the cabin. I intended to do it right. Twice I tore
down large portions of it when I learned a new method of doing
something and was no longer satisfied with my earlier, shoddier
work. I think I was afraid of having to think of something else
to do when I finished it.
And with good reason. The day came, as it always must,
when I could find nothing else to do. There was not a screw to
tighten on a single hinge, not a surface to sand smoother, no
roof shingle out of place.
Well, I reasoned, there was always furniture to make. That
ought to be a lot harder than walls, a floor, and a roof. All I
had inside was some cheap burlap curtains and a rude bedstead.
I spread my bedroll out on the straw mattress and spent a
restless night "indoors" for the first time in many weeks.
The next day I prowled the grounds, forming vague plans
for a vegetable garden, a well, and-no kidding--a white picket
fence. The fence would be easy. The garden would be a lot
harder, an almost impossible project worthy of my mood at the
time. As for a well, I'd have to have one for the garden, but
somehow the fiction of worth-while labor broke down when I
thought about a well. The reason was that, in Texas, there is
no more water under the surface than there is anywhere else on
Luna. If you want water and aren't conveniently near the Rio
Grande, what you do is dig or drill to a level determined by
lottery for each parcel of land, and when you've done that, the
disneyland board of directors will have a pipe run out to the
bottom of your well and you can pretend you've struck water. At
my cabin that depth was fifteen meters. The labor of digging
that deep didn't daunt me. I knew I was up to it. Hell, even
with a female hormonal system impeding me I'd developed
shoulders and biceps that would have made Bobbie go into
aesthetic shock. Trading my plane and saw for a pick and shovel
would be no problem. That was the part I looked forward to.
What didn't thrill me was the pretending. I'd gotten good
at it, looking at the stars at night and marveling at the size
of the universe. I'd not gone loony; I knew they were just
little lights I could have held in my hand. But at night,
weary, I could forget it. I could forget a lot of things. I
didn't know if I could forget digging fifteen meters for a dry
hole, then seeing the pipe laid and the cool, sweet,
life-giving water fill up that dry hole.
I hate to get too metaphorical. Walter always howled when
I did. Readers tire of metaphors easily, he's always said. Why
the well, and not the stars? Why come this far and balk, why
lose one's imagination right at the end? I don't know, but it
probably had to do with the dry hole concept. I just kept
thinking my entire life was a big dry hole. All I'd ever
accomplished that I was in any way proud of was the cabin . . .
and I hated the cabin.
That night I couldn't get to sleep. I fought it a long
time, then I got up and stumbled through the night with no
lantern until I found my hatchet. I chopped the bedstead to
kindling and piled it against the wall, and I soaked that
kindling in kerosene. I set it alight and walked out the front
door, leaving it open to make a draft, and went slowly up the
low hill behind my property. There I squatted on my haunches
and watched, feeling very little emotion, as the cabin burned
to the ground.
=*= =*= =*= =*=
I wonder if there's a lonelier place anywhere than an
arena designed to seat thirty or forty thousand people, empty.
The King City slash-boxing venue did have an official
name, the Somebody-or-other Memorial Gladiatorium, but it was
another case of honoring someone well-known at the time that
sports history has forgotten. The arena is called, in all the
sports pages, in the minds of bloodthirsty fans everywhere,
even on the twenty-meter sign on the outside, simply the Bucket
of Blood.
It was peaceful now. The concentric circles of seats were
in shadows. The sound system was silent. The blood gutters
around the ring had been sluiced clean, ready for the evening's
fresh torrents. Some of that new blood would come from the man
now standing alone under the ring of harsh white lights
suspended from the obscured ceiling; MacDonald. I walked down
the gentle curvature of the aisle toward him.
He was nude, standing with his back to me. I thought I
didn't make any noise, but he was a tough man to sneak up on.
He looked over his shoulder, not in any alarm, just curious.
"Hello, Hildy." No shock of recognition, no comment that
I'd been male the last time he'd seen me. Maybe he'd heard, or
maybe his eyes just didn't miss much, and very little could
surprise him.
"Do you get nervous before a fight?"
He frowned, and seemed to give the question real thought.
"I don't think so. I get . . . heightened in some way. I
find it hard to sit down. Maybe it's nervousness. So I come up
here and re-think my last fight, remember the things I did
wrong, try to think of ways not to do them wrong the next
time."
"I didn't think you did things wrong." I was looking for
stairs to join him in the ring, but there didn't seem to be
any. I hopped lightly over the meter-high edge.
"Everybody makes mistakes. You try to minimize them, in my
line of work."
I saw that he had a partial erection. Had he been
masturbating? I couldn't deal with that just then, had never
been less interested in sex in my life. I put my hand on his
face. He stood there with his arms folded and looked into my
eyes.
"I need help," I said.
"Yes," he said, and put his arms around me.
#
He took me down to his dressing room, locker room,
whatever he called it. He bustled around for a while, making
drinks for both of us, letting me regain some of my composure.
The funny thing, I hadn't cried. My shoulders had shaken, there
in his arms, and I'd made some funny noises, but no tears came.
I wasn't shaking. My heart was not pounding. I didn't know
quite what to make of it, but I'd never been nearer to
screaming in my life.
"You interrupted my crazy little ritual," he said, handing
me a strawberry margarita. It didn't occur to me until later to
wonder how he knew I drank them.
"Nice bar you have."
"They take good care of me, so long as I draw the crowds.
Cheers." He held his own glass out to me, and we sipped.
Excellent.
"I hope you're not drinking anything too strong."
"No matter what you may think, I'm not suicidal. Not now."
"What do you--"
"I always go out there alone," he said, getting up,
standing with his back to me, cutting off the question he
didn't seem ready to answer yet. "The dirty little secret is,
the anticipation turns me on. I've read up on it. Some people
are aroused by danger. It's more common to be aroused after
you've come through a life-threatening situation. Me, I get it
before."
"I hope I didn't ruin anything for you."
"No. It's not important."
