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kerosene lamps, then opened the door of the stove and lit the
pile of pine shavings there. I added kindling until I had a
small, hot fire, then filled the coffee pot from the brass
spigot at the bottom of the tall ceramic water cooler and set
it on the stove to boil. Cricket watched all these operations
with interest, sitting at the table in one of my two kitchen
chairs. His hat was on the table, but he still held on to his
cane.
I scooped coffee beans from the glass jar and put them in
the grinder and started cranking it by hand. The room filled
with the smell. When I had the right grind I dumped it into the
basket and put it into the pot. Then I got a plate and the half
of an apple pie sitting on the counter, cut him a huge slice,
and set it before him with a fork and napkin. Only then did I
sit down across from him, remove my hat, and put it next to
his.
He looked down at the pie as if curious as to the purpose
and meaning of such a thing, hesitantly picked up his fork, and
ate a bite. He looked all around the cabin again.
"This is nice," he said. "Homey-like."
"Rustic," I suggested. "Plain. Pioneering. Boeotian."
"Texan," he summed up. He gestured with his fork. "Good
pie."
"Wait'll you taste the coffee."
"I'm sure it'll be first-rate." He gestured again, this
time at the room. "Brenda said you needed help, but I never
imagined this."
"She didn't say that."
"No. What she said was, 'Hildy's smiling at children, and
teaching them her card tricks.' I knew I had to get here as
fast as I could."
#
I can imagine his alarm. But why shouldn't Hildy smile at
children? More important, why had she spent so much time not
smiling at anyone? But the business about the cards was sure to
worry Cricket. I never taught anyone my tricks.
And now for the first of several digression . . .
I can't simply gloss over those missing months with the
explanation that you wouldn't be interested. You wouldn't, but
certain things did happen, mostly of a negative nature, to get
me from the CC to the kitchen table with Cricket, and it's
worth relating a few of them to give a feel for my personal
odyssey during that time.
What I did was use my weekends on a Quest.
Every Saturday I went to the Visitors Center and there I
shed my secret identity as a mildmannered reporter to become a
penny-ante Diogenes, searching endlessly for an honest game. So
far all I'd found were endless variations of the mechanic's
grip, but I was undaunted. Look in the Yellow Files under
Philosophers, Professional, and you'll get a printout longer
than Brenda's arm. Don't even try Counselors or Therapists
unless you have a wheelbarrow to cart away the paper. But
that's what I was doing. Once out in the real world again, I
spent my Saturdays sampling the various ways other people had
found to get through the day, and the next day, and the next
day.
Of the major schools of thought, of the modern or trendy,
I already knew a lot, and many of them I felt could be
dispensed with. No need to attend a Flackite pep rally, for
instance. So I began with the classic cons.
I've already said I'm a cynic. In spite of it, I made my
best attempt to give each and every guru his day in court. But
with the best will in the world it is impossible for me to
present the final results as anything other than a short series
of comedy blackouts. And that's how I spent my Saturdays.
On Sundays, I went to church.
#
It's not really proper to start supper with dessert, but
in Texas one is expected to put some food in front of a guest
within a few minutes of his crossing your threshold. The pie
was the best thing close at hand. But I soon had a bowl of
chili and a plate of cornbread in front of him. He dug in, and
didn't seem to mind the sweat that soon beaded his forehead.
"I thought you'd ride up on a horse," he said. "I kept
listening for it. You surprised me, coming on foot."
"You have any idea how much up-keep there is on a horse?"
"Not the foggiest."
"A lot, trust me. I ride a bicycle. I've got the finest
Dursley Pedersen in Texas, with pneumatic tyres."
"So where is it?" He reached for the pitcher and poured
himself another glass of water, something everyone does when
eating my chili.
"Had a little accident. Were you waiting long?"
"About an hour. I checked the schoolhouse but nobody was
there."
"I'm only there mornings. I have another job." I got a
copy of tomorrow's Texian and handed it to him. He looked at
the colophon, then at me, and started scanning it without
comment.
"How's your daughter doing? Lisa?"
"She's fine. Only she wants to be called Buster now. Don't
ask me why."
"They go through stages like that. My students do, anyway.
I did."
"So did I."
"Last time you said she was into that father thing. Is she
still?"
He made a gesture that took in his new body, and shrugged.
"What do you think?"
#
My researches turned up one listing that seemed an
appropriate place to begin. This fellow was the only living
practitioner of his craft, he vas ze zpitting image of Zigmunt
Frrreud, unt he zpoke viz an aggzent zat zounded zomezing like
zis. Freudian psychotherapy is not precisely debunked, of
course, many schools use it as a foundation, merely throwing
out this or that tenet since found to be based more on Mr.
Freud's own hang-ups than any universal human condition.
How would a strict Freudian handle the realities of Lunar
society? I wondered. This is how:
Ziggy had me recline on a lovely couch in an office that
would have put Walter's to shame. He asked me what seemed to be
the problem, and I talked for about ten minutes with him taking
notes behind me. Then I stopped.
"Very interesting," he said, after a moment. He asked me
about my relationship with my mother, and that was good for
another half hour of talk on my part. Then I stopped.
"Very interesting," he said, after an even longer pause. I
could hear his pen scratching on his note pad.
"So what do you think, doc?" I asked, turning to crane my
neck at him. "Is there any hope for me?"
"I zink," he zaid, and that's enough of zat, "that you
present a suitable case for therapy."
"So what's my problem?"
"It's far too early to tell. I'm struck by the incident
you related between you and your mother when you were, what . .
. fourteen? When she brought home the new lover you did not
approve of."
"I didn't approve of much of anything about her at that
time. Plus, he was a jerk. He stole things from us."
"Do you ever dream of him? Perhaps this theft you worry
about was a symbolic one."
"Could be. I seem to remember he stole Callie's best
symbolic china service and my symbolic guitar."
"Your hostility aimed at me, a father figure, might be
simply transferred from your rage toward your absent father."
"My what?"
"The new lover . . . yes, it could be the real feeling you
were masking was resentment at him for possessing a penis."
"I was a boy at the time."
"Even more interesting. And since then you've gone so far
as to have yourself castrated . . . yes, yes, there is much
here worth looking into."
"How long do you think it will take?"
"I would anticipate excellent progress in . . . three to
five years."
"Actually, no," I said. "I don't think I have any hope of
curing you in that little time. So long, doc, it's been great."
"You still have ten minutes of your hour. I bill by the
hour."
"If you had any sense, you'd bill by the month. In
advance."
#
"Of course, that wasn't the only reason I got the Change,"
Cricket said. "I'd been thinking about it for a while, and I
thought I might as well see what it's like."
I was clearing the table while he relaxed with a glass of
wine--the Imbrium '22, a good vintage, poured into a bottle
labeled "Whiz-Bang Red" and smuggled past the anachronism
checkers. It was a common practice in Texas, where everyone
agreed authenticity could be carried too far.
"You mean this is your first time . . .?"
"I'm younger than you are," he said. "You keep forgetting
that."
"You're right. How's it working out? Do you mind if I
clean up?"
"Go ahead. I'm liking it all right. With a little
practice, I might even get good at it. Still feels funny,
though. I'd like to meet the guy that invented testicles. What
a joker."
"They do seem sort of like a preliminary design, don't
they?" I unfastened my skirt and folded it, then sat at the
little table with the wavy mirror I used for dressing, make-up,
and ablutions, and picked up my button hook. "Should I still be
calling you Cricket? It's not a real masculine name."
He was watching me struggling to un-hook the buttons on my
shoes, which was understandable, as it is an unlikely process
to one raised in an environment of bare feet or slip-on
footwear. Or at least I thought that was what he was watching.
Then I wondered if it was my knickers. They're nothing special:
cotton, baggy, with elastic at mid-calf. But they have cute
little pink ribbons and bows. This raised an interesting
possibility.
"I haven't changed it," he said. "But Lisa-Buster, dammit,
wants me to."
"Yeah? She could call you Jiminy." I had unbuttoned my
shirtwaist blouse and laid it on the skirt. I doffed the
bloomers and was working on the buttons of the
combinations--another loose cotton item fashion has happily
forgotten--before I looked up and had to laugh at the
expression on his face.
"I hit it, didn't I?" I said.
"You did, but I won't answer to it. I'm considering Jim,
or maybe Jimmy, but . . . what you said, that's right out.
What's wrong with Cricket for a man, anyway?"
"Not a thing. I'll continue to call you Cricket." I
stepped out of the combinations and tossed them aside.
"Jesus, Hildy!" Cricket exploded. "How long does it take
you to get out of all that stuff?"
"Not nearly as long as it takes to put it on. I'm never
quite sure I have it all in the right order."
"That's a corset, isn't it?"
"That's right." Actually, he was almost right. We'd gotten
down to the best items by now, no more cotton. The thing he was
staring at could be bought--had been bought--in a specialty
shop on the Leystrasse catering to people with a particular
taste formerly common, now rare, and was not to be confused
with the steel, whalebone, starch and canvas contraptions
Victorian women tortured themselves with. It had elastic in it,
and there the resemblance ended. It was pink and had frills
around the edges and black laces in back. I pulled the pin
holding my hair up, shook my head to let it fall. "Actually,
you can help me with it. Could you loosen the laces for me?" I
waited, then felt his hands fumbling with them.
