“Everybody has a father,” he explained patiently. “I guess you never got the birds-and-bees lecture; I guess they don’t tell you the facts of life around here. No father, no child—us men are necessary for that. And judging by the number of women I’ve seen in this here town, there must be a busy bunch of variants hanging around.” “Males are * not necessary,” she contradicted. “Males are used only for labor in the city. The Mother practices parthenogenesis to maintain a planned female population.”
“Nope, never heard of that religion,” Owen admitted.’ “Is it like the Baptists or more like the Unitarians?”
“It isn’t a religion, it is the scientific method of causing pregnancy. Parthenogenesis is the reproduction of female children without the necessity of a male parent.”
“You mean two women?” Owen fell back in astonishment. “Two women can do it?”
“Two or more.”
“It won’t work!” he declared. “That kind of funny business won’t work. You’ve got to have a man.”
“Our long history is proof enough. The city has been maintained for a hundred and sixty-nine years.”
“Yeah—by manpower ”
“Females are responsible for the manpower. Females reproduce themselves.”
Owen was so shaken that he reached for the bottled fortifier. “I’ll be kicked by a cross-eyed mule!” He gaped up at his hostess. “You were born because of . • . uh … well, two women … doing things?” ,
“Myself, and the others.”
“Geez, and here I thought I knew everything. I’m a man of the world.” He stared at Paoli with continuing amazement. “Baby doll, they don’t even do that in Indianapolis!”
“We must maintain our population.”
Owen shook his head with dismay. “Just wait until Pastor Coulson gets here and finds out about that ”
He swallowed and absently passed over the bottle.
Paoli said, “The redcoats are coming.”
“Fat lot of good it’ll do them in this town,” Owen mumbled.
He got the warden on her feet after a long effort.
Moving carefully, lest she tumble to the floor and cause him to lose another several minutes getting her upright again, Owen led Paoli across the workshop to the machine. Her feet had some difficulty in following one another in a reasonably straight line. The coffin resting beside the oven door was pushed aside, and the door yanked open.
It was going to be a tight fit. The woman was much too long for the opening.
“What are we doing?” Paoli asked.
“We are conducting a scientific experiment, baby doll. We are going to whittle you down to size. I just figured out how to do it—-all I have to do is trim a few inches off your legs and presto! bring you down eyeball to eyeball. I’m going to pop you into the oven and make shorter legs.”
“Insert me into that chamber?”
“It’s the only game in the house.”
“But you aren’t familiar with the machine.”
“I am too! I made bacon all day.”
“You don’t know how to refashion a human body.” Owen stopped short, realizing the truth of the statement. Making bacon and booze and cigars was one thing, but making a woman—He glanced over at the instruction manuals on the workbench, but the memory of those livid man pictures reacted all the way down to his sphincter. “Well, hey— Can’t you tell me how to do it?”
“I suppose so. Yes. I know how.”
“Now that’s the answer! You tell me what to do and I’ll press the buttons. See how simple it is?”
Simple.
Owen began the task of inserting the tall woman into the chamber, into his new operating theater. It was most difficult, even with her fumbling cooperation. On the first attempt he managed to stuff into the oven her head, shoulders, torso, and pelvis, but that left her legs and feet dangling outside over the oven door. The legs couldn’t be shortened while they were outside the chamber and kicking. Owen hauled the body out, turned it around, and slid it in a second time. Paoli was bent nearly double. The posterior went in first, followed by torso, shoulders, and head. The arms were mostly inside, but her knees were hooked over the edge and the feet were still on the floor. Owen tried sliding her in on her back, and then on her belly. He bent the body double once again and inserted the head and feet together, but that left her rump hanging over into the room. Paoli tried to be helpful, but her rubbery limbs had a tendency to stray in the wrong directions.
Owen hauled the non-fitting body out of the operating theater and uttered an ancient, expressive Indiana word.
“Think!” he urged the woman.
“I am unable to think. My head spins.”