"If you want to relieve the pressure, you know, make love,
we could." I regretted saying it as soon as the words were out
of my mouth. Under other circumstances, sure . . . in fact,
damn sure. He was gorgeous, something I hadn't realized the
other times I'd met him, being male myself at the time. The
body was quite good-lean, compact, made for speed and stamina
rather than power--but, so what? It was a Formula A fighter's
body. His opponent this evening would be wearing essentially
the same body, plus or minus three kilograms, even if she was
female. What I'd been noticing about him were two things: the
hands, and the face. The hands were long and wide, the knuckles
a bit thickened, the palms rough. They moved with a total
assurance, they never dithered, never fumbled. They were hands
that would know how to handle a woman's body.
The face . . . well, it was the eyes, wasn't it? It was a
handsome enough face, craggy in a way I liked, strong brows and
cheeks, the mouth maybe a little prim, but capable of
softening, as when he put his arms around me. But the eyes, the
eyes. Without my being able to describe any one quality or even
set of qualities that should make them so, they were riveting.
When he looked at me, he looked at me, nothing else,
unwavering, seeing more of me than anybody ever should.
Again, he seemed to be considering the offer. He made the
small smile that was the most I'd ever seen him give away.
"It's been a long time since I accepted an offer made with
so much enthusiasm as that," he said.
"Sorry. It was really stupid. Now you'll tell me you're
homosexual."
"Why? Because I turned you down?"
"No, because all my guesses lately turn out wrong. Just
the way you looked at me, though I should have known you aren't
interested now, I just thought I saw . . . something."
"You're not doing too badly. No, I'm . . . do you want to
hear this?"
"If you want to tell."
He gave a shrug that said we both knew the important
things hadn't come up yet, but he was willing to wait.
"Okay. Briefly, for future reference, I'm mostly hetero,
say ninety percent, when male. I haven't been female for a very
long time, and probably never will be again."
"Didn't you like it?"
"I had a problem. I didn't like making love to men. My
love life was almost exclusively with other women. I didn't
like . . . accepting someone else into my body. I was always
afraid to. Women have to be able to surrender too much control.
It made me nervous."
"It doesn't have to be like that."
"So I've been told. It always was for me."
"That's the important thing, I guess." There may have been
a more inane conversation since the Invasion, but no record of
it survives. I took another drink to cover my discomfort. This
whole thing had been a mistake. I saw I'd made him
uncomfortable in some way I didn't understand, and wished I was
somewhere else. Anywhere else. I started to get up, and found I
could not. My arms and legs simply would not operate to lift me
out of my chair. My arms would still lift the drink-I lifted
it, drank, one of the more needed drinks since the night they
invented the strawberry margarita--but they defied my orders to
do anything about getting bodily elevation.
Screwed up? You bet.
I wasn't about to tolerate such a mutiny, so I got angry,
and broke the process down into steps. Put palms flat against
chair arms. Set feet flat on floor. Press down on hands and
feet. Do not operate this machinery under the influence of
narcotic drugs. There you go, Hildy, you're getting up.
"I've been trying to kill myself," I said, and sat back
down.
"You've come to the right place. Tell me about it."
#
You do something often enough, you get good at it. My
opening-up-and-letting-it-all-hang-out skills had never been
strong, but telling my story to Fox, to Liz, even the part of
it I'd told to Callie had at least put a polish on the
narrative. I found myself using some of the same phrases I'd
used the times before, things I'd said that had struck me as
particularly droll or that somehow managed to put a better face
on the situation. I'm a writer, I can't help it. I found myself
almost enjoying the exercise. It was a story I was doing, and
as in any story, there's the parts you think will sell it and
the parts that will simply confuse the reader. And when the
audience is small, you tailor it to what you think they will
like. So, without my intending it, the story because a pitch
for a series I'd like to do in the great Extra Edition of Life.
Or if you prefer, the recitations to Fox, Liz, and Callie had
been out-of-town try-outs, and this was the big-time critic
whose review would make you or break you.
But Andrew wasn't having it. He let me prattle on like
that for almost an hour. I think he was getting a feel for the
particular type of horseshit I was selling, its distinctive
aroma and texture when you stepped in it, the color of it and
the sound it made when it landed. When he knew he'd recognize
that particular kind of manure if it turned up in his pasture
again he held up his hand until my mouth stopped working and he
said "Now tell me what really happened."
So I started over.
I didn't lie the first time through, you understand. But
I'm bound to say I didn't tell the truth, either. All those
years at the Nipple had sharpened my editorial skills
outrageously, and one of the first things you learn as a
reporter is that the easiest way to prevaricate is to simply
not tell all the truth. I wondered, beginning again, if I
remembered how to tell all the truth. If I even knew what all
the truth was. (We could spend a pleasant afternoon debating
whether or not anyone ever knows even a small portion of the
truth, about herself or about anything, but that way madness
lies.) All he wanted was my best shot at telling him what I
knew, without all the gimcracks and self-serving invention one
throws in to make oneself look better. Try it sometime; it's
one of the hardest things you'll ever do.
It takes a long time, too. Doing it well involves going
back to things you may not, at first, have thought relevant to
the story, sometimes way back. I told him things about my
childhood I hadn't even realized I remembered. The process was
also drawn out by the times I just sat there, staring into
space. Andrew never prompted me, never hurried me in any way.
He never asked a single question. The only times he spoke were
in answer to a direct question from me, and if a nod or a shake
of the head would do, that's what I got. A conversational
minimalist, Andrew MacDonald.
Two things alerted me to the fact that I was through with
my story: I had stopped talking, and a plate of sandwiches had
appeared on the table beside me. I fell on the food like a
Visigoth sacking Rome. I don't know when I'd ever been so
hungry. As I stuffed my face I noticed three empty margarita
continued. "I used to be one of you. Well, better, but one of
you." That got me some derisive shouts, a few laughs. "I know
none of your editors will take no for an answer. So I'll give
you a break. In fifteen minutes this door will open, and you're
all free to come in. I don't guarantee you an interview, but
this idiocy has got to stop. My neighbors are complaining."
I knew that last would buy me exactly no sympathy, but the
promise of opening the door would keep them solidly in place
for a while. I waved to them, and switched off the screen.
I told the door to open up in fifteen minutes, and hurried
to the back.