"How do you handle this in the morning?" he griped.
"I have a girl come in." But not really. What I did was
run my finger down the pressure seams in front and bingo. So if
removing it would have been as easy as that--and it would have
been--why ask for help? You're way ahead of me, aren't you.
"I have to view this as pathology," he said, sitting back
down as I forced the still-tight garment down over my hips and
added it to the pile. "How did you ever get into all this
foolishness?"
I didn't tell him, but it was one piece at a time. The
Board didn't care what you wore under your clothes as long as
you looked authentic on the outside. But I'd grown interested
in the question all women ask when they see the things their
grandmothers wore: how the hell did they do it?
I don't have a magic answer. I've never minded heat; I
grew up in the Jurassic Era, Texas was a breeze compared to the
weather brontos liked. The real corset, which I tried once, was
too much. The rest wasn't so bad, once you got used to it.
So how I did it was easy. As to why . . . I don't know. I
liked the feeling of getting into all that stuff in the
morning. It felt like becoming someone else, which seemed a
good idea since the self I'd been lately kept doing foolish
things.
"It makes it easier to write for my paper if I dress for
the part," I finally told him.
"Yeah, what about this?" he said, brandishing the copy of
the Texian at me. He ran his finger down the columns. "'Farm
Report,' in which I'm pleased to learn that Mr. Watkins' brown
mare foaled Tuesday last, mother and daughter doing fine.
Imagine my relief. Or this, where you tell me the corn fields
up by Lonesome Dove will be in real trouble if they don't get
some rain by next week. Did it slip your mind that the
weather's on a schedule in here?"
"I never read it. That would be cheating."
"'Cheating,' she says. The only thing in here that sounds
like you is this Gila Monster column, at least that gets
nasty."
"I'm tired of being nasty."
"You're in even worse shape than I thought." He slapped
the paper, frowning as if it were unclean. "'Church News."
Church news, Hildy?"
"I go to church every Sunday."
#
He probably thought I meant the Baptist Church at the end
of Congress. I did go there from time to time, usually in the
evenings. The only thing Baptist about it was the sign out
front. It was actually non-denominational, non-sectarian . . .
non-religious, to tell the truth. No sermons were preached but
the singing was lots of fun.
Sunday mornings I went to real churches. It's still the
most popular sabbath, Jews and Muslims notwithstanding. I tried
them out as well.
I tried everybody out. Where possible I met with the
clergy as well as attending a service, seeking theological
explanations. Most were quite happy to talk to me. I
interviewed preachers, presbyters, vicars, mullahs, rabbis,
Lamas, primates, hierophants, pontiffs and matriarchs; sky
pilots from every heavenly air force I could locate. If they
didn't have a formal top banana or teacher I spoke with the
laity, the brethren, the monks. I swear, if three people ever
got together to sing hosannah and rub blue mud on their bodies
for the glory of anything, I rooted them out, ran them to
ground, and shook them by the lapels until they told me their
idea of the truth. Don't tell me your doubts, lord love you,
tell me something you believe in. Glory!
Surveys say sixty percent of Lunarians are atheist,
agnostic, or just too damn stupid or lazy ever to have harbored
an epistemological thought. You'd never know it by me. I began
to think I was the only person in Luna who didn't have an
elaborate, internally-logical theology--always (at least so
far) based on one or two premises that couldn't be proven.
Usually there was a book or body of writing or legends or myths
that one could take whole, precluding the necessity of figuring
it out for yourself. If that failed, there was always the route
of a New Revelation, and there'd been a passel of them, both
branching from established religions and springing full-blown
from nothing but the mind of some wild-eyed fellow who'd Seen
The Truth.
The drawback, for me, the common thread running through
all of them, the magic word that changed an interesting story
into the Will of God, was Faith. Don't get me wrong, I'm not
disparaging it. I tried to start with an open mind, no
preconceptions. I was open to the lightning bolt, if it chose
to strike me. I kept thinking that one day I'd look up and say
yes! That's it! But instead I just kept thinking, and quickly
thought my way right out the door.
Of the forty percent who claim membership in an organized
religion, the largest single group is the F.L.C.C.S. After
that, Christians or Christian-descended faiths, everything from
the Roman Catholics to groups numbering no more than a few
dozen. There are appreciable minorities of Jews, Buddhists,
Hindoos, Mormons, and Mahometans, some Sufis and Rosicrucians
and all the sects and off-shoots of each. Then there were
hundreds of really off-beat groups, such as the Barbie Colony
out in Gagarin where they all have themselves altered to look
exactly alike. There were people who worshipped the Invaders as
gods, a proposition I wasn't prepared to deny, but if so, so
what? All they'd demonstrated toward us so far was
indifference, and what's the use of an indifferent god? How
would a universe created by such a god be any different from
one where there was no god, or where God was dead? There were
people who believed that, too, that there had been a god but he
came down with something and didn't pull through. Or a group
that left that group who thought God wasn't dead, but in some
heavenly intensive care unit.
There were even people who worshipped the CC as a god. So
far I'd stayed away from them.
But my intention was to visit all the rest, if I lived
that long. So far my wanderings had been mostly through various
Christian sects, with every fourth Sunday devoted to what the
listings called Religions, Misc. Some of these were about as
misc. as a person could stand.
I had attended a Witches Black Mass, where we all took our
clothes off and a goat was sacrificed and we were smeared with
blood, which was even less fun than it sounds. I had sat in the
cheap seats in Temple Levana Israel and listened to a guy
reading in Hebrew, simultaneous translation provided for a
small donation. I had sloshed down wine and eaten pale
tasteless cookies which, I was informed, were the body and
blood of Christ, and if they were, I figured I'd eaten him up
to about the left knee. I could sing all the verses of Amazing
Grace and most of Onward, Christian Soldiers. Nights, I read
from various holy tracts; somewhere in there, I acquired a
subscription to The Watchtower, I still don't know how. I
learned the glories of glossolalia, going jibber-jabber
jibber-jabber right along with the rest of them, no
simultaneous translation available at any price, no way to do
it without feeling foolish.
These were only a few of my adventures; the list was long.
They could be best summarized in a visit I paid to one
congregation where, midway through the festivities, I was
handed a rattlesnake. Having no idea what I was supposed to do
with the creature, I grabbed its head and milked it of its
venom. No, no, no, they all cried. You're supposed to handle
it. What the fuck for? I cried back. Haven't you heard? These
suckers are dangerous. To which they had this to say: God will
protect you.
Well, why not? I just hadn't seen the harm in giving Him a
hand in the matter. I knew a little about rattlesnakes and I
hadn't seen a one that showed signs of listening to anybody.
And that was my problem. I always seemed to de-fang the serpent
of faith before it had a chance to canker.
Possibly this was good. But I still didn't have anything
else going.
#
Sourdough, shortly before his death, had given me a
beautiful delft pitcher and basin set. I filled the basin,
added some rosewater, a little Oil of Persia and a dab of What
The French Maid Wore, then patted my face with a damp
washcloth.
"Everything's a struggle in here, isn't it?" Cricket said.
"I find myself wondering where the water came from."
"Everything's always been a struggle everywhere, my boy,"
I replied, letting down the top of my chemise and washing my
breasts and under my arms. "It's just that different people
have struggled for different things at different times."
"Water comes out of a tap, that's all I know."
"Don't pretend ignorance with me. Water comes from the
rings of Saturn, is boosted in slow orbits in the form of big
chunks of dirty ice until we catch it here and melt it. Or it
comes out of the air when we re-process it, or the sewage when
we filter it, then it's piped to your home, then it comes out
of the tap. In my case, for the pipe substitute a man who comes
by once a week and fills my barrels."
"All I have to do with it is turning the tap."
I pointed to my tank sitting on the sink. "So do I," I
said. I patted myself dry and started rubbing cream on my skin.
"I know you're dying to ask, so I'll tell you I bathe every
third or fourth day at the hotel in town. All over; soap and
everything. And if what you've seen horrifies you, wait till
you need to relieve yourself."
"You're really into this, aren't you. That's what I can't
get over."
"Why all this sudden concern about my standard of living?"
That one seemed to make him uncomfortable, so we were
quiet for a while, until I had finished wiping off the cold
cream. I couldn't read his expression well in the dim light,
looking at him in the mirror.
"If you were going to say the people who live in here are
losers, save it, I've already heard that. And I don't deny it."
I opened an oval lacquered box, took out a powder puff, and
started applying the stuff until I sat in the center of a
fragrant cloud. On the side of the box it said "Midnight in
Paris."
"That's why you don't belong here," he said. "Hildy,
you've still got worlds to conquer. You can't bury yourself in
here, playing at being a newspapergirl. There's a real world
out there."
In here, too, I might have said, but didn't. I turned to
face him, then put the straps of my chemise back up over my
shoulders. It was more of a long vest, really, made of yellow
silk, snug at the waist. In addition to that I still had on my
best silk stockings, held up by garters, and maybe a trifle
here and a whimsy there. He crossed his legs.
"You once accused me of being not so good at people. You
were right. I'd known you for years, and didn't know you had a
daughter, didn't know a lot of things about you. Cricket,
there's things you don't know about me. I'm not going to get
into them, it's my problem, not yours, but believe me when I
tell you that if I hadn't come here, I'd be dead by now."
He looked dubious, but a little worried at the same time.
He started to say something, but changed his mind. His arms
were crossed now, too, one hand up and playing self-consciously
with his mustache.
I reached behind me for the little purple vial of
patchouli, dabbed a bit behind my ears, between my breasts,
between my thighs. I got up and walked by him--quite close by
him--to the bed, where I pulled the big comforter down to the
foot, plumped up the pillows, and reclined with one foot
trailing onto the floor, the other on the bed. The girl in the
painting behind the bar at the Alamo is in an identical pose,
though you would have to call her plump.
I said, "Cricket, I haven't been in the big city for a
while. Maybe I've forgotten how things are there. But in Texas,
it's considered impolite to keep a lady waiting."
He got up, almost stumbled as he tried to get out of his
shoes, then gave that up and came into my arms.
#
Kitten Parker, the male manifestation, was nude, supine,
cruciform. I, the female manifestation, was also nude, and in
lotus position: shoulders back, legs folded with the soles of
my feet turned up on my thighs, hands loose and palm-upward in
my lap. My knees stuck out to the sides and my weight barely
made an impression on his body--that's right, I was impaled, as
the porno writers sometimes put it.
Those writers wouldn't have been interested in this scene,
however. We'd been there, unmoving, for going on five hours.
It was called sex therapy and Kitten Parker was the
leading proponent of it. In fact, he invented it, or at least
refined it from earlier versions. What it was, was a type of
yoga, wherein I had been urged to find my "spiritual center."
So far my best guess as to its location was about five
centimeters cervix-wards from the tip of his glans.
I found this frustrating. I'd been finding it frustrating
for going on five hours. See, I was supposed to find my center
because I was the yin, and because I was the novice. His center
wasn't material to the exercise, he knew where his center was
though he hadn't told me where yet; maybe that was lesson two.
His contribution was to bring the thrust of his enlightenment,
also known as his yang, or glans, into contact with my
spiritual center, or rather I was apparently supposed to lower
the center down, since deeper penetration was clearly out of
the question. Maybe what I was feeling wasn't my center at all,
maybe it was just a vaginal suburb, but it had taken me going
on two hours just to entertain the notion that maybe, possibly,
that might be it, this little place inside me that seemed to
want to be massaged, and I wasn't about to go searching for it
again.
So I thought about that might-be-center, willed it to
move. It just stayed right there. I began to wonder if his yang
was anywhere near as sore as my yin was getting. And if this
whole thing would prove to be a yawn.
Actually, the only center I really cared about was the one
every woman knows how to find without a road map from Kitten
Parker: the center of sexual response, right up there in the
cleft of the labia, the little-girl-in-the-boat, and that
little girl had been sitting there, becalmed, hands on the
oars, rowing her little single-minded heart out, swollen and
excited, for going on . . . well, just over six hours now and
the little slut was pouting and resenting the lack of attention
and had been for . . . yes . . . and she didn't like that one
bit, no she didn't, and she was just about to SCREEEEEAM!
CUT TO
INTERIOR -- OFFICE OF THE PRIMALIST
Lots of ferns, lots of leather, violent paintings on the
walls. The PRIMALIST faces her patient, HILDY, who, red-faced,
watery-eyed, has had just about all the therapy a person can
stand.
HILDY
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!
PRIMALIST
That's better, that's much better. We're starting to get
through the layers of rage. Now reach even deeper.
HILDY
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!
PRIMALIST
No, no, you're back to the childhood peevishness again.
Deeper, deeper! From the soul!
HILDY
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
PRIMALIST
(slaps HILDY's face)
You're really not trying. You call that a scream? Ooooooh.
Sounds like a cow. Again!
HILDY
YAAAH! YAAAH! YAAAAH! YAAAAAAA . . .
PRIMALIST
Don't give me that lost-your-voice crap. You're giving up!
I won't let you give up! I can make you face the primal source.
(slaps HILDY again)
Now, once more, with--
HILDY kicks the PRIMALIST in the belly, then knees her in
the face. The PRIMALIST goes flying across the room and lands
in the FERNS.
CUT TO
CLOSE SHOT -- PRIMALIST
Who is bleeding from the nose and mouth and is momentarily
out of breath.
PRIMALIST
That's much better! We're really getting somewhere now . .
. hey! Where . . .
O.S. SOUND of footsteps: SOUND of a door opening.
PRIMALIST looks concerned.
HILDY
(raggedly, receding)
AAAAAaaaaaaaaaaah . . . sh--
SOUND of door slamming.
FADE OUT
#
I passed out, right there on the thrust of Kitten's
enlightenment.
I was only gone a few seconds, during which I re-lived a
particularly fruitless episode early in my Quest; sort of a
comic within a comic. I really wish that Shouter, Screamin'
Sabina, had had cojones. My kick would have been right in the
spiritual center.
"What it was," I told Kitten as he helped me to my feet,
"was the most powerful orgasm of my life. Jesus, Kitten, I
think you've got something here. And this was only lesson one?
Man, sign me up! I want to get into the advanced classes right
away. I never would have dreamed it was possible to get off
that way, much less such a . . . such an earthquake! Wow!"
I fluttered on like that for a while, probably sounding a
lot like I had many, many years ago when I first discovered
what that doohickey was for, when a sign from the outside world
finally penetrated the golden haze of contentment. Kitten was
frowning.
"You weren't supposed to do that," he said. "The point is
enlightenment, not mere physical pleasures."
"Goodbye," I said.
#
At least Cricket didn't seem to mind if I pursued mere
physical pleasures. It didn't take any five hours, either. The
first of many came about five minutes after we began, him still
fully dressed, pants around his knees. After that we settled
down a bit and carried on far into the night.
It was my first sex since Kitten Parker. I hadn't even
thought about it in all that time.
I didn't pass out during any of the orgasms, but it was
special in another way. When we finally seemed to be through, I
was still wearing most of what I'd gone to bed with, and there
was a reason for that: Cricket liked it.
So many of our words come from a time when, by all
reports, sex was even more screwed-up than it is today,
unlikely as that seems. Call it a perversion? Seems very
judgmental to me, but then they called masturbation self-abuse,
and I don't even like the flavor of the word masturbation. You
can call it a fetish, a fixation. A "sexual preference," how's
that for neutral? Bland is more like it. Call it what you wish,
we all like different things. The Duke of Bosnia likes pain,
preferably with the teeth. Fox liked tearing clothes off;
Cricket liked to have me leave them on. He liked silk and satin
and lace "unmentionables," and he liked to watch me take a few
of them off.
What made it special was that he hadn't known he liked
that. He hadn't known much of anything. He was still a novice
in this business of being a man. Helping him find it out about
himself was a thrill for me, the kind you don't get too often
in this life. I could only recall three other instances and the
last had been about seventy years ago. By the time you're fifty
or so you're unlikely to discover a new preference in yourself,
or anybody else.
"I was beginning to think I really was a singlesexer," he
said, when it seemed we were finally through. My head was
tucked up beneath his arm, that hand stroking slowly over the
curve of my hip, him leaning back, propped up on my best
feather pillows, a cup of hot tea carefully cradled on his
belly. I'd got up to brew the tea. He'd watched me the whole
time. He took little sips now and then between his amazed
sighs, and I'd trained him to give me sips when I ran a nail
over the line of hair on his tummy.
"Something just clicked," he said. I'd heard this line
several times already, but the sound of his voice was soothing
me. "It just clicked."
"Mmm-hmmm," I said.
"It just clicked. I told you I'd been with women before.
It was fun. I had a great time. Orgasms, the whole bit. I liked
being with women, just about as much as being with men. You
know?"
"Mmm-hmmm," I said.
"But I haven't been having much luck with women since the
Change. It just didn't seem very special, you know? Not with
guys, either, for that matter, not like it was when I was
female. I was thinking about Changing back. This thing just
wasn't giving me much pleasure." He flicked his exhausted new
toy with his thumb. "You know?"
"Mmm-hmmm," I said, and shifted a little to put my cheek
against his chest. If I'd had any complaint it was that, when
flipping through the Toys for Boys catalog, he'd ordered his
from the extra-large column. I don't know why first-time
Changers do that--they'd just been girls, right? and they had
to know that more is not better, that one size truly does fit
all--but I'd seen it happen many times before. Some little
relay clicks, and when it's time to make the decision between
hung and hung!, a great many opt for the large economy size.
Strange are the ways of the human mind, doubly so when it comes
to sex.
"But something just clicked. For the first time I looked
at a female body and I didn't just think 'Gosh, isn't she
cute,' or 'She'd be fun to have sex with,' or . . . or anything
like that. It clicked, and I wanted you. I had to have you." He
shook his head. "Who can figure a thing like that?"
I thought, who indeed, but I said "Mmm-hmmm." What I'd
been thinking before that was I could have a discreet word with
him later, or maybe have a friend plant the suggestion
concerning excess yardage. It had been a minor complaint, no
question, but there was also no question it would be even
better with more normal equipment, next time.
I was already thinking about the next time.
#
No more digressions, no more cutaways to Hildy's Quest.