“You need a stiff drink—it’s good for fevers, dizzy spells, and frostbite. And you’re dirty.” Her wet clothes had picked up the soot or dust or whatever it was from inside the chamber. “You need a stiff drink and a bath. Do you a world of good.”
Paoli said, “A wake is not amusing. I would not care to live in prehistoric times.”
“Just between you and me, toots, I don’t think much of this time—your time. I had more fun in Indiana—old nineteen forty-two was a good year, war or no war. Did I ever tell you about Shut Out?”
“What is a shutout?”
“A horse, a winner named Shut Out.”
“What is a horse?”
Owen clicked his tongue. “Maybe you didn’t get very far in school. Shut Out was one hell of a racehorse, if I say so myself, and, baby, I’m a keen judge of horseflesh. Shut Out won the Derby last year and I made a bundle.”
Paoli opened her mouth to ask but Owen held up a quick hand to stop the question.
“A bundle is ninety dollars. Now let’s figure on this business at hand. We’ve got to whittle you down.”
Owen studied the chamber’s dimensions and then those of the blonde; he was already familiar with most of hers, but he enjoyed studying them nevertheless. Had she been his own height the problem wouldn’t be a problem: the oven was designed for bodies six feet or shorter, and pity the poor basketball player if Kehli and her crew dug up a lanky male. At just six feet, his head would be touching one end of the chamber with his bare feet scraping the other end—with no thought for his comfort while the fabricator fiddled—but the leggy woman couldn’t possibly fit inside unless she had the skills of a contortionist and the patience of a clutch of saints.
f‘I could put you up on the workbench and make the alterations first,” Owen suggested. “I could whittle out a-few inches here and there between knee and shinbone, and then pop you into the oven and glue you together again. I’m a pretty good master joiner, if I say so myself.”
Paoli hugged her knees.“No.”
“I didn’t think you’d like that one—queasy stomach, I guess. Well, what to do, what to do?” He looked around the apartment. “Hey—I’ve got it! Stay right there now —don’t go away.”
She revealed no desire to get up from the floor.
Owen ran to the lounge area and came back with the chair Paoli had been sitting on earlier—a rather stiff and uncomfortable straight chair without arms or seat padding.
“I saw Abbott and Costello do this with a horse—except that they were trying to get up on top, of course.”
“Shut Out,” she said.
“Exactly. You’re coming along, baby doll.”
Owen directed his subject to crawl inside the chamber feet first, scrunching in all the way until her toes touched the farthest corner—but remembering to keep her legs straight, of course. Paoli went in slowly: feet, legs, pelvis, and most of the torso. Owen pulled the chair up to the oven door and positioned it under her shoulders and head. For the first time he had all of her off the floor, with the entire body in a horizontal position.
“Eureka!” he cried with satisfaction. “That’s using the old noggin. Are you comfy, honeypot?”
“No.”
“Pay it no mind. This won’t take long.”
Owen ran around to th
e front of the machine and met the next obstacle: the concave bar and the viewing window were much too high for his forehead and eyes, being designed for tall operation. He considered getting another chair but realized that would put him too high in the air. The apartment had no footstools or buckets to stand on. Owen peered around the corner at Paoli, and then beyond her to rediscover Yorick’s mummy case.
He pulled the coffin into position at the front of. the machine and gingerly stood on it to test its strength. The lid supported his weight. Owen’s forehead touched the cerebral bar.
“Facile Lucille, I’ve got it!” He peered into the dim chamber and saw the pink-clad legs stretched out before him, awaiting the journeyman carpenter’s magic touch. The only light in the operating theater was the daylight filtering through the front doorway.
“I’m ready, loveboat—it won’t be long now. That’s a joke, if you missed it. What do I do first?”
“Depress the first button.”
“Just like making bacon.” Owen pushed but nothing happened. He jabbed the button a second time. “Something wrong here. Is the power off?”
“It is never off. Depress the button firmly.”