A previous call to the police had cleared the smaller
group out of the corridor back there. It was not a public
space, so I could do that, and the reporters had to retreat to
Texas, from which they could not be chased out, so long as they
didn't violate any of the appropriate technology laws by
bringing in modern tools or clothing. That was fine with me; I
knew the land, and they didn't.
I came out of the cave cautiously. It was full night, with
no "moon," a fact I'd checked in my weather schedule. I peered
over the edge of the cliff and saw them down there, gathered
around a campfire near the river, drinking coffee and toasting
marshmallows. I shouldered my pack, settled all my other items
so they would make no noise, and scaled the smaller, gentler
slope that rose behind the cave. I soon came to stand on top of
the hill, and Mexico lay spread out before me in the starlight.
I started off, walking south, keeping my spirits up by
envisioning the scene when the hungry hordes poured through the
door to find an empty nest.
#
For the next three weeks I lived off the land. At least, I
did as much of that as I could. Texas or Mexico, the pickings
could be mighty slim in these parts, partner. There were some
edible plants, some cactus, none of which you'd call a gourmet
delight, but I dutifully tried as many of them as I could find
and identify out of my disneyland resident's manual. I'd
brought along staples like pancake batter and powdered eggs and
molasses and corn meal, and some spices, mostly chili powder. I
wasn't entirely on my own. I could sneak into Lonesome Dove or
New Austin when things started getting low.
So in the morning I'd eat flapjacks and eggs, and at night
beans and cornbread, but I supplemented this fare with wild
game.
What I'd had in mind was venison. There are plenty of deer
and antelope playing around my home, even a few buffalo
roaming. Buffalo seemed a bit extreme for one person, but I'd
brought a bow and arrow hoping to bag a pronghorn or small buck
deer. The discouraging word was, those critters are hard to
sneak up on, hard to get in range of, if your range is as short
as mine. As a resident of Texas, I was entitled to take two
deer or antelope each year, and I'd never bagged even one. I'd
never wanted to. You can use firearms for this purpose, but
checking them out of the disneyland office was a process so
beset with forms in triplicate and solemn oaths that I never
even considered it. Besides, I wondered, in passing, if the CC
would allow me such a lethal weapon in view of my recent track
record.
I was also allowed a virtually unlimited quota of
jackrabbits, and that's what I ate. I didn't shoot any, though
I shot at them. I set snares. Most mornings I'd find one or two
struggling to get free. The first one was hard to kill and the
killing cost me my appetite, but it got easier after that. It
was just as I "remembered" it from Scarpa. Before long it
seemed natural.
I had found one of the very few places in Luna where I
could hide out until the Silvio story cooled off. I calculated
that would take about a month. It would be a year or more
before the whole thing was old news, but I was sure my own part
in the travesty would be largely forgotten sooner than that. So
I spent my days wandering the length and breadth of my huge
back yard. There wasn't a lot to do. I occupied myself by
catching rattlesnakes. All this takes is a certain amount of
roaming around, and a bit of patience. They just coil up and
hiss and rattle when you find them, and can be captured using a
long stick and a bit of rope to loop around their necks. I was
very careful handling them as I couldn't afford to be bitten.
That would mean either returning to the world for medical
treatment, or surrendering myself to the tender mercies of Ned
Pepper. If you call up an old Boy Scout manual and read the
section on snakebite, it'll curl your hair.
Once a week I'd creep up on the entrance to my old back
door. By the second week there was no one there. I went over to
my unfinished cabin and counted the reporters camped nearby.
They had figured out where I was, in a general way. I'm sure
somebody in town had reported my stealthy shopping trips. It
stood to reason that, having abandoned my apartment, I'd show
up at the cabin sooner or later. And they were right. I did
plan to return there.
At the end of the third week there were still a dozen
people at the cabin. Enough was enough, I decided. So I waited
until long after dark, watching them forlornly trying to
entertain each other without benefit of television, saw them
crawl into sleeping bags one by one, many riproaring drunk. I
waited still longer, until their fire was embers, until the
surprising cold of the desert night had chilled the snakes in
my bag, making them dopey and tractable. Then I stole into
their camp, silent as any red Indian, and left a rattler within
a few feet of each of the sleeping bags. I figured they'd crawl
in to get warm, and judging from the screams and shouts I heard
about an hour before sunrise, that's just what they did.
Morning found them all gone. I watched from a distance
through my field glasses as I made my breakfast of pancakes and
left-over rabbit chili as they drifted back one by one after
having been treated by autodocs. The sheriff showed up a little
later and started writing out citations. If anything, the cries
were even louder when the reporters found out the price they
would have to pay for non-resident killing of indigenous
reptiles. He wasn't impressed at all by their pleas that most
of the snakes had been killed by accident, in the struggle to
get out of the sleeping bags.
I thought they might post a guard the next night, but they
didn't. City slickers, all of them. So I crept in again and
left the remainder of my stock. After my second raid, only four
of the hardiest returned. They were probably going to stay
indefinitely, and they'd be alert now. Too bad they couldn't
prove I'd sicced the snakes on them.
I walked up to the cabin and started changing my clothes.
It took them a minute or two to notice me, then they all
gathered around. Four people can hardly be called a mob, but
four reporters come close. They all shouted at once, they got
in my way, they grew angrier by the minute. I treated them as
if they were unusually mobile rocks, too big to move, but not
worth looking at and certainly not something to talk to. Even
one word would only serve to encourage them.
They hung around most of the day. Others joined them,
including one idiot who had brought an antique camera with
bellows, black cape, and a bar to hold flash powder, apparently
hoping to get a novelty picture of some kind. There was a
novelty picture in it, when the powder slipped down his shirt
and ignited and the others had to slap out the flames. Walter
ran the sequence in his seven o'clock edition with a funny
commentary.
Even reporters will give up eventually if there's really
no story there. They wanted to interview me, but I wasn't
important enough to rate a come-and-go watch, supplying the
'pad with those endlessly fascinating shots of a person walking
from his door to his car, and arriving home at night, not
answering the questions of the throng of reporters with nothing
better to do. So by the second day they all went away, gone to
haunt someone else. You don't give assignments like that to
your top people. I'd known guys who spent all their time staked
out on this or that celebrity, and not one could pour piss out
of a boot.