None were any more enlightening than the handful I've
detailed. In spite of that, I planned to keep on with my slog
through the shabbier neighborhoods of religion, philosophy, and
therapy. Why? Well, the answer might really be out there,
somewhere. Just because you've been dealt a thousand hands of
nothing much doesn't mean the next deal won't turn up the Royal
Flush. And I saw no reason why the "answer," if it existed,
should be any less likely to be with the kooks than with the
more respected, conventional snake-oil salesmen. Hell, I knew
something about the established religions and philosophies, I'd
been hearing about them for a hundred years and they'd never
given me anything. That's why I'd been going to the
snake-handlers instead of the Flacks.
There was another reason. While I did pretty well during
the week, what with the Texian and school to keep me busy,
weekends were still pretty shaky. If I gave the impression that
my Quest was being handled by a tough, cynical, self-assured
woman of the world, I gave the wrong impression. Picture
instead a ragged, wild-eyed, unkempt Seeker, jumping at every
loud noise, always alert for feelings of self-destruction she
wasn't even sure she'd recognize. Picture a woman who had seen
the bullet flying toward her face, had felt the rope pull tight
around her neck, watched the blood flow over the bathroom
floor. We're talking desperation here, folks, and it moved in
and sprawled all over the sofa every Friday evening, like the
most unforgettable advertising jingle you ever heard.
Maybe it was the Quest itself making me nervous? I thought
of that, stayed home one weekend. I didn't sleep at all, I just
kept singing that jingle.
The good news was my list of places to go, people to see,
was a good five years long now, and I was adding new
discoveries at almost the same rate I was crossing them off. As
long as there was one more whacko to talk to, one more verse of
Amazing Grace to sing in one more ramshackle tabernacle, I felt
I could hang on.
So maybe God was looking after me. The chief danger seemed
to be that he might bore me to death before I was finished.
Our passions spent, Cricket's mouth finally having stopped
telling me how everything had just clicked, we lay quietly in
each other's arms for a long time, neither of us very sleepy.
He was still too wound up about the new world that had opened
to him, while I was thinking thoughts I hadn't thought in a
very long time.
He put his hand on my chin and I looked up at him.
"You really like it here, don't you?" he said.
I nuzzled into his chest. "I like it here very much."
"No, I meant--"
"I know what you meant." I kissed him on the neck, then
sat up and faced him. "I've got a place here, Cricket. I'm
doing things I like. The people in here may be losers, but I
like them, and I like their children. They like me. There's
talk about running me for mayor of New Austin.
"You're kidding."
I laughed. "There's no way I'd take it. A politician is
the last thing I'd want to be. But I'm touched they thought of
me."
"Well, I've got to admit the place seems to agree with
you." He patted my belly. "Looks like you're putting on some
weight."
"Too much chili beans, Chinese food, and apple pie." And
way too much Kitten Parker. The bastard, telling me we weren't
supposed to get any pleasure out of it.
"I guess you've managed to surprise me," he said. "I
really thought you were in trouble. I still think maybe you
are, but not the kind I thought." You don't know the half of
it, babe, I thought. "This place seems to agree with you," he
went on. "I don't know when I've seen you looking so happy, so
. . . radiant."
"How long ago did you get your Change?"
"About a month."
"Some of that's your cock talking, idiot. Things are still
colored for you. It's called lust."
"Could be. But only part of it." He glanced at his
thumbnail. "Uh . . . listen, I hadn't planned to stay out the
night--"
"You can go home if you want to." You swine.
"No, I was wondering if I could stay over? But I'll have
to call the sitter, I'm already late."
"You have a human sitter?"
"Only the best for my little Buster."
I kissed him and got up as he was making the call. I took
off the rest of my clothes, hearing him whispering in the
background. Then I stepped out onto the porch.
I hadn't been sleeping a lot. Though the nights tend to be
cold, I often walked them like that, nude, in the moonlight.
Cricket was wrong if he thought I was happy--the best I could
claim was to be happier here than anywhere else I could think
of--and the nearest I came to happiness was on these nocturnal
rambles. Sometimes I'd be out for hours, and come back
shivering and pile under the quilts. In that snugness I was
usually able to drift off.
Tonight I couldn't stay gone long. I noted there was
enough moonlight for Cricket to find his way to the outhouse,
then hurried back inside.
He was already asleep .I went around dousing the lamps,
then lit a candle and carried it to the bed. I sat down
carefully, not wanting to wake him, and just looked at his
sleeping face there in the candlelight for the longest time.
=*= =*= =*= =*=
The Bicentennial Commemoration of the Invasion of the
Earth had to qualify as the slickest public relations job of
the century. Back when Walter first summoned me and Brenda to
his office with his idea of a series of Invasion stories I had
laughed in his face. Now, exactly one year later, every
politician in Luna was trying to claim the whole thing was his
idea.
But one man was responsible, and his name was Walter
Editor.
Brenda and I played our small part. The articles were
well-received by the public-somewhere or other I've got a
parchment from some civic organization commending me for
excellence in journalism for one of them--was it the Kiwanis or
the Elks?--but the ground had been prepared for over a year by
the P.R. firm Walter had hired at his own expense. By the time
of Silvio's assassination sentiment was growing for a public
display. You couldn't call it a celebration, it hadn't been a
proud day in human history. It had to include a memorial for
the billions of dead, that was certain. The tone of the thing
should be one of sadness and resolve, all seemed to agree. If
you asked them what was being resolved--the recapture of Earth
and extermination of the Invaders, is that what you had in
mind?--you got an uncomfortable shrug in reply, but dammit, we
ought to be resolute! Hell, why not? Resolution doesn't cost
anything.
But the commemoration was going to. It kept snowballing
with nary a voice raised against it (Walter's fine hand again),
until by the time the Great Day arrived every pisspot enclave
in Luna was holding some kind of shindig.
Even in Texas, where we avoid as much outside news as we
can, they were having a barbecue as big as Alamo Day. I was
sorry I was going to be missing it, but I'd promised Brenda I'd
go with her, and besides . . . Cricket was going to be there.
Yes, dear hearts, Hildy was in love. Please hold your
applause until I can determine if the feeling is mutual.
#
All the Eight Worlds were commemorating the day; Pluto and
Mars had actually created a permanent yearly holiday to be
known as Invasion Day, and the betting was that Luna would soon
follow suit. And Luna, being the most populous planet, hated to
follow any of the seven worlds in anything and so, being the
most populous planet and the Refuge of Humanity as well as the
FrontLine Planet and the Bulwark of the Race--not to mention
the First to Get Our Asses Whipped if the Invaders ever decided
to continue what they started . . . Luna being all that, and
more, had determined to put on the biggest and bestest of all
the eight festivals, and King City being the largest city in
Luna made it seem a natural site for the planet-wide Main
Event, and Armstrong Park being over twenty times the size of
the vanished Walt Disney Universe, it just seemed to follow
that the thing ought to be held there, and that was where I was
going that fine Solar Evening when all I really wanted to do
was stroll down Congress Street, Cricket on my arm, and eat
cotton candy and maybe bob for apples.
And hey, sure it wasn't a celebration, but what's a
holiday without fireworks?
That's the only reason I'd agreed to go, Brenda's promise
that I could see the whole thing a safe distance from the
madding crowds. The fireworks themselves didn't scare me; I
liked fireworks, hated crowds of strangers.
The tube trip almost killed me, though. We'd deliberately
decided to start out quite early to avoid the crush on the
tubes, but what one genius can think up, another can duplicate,
so the trains were already jammed with people who'd had the
same idea. Worse, these were people planning to rough it on the
surface, away from the eight gigantic temporary domes set up
for the show, so they had brought their camping gear. The
aisles and overhead racks were piled high with luggage carts,
beer coolers, inflatable five-room tents, and 3.4 children per
family. It got so bad they started hanging small children from
the overhead straps, where they dangled and giggled. Then it
got worse. The train stopped taking passengers long before it
arrived at Armstrong. My stop was three short of the park, and
I soon saw there would be no point in fighting my way out, so I
rode it to the end of the line--gaped in horror at the masses
already assembled there--was disgorged by an irresistible human
tide, then re-boarded and rode it back, empty, to Dionysius
Station.
Where I sat down on a bench, my suit and picnic hamper
beside me, and just shook for a while, and watched about a
dozen human sardine cans rumble by in one direction and a like
number return. Then I grabbed my gear and went up the stairs to
the surface.
After returning from my frolics with the Alphans, I'd
found my suit on the foot of my bed in my cabin. I don't know
who brought it there. But I didn't want it anymore, so one
Saturday I took it back to the shop, meaning to have them fix
the faceplate and sell it on consignment. The salesman took one
look at the hole and before I had a chance to explain I was
being ushered into the manager's office and he promptly fainted
dead away. None of them had ever seen a broken faceplate
before. So I shut up, and soon found myself in possession of
their top-of-the-line model, plus five years of free air,
courtesy Hamilton's Outdoor Outfitters. I made no demands and
was asked to sign no disclaimers; they simply wanted me to have
it. They're probably still chewing their knuckles, waiting for
the lawsuit.
I climbed into this engineering wonder, and that special
new-suit aroma went a long way toward calming me down. I'd
worried it might stir entirely different associations--how
about that cute point-of-view shot of a piece of the faceplate
tumbling away?--but instead the low whirs and hums and the pure
pile of pine shavings there. I added kindling until I had a
small, hot fire, then filled the coffee pot from the brass
spigot at the bottom of the tall ceramic water cooler and set
it on the stove to boil. Cricket watched all these operations
with interest, sitting at the table in one of my two kitchen
chairs. His hat was on the table, but he still held on to his
cane.
I scooped coffee beans from the glass jar and put them in
the grinder and started cranking it by hand. The room filled
with the smell. When I had the right grind I dumped it into the
basket and put it into the pot. Then I got a plate and the half
of an apple pie sitting on the counter, cut him a huge slice,
and set it before him with a fork and napkin. Only then did I
sit down across from him, remove my hat, and put it next to
his.
He looked down at the pie as if curious as to the purpose
and meaning of such a thing, hesitantly picked up his fork, and
ate a bite. He looked all around the cabin again.
"This is nice," he said. "Homey-like."
"Rustic," I suggested. "Plain. Pioneering. Boeotian."
"Texan," he summed up. He gestured with his fork. "Good
pie."
"Wait'll you taste the coffee."
"I'm sure it'll be first-rate." He gestured again, this
time at the room. "Brenda said you needed help, but I never
imagined this."
"She didn't say that."
"No. What she said was, 'Hildy's smiling at children, and
teaching them her card tricks.' I knew I had to get here as
fast as I could."
#
I can imagine his alarm. But why shouldn't Hildy smile at
children? More important, why had she spent so much time not
smiling at anyone? But the business about the cards was sure to
worry Cricket. I never taught anyone my tricks.
And now for the first of several digression . . .
I can't simply gloss over those missing months with the
explanation that you wouldn't be interested. You wouldn't, but
certain things did happen, mostly of a negative nature, to get
me from the CC to the kitchen table with Cricket, and it's
worth relating a few of them to give a feel for my personal
odyssey during that time.
What I did was use my weekends on a Quest.
Every Saturday I went to the Visitors Center and there I
shed my secret identity as a mildmannered reporter to become a
penny-ante Diogenes, searching endlessly for an honest game. So
far all I'd found were endless variations of the mechanic's
grip, but I was undaunted. Look in the Yellow Files under
Philosophers, Professional, and you'll get a printout longer
than Brenda's arm. Don't even try Counselors or Therapists
unless you have a wheelbarrow to cart away the paper. But
that's what I was doing. Once out in the real world again, I
spent my Saturdays sampling the various ways other people had
found to get through the day, and the next day, and the next
day.
Of the major schools of thought, of the modern or trendy,
I already knew a lot, and many of them I felt could be
dispensed with. No need to attend a Flackite pep rally, for
instance. So I began with the classic cons.
I've already said I'm a cynic. In spite of it, I made my
best attempt to give each and every guru his day in court. But
with the best will in the world it is impossible for me to
present the final results as anything other than a short series
of comedy blackouts. And that's how I spent my Saturdays.
On Sundays, I went to church.
#
It's not really proper to start supper with dessert, but
in Texas one is expected to put some food in front of a guest
within a few minutes of his crossing your threshold. The pie
was the best thing close at hand. But I soon had a bowl of
chili and a plate of cornbread in front of him. He dug in, and
didn't seem to mind the sweat that soon beaded his forehead.
"I thought you'd ride up on a horse," he said. "I kept
listening for it. You surprised me, coming on foot."
"You have any idea how much up-keep there is on a horse?"
"Not the foggiest."
"A lot, trust me. I ride a bicycle. I've got the finest
Dursley Pedersen in Texas, with pneumatic tyres."
"So where is it?" He reached for the pitcher and poured
himself another glass of water, something everyone does when
eating my chili.
"Had a little accident. Were you waiting long?"
"About an hour. I checked the schoolhouse but nobody was
there."
"I'm only there mornings. I have another job." I got a
copy of tomorrow's Texian and handed it to him. He looked at
the colophon, then at me, and started scanning it without
comment.
"How's your daughter doing? Lisa?"
"She's fine. Only she wants to be called Buster now. Don't
ask me why."
"They go through stages like that. My students do, anyway.
I did."
"So did I."
"Last time you said she was into that father thing. Is she
still?"
He made a gesture that took in his new body, and shrugged.
"What do you think?"
#
My researches turned up one listing that seemed an
appropriate place to begin. This fellow was the only living
practitioner of his craft, he vas ze zpitting image of Zigmunt
Frrreud, unt he zpoke viz an aggzent zat zounded zomezing like
zis. Freudian psychotherapy is not precisely debunked, of
course, many schools use it as a foundation, merely throwing
out this or that tenet since found to be based more on Mr.
Freud's own hang-ups than any universal human condition.
How would a strict Freudian handle the realities of Lunar
society? I wondered. This is how:
Ziggy had me recline on a lovely couch in an office that
would have put Walter's to shame. He asked me what seemed to be
the problem, and I talked for about ten minutes with him taking
notes behind me. Then I stopped.
"Very interesting," he said, after a moment. He asked me
about my relationship with my mother, and that was good for
another half hour of talk on my part. Then I stopped.
"Very interesting," he said, after an even longer pause. I
could hear his pen scratching on his note pad.
"So what do you think, doc?" I asked, turning to crane my
neck at him. "Is there any hope for me?"
"I zink," he zaid, and that's enough of zat, "that you
present a suitable case for therapy."
"So what's my problem?"
"It's far too early to tell. I'm struck by the incident
you related between you and your mother when you were, what . .
. fourteen? When she brought home the new lover you did not
approve of."
"I didn't approve of much of anything about her at that
time. Plus, he was a jerk. He stole things from us."
"Do you ever dream of him? Perhaps this theft you worry
about was a symbolic one."
"Could be. I seem to remember he stole Callie's best
symbolic china service and my symbolic guitar."
"Your hostility aimed at me, a father figure, might be
simply transferred from your rage toward your absent father."
"My what?"
"The new lover . . . yes, it could be the real feeling you
were masking was resentment at him for possessing a penis."
"I was a boy at the time."
"Even more interesting. And since then you've gone so far
as to have yourself castrated . . . yes, yes, there is much
here worth looking into."
"How long do you think it will take?"
"I would anticipate excellent progress in . . . three to
five years."
"Actually, no," I said. "I don't think I have any hope of
curing you in that little time. So long, doc, it's been great."
"You still have ten minutes of your hour. I bill by the
hour."
"If you had any sense, you'd bill by the month. In
advance."
#
"Of course, that wasn't the only reason I got the Change,"
Cricket said. "I'd been thinking about it for a while, and I
thought I might as well see what it's like."
I was clearing the table while he relaxed with a glass of
wine--the Imbrium '22, a good vintage, poured into a bottle
labeled "Whiz-Bang Red" and smuggled past the anachronism
checkers. It was a common practice in Texas, where everyone
agreed authenticity could be carried too far.
"You mean this is your first time . . .?"
"I'm younger than you are," he said. "You keep forgetting
that."
"You're right. How's it working out? Do you mind if I
clean up?"
"Go ahead. I'm liking it all right. With a little
practice, I might even get good at it. Still feels funny,
though. I'd like to meet the guy that invented testicles. What
a joker."
"They do seem sort of like a preliminary design, don't
they?" I unfastened my skirt and folded it, then sat at the
little table with the wavy mirror I used for dressing, make-up,
and ablutions, and picked up my button hook. "Should I still be
calling you Cricket? It's not a real masculine name."
He was watching me struggling to un-hook the buttons on my
shoes, which was understandable, as it is an unlikely process
to one raised in an environment of bare feet or slip-on
footwear. Or at least I thought that was what he was watching.
Then I wondered if it was my knickers. They're nothing special:
cotton, baggy, with elastic at mid-calf. But they have cute
little pink ribbons and bows. This raised an interesting
possibility.
"I haven't changed it," he said. "But Lisa-Buster, dammit,
wants me to."
"Yeah? She could call you Jiminy." I had unbuttoned my
shirtwaist blouse and laid it on the skirt. I doffed the
bloomers and was working on the buttons of the
combinations--another loose cotton item fashion has happily
forgotten--before I looked up and had to laugh at the
expression on his face.
"I hit it, didn't I?" I said.
"You did, but I won't answer to it. I'm considering Jim,
or maybe Jimmy, but . . . what you said, that's right out.
What's wrong with Cricket for a man, anyway?"
"Not a thing. I'll continue to call you Cricket." I
stepped out of the combinations and tossed them aside.
"Jesus, Hildy!" Cricket exploded. "How long does it take
you to get out of all that stuff?"
"Not nearly as long as it takes to put it on. I'm never
quite sure I have it all in the right order."
"That's a corset, isn't it?"
"That's right." Actually, he was almost right. We'd gotten
down to the best items by now, no more cotton. The thing he was
staring at could be bought--had been bought--in a specialty
shop on the Leystrasse catering to people with a particular
taste formerly common, now rare, and was not to be confused
with the steel, whalebone, starch and canvas contraptions
Victorian women tortured themselves with. It had elastic in it,
and there the resemblance ended. It was pink and had frills
around the edges and black laces in back. I pulled the pin
holding my hair up, shook my head to let it fall. "Actually,
you can help me with it. Could you loosen the laces for me?" I
waited, then felt his hands fumbling with them.
