She glances around at the dimly lit walls, at the window exactly where it is supposed to be, at the dust bunnies dancing in the slight draft coming in through the window, at the cracks in the ceiling and even the cobweb in the corner where it has been allowed to remain for months undisturbed (since Joshua does not believe in killing spiders that aren't poisonous). She knows she's not at the Gleason Institute, she knows she's not dreaming. She peers at Joshua speculatively. If he could induce her body to grow a second set of genitals, perhaps "springing" her while she's asleep isn't such an impossible feat to have pulled off. He does look beautiful lying there, staring up at her. And his body is so . . . there.
She takes his hand and brings it to her mouth. "They're just dying to remove everything they think doesn't belong there," she remarks between kisses to his palm. "But I won't let them, Joshua. Just as I wouldn't let them find you." Almost breathless, she turns his hand over and kisses the back of it knuckle by knuckle, and then licks and sucks his index finger.
For the next couple of hours they don't stop to talk. It's all so fantastic Pat wants to do it again and again in every combination she can think of. Later, though, when they are lying quietly, drifting almost into sleep, her mind resumes work. "What a shame we can't both screw one another simultaneously," she says, sighing. "Don't you think that would be neat?"
"In most things human, precise complementarity is disastrous," Joshua observes, as though stating a universally acknowledged truth. "Hadn't you noticed? Also, though in theory it would be nice, geometrically it would be a little like trisecting the angle." Pat giggles at the image, and Joshua joins her. "But we call this symmetrical equivalence. Given this sexual arrangement, we can all get pregnant, can all impregnate, can all even do it solo, through artificial insemination. Though of course since it wouldn't be too good for the collective gene pool, self-impregnation is virtually taboo."
"Like incest," Pat says, then thinks that "doing it solo" would really mean that the same genes would be reproduced, rather than a possible slew of recessives. So the analogy doesn't quite hold up. But this we that Joshua refers to, as though a whole community of persons are as he is himself and has made her to be. . . It is time, she thinks, to pin him down. "Who is this 'we' you're referring to?" she asks him. "Are you saying there are others like you?" She has, since he admitted he had changed her, been thinking that his chromosomes must have mutated, and have mysteriously developed the power to cause hers to mutate, too. But then there's the mystery of how he got her from the institute to his room (and without waking her, yet). . . .
Joshua props himself on an elbow and gazes down into her face. "If I told you any of it, you'd think I was handing you a National Enquirer special."
That cracks Pat up. And so she has to tell him the conversation she overheard, in which Sam said that when he started reading the file Lewis had faxed him, he'd thought it was a hoax, National Enquirer style. "So," she concludes, "I don't think you have to worry about my dismissing it out of hand, considering how improbable this—" she gestures at his and her own genitals—"is."
"First, there aren't many of us left here." Joshua's face grows sober. "Which is why I broke the rules and got involved with you. I was born here—on this planet, I mean—but this is not where my people come from. Before I was born, a subset of our constellation—this is hard to explain, I'm not sure what the best English equivalences are. By constellation I mean something remotely like a guild, or association—but no. The thing is, it's more like a tribe, to which a certain kind of work had been allotted. . . ." Joshua frowns. "But 'tribe' must sound primitive to your ears, and it's not that. . . ." He fidgets with the top hem of the sheet. "Well, a number of us, from the group that is meant to do comparative sorts of studies—sort of a combination of your disciplines of anthropology, sociology, psychology, history and philosophy with quite a lot of the sciences thrown in—anyway, a group of us arrived here about one hundred years ago. Humans are especially interesting to us because they're physiologically very similar—except that they're sexually dimorphic." He smiles, almost shyly, and blinks his so-sweet brown eyes slowly at her. "You can't imagine how weird my people find it that most of the large animals on your planet are sexually dimorphic. Though actually, I probably can't imagine how weird it is to them, either, since I was raised here, and so have been used to it all my life."
It's all coming so fast. It's fantastic, but one part of her, the part coldly watching, doesn't feel all that surprised. Still, she knows she should be astounded and disbelieving (even after all that has happened to her). "You're saying you—your family or whatever—are from another planet!" she exclaims. And the watcher inside her thinks of how he told her nothing about this before, of how he did not warn her that her body would be changing (much less ask her permission to change it). . . .
He half laughs; his eyes meeting hers get even shyer. "You see, I told you. Anyway, the problem is that most of us have died. Which we weren't supposed to do. I mean, ordinarily our lifespan is several of your centuries. But disease and all sorts of accidents have been a problem." He shrugs. "I suppose if my constellation had realized that before the window-for-transit next opened humans would develop the capacity for destroying the planet any number of ways, we probably wouldn't have come. Anyway, we're stuck here. And those few of us born here who have survived are in need of mates. But of those available to my age cohort all are forbidden me, because they are too closely alfinial. And so I knew that if I wanted to have a child I'd have to mate with a human to do so. And though it's forbidden to mate with humans . . ."