It felt good to be alone again. I got down to serious
work, finishing my un-completed cabin.
#
Brenda came by on the second day. For a while she said
nothing, just stood there and watched me hammering shingles
into place.
She looked different. She was dressed well, for one thing,
and had done some interesting things with make-up. Now that she
had some money, I supposed she had found professional advice.
The biggest new thing about her was that she was about fifteen
kilos heavier. It had been distributed nicely, around the
breasts and hips and thighs. For the first time, she looked
like a real woman, only taller.
I took the nails out of my mouth and wiped my forehead
with the back of my hand.
"There's a thermos of lemonade by the toolbox," I said.
"You can help yourself, if you'll bring me a glass."
"It's talking," she said. "I was told it wouldn't talk,
but I had to come see for myself." She had found the thermos
and couple of glasses, which she inspected dubiously. They
could have used a wash, I admit it.
"I'll talk," I said. "I just won't do interviews. If
that's what you came for, take a look in that gunny sack by
your feet."
"I heard about the snakes," she said. She was climbing up
the ladder to join me on the ridge of the roof. "That was sort
of infantile, don't you think?"
"It did the job." I took the glass of lemonade and she
gingerly settled herself beside me. I drained mine and tossed
the glass down into the dirt. She was wearing brand new denim
pants, very tight to show off her newly-styled hips and legs,
and a loose blouse that managed to hide the boniness of her
shoulders, knotted tight between her breasts, baring her good
midriff. The tattoo around her navel seemed out of place, but
she was young. I fingered the material of her blouse sleeve.
"Nice stuff," I said. "You did something to your hair."
She patted it self-consciously, pleased that I'd noticed.
"I was surprised Walter didn't sent you out here," I said.
"He'd figure because we worked together, I might open up to
you. He'd be wrong, but that's how he'd figure it."
"He did send me," she said. "I mean, he tried. I told him
to go to hell."
"Something must be wrong with my ears. I thought you
said--"
"I asked him if he wanted to see the hottest young
reporter in Luna working for the Shit."
"I'm flabbergasted."
"You taught me everything I know."
I wasn't going to argue with that, but I'll admit I felt
something that might have been a glow of pride. Passing the
torch, and all that, even if the torch was a pretty shoddy
affair, one I'd been glad to be rid of.
"So how's all the notoriety treating you?" I asked her.
"Has it cost you your sweet girlish laughter yet?"
"I never know when you're kidding." She'd been gazing into
the purple hills, into the distance, like me. Now she turned
and faced me, squinting in the merciless sunlight. Her face was
already starting to burn. "I didn't come here to talk about me
and my career. I didn't even come to thank you for what you
did. I was going to, but everybody said don't, they said Hildy
doesn't like stuff like that, so I won't. I came because I'm
worried about you. Everybody's worried about you."
"Who's everybody?"
"Everybody. All the people in the newsroom. Even Walter,
but he'd never admit it. He told me to ask you to come back. I
told him to ask you himself. Oh, I'll tell you his offer, if
you're interested--"
"--which I'm not."
"--which is what I told him. I won't try to fool you,
Hildy. You never got close to the people you worked with, so
maybe you don't know how they feel about you. I won't say they
love you, but you're respected, a lot. I've talked to a lot of
people, and they admire your generosity and the way you play
fair with them, within the limits of the job."
"I've stabbed every one of them in the back, one time or
another."
"That's not how they feel. You beat them to a lot of
stories, no question, but the feeling is it's because you're a
good reporter. Oh, sure, everybody knows you cheat at cards--"
"What a thing to say!"
"--but nobody can ever catch you at it, and I think they
even admire you for that. For being so good at it."
"Vile calumny, every word of it."
"Whatever. I promised myself I wouldn't stay long, so I'll
just say what I came here to say. I don't know just what
happened, but I saw that Silvio's death wasn't something you
could just shrug off. If you ever want to talk about it,
completely off the record, I'm willing to listen. I'm willing
to do just about anything." She sighed, and looked away for a
moment, then back. "I don't really know if you have friends,
Hildy. You keep a part of yourself away from everyone. But I
have friends, and I need them. I think of you as one of my
friends. They can help out when things are really bad. So what
I wanted to say, if you ever need a friend, any time at all,
just call me."
I didn't want this, but what could I do, what could I say?
I felt a hot lump in the back of my throat. I tried to speak,
but it would get into entirely too much if I ever started, into
things I don't think she needed or wanted to know.
She patted my knee and started to get down off the roof. I
grabbed her hand and pulled her back. I kissed her on the lips.
For the first time in many days I smelled a human smell other
than my own sweat. She was wearing a scent I had worn the day
we kidnapped the Grand Flack.
She would have been happy to go farther but it wasn't my
scene and we both knew it, and both knew I'd had nothing in
mind other than to thank her for caring enough to come out
here. So she climbed down from the roof, started back into
town. She turned once, waved and smiled at me.
I worked furiously all afternoon, evening, and into the
night, until it grew too dark to see what I was doing.
#
Cricket came by the next day. I was working on the roof
again.
"Git down off'n that there shack, you cayuse!" she
shouted. "This here planet ain't big enough fer the both of
us." She was pointing a chromeplated six-shooter at me. She
pulled the trigger, and a stick shot out and a flag unfurled.
It said BANG! She rolled it up and put the gun back on her hip
as I came down the ladder, grateful of the interruption. It was
the hottest part of the day; I'd taken my shirt off and my skin
shone as if I'd just stepped out of the shower.
"The hombre back in the bar said this stuff would take the
hide off of a rattlesnake," she said, holding up a bottle of
brown liquid. "I told him that's what I intended to use it
for." I held out my hand. She scowled at it, then took it. She
was dressed in full, outrageous "western" regalia, from the
white Stetson hat to the highheeled lizard boots, with many a
pearly button and rawhide fringe in between. You expected her
to whip out a guitar and start yodeling "Cool Water." She was
also sporting a trim blonde mustache.
"I hate the soup strainer," I said, as she poured me a
drink.
"So do I," she admitted. "I'm like you; I don't care to
mix. But my little daughter bought it for me for my birthday,
so I figure I have to wear it for a few weeks to make her
happy."
"I didn't know you had a daughter."
"There's a lot you don't know about me. She's at that age
when gender identity starts to crop up in their minds. One of
her friend's mother just got a Change, and Lisa's telling me
she wants to have a daddy for a while. Hell, at least it goes
with the duds." She had been digging in a pocket. Now she
flipped out a wallet and showed me a picture of a girl of about
six, a sweeter, younger version of herself. I tried my hand at
a few complimentary phrases, and became aware she was curling
her lip at me.
"Oh, shut up, Hildy," she said. "You being 'nice' just
reminds me of why you're doing it, you louse."
"Did you have any trouble getting out of the Studio?"
"They roughed me up pretty good. Knocked out my front
teeth, broke a couple of fingers. But the cavalry arrived and
got pictures of the whole thing, and right now they're talking
to my lawyers. I guess I got you to thank for that; the timely
arrival, I mean."
"No need to thank me."
"Don't worry, I wasn't going to."
"I was surprised it was so easy to get the drop on you."
She brought out two shot glasses and poured some of her
rattlesnake-hide remover in each, then looked at me in a funny
way.
"So am I. You can probably imagine, I've been thinking it
over. I think it was Brenda being there. I must have thought
she'd slow you down. Jog your elbow in some way when it came
time to do the dirty deed." She handed me a glass, and we both
drained them. She made a face; I was a little more used to the
stuff, but it never goes down easy. "All subconscious, you
understand. But I thought you'd hesitate, since it's so obvious
how much she looks up to you. So while I was waiting for that
window of vulnerability I made the great mistake of turning my
back on you, you son of a bitch."
"Bitch will do."
"I meant what I said. I was thinking of the male Hildy I
knew, and he would have hesitated."
"That's ridiculous."
"Maybe so. But I think I'm right Changing is almost always
more than just re-arranging the plumbing. Other things change,
too. So I was caught in the middle, thinking of you as a man
who'd do something stupid in the presence of a little pussy,
not as the ruthless cunt you'd become."
"It was never like that with me and Brenda."
"Oh, spare me. Sure, I know you never screwed her. She
told me that. But a man's always aware of the possibility. As a
woman you know that. And you use it, if you have any brains,
just like I do."
I couldn't say she was definitely wrong. I know that
changing sex is, for me, more than just a surface thing. Some
attitudes and outlooks change as well. Not a lot, but enough to
make a difference in some situations.
"You're sleeping with her, aren't you?" I asked, in some
surprise.
"Sure. Why not?" She took another drink and squinted at
me, then shook her head. "You're good at a lot of things,
Hildy, but not so good at people." I wasn't sure what she meant
by that. Not that I disagreed, I just wasn't sure what she was
getting at.
"She sent you out here?"
"She helped. I would have come out here anyway, to see if
I really wanted to put a few new dents in your skull. I was
going to, but what's the point? But she's worried about you.
She said having Silvio die in your arms like that hit you
pretty hard."
"It did. But she's exaggerating."
"Could be. She's young. But I'll admit, I was surprised to
see you quit. You've talked about it ever since I've known you,
so I just assumed it was nothing but talk. You really going to
squat out here for the rest of your life?" She looked sourly
around at the blasted land. "What the hell you gonna do, once
this slum is finished? Grow stuff? What can you raise out here,
anyway?"
"Calluses and blisters, mostly." I showed her my hands.
"I'm thinking of entering these in the county fair."
She poured another drink, corked the bottle, and handed it
to me. She drained her glass in one gulp.
"Lord help me, I think I'm beginning to like this stuff."
"Are you going to ask me to go back to work?"
"Brenda wanted me to, but I said I don't want to get that
mixed up in your karma. I've got a bad feeling about you,
Hildy. I don't know just what it is, but you've had an
absolutely incredible run of good luck, for a reporter. I mean
the David Earth story, and Silvio."
"Not such good luck for David and Silvio."
"Who cares? What I'm saying, I have this feeling you'll
have to pay for all that. You're in for a run of bad luck."
"You're superstitious."
"And bi-sexual. See, you learned three new things about me
today."
I sighed, and debated taking one more drink. I knew I'd
fall off the roof if I did.
"I want to thank you, Cricket, for coming all the way out
here to tell me I'm jinxed. A gal really needs to hear that
from time to time."
She grinned at me. "I hope it ruined your day."
I waved my hand at the desolation around us.
"How could anyone ruin all this?"
"I'll admit, making all this any worse is probably beyond
even my formidable powers. And I'll go now, back to the glitter
and glamour and madcap whirl of my life, leaving you to
languish with the lizards, and will add only these words, to
wit, Brenda is right, you do have friends, and I'm one, though
I can't imagine why, and if you need anything, whistle, and
maybe I'll come, if I don't have anything else to do."
And she leaned over and kissed me.
#
They say that if you stay in one place long enough,
everybody you ever met will eventually go by that spot. I knew
it had to be true when I saw Walter struggling up the trail
toward my cabin. I couldn't imagine what could have brought him
out to West Texas other than a concatenation of mathematical
unlikelihoods of Dickensian proportions. That, or Cricket and
Brenda were right: I did have friends.
I needn't have worried about that last possibility.
"Hildy, you're a worthless slacker!" he shouted at me from
three meters away. And what a sight he was. I don't think he'd
ever visited an historically-controlled disneyland in his life.
One can only imagine, with awe, the titanic struggles it must
have taken to convince him that he could not wear his office
attire into Texas, that his choices were nudity, or period
dress. Well, nudity was right out, and I resolved to give
thanks to the Great Spirit for not having had to witness that.
The sight of Walter in his skin would have put the buzzards off
their feed. So out of the rather limited possibilities in his
size in the disney tourist costume shop, he had selected a cute
little number in your basic Riverboat Gambler style: black
pants, coat, hat, and boots, white shirt and string tie,
scarlet-andmaroon paisley vest with gold edging and brass watch
fob. As I watched, the last button on the vest gave up the
fight, popping off and ricocheting off a rock with a sound
familiar to watchers of old western movies, and the buttons on
his shirt were left to struggle on alone. Lozenges of pale,
hairy flesh were visible in the gaps between buttons. His belt
buckle was buried beneath a substantial overhang. His face was
running with sweat. All in all, better than I would have
expected, for Walter.