"How do you handle this in the morning?" he griped.
"I have a girl come in." But not really. What I did was
run my finger down the pressure seams in front and bingo. So if
removing it would have been as easy as that--and it would have
been--why ask for help? You're way ahead of me, aren't you.
"I have to view this as pathology," he said, sitting back
down as I forced the still-tight garment down over my hips and
added it to the pile. "How did you ever get into all this
foolishness?"
I didn't tell him, but it was one piece at a time. The
Board didn't care what you wore under your clothes as long as
you looked authentic on the outside. But I'd grown interested
in the question all women ask when they see the things their
grandmothers wore: how the hell did they do it?
I don't have a magic answer. I've never minded heat; I
grew up in the Jurassic Era, Texas was a breeze compared to the
weather brontos liked. The real corset, which I tried once, was
too much. The rest wasn't so bad, once you got used to it.
So how I did it was easy. As to why . . . I don't know. I
liked the feeling of getting into all that stuff in the
morning. It felt like becoming someone else, which seemed a
good idea since the self I'd been lately kept doing foolish
things.
"It makes it easier to write for my paper if I dress for
the part," I finally told him.
"Yeah, what about this?" he said, brandishing the copy of
the Texian at me. He ran his finger down the columns. "'Farm
Report,' in which I'm pleased to learn that Mr. Watkins' brown
mare foaled Tuesday last, mother and daughter doing fine.
Imagine my relief. Or this, where you tell me the corn fields
up by Lonesome Dove will be in real trouble if they don't get
some rain by next week. Did it slip your mind that the
weather's on a schedule in here?"
"I never read it. That would be cheating."
"'Cheating,' she says. The only thing in here that sounds
like you is this Gila Monster column, at least that gets
nasty."
"I'm tired of being nasty."
"You're in even worse shape than I thought." He slapped
the paper, frowning as if it were unclean. "'Church News."
Church news, Hildy?"
"I go to church every Sunday."
#
He probably thought I meant the Baptist Church at the end
of Congress. I did go there from time to time, usually in the
evenings. The only thing Baptist about it was the sign out
front. It was actually non-denominational, non-sectarian . . .
non-religious, to tell the truth. No sermons were preached but
the singing was lots of fun.
Sunday mornings I went to real churches. It's still the
most popular sabbath, Jews and Muslims notwithstanding. I tried
them out as well.
I tried everybody out. Where possible I met with the
clergy as well as attending a service, seeking theological
explanations. Most were quite happy to talk to me. I
interviewed preachers, presbyters, vicars, mullahs, rabbis,
Lamas, primates, hierophants, pontiffs and matriarchs; sky
pilots from every heavenly air force I could locate. If they
didn't have a formal top banana or teacher I spoke with the
laity, the brethren, the monks. I swear, if three people ever
got together to sing hosannah and rub blue mud on their bodies
for the glory of anything, I rooted them out, ran them to
ground, and shook them by the lapels until they told me their
idea of the truth. Don't tell me your doubts, lord love you,
tell me something you believe in. Glory!
Surveys say sixty percent of Lunarians are atheist,
agnostic, or just too damn stupid or lazy ever to have harbored
an epistemological thought. You'd never know it by me. I began
to think I was the only person in Luna who didn't have an
elaborate, internally-logical theology--always (at least so
far) based on one or two premises that couldn't be proven.
Usually there was a book or body of writing or legends or myths
that one could take whole, precluding the necessity of figuring
it out for yourself. If that failed, there was always the route
of a New Revelation, and there'd been a passel of them, both
branching from established religions and springing full-blown
from nothing but the mind of some wild-eyed fellow who'd Seen
The Truth.
The drawback, for me, the common thread running through
all of them, the magic word that changed an interesting story
into the Will of God, was Faith. Don't get me wrong, I'm not
disparaging it. I tried to start with an open mind, no
preconceptions. I was open to the lightning bolt, if it chose
to strike me. I kept thinking that one day I'd look up and say
yes! That's it! But instead I just kept thinking, and quickly
thought my way right out the door.
Of the forty percent who claim membership in an organized
religion, the largest single group is the F.L.C.C.S. After
that, Christians or Christian-descended faiths, everything from
the Roman Catholics to groups numbering no more than a few
dozen. There are appreciable minorities of Jews, Buddhists,
Hindoos, Mormons, and Mahometans, some Sufis and Rosicrucians
and all the sects and off-shoots of each. Then there were
hundreds of really off-beat groups, such as the Barbie Colony
out in Gagarin where they all have themselves altered to look
exactly alike. There were people who worshipped the Invaders as
gods, a proposition I wasn't prepared to deny, but if so, so
what? All they'd demonstrated toward us so far was
indifference, and what's the use of an indifferent god? How
would a universe created by such a god be any different from
one where there was no god, or where God was dead? There were
people who believed that, too, that there had been a god but he
came down with something and didn't pull through. Or a group
that left that group who thought God wasn't dead, but in some
heavenly intensive care unit.
There were even people who worshipped the CC as a god. So
far I'd stayed away from them.
But my intention was to visit all the rest, if I lived
that long. So far my wanderings had been mostly through various
Christian sects, with every fourth Sunday devoted to what the
listings called Religions, Misc. Some of these were about as
misc. as a person could stand.
I had attended a Witches Black Mass, where we all took our
clothes off and a goat was sacrificed and we were smeared with
blood, which was even less fun than it sounds. I had sat in the
cheap seats in Temple Levana Israel and listened to a guy
reading in Hebrew, simultaneous translation provided for a
small donation. I had sloshed down wine and eaten pale
tasteless cookies which, I was informed, were the body and
blood of Christ, and if they were, I figured I'd eaten him up
to about the left knee. I could sing all the verses of Amazing
Grace and most of Onward, Christian Soldiers. Nights, I read
from various holy tracts; somewhere in there, I acquired a
subscription to The Watchtower, I still don't know how. I
learned the glories of glossolalia, going jibber-jabber
jibber-jabber right along with the rest of them, no
simultaneous translation available at any price, no way to do
it without feeling foolish.
These were only a few of my adventures; the list was long.
They could be best summarized in a visit I paid to one
congregation where, midway through the festivities, I was
handed a rattlesnake. Having no idea what I was supposed to do
with the creature, I grabbed its head and milked it of its
venom. No, no, no, they all cried. You're supposed to handle
it. What the fuck for? I cried back. Haven't you heard? These
suckers are dangerous. To which they had this to say: God will
protect you.
Well, why not? I just hadn't seen the harm in giving Him a
hand in the matter. I knew a little about rattlesnakes and I
hadn't seen a one that showed signs of listening to anybody.
And that was my problem. I always seemed to de-fang the serpent
of faith before it had a chance to canker.
Possibly this was good. But I still didn't have anything
else going.
#
Sourdough, shortly before his death, had given me a
beautiful delft pitcher and basin set. I filled the basin,
added some rosewater, a little Oil of Persia and a dab of What
The French Maid Wore, then patted my face with a damp
washcloth.
"Everything's a struggle in here, isn't it?" Cricket said.
"I find myself wondering where the water came from."
"Everything's always been a struggle everywhere, my boy,"
I replied, letting down the top of my chemise and washing my
breasts and under my arms. "It's just that different people
have struggled for different things at different times."
"Water comes out of a tap, that's all I know."
"Don't pretend ignorance with me. Water comes from the
rings of Saturn, is boosted in slow orbits in the form of big
chunks of dirty ice until we catch it here and melt it. Or it
comes out of the air when we re-process it, or the sewage when
we filter it, then it's piped to your home, then it comes out
of the tap. In my case, for the pipe substitute a man who comes
by once a week and fills my barrels."
"All I have to do with it is turning the tap."
I pointed to my tank sitting on the sink. "So do I," I
said. I patted myself dry and started rubbing cream on my skin.
"I know you're dying to ask, so I'll tell you I bathe every
third or fourth day at the hotel in town. All over; soap and
everything. And if what you've seen horrifies you, wait till
you need to relieve yourself."
"You're really into this, aren't you. That's what I can't
get over."
"Why all this sudden concern about my standard of living?"
That one seemed to make him uncomfortable, so we were
quiet for a while, until I had finished wiping off the cold
cream. I couldn't read his expression well in the dim light,
looking at him in the mirror.
"If you were going to say the people who live in here are
losers, save it, I've already heard that. And I don't deny it."
I opened an oval lacquered box, took out a powder puff, and
started applying the stuff until I sat in the center of a
fragrant cloud. On the side of the box it said "Midnight in
Paris."
"That's why you don't belong here," he said. "Hildy,
you've still got worlds to conquer. You can't bury yourself in
here, playing at being a newspapergirl. There's a real world
out there."
In here, too, I might have said, but didn't. I turned to
face him, then put the straps of my chemise back up over my
shoulders. It was more of a long vest, really, made of yellow
silk, snug at the waist. In addition to that I still had on my
best silk stockings, held up by garters, and maybe a trifle
here and a whimsy there. He crossed his legs.
"You once accused me of being not so good at people. You
were right. I'd known you for years, and didn't know you had a
daughter, didn't know a lot of things about you. Cricket,
there's things you don't know about me. I'm not going to get
into them, it's my problem, not yours, but believe me when I
tell you that if I hadn't come here, I'd be dead by now."