It wildly elates her to think that not only did he choose her, but that he went against his own people in doing so. She grabs his free wrist. "You're saying you broke your people's laws when you got involved with me?"
His smile is so warm it touches even the watcher. She wonders how he rates with his own people, and whether they will accept what he has done. "Well, yes. But I think it will be all right. Because, you see, there are so few of us left here. And the travel window won't open until after I've passed the age at which I can bear children."
Pat flops onto her back and stares up at the dimly lit ceiling. "I can't handle this. You're saying you want to get pregnant by me?"
Joshua nods. "I suppose that sounds strange to you—because you think of me as a male. But remember, I'm no more a male than you are."
She turns her head and gestures. "But your mustache and beard. And you don't have developed breasts."
"All secondary characteristics, Pat. I chose them when I elected to present myself as a male. Since one must choose one or another on this world. And we've learned the hard way it's too risky to present as females. Too many times those of us presenting as females have been sexually attacked—and discovered. In addition to being less vulnerable to rape, men have greater mobility and access than women. It's simply safer for us to look like men."
"Does that mean I'm going to be growing out a beard, too?"
Joshua laughs. "Only if you want to."
She shakes her head. "I don't see how. Controlling hormones and all that . . ."
"It's easy. I'll show you." He leans over and kisses her lips very lightly. "Well, what do you think? Am I a liar or a lunatic?"
Pat throws her arms around him. "A charmer," she retorts. "I'm completely taken in." Or almost, the watcher murmurs. Because how can you really trust someone who has lied so massively, who chooses manipulation over honest discussion and decision-making? Half smiling, she strokes his flat furry stomach and tries to imagine it swelling under her hands with the persistent fullness of pregnancy. (With her child.) She kisses his shoulder. "There's just one thing. . . ."
He withdraws a little to look into her face. "What's that?"
"Will you please just say the words, 'I want to have your baby'?"
Joshua's eyes gleam. "Pat, darling, I want to have your baby," he repeats with utter gravity.
Pat laughs hysterically. Now that, she thinks, is true National Enquirer.
But when she finishes laughing, she sits up so as to be more serious. "Another thing," she says, "that I absolutely have to know. How can we be here in your room? When I first woke I thought I must be dreaming, or maybe hallucinating. How could we be here?"
Joshua sits up, too. "I can't tell you. The strictures against showing our technology to humans are even more serious than those forbidding me to mate with you." He frowns. "Which reminds me, Pat, you must not ever have sexual intercourse with another human, or give others your blood." He gestures at her genitals. "It would spread, you know."
"I know." She bites her lip. More decisions he's making for her, about what to do with her body? "I'm not sure I like your deciding for me that I'm going to be permanently monogamous." She frowns. "But wait a minute, that's not how you changed me, is it. Because we never did have intercourse. So how did you do it?"
Joshua hesitates a few seconds before answering. "You remember that time you cut yourself chopping onions?"
Pat shakes her head. "No, not really . . ."
"Well, you did. It was, I think, in January. And I kissed and licked the cut." His lips pressed tightly together. "Because I forgot. It completely slipped my mind that I could change you that way—though all the while I was being so excruciatingly careful in our sexual relations. . . ."
Pat's stomach drops. After maybe half a minute she asks in a very small voice: "You mean you didn't mean to?" So he didn't specially choose her?
Joshua sighs. "I'm afraid not." His eyes meet hers. "But I'm glad I did. My people are scattered all over the world—mostly in Asia. A person gets lonely. And, as I said, now I'll be able to bear a child."
Pat nods slowly. So it was an accident. But he came back for her anyway, didn't he. And surely that counts for a lot. . . .
Dawn is breaking when they finally settle down with the intention to sleep. In the morning, she thinks (even as she's watching the walls lighten), she'll call the collective, and they'll tell her where her parents are staying. They'll raise hell for her, and the bastards won't be able to touch her. All of her genitals will be left intact, of that she is determined. And they will not reincarcerate her. Next Monday she'll start classes, right on schedule. They don't know it's a virus. And whether it should be considered harmful or not is in any case a social, not a medical, issue.
Lying with her head on Joshua's chest, drifting off to sleep, she thinks how easy it would be to spread the virus. His people are here to study humans' innate perversity. It seems only fair to take advantage of her privilege, to spread the wealth around to others. She would be a traitor to her own kind if she didn't. So what if she spoils Joshua's and his people's research project? Humans did not ