by Dan Simmons
Sophia’s dark gaucho pants and other white, frilly unnamed things joined the blouse atop the thick shrub a few seconds later.
Crozier could only stare. His easy smile became a dead man’s rictus. He was sure that his eyes were bulging out of his head, but he could not turn away, nor avert his gaze.
Sophia Cracroft stepped out into the sunlight.
She was absolutely naked. Her arms hung easily at her sides; her hands were slightly curled. Her breasts were not large but were very high and very white and tipped with large nipples that were pink, not brown as had been the case with all the other women — crib doxies, gap-toothed prostitutes, native girls — whom Crozier had seen naked before this moment.
Had he ever seen another woman truly naked before? A white woman? At this instant he thought not. And if he had, he knew, it mattered not in the least.
The sunlight reflected off young Sophia’s blindingly white skin. She did not cover herself. Still frozen in languid posture and vapid expression, only his penis reacting by becoming even more turgid and aching, Crozier realized that he was astonished that this goddess in his mind, this perfection of English womanhood, the woman he already mentally and emotionally had chosen to be his wife and the mother of his children, had thick, luxurious pubic hair that seemed intent, here and there, on leaping out of its proper black V of an inverted triangle. Unruly was the only word that came to his otherwise empty mind. She had unpinned her long hair and let it fall to her shoulders.
“Are you coming in, Francis?” she called softly from where she stood on the grassy shelf. Her tone was as neutral as if she were asking him if he would like a bit more tea. “Or are you just going to stare?”
Without another word she dived into the water in a perfect arc, her pale hands and white arms cleaving the mirrorlike surface an instant before the rest of her.
By this time Crozier had opened his mouth to speak, but articulate speech was obviously an impossibility. After a moment he closed his mouth.
Sophia swam easily back and forth. He could see her white buttocks rising behind her strong, white back, along which her wet hair lay separated like three brushstrokes of the blackest of India inks.
She raised her head, treading water easily while stopping at the far end of the pond near the large tree she’d pointed out upon her arrival. “The platypus’s burrow is behind these roots,” she called. “I don’t think it wants to come out and play today. It’s shy. Don’t you be, Francis. Please.”
As if in a dream Crozier felt himself rising, walking to the thickest patch of shrubbery he could find close to the water on the opposite side of the pond from where Sophia was. His fingers shook violently as he worked to undo his buttons. He found himself folding his clothing in tight, proper little squares, setting the squares within a larger square on the grass at his feet. He was sure he was taking hours. His throbbing erection would not go away. Will it gone as he would, imagine it away as he might, it persisted in rising rigid to his navel and pitching back and forth there, the glans as red as a signal lantern and extended several taut inches free of its foreskin.
Crozier stood irresolute behind the bush, hearing the splashes as Sophia continued to swim. If he dithered another moment, he knew, she would be climbing out of the pond, be back behind her own curtain of a shrub drying herself off, and he would curse himself for a coward and a fool for the rest of his days.
Peeking through the branches of his shrub, Crozier waited until the lady’s back was turned as she swam toward the far shore, and then, with much speed and clumsiness, he threw himself forward into the water, stumbling more than diving, abandoning all grace in his single-minded effort to get his treacherous prick beneath the water and out of sight before Miss Cracroft turned her face his way.
When he surfaced, spluttering and blowing, she was treading water twenty feet away and smiling at him.
“I’m delighted you decided to join me, Francis. Now if the male platypus emerges with his venomous spur, you can protect me. Shall we inspect the burrow entrance?” She pivoted gracefully and swam toward the huge tree where it overhung the water.
Vowing to keep at least ten — no, fifteen — feet of open water between them, like a foundering ship surrendering to a lee shore, Crozier dog-paddled after her.
The pond was surprisingly deep. As he stopped twelve feet from her and treaded water clumsily to keep his head above the surface, Crozier realized that even here at the edge, where roots from the large tree came down five feet of steep bank into the water and tall grasses hung over casting afternoon shadows, Crozier’s flailing feet and seeking toes could not at first find purchase on the bottom.
Suddenly Sophia was coming toward him.
She must have seen the panic in his eyes; he did not know whether to back-paddle furiously or just somehow warn her away from his condition of prick-rampant, because she paused mid-breaststroke — and he could see her white breasts bobbling beneath the surface — nodded to her left, and swam easily toward the tree roots.
Crozier followed.
They hung on to the roots, only about four feet from each other, but the water was blessedly dark below chest level, and Sophia pointed to what might have been a burrow opening, or just a muddy indentation, in the bank between the tangle of tree roots.
“This is a camping or bachelor burrow, not a nesting burrow,” said Sophia. She had beautiful shoulders and collarbones.
“What?” said Crozier. He was happy — and mildly amazed — that his power of speech had returned, but less than satisfied by the odd, strangled sound of the syllable and by the fact that his teeth were chattering. The water was not cold.
Sophia smiled. A strand of dark hair was plastered along one of her sharp cheeks. “Platypuses make two kinds of burrows,” she said softly, “this kind — what some naturalists call a camping burrow — which both the male and female use except during breeding season. The bachelors live here. The nesting burrow is dug out by the female for the actual breeding, and after that deed is performed, she excavates another small chamber to act as a nursery.”
“Oh,” said Crozier, clinging to the root as tightly as he had ever clung to any ship’s line while two hundred feet up in the rigging during a hurricane.
“Platypuses lay eggs, you know,” continued Sophia, “like reptiles. But the mothers secrete milk, like mammals.”
Through the water he could see the dark circles in the centres of the white globes of her breasts.
“Really?” he said.
“Aunt Jane, who is something of a naturalist herself, believes that the venomous spurs on the hind legs of the male are used not only to fight other male platypuses and intruders, but to hang on to the female while they are swimming and mating at the same time. Presumably he does not secrete the venom when clinging to his breeding partner.”
“Yes?” said Crozier and wondered if he should have said No? He had no idea what they were talking about.
Using the tangle of roots, Sophia pulled herself closer, until her breasts were almost touching him. She laid her cool hand — a surprisingly large hand — flat against his chest.
“Miss Cracroft … ,” he began.
“Shhhh,” said Sophia. “Hush.”
She shifted her left hand from the root to his shoulder, hanging from him as she had hung from the tree root. Her right hand slid lower, pressing across his belly, touching his right hip, then coming back to his centre and going lower again.
“Oh, my,” she whispered by his ear. Her cheek was against his now, her wet hair in his eyes. “Is this a venomous spur I’ve found?”
“Miss Cra— … ,” he began.
She squeezed. She floated gracefully so that suddenly her strong legs were on either side of his left leg, and then she lowered her weight and warmth, rubbing against him. He raised that leg slightly to buoy her up and keep her face above water. Her eyes were closed. Her hips ground, her breasts flattened against him, and her right hand began to stroke the length of him.
Croz
ier moaned, but it was only an anticipatory moan, not one of release. Sophia made a soft sound against his neck. He could feel the heat and wetness of her nether regions against his raised leg and thigh. How can anything be wetter than water? he wondered.
Then she moaned in earnest, and Crozier closed his eyes as well — sorry that he could not continue seeing her but having no choice — she pressed herself hard against him once, twice, a third downward-pressing time, and her stroking became hurried, urgent, expert, knowing, and demanding.
He buried his face against her wet hair as he throbbed and pulsed into the water. Crozier thought the pulsing ejaculation might never end, and — if he had been able — he would have apologized to her at once. Instead, he moaned again and almost lost his grip on the tree root. They both bobbled, their chins dripping beneath the waterline.
What confused Francis Crozier most at that moment — and everything in the universe confused him right then, while nothing in the universe bothered him — was the fact of the lady’s downward-pressing, her thighs strong around him, her cheek pressed hard against his own while she closed her eyes so tightly, and her own moan. Certainly women could not feel the kind of intensity that men do? Some of the doxies had moaned, but certainly that had been only because they knew the men liked it — it had been obvious that they felt nothing.
And yet …
Sophia pulled back, looked into his eyes, smiled easily, kissed him full on the lips, raised her legs into an almost jackknife, kicked off from the roots, and swam for the shore where her clothes lay on the mildly quaking bush.
Incredibly, they dressed, picked up their picnic things, packed the mule, mounted, and rode all the way back to Government House in silence.
Incredibly, that evening during dinner, Sophia Cracroft laughed and chatted with her aunt, Sir John, and even with the unusually loquacious Captain James Clark Ross, while Crozier sat mostly silent and staring at the table. He could only admire her … what did the Frogs call it? — her sangfroid, while Crozier’s attention and soul felt precisely as his body had at the moment of his endless orgasm in the Platypus Pond — atoms and essence scattered to every corner of the universe.
Yet Miss Cracroft did not act aloof toward him nor offer any sense of reproof. She smiled at him, made comments to him, and attempted to include him in the conversation just as she did every evening in Government House. And certainly her smile toward him was a little warmer? More affectionate? Even smitten? It had to be so.
After dinner that night, when Crozier suggested a walk in the garden, she begged off, pleading a previous engagement of cards with Captain Ross in the main parlour. Would Commander Crozier care to join them?
No, Commander Crozier begged off in return, understanding from the warm and easy undertones in her warm and easy surface banter that all must be kept normal in Government House that evening and until the two of them could meet to discuss their future. Commander Crozier announced loudly that he had a bit of a headache and would turn in early.
He was awake, dressed in his best uniform, and walking the halls of the mansion before dawn the next day, certain that Sophia would have the same impulse of meeting early.
She did not. Sir John was the first to come to breakfast, and he made endless, insufferable small talk with Crozier, who had never mastered the insipid art of small talk, much less been able to hold up his end of a conversation on what the proper tariff should be on renting prisoners for digging canals.
Lady Jane came down next, and even Ross appeared for breakfast before Sophia finally made an appearance. By this time Crozier was on his sixth cup of coffee, which he had learned to prefer over tea in the morning during his winters with Parry in the northern ice years earlier, but he stayed while the lady had her usual eggs, sausage, beans, toast, and tea.
Sir John disappeared somewhere. Lady Jane deliquesced. Captain Ross wandered off. Sophia finally finished her breakfast.
“Would you like to walk in the garden?” he asked.
“So early?” she said. “It’s already very hot out there. This autumn shows no signs of cooling off.”
“But … ,” began Crozier and attempted to communicate the urgency of his invitation with his gaze.
Sophia smiled. “I would be delighted to walk in the garden with you, Francis.”
They strolled slowly, interminably, waiting for a single prisoner-gardener to finish his task of unloading heavy bags of fresh fertilizer.
When the man was gone, Crozier steered her upwind to the stone bench at the far and shaded end of the long formal garden. He helped her take her seat and waited while she folded her parasol. She looked up at him — Crozier was too agitated to sit and loomed over her, shifting from foot to foot as he loomed — and he imagined that he could see the expectation in her eyes.
Finally he had the presence of mind to go to one knee.
“Miss Cracroft, I am aware that I am a mere commander in Her Majesty’s Navy and that you deserve only the attentions of the full Admiral of the Fleet … no, I mean, of royalty, of one who would command a full Admiral … but you must be aware, I know you are aware, of the intensity of my feelings toward you, and if you could see yourself finding reciprocal feelings for …”
“Good God, Francis,” interrupted Sophia, “you are not going to propose marriage, are you?”
Crozier had no answer to that. On one knee, both hands clasped and extended toward her as if in prayer, he waited.