Owen pushed in and held it down with his thumb. “I did, I did, but there ain’t nothing happening. There’s no work light, no paper tray, no nothing. What’s the matter?”
“Depress the second button.”
Owen pressed without result and then methodically pushed all the buttons in sequence. The machine did nothing. He pushed in reverse sequence. There was no result.
“This tool of the devil won’t work! It’s extinct, defunct, cold stone dead; You forgot to pay the electric bill—the power is off.”
“It isn’t working for you?”
“It isn’t working for me and you. Dead as the old doornail.” He balled a fist and beat on the machine.
After a thoughtful silence Paoli said, “I see.”
“I don’t see much of anything. Just you in there.”
“The machine cannot operate while the door is open. This door I am lying on. It is a safety measure.”
Owen blinked at the dim legs seen behind the window and then sat down on the coffin to contemplate his defeat. He gazed about the apartment, taking a mental inventory of the cramped lounge, the woman’s bedroom, the dining area, the kitchen, that cubicle at the back where he was supposed to sleep, and finally the workshop. He looked without real interest at the jar of old coins on the bench. The pile of kindling wood from the broken door was heaped at the front of the parlor—if he wanted to stretch a point and call the entranceway a parlor. The road continued to move under the bright sun. None of it really mattered. He had lost a battle to the machine— his first loss of the day. The sense of failure depressed him.
The woman slowly hauled herself out of the oven, tumbled off the chair, picked herself up, and came around the corner to sit on the coffin beside him.
The lid sank under their weight.
She said in explanation, “The circuitry includes a safety switch at the door; it is there to prevent a mishap during the reconstitution processes. I didn’t remember that because my head spins.”
“Never mind, just never mind.” Owen reached for her hand and gently squeezed her fingers in reassurance. “I like tall women.”
They sat together for a long while in contemplative silence, holding hands and watching a small part of the world pass by the doorway. Workmen continued to go by in their familiar wooden poses, and once a pink-clad monitor turned to stare in wonder at the doorless doorway, but she didn’t leave the road to investigate the oddity. Owen had forgotten his clothing lying out on the grass.
He wondered if that door and its switch was the clue to his second lifestyle. Had the drunken bat of last night opened the oven door too soon and hauled him out half-baked, in a manner of speaking? Had she failed to follow the timing of the recipe, being too eager to get her hands on his body? If she was hot for his body. Or had she simply been so loaded on bad booze that she didn’t know what she was doing and couldn’t read the instruction book?
Paoli was looking at his hand enfolding hers. “Do you have a name?”
“Of course I have a name. I’ve already told you my name. My name is Owen Hall. I’m from Indiana.”
“You seem sad, Owen Hall from Indiana.”
“That’s because I can’t be a zeppelin pilot,” he said. “I always wanted to be a zeppelin pilot, but now I can’t be because it crashed in Jersey about six years ago and I don’t think they make them anymore, what with the war and all.”
The woman shook her head with puzzlement and then wished that she hadn’t. “I don’t understand you again, Owen Hall from Indiana.”
“I thought you’d ask, what is a zeppelin?”
“What is a zeppelin?”
“Baby doll, I just happed to be a zeppelin expert. As a matter of cold fact, I’m the only guy in this here town that knows anything about anything. I wonder if I could get a job as mayor, or prince, or something like that, and put my talents to work?” Owen rested the whiskey bottle on his knee and debated the wisdom of offering the woman a drink. She was having some difficulty in maintaining her perch on the coffin. “A zeppelin is a big gas bag that sails around in the sky. People ride in it—they ride in those little cars slung underneath the bag.”
“Did the ancient gods walk on the sky with it?”
“They sure did. Most of the time they rode in airplanes, but some of the rich ones had zeppelins. I saw one once—a real one.”
Paoli said in awe, “You are a living legend.”
Owen eyed her suspiciously, searching for mockery.