"Kind of far from the Mississippi, aren't you, tinhorn?" I
asked him.
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"Never mind. You're just the man I wanted to see. Give me
a hand unloading these planks, will you? It'd take me all day,
alone."
He gaped at me as I went to the buckboard which had been
sitting there for an hour, filled with fresh, best-quality
boards from Pennsylvania, boards I intended to use for the
cabin floor, when I got around to it. I clambered up onto the
wagon and lifted one end of a plank.
"Well, come on, pick up the other end."
He thought it over, then trudged my way, looking
suspiciously at the placid team of mules, giving them a wide
berth. He hefted his end, grunting, and we tossed it over the
side.
After we'd tossed enough of them to establish a rhythm, he
spoke.
"I'm a patient man, Hildy."
"Hah."
"Well, I am. What more do you want? I've waited longer
than most men in my position would have. You were tired, sure,
and you needed a rest . . . though how anybody could think of
this as a rest is beyond me."
"You waited for what?"
"For you to come back, of course. That's why I'm here.
Vacation's over, my friend. Time to come back to the real
world."
I set my end of the board down on the pile, wiped my brow
with the back of my arm, and just stared at him. He stared
back, then looked away, and gestured to the lumber. We picked
up another board.
"You could have let me know you were taking a sabbatical,"
he said. "I'm not complaining, but it would have made things
easier. Your checks have kept on going to your bank, of course.
I'm not saying you're not entitled, you'd saved up . . . was it
six, seven months vacation time?"
"More like seventeen. I've never had a vacation, Walter."
"Something always came up. You know how it is. And I know
you're entitled to more, but I don't think you'd leave me out
on a limb by taking it all at once. I know you, Hildy. You
wouldn't do that to me."
"Try me."
"See, what's happened, this big story has come up. You're
the only one I'd trust to cover it. What it is--"
I dropped my end of the last board, startling him and
making him lose his grip. He danced out of the way as the heavy
timber clattered to the floor of the wagon.
"Walter, I really don't want to hear about it."
"Hildy, be reasonable, there's no one else who-"
"This conversation got off on the wrong foot, Walter. Some
way, you always manage to do that with me. I guess that's why I
didn't come right up to you and say it, and that was a mistake,
I see it now, so I'm going to--"
He held up his hand, and once more I fell for it.
"The reason I came," he said, looking down at the ground,
then glancing up at me like a guilty child, " . . . well, I
wanted to bring you this." He held out my fedora, more battered
than ever from being stuffed into his back pocket. I hesitated,
then took it from him. He had a sort of half smile on his face,
and if there had been one gram of gloating in it I'd have
hurled the damn thing right in his face. But there wasn't. What
I saw was some hope, some worry, and, this being Walter, a
certain gruff-but-almost-lovable diffidence. It must have been
hard for him, doing this.
What can you do? Throwing it back was out. I can't say I
ever really liked Walter, but I didn't hate him, and I did
respect him as a newsman. I found my hands working
unconsciously, putting some shape back into the hat, making the
crease in the top, my thumbs feeling the sensuous material. It
was a moment of high symbolism, a moment I hadn't wanted.
"It's still got blood on it," I said.
"Couldn't get it all out. You could get a new one, if this
has bad memories."
"It doesn't matter one way or the other." I shrugged.
"Thanks for going to the trouble, Walter." I tossed the hat on
a pile of wood shavings, bent nails, odd lengths of sawed
lumber. I crossed my arms.
"I quit," I said.
He looked at me a long time, then nodded, and took a
sopping handkerchief from his back pocket and mopped his brow.
"If you don't mind, I won't help you with the rest of
this," he said. "I've got to get back to the office."
"Sure. Listen, you could take the wagon back into town.
The mule skinner said he'd be back for it before dark, but I'm
worried the mules might be getting thirsty, so it would--"
"What's a mule?" he said.
#
I eventually got him seated on the bare wooden board,
reins in hand, a doubtful expression on his choleric face, and
watched him get them going down the primitive trail to town. He
must have thought he was "driving" the mules; just let him try
to turn them from the path to town, I thought. The only reason
I'd let him do it in the first place was that the mules knew
the way.
That was the end of my visitors. I kept waiting for Fox or
Callie to show up, but they didn't. I was glad to have missed
Callie, but it hurt a little that Fox stayed away. It's
possible to want two things at once. I really did want to be
left alone . . . but the bastard could have tried.
#
My life settled into a routine. I got up with the sun and
worked on my cabin until the heat grew intolerable. Then I'd
mosey down into New Austin come siesta time for a few belts of
a home brew the barkeep called Sneaky Pete and a few hands of
five card stud with Ned Pepper and the other regulars. I had to
put on a shirt in the saloon: pure sex discrimination, of the
kind that must have made women's lives hell in the 1800's. When
working, I wore only dungarees, boots, and a sombrero to keep
the worst heat off my head. I was brown as a nut from the waist
up. How women wore the clothes the bargirls had on in a West
Texas summer is one of the great mysteries of life. But, come
to think of it, the men dressed just as heavily. A strange
culture, Earth.
As the evening approached I'd return to the cabin and
labor until sundown. In the evening's light I would prepare my
supper. Sometimes one of my friends would join me. I developed
a certain reputation for buttermilk biscuits, and for my
perpetual pot of beans, into which I'd toss some of the
unlikeliest ingredients imaginable. Maybe I would find a new
career, if I could interest my fellow Lunarians in the
subtleties of Texas chili.
I always stayed awake for about an hour after the last
light of day had faded. I have no way of comparing, of course,
but it seemed to me the nightly display of starry sky was
probably pretty close to the real thing, what I'd see if I were
transported to the real Texas, the real Earth, now that all
man's pollution was gone. It was glorious. Nothing like a Lunar
night, not nearly as many stars, but better in its own way. For
one thing, you never see the Lunar night sky without at least
one thickness of glass between you and the heavens. You never
feel the cooling night breezes. For another, the Lunar sky is
too hard. The stars glare unmercifully, unblinking, looking
down without forgiveness on Man and all his endeavors. In Texas
the stars at night do indeed burn big and bright, but they wink
at you. They are in on the joke. I loved them for that.
Stretched out on my bedroll, listening to the coyotes howling
at the moon--and I loved them for that, too, I wanted to howl
with them . . . I achieved the closest approximation of peace I
had ever found, or am likely to find.
I spent something like two months like that. There was no
hurry on the cabin. I intended to do it right. Twice I tore
down large portions of it when I learned a new method of doing
something and was no longer satisfied with my earlier, shoddier
work. I think I was afraid of having to think of something else
to do when I finished it.
And with good reason. The day came, as it always must,
when I could find nothing else to do. There was not a screw to
tighten on a single hinge, not a surface to sand smoother, no
roof shingle out of place.
Well, I reasoned, there was always furniture to make. That
ought to be a lot harder than walls, a floor, and a roof. All I
had inside was some cheap burlap curtains and a rude bedstead.
I spread my bedroll out on the straw mattress and spent a
restless night "indoors" for the first time in many weeks.
The next day I prowled the grounds, forming vague plans
for a vegetable garden, a well, and-no kidding--a white picket
fence. The fence would be easy. The garden would be a lot
harder, an almost impossible project worthy of my mood at the
time. As for a well, I'd have to have one for the garden, but
somehow the fiction of worth-while labor broke down when I
thought about a well. The reason was that, in Texas, there is
no more water under the surface than there is anywhere else on
Luna. If you want water and aren't conveniently near the Rio
Grande, what you do is dig or drill to a level determined by
lottery for each parcel of land, and when you've done that, the
disneyland board of directors will have a pipe run out to the
bottom of your well and you can pretend you've struck water. At
my cabin that depth was fifteen meters. The labor of digging
that deep didn't daunt me. I knew I was up to it. Hell, even
with a female hormonal system impeding me I'd developed
shoulders and biceps that would have made Bobbie go into
aesthetic shock. Trading my plane and saw for a pick and shovel
would be no problem. That was the part I looked forward to.
What didn't thrill me was the pretending. I'd gotten good
at it, looking at the stars at night and marveling at the size
of the universe. I'd not gone loony; I knew they were just
little lights I could have held in my hand. But at night,
weary, I could forget it. I could forget a lot of things. I
didn't know if I could forget digging fifteen meters for a dry
hole, then seeing the pipe laid and the cool, sweet,
life-giving water fill up that dry hole.
I hate to get too metaphorical. Walter always howled when
I did. Readers tire of metaphors easily, he's always said. Why
the well, and not the stars? Why come this far and balk, why
lose one's imagination right at the end? I don't know, but it
probably had to do with the dry hole concept. I just kept
thinking my entire life was a big dry hole. All I'd ever
accomplished that I was in any way proud of was the cabin . . .
and I hated the cabin.
That night I couldn't get to sleep. I fought it a long
time, then I got up and stumbled through the night with no
lantern until I found my hatchet. I chopped the bedstead to
kindling and piled it against the wall, and I soaked that
kindling in kerosene. I set it alight and walked out the front
door, leaving it open to make a draft, and went slowly up the
low hill behind my property. There I squatted on my haunches
and watched, feeling very little emotion, as the cabin burned
to the ground.
=*= =*= =*= =*=
I wonder if there's a lonelier place anywhere than an
arena designed to seat thirty or forty thousand people, empty.
The King City slash-boxing venue did have an official
name, the Somebody-or-other Memorial Gladiatorium, but it was
another case of honoring someone well-known at the time that
sports history has forgotten. The arena is called, in all the
sports pages, in the minds of bloodthirsty fans everywhere,
even on the twenty-meter sign on the outside, simply the Bucket
of Blood.
It was peaceful now. The concentric circles of seats were
in shadows. The sound system was silent. The blood gutters
around the ring had been sluiced clean, ready for the evening's
fresh torrents. Some of that new blood would come from the man
now standing alone under the ring of harsh white lights
suspended from the obscured ceiling; MacDonald. I walked down
the gentle curvature of the aisle toward him.
He was nude, standing with his back to me. I thought I
didn't make any noise, but he was a tough man to sneak up on.
He looked over his shoulder, not in any alarm, just curious.
"Hello, Hildy." No shock of recognition, no comment that
I'd been male the last time he'd seen me. Maybe he'd heard, or
maybe his eyes just didn't miss much, and very little could
surprise him.
"Do you get nervous before a fight?"
He frowned, and seemed to give the question real thought.
"I don't think so. I get . . . heightened in some way. I
find it hard to sit down. Maybe it's nervousness. So I come up
here and re-think my last fight, remember the things I did
wrong, try to think of ways not to do them wrong the next
time."
"I didn't think you did things wrong." I was looking for
stairs to join him in the ring, but there didn't seem to be
any. I hopped lightly over the meter-high edge.
"Everybody makes mistakes. You try to minimize them, in my
line of work."
I saw that he had a partial erection. Had he been
masturbating? I couldn't deal with that just then, had never
been less interested in sex in my life. I put my hand on his
face. He stood there with his arms folded and looked into my
eyes.
"I need help," I said.
"Yes," he said, and put his arms around me.
#
He took me down to his dressing room, locker room,
whatever he called it. He bustled around for a while, making
drinks for both of us, letting me regain some of my composure.
The funny thing, I hadn't cried. My shoulders had shaken, there
in his arms, and I'd made some funny noises, but no tears came.
I wasn't shaking. My heart was not pounding. I didn't know
quite what to make of it, but I'd never been nearer to
screaming in my life.
"You interrupted my crazy little ritual," he said, handing
me a strawberry margarita. It didn't occur to me until later to
wonder how he knew I drank them.
"Nice bar you have."
"They take good care of me, so long as I draw the crowds.
Cheers." He held his own glass out to me, and we sipped.
Excellent.
"I hope you're not drinking anything too strong."
"No matter what you may think, I'm not suicidal. Not now."