He looked dubious, but a little worried at the same time.
He started to say something, but changed his mind. His arms
were crossed now, too, one hand up and playing self-consciously
with his mustache.
I reached behind me for the little purple vial of
patchouli, dabbed a bit behind my ears, between my breasts,
between my thighs. I got up and walked by him--quite close by
him--to the bed, where I pulled the big comforter down to the
foot, plumped up the pillows, and reclined with one foot
trailing onto the floor, the other on the bed. The girl in the
painting behind the bar at the Alamo is in an identical pose,
though you would have to call her plump.
I said, "Cricket, I haven't been in the big city for a
while. Maybe I've forgotten how things are there. But in Texas,
it's considered impolite to keep a lady waiting."
He got up, almost stumbled as he tried to get out of his
shoes, then gave that up and came into my arms.
#
Kitten Parker, the male manifestation, was nude, supine,
cruciform. I, the female manifestation, was also nude, and in
lotus position: shoulders back, legs folded with the soles of
my feet turned up on my thighs, hands loose and palm-upward in
my lap. My knees stuck out to the sides and my weight barely
made an impression on his body--that's right, I was impaled, as
the porno writers sometimes put it.
Those writers wouldn't have been interested in this scene,
however. We'd been there, unmoving, for going on five hours.
It was called sex therapy and Kitten Parker was the
leading proponent of it. In fact, he invented it, or at least
refined it from earlier versions. What it was, was a type of
yoga, wherein I had been urged to find my "spiritual center."
So far my best guess as to its location was about five
centimeters cervix-wards from the tip of his glans.
I found this frustrating. I'd been finding it frustrating
for going on five hours. See, I was supposed to find my center
because I was the yin, and because I was the novice. His center
wasn't material to the exercise, he knew where his center was
though he hadn't told me where yet; maybe that was lesson two.
His contribution was to bring the thrust of his enlightenment,
also known as his yang, or glans, into contact with my
spiritual center, or rather I was apparently supposed to lower
the center down, since deeper penetration was clearly out of
the question. Maybe what I was feeling wasn't my center at all,
maybe it was just a vaginal suburb, but it had taken me going
on two hours just to entertain the notion that maybe, possibly,
that might be it, this little place inside me that seemed to
want to be massaged, and I wasn't about to go searching for it
again.
So I thought about that might-be-center, willed it to
move. It just stayed right there. I began to wonder if his yang
was anywhere near as sore as my yin was getting. And if this
whole thing would prove to be a yawn.
Actually, the only center I really cared about was the one
every woman knows how to find without a road map from Kitten
Parker: the center of sexual response, right up there in the
cleft of the labia, the little-girl-in-the-boat, and that
little girl had been sitting there, becalmed, hands on the
oars, rowing her little single-minded heart out, swollen and
excited, for going on . . . well, just over six hours now and
the little slut was pouting and resenting the lack of attention
and had been for . . . yes . . . and she didn't like that one
bit, no she didn't, and she was just about to SCREEEEEAM!
CUT TO
INTERIOR -- OFFICE OF THE PRIMALIST
Lots of ferns, lots of leather, violent paintings on the
walls. The PRIMALIST faces her patient, HILDY, who, red-faced,
watery-eyed, has had just about all the therapy a person can
stand.
HILDY
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!
PRIMALIST
That's better, that's much better. We're starting to get
through the layers of rage. Now reach even deeper.
HILDY
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!
PRIMALIST
No, no, you're back to the childhood peevishness again.
Deeper, deeper! From the soul!
HILDY
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
PRIMALIST
(slaps HILDY's face)
You're really not trying. You call that a scream? Ooooooh.
Sounds like a cow. Again!
HILDY
YAAAH! YAAAH! YAAAAH! YAAAAAAA . . .
PRIMALIST
Don't give me that lost-your-voice crap. You're giving up!
I won't let you give up! I can make you face the primal source.
(slaps HILDY again)
Now, once more, with--
HILDY kicks the PRIMALIST in the belly, then knees her in
the face. The PRIMALIST goes flying across the room and lands
in the FERNS.
CUT TO
CLOSE SHOT -- PRIMALIST
Who is bleeding from the nose and mouth and is momentarily
out of breath.
PRIMALIST
That's much better! We're really getting somewhere now . .
. hey! Where . . .
O.S. SOUND of footsteps: SOUND of a door opening.
PRIMALIST looks concerned.
HILDY
(raggedly, receding)
AAAAAaaaaaaaaaaah . . . sh--
SOUND of door slamming.
FADE OUT
#
I passed out, right there on the thrust of Kitten's
enlightenment.
I was only gone a few seconds, during which I re-lived a
particularly fruitless episode early in my Quest; sort of a
comic within a comic. I really wish that Shouter, Screamin'
Sabina, had had cojones. My kick would have been right in the
spiritual center.
"What it was," I told Kitten as he helped me to my feet,
"was the most powerful orgasm of my life. Jesus, Kitten, I
think you've got something here. And this was only lesson one?
Man, sign me up! I want to get into the advanced classes right
away. I never would have dreamed it was possible to get off
that way, much less such a . . . such an earthquake! Wow!"
I fluttered on like that for a while, probably sounding a
lot like I had many, many years ago when I first discovered
what that doohickey was for, when a sign from the outside world
finally penetrated the golden haze of contentment. Kitten was
frowning.
"You weren't supposed to do that," he said. "The point is
enlightenment, not mere physical pleasures."
"Goodbye," I said.
#
At least Cricket didn't seem to mind if I pursued mere
physical pleasures. It didn't take any five hours, either. The
first of many came about five minutes after we began, him still
fully dressed, pants around his knees. After that we settled
down a bit and carried on far into the night.
It was my first sex since Kitten Parker. I hadn't even
thought about it in all that time.
I didn't pass out during any of the orgasms, but it was
special in another way. When we finally seemed to be through, I
was still wearing most of what I'd gone to bed with, and there
was a reason for that: Cricket liked it.
So many of our words come from a time when, by all
reports, sex was even more screwed-up than it is today,
unlikely as that seems. Call it a perversion? Seems very
judgmental to me, but then they called masturbation self-abuse,
and I don't even like the flavor of the word masturbation. You
can call it a fetish, a fixation. A "sexual preference," how's
that for neutral? Bland is more like it. Call it what you wish,
we all like different things. The Duke of Bosnia likes pain,
preferably with the teeth. Fox liked tearing clothes off;
Cricket liked to have me leave them on. He liked silk and satin
and lace "unmentionables," and he liked to watch me take a few
of them off.
What made it special was that he hadn't known he liked
that. He hadn't known much of anything. He was still a novice
in this business of being a man. Helping him find it out about
himself was a thrill for me, the kind you don't get too often
in this life. I could only recall three other instances and the
last had been about seventy years ago. By the time you're fifty
or so you're unlikely to discover a new preference in yourself,
or anybody else.
"I was beginning to think I really was a singlesexer," he
said, when it seemed we were finally through. My head was
tucked up beneath his arm, that hand stroking slowly over the
curve of my hip, him leaning back, propped up on my best
feather pillows, a cup of hot tea carefully cradled on his
belly. I'd got up to brew the tea. He'd watched me the whole
time. He took little sips now and then between his amazed
sighs, and I'd trained him to give me sips when I ran a nail
over the line of hair on his tummy.
"Something just clicked," he said. I'd heard this line
several times already, but the sound of his voice was soothing
me. "It just clicked."
"Mmm-hmmm," I said.
"It just clicked. I told you I'd been with women before.
It was fun. I had a great time. Orgasms, the whole bit. I liked
being with women, just about as much as being with men. You
know?"
"Mmm-hmmm," I said.
"But I haven't been having much luck with women since the
Change. It just didn't seem very special, you know? Not with
guys, either, for that matter, not like it was when I was
female. I was thinking about Changing back. This thing just
wasn't giving me much pleasure." He flicked his exhausted new
toy with his thumb. "You know?"
"Mmm-hmmm," I said, and shifted a little to put my cheek
against his chest. If I'd had any complaint it was that, when
flipping through the Toys for Boys catalog, he'd ordered his
from the extra-large column. I don't know why first-time
Changers do that--they'd just been girls, right? and they had
to know that more is not better, that one size truly does fit
all--but I'd seen it happen many times before. Some little
relay clicks, and when it's time to make the decision between
hung and hung!, a great many opt for the large economy size.
Strange are the ways of the human mind, doubly so when it comes
to sex.
"But something just clicked. For the first time I looked
at a female body and I didn't just think 'Gosh, isn't she
cute,' or 'She'd be fun to have sex with,' or . . . or anything
like that. It clicked, and I wanted you. I had to have you." He
shook his head. "Who can figure a thing like that?"
I thought, who indeed, but I said "Mmm-hmmm." What I'd
been thinking before that was I could have a discreet word with
him later, or maybe have a friend plant the suggestion
concerning excess yardage. It had been a minor complaint, no
question, but there was also no question it would be even
better with more normal equipment, next time.
I was already thinking about the next time.
#
No more digressions, no more cutaways to Hildy's Quest.