She patted his arm. “Commander Crozier, you are a wonderful man. A gentle man despite all those rough edges which may never be rounded off. And you are a wise man — especially in understanding that I shall never be a commander’s wife. That would not be fitting. That would never be … acceptable.”
Crozier tried to speak. No words came to mind. That part of his brain still working was trying to complete the endless sentence proposing marriage which he had lain awake all night composing. He had got through almost a third of it — after a fashion.
Sophia laughed softly and shook her head. Her eyes darted, making sure that no one — not even a prisoner — was within sight or hearing. “Please do not be concerned about yesterday, Commander Crozier. We had a wonderful day. The … interlude … at the pond was pleasant for both of us. It was a function of … my nature … as much as a result of mutual feelings of closeness we felt for those few moments. But please disabuse yourself, my dear Francis, that there remains upon you any burden or compulsion to act in any way on my behalf because of our brief indiscretion.”
He looked at her.
She smiled, but not with as much warmth as he had become used to. “It is not,” she said so softly that the words came through the hot air as slightly more than a firm whisper, “as if you compromised my honour, Commander.”
“Miss Cracroft … ,” Crozier began again and stopped. If his ship had been in the act of being forced against a lee shore with the pumps out of action and four feet of water in the hold and climbing, the rigging snarled and the sails in tatters, he would have known what orders to give. What to say next. At this moment not a single word came to mind. There was only a rising pain and astonishment in him that hurt all the worse for being a recognition of something old and all too well understood.
“If I were to marry,” continued Sophia, opening her parasol again and spinning it above her, “it would be to our dashing Captain Ross. Although I am not destined to be a mere captain’s wife either, Francis. He would have to be knighted … but I am sure he will be soon.”
Crozier stared into her eyes, searching for some sign of jest. “Captain Ross is engaged,” he said finally. His voice sounded like the croak of a man who has been stranded without water for many days on end. “They plan to marry immediately after James’s return to England.”
“Oh, pshaw,” said Sophia, standing now and twirling the parasol more quickly. “I will be returning to England by swift packet boat myself this summer, even before Uncle John is recalled. Captain James Clark Ross has not seen the last of me.”
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She looked down at him where he remained, absurdly, still on one knee in the white gravel. “Besides,” she said brightly, “even if Captain Ross marries that young pretendress waiting for him — he and I have spoken of her often, and I can assure you that she is a fool — marriage is the end of nothing. It is not death. It is not Hamlet’s ‘Unknown Country’ from which no man returns. Men have been known to return from marriage and find the woman who has been right for them all along. Mark my words on this, Francis.”
He stood then, finally. He stood and brushed the white gravel from the knee of his best dress uniform trousers.
“I must go now,” said Sophia. “Aunt Jane, Captain Ross, and I are going into Hobart Town this morning to see some new stallions the Van Diemen Company have just imported for breeding services. Do feel free to come with us if you so choose, Francis, but for heaven’s sake change your clothing and your expression before you do.”
She touched his forearm lightly and walked back into Government House, twirling her parasol as she went.
Crozier heard the muffled bell on deck ring eight bells. It was 4:00 a.m. Usually, on a ship at sea, the men would be rousted from their hammocks in half an hour to begin holystoning the decks and cleaning everything in sight. But here in the darkness and the ice — and in the wind, Crozier could hear it still howling in the riggings, meaning another blizzard was probable, and this only the tenth of November of their third winter — the men were allowed to sleep late, lazing away until four bells in the morning watch. Six a.m. Then the cold ship would come alive with the mates’ shouts and the men’s finneskoed feet hitting the deck before the mates carried out their threats of cutting their hammocks down with the seamen still in them.
This was a lazy paradise compared to sea duty. The men not only slept late but were allowed to have their breakfast here on the lower deck at eight bells before having to get on with their morning duties.
Crozier looked at the whiskey bottle and glass. Both were empty. He raised the heavy pistol — extra heavy with its full charge of powder and ball. His hand could tell.