"What do you--"
"I always go out there alone," he said, getting up,
standing with his back to me, cutting off the question he
didn't seem ready to answer yet. "The dirty little secret is,
the anticipation turns me on. I've read up on it. Some people
are aroused by danger. It's more common to be aroused after
you've come through a life-threatening situation. Me, I get it
before."
"I hope I didn't ruin anything for you."
"No. It's not important."
"If you want to relieve the pressure, you know, make love,
we could." I regretted saying it as soon as the words were out
of my mouth. Under other circumstances, sure . . . in fact,
damn sure. He was gorgeous, something I hadn't realized the
other times I'd met him, being male myself at the time. The
body was quite good-lean, compact, made for speed and stamina
rather than power--but, so what? It was a Formula A fighter's
body. His opponent this evening would be wearing essentially
the same body, plus or minus three kilograms, even if she was
female. What I'd been noticing about him were two things: the
hands, and the face. The hands were long and wide, the knuckles
a bit thickened, the palms rough. They moved with a total
assurance, they never dithered, never fumbled. They were hands
that would know how to handle a woman's body.
The face . . . well, it was the eyes, wasn't it? It was a
handsome enough face, craggy in a way I liked, strong brows and
cheeks, the mouth maybe a little prim, but capable of
softening, as when he put his arms around me. But the eyes, the
eyes. Without my being able to describe any one quality or even
set of qualities that should make them so, they were riveting.
When he looked at me, he looked at me, nothing else,
unwavering, seeing more of me than anybody ever should.
Again, he seemed to be considering the offer. He made the
small smile that was the most I'd ever seen him give away.
"It's been a long time since I accepted an offer made with
so much enthusiasm as that," he said.
"Sorry. It was really stupid. Now you'll tell me you're
homosexual."
"Why? Because I turned you down?"
"No, because all my guesses lately turn out wrong. Just
the way you looked at me, though I should have known you aren't
interested now, I just thought I saw . . . something."
"You're not doing too badly. No, I'm . . . do you want to
hear this?"
"If you want to tell."
He gave a shrug that said we both knew the important
things hadn't come up yet, but he was willing to wait.
"Okay. Briefly, for future reference, I'm mostly hetero,
say ninety percent, when male. I haven't been female for a very
long time, and probably never will be again."
"Didn't you like it?"
"I had a problem. I didn't like making love to men. My
love life was almost exclusively with other women. I didn't
like . . . accepting someone else into my body. I was always
afraid to. Women have to be able to surrender too much control.
It made me nervous."
"It doesn't have to be like that."
"So I've been told. It always was for me."
"That's the important thing, I guess." There may have been
a more inane conversation since the Invasion, but no record of
it survives. I took another drink to cover my discomfort. This
whole thing had been a mistake. I saw I'd made him
uncomfortable in some way I didn't understand, and wished I was
somewhere else. Anywhere else. I started to get up, and found I
could not. My arms and legs simply would not operate to lift me
out of my chair. My arms would still lift the drink-I lifted
it, drank, one of the more needed drinks since the night they
invented the strawberry margarita--but they defied my orders to
do anything about getting bodily elevation.
Screwed up? You bet.
I wasn't about to tolerate such a mutiny, so I got angry,
and broke the process down into steps. Put palms flat against
chair arms. Set feet flat on floor. Press down on hands and
feet. Do not operate this machinery under the influence of
narcotic drugs. There you go, Hildy, you're getting up.
"I've been trying to kill myself," I said, and sat back
down.
"You've come to the right place. Tell me about it."
#
You do something often enough, you get good at it. My
opening-up-and-letting-it-all-hang-out skills had never been
strong, but telling my story to Fox, to Liz, even the part of
it I'd told to Callie had at least put a polish on the
narrative. I found myself using some of the same phrases I'd
used the times before, things I'd said that had struck me as
particularly droll or that somehow managed to put a better face
on the situation. I'm a writer, I can't help it. I found myself
almost enjoying the exercise. It was a story I was doing, and
as in any story, there's the parts you think will sell it and
the parts that will simply confuse the reader. And when the
audience is small, you tailor it to what you think they will
like. So, without my intending it, the story because a pitch
for a series I'd like to do in the great Extra Edition of Life.
Or if you prefer, the recitations to Fox, Liz, and Callie had
been out-of-town try-outs, and this was the big-time critic
whose review would make you or break you.
But Andrew wasn't having it. He let me prattle on like
that for almost an hour. I think he was getting a feel for the
particular type of horseshit I was selling, its distinctive
aroma and texture when you stepped in it, the color of it and
the sound it made when it landed. When he knew he'd recognize
that particular kind of manure if it turned up in his pasture
again he held up his hand until my mouth stopped working and he
said "Now tell me what really happened."
So I started over.
I didn't lie the first time through, you understand. But
I'm bound to say I didn't tell the truth, either. All those
years at the Nipple had sharpened my editorial skills
outrageously, and one of the first things you learn as a
reporter is that the easiest way to prevaricate is to simply
not tell all the truth. I wondered, beginning again, if I
remembered how to tell all the truth. If I even knew what all
the truth was. (We could spend a pleasant afternoon debating
whether or not anyone ever knows even a small portion of the
truth, about herself or about anything, but that way madness
lies.) All he wanted was my best shot at telling him what I
knew, without all the gimcracks and self-serving invention one
throws in to make oneself look better. Try it sometime; it's
one of the hardest things you'll ever do.
It takes a long time, too. Doing it well involves going
back to things you may not, at first, have thought relevant to
the story, sometimes way back. I told him things about my
childhood I hadn't even realized I remembered. The process was
also drawn out by the times I just sat there, staring into
space. Andrew never prompted me, never hurried me in any way.
He never asked a single question. The only times he spoke were
in answer to a direct question from me, and if a nod or a shake
of the head would do, that's what I got. A conversational
minimalist, Andrew MacDonald.
Two things alerted me to the fact that I was through with
my story: I had stopped talking, and a plate of sandwiches had
appeared on the table beside me. I fell on the food like a
Visigoth sacking Rome. I don't know when I'd ever been so
hungry. As I stuffed my face I noticed three empty margarita