“I was about fourteen years old when a real monster of a zeppelin sailed right over my head—sailed right across Indiana. Wow, but it was big! That old gas bag was over seven hundred feet long and I’ll bet you it was a hundred feet in diameter—it was huge! I remember that it had five engines—I counted them—and the next day the papers said it was zipping along at seventy miles an hour. Lovepot, that’s speed.
“It was on a round-the-world tour. It flew over Siberia and Japan and Alaska. Well, it actually flew all the way around the world, and then it flew over Indiana on the way home. That’s when I decided that I wanted to be a zeppelin pilot and fly around the world—or fly over the North Pole like that Italian zeppelin did in nineteen twenty-six.” He held the bottle up to his eye, measuring the remaining contents. “But now I can’t. There ain’t no more Zeppelins—ol’ Hitler had them broken up for scrap —and here I sit stuck away in this crazy place with a lady who’s so loaded she’s about to fall right off this here coffin. There ain’t no justice.”
“The old Mother stories are true,” Paoli exclaimed. “Gods did walk the sky in ancient times.”
“We called them fly-boys.”
“Are you an ancient fly-boy?”
“Nope, I’m an ancient Democrat—vote early and often.”
Owen took a final drink from his bottle, firmly capped it, and set it aside. There was work to do, and he began the difficult task of getting the woman to her feet and into the. shower stall. She didn’t cooperate readily because she didn’t understand what was happening.
“Is the wake ended?”
“The wake is not ended. I came over to stay the night; remember?” He tried to brush away the sooty debris but succeeded only in smearing the pink coveralls. “We’ve got to get you cleaned up. You look a mess.”
“I have now cloothing.”
“New clothing.”
“I have new clothing.”
“Your face and hands are dirty, and some of the oven stuff is in your hair. You need a bath.”
Owen grasped her forearms and began tugging. Paoli did nothing but sit and stare at him. Her eyes would not focus properly. Owen tried to encircle her waist with his arms and lift her off the coffin, but failed because he lacked the proper purchase to move her mass. He thought that perhaps a goose in the proper place would start her skyward, but it did not—she m
erely looked around and down at him in startled surprise. Finally, Owen rapped sharply on the side of the coffin with his knuckles.
She asked with wonder, “Who is that?” and looked at the doorless doorway.
Owen said, “Poor Yorick wants out of the coffin. You’re sitting on his stomach.”
Paoli jumped and would have toppled over face forward onto the floor if Owen had not steadied her. He led her into the shower stall.
It was a small cubicle, barely large enough for the two of them, but he managed to crowd in with her and turn on the water. She gasped when the cold stream struck her on top of the head and coursed down her face.
Owen said sheepishly, “I forgot to take your clothes off.” He found the fasteners and peeled off the soggy coveralls. Paoli watched him wordlessly.
“No fair!” Owen cried, and pointed to the halter serving as a bra. “You make underwear for yourself, but nobody made any for me.” He reached around behind her and unfastened the halter, then slipped his fingers into the waistline of the underpants and pulled them down and off. When he straightened up he found his eye level just above the nipples of her breasts.
Owen held his silence for a long moment and finally expelled a breath. “Geez, babe. I don’t know what to say.”
Paoli continued to watch him without speaking.
After a while Owen remembered his manners. “Got any soap?”
She gave him a small bar of soap. Owen made suds and began soaping her down, beginning with her neck and working down her arms. By the time he had reached her hands and the tips of her fingers he had regained a measure of courage. The amazon’s breasts no longer intimidated him. Owen lifted her hands up to his shoulders and began soaping her torso. He lingered over the breasts long after they were impeccably clean, and moved down to wash her stomach. After a very long time he found himself at her knees.
“Hey, move your feet apart. You’re too tight.”
Paoli complied.
When the task was half completed Owen turned the woman around and washed up the back, beginning at the heels and working toward the neck. He was back at the beginning. There was no shampoo to be found in the cubicle, so he washed her hair with soap and then rinsed it two or three times to be certain the soap was gone. The task was done and he turned off the water. The woman leaned against the stall with her eyes closed.
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