None were any more enlightening than the handful I've
detailed. In spite of that, I planned to keep on with my slog
through the shabbier neighborhoods of religion, philosophy, and
therapy. Why? Well, the answer might really be out there,
somewhere. Just because you've been dealt a thousand hands of
nothing much doesn't mean the next deal won't turn up the Royal
Flush. And I saw no reason why the "answer," if it existed,
should be any less likely to be with the kooks than with the
more respected, conventional snake-oil salesmen. Hell, I knew
something about the established religions and philosophies, I'd
been hearing about them for a hundred years and they'd never
given me anything. That's why I'd been going to the
snake-handlers instead of the Flacks.
There was another reason. While I did pretty well during
the week, what with the Texian and school to keep me busy,
weekends were still pretty shaky. If I gave the impression that
my Quest was being handled by a tough, cynical, self-assured
woman of the world, I gave the wrong impression. Picture
instead a ragged, wild-eyed, unkempt Seeker, jumping at every
loud noise, always alert for feelings of self-destruction she
wasn't even sure she'd recognize. Picture a woman who had seen
the bullet flying toward her face, had felt the rope pull tight
around her neck, watched the blood flow over the bathroom
floor. We're talking desperation here, folks, and it moved in
and sprawled all over the sofa every Friday evening, like the
most unforgettable advertising jingle you ever heard.
Maybe it was the Quest itself making me nervous? I thought
of that, stayed home one weekend. I didn't sleep at all, I just
kept singing that jingle.
The good news was my list of places to go, people to see,
was a good five years long now, and I was adding new
discoveries at almost the same rate I was crossing them off. As
long as there was one more whacko to talk to, one more verse of
Amazing Grace to sing in one more ramshackle tabernacle, I felt
I could hang on.
So maybe God was looking after me. The chief danger seemed
to be that he might bore me to death before I was finished.
Our passions spent, Cricket's mouth finally having stopped
telling me how everything had just clicked, we lay quietly in
each other's arms for a long time, neither of us very sleepy.
He was still too wound up about the new world that had opened
to him, while I was thinking thoughts I hadn't thought in a
very long time.
He put his hand on my chin and I looked up at him.
"You really like it here, don't you?" he said.
I nuzzled into his chest. "I like it here very much."
"No, I meant--"
"I know what you meant." I kissed him on the neck, then
sat up and faced him. "I've got a place here, Cricket. I'm
doing things I like. The people in here may be losers, but I
like them, and I like their children. They like me. There's
talk about running me for mayor of New Austin.
"You're kidding."
I laughed. "There's no way I'd take it. A politician is
the last thing I'd want to be. But I'm touched they thought of
me."
"Well, I've got to admit the place seems to agree with
you." He patted my belly. "Looks like you're putting on some
weight."
"Too much chili beans, Chinese food, and apple pie." And
way too much Kitten Parker. The bastard, telling me we weren't
supposed to get any pleasure out of it.
"I guess you've managed to surprise me," he said. "I
really thought you were in trouble. I still think maybe you
are, but not the kind I thought." You don't know the half of
it, babe, I thought. "This place seems to agree with you," he
went on. "I don't know when I've seen you looking so happy, so
. . . radiant."
"How long ago did you get your Change?"
"About a month."
"Some of that's your cock talking, idiot. Things are still
colored for you. It's called lust."
"Could be. But only part of it." He glanced at his
thumbnail. "Uh . . . listen, I hadn't planned to stay out the
night--"
"You can go home if you want to." You swine.
"No, I was wondering if I could stay over? But I'll have
to call the sitter, I'm already late."
"You have a human sitter?"
"Only the best for my little Buster."
I kissed him and got up as he was making the call. I took
off the rest of my clothes, hearing him whispering in the
background. Then I stepped out onto the porch.
I hadn't been sleeping a lot. Though the nights tend to be
cold, I often walked them like that, nude, in the moonlight.
Cricket was wrong if he thought I was happy--the best I could
claim was to be happier here than anywhere else I could think
of--and the nearest I came to happiness was on these nocturnal
rambles. Sometimes I'd be out for hours, and come back
shivering and pile under the quilts. In that snugness I was
usually able to drift off.
Tonight I couldn't stay gone long. I noted there was
enough moonlight for Cricket to find his way to the outhouse,
then hurried back inside.
He was already asleep .I went around dousing the lamps,
then lit a candle and carried it to the bed. I sat down
carefully, not wanting to wake him, and just looked at his
sleeping face there in the candlelight for the longest time.
=*= =*= =*= =*=
The Bicentennial Commemoration of the Invasion of the
Earth had to qualify as the slickest public relations job of
the century. Back when Walter first summoned me and Brenda to
his office with his idea of a series of Invasion stories I had
laughed in his face. Now, exactly one year later, every
politician in Luna was trying to claim the whole thing was his
idea.
But one man was responsible, and his name was Walter
Editor.
Brenda and I played our small part. The articles were
well-received by the public-somewhere or other I've got a
parchment from some civic organization commending me for
excellence in journalism for one of them--was it the Kiwanis or
the Elks?--but the ground had been prepared for over a year by
the P.R. firm Walter had hired at his own expense. By the time
of Silvio's assassination sentiment was growing for a public
display. You couldn't call it a celebration, it hadn't been a
proud day in human history. It had to include a memorial for
the billions of dead, that was certain. The tone of the thing
should be one of sadness and resolve, all seemed to agree. If
you asked them what was being resolved--the recapture of Earth
and extermination of the Invaders, is that what you had in
mind?--you got an uncomfortable shrug in reply, but dammit, we
ought to be resolute! Hell, why not? Resolution doesn't cost
anything.
But the commemoration was going to. It kept snowballing
with nary a voice raised against it (Walter's fine hand again),
until by the time the Great Day arrived every pisspot enclave
in Luna was holding some kind of shindig.
Even in Texas, where we avoid as much outside news as we
can, they were having a barbecue as big as Alamo Day. I was
sorry I was going to be missing it, but I'd promised Brenda I'd
go with her, and besides . . . Cricket was going to be there.
Yes, dear hearts, Hildy was in love. Please hold your
applause until I can determine if the feeling is mutual.
#
All the Eight Worlds were commemorating the day; Pluto and
Mars had actually created a permanent yearly holiday to be
known as Invasion Day, and the betting was that Luna would soon
follow suit. And Luna, being the most populous planet, hated to
follow any of the seven worlds in anything and so, being the
most populous planet and the Refuge of Humanity as well as the
FrontLine Planet and the Bulwark of the Race--not to mention
the First to Get Our Asses Whipped if the Invaders ever decided
to continue what they started . . . Luna being all that, and
more, had determined to put on the biggest and bestest of all
the eight festivals, and King City being the largest city in
Luna made it seem a natural site for the planet-wide Main
Event, and Armstrong Park being over twenty times the size of
the vanished Walt Disney Universe, it just seemed to follow
that the thing ought to be held there, and that was where I was
going that fine Solar Evening when all I really wanted to do
was stroll down Congress Street, Cricket on my arm, and eat
cotton candy and maybe bob for apples.
And hey, sure it wasn't a celebration, but what's a
holiday without fireworks?
That's the only reason I'd agreed to go, Brenda's promise
that I could see the whole thing a safe distance from the
madding crowds. The fireworks themselves didn't scare me; I
liked fireworks, hated crowds of strangers.
The tube trip almost killed me, though. We'd deliberately
decided to start out quite early to avoid the crush on the
tubes, but what one genius can think up, another can duplicate,
so the trains were already jammed with people who'd had the
same idea. Worse, these were people planning to rough it on the
surface, away from the eight gigantic temporary domes set up
for the show, so they had brought their camping gear. The
aisles and overhead racks were piled high with luggage carts,
beer coolers, inflatable five-room tents, and 3.4 children per
family. It got so bad they started hanging small children from
the overhead straps, where they dangled and giggled. Then it
got worse. The train stopped taking passengers long before it
arrived at Armstrong. My stop was three short of the park, and
I soon saw there would be no point in fighting my way out, so I
rode it to the end of the line--gaped in horror at the masses
already assembled there--was disgorged by an irresistible human
tide, then re-boarded and rode it back, empty, to Dionysius
Station.
Where I sat down on a bench, my suit and picnic hamper
beside me, and just shook for a while, and watched about a
dozen human sardine cans rumble by in one direction and a like
number return. Then I grabbed my gear and went up the stairs to
the surface.
After returning from my frolics with the Alphans, I'd
found my suit on the foot of my bed in my cabin. I don't know
who brought it there. But I didn't want it anymore, so one
Saturday I took it back to the shop, meaning to have them fix
the faceplate and sell it on consignment. The salesman took one
look at the hole and before I had a chance to explain I was
being ushered into the manager's office and he promptly fainted
dead away. None of them had ever seen a broken faceplate
before. So I shut up, and soon found myself in possession of
their top-of-the-line model, plus five years of free air,
courtesy Hamilton's Outdoor Outfitters. I made no demands and
was asked to sign no disclaimers; they simply wanted me to have
it. They're probably still chewing their knuckles, waiting for
the lawsuit.
I climbed into this engineering wonder, and that special
new-suit aroma went a long way toward calming me down. I'd
worried it might stir entirely different associations--how
about that cute point-of-view shot of a piece of the faceplate
tumbling away?--but instead the low whirs and hums and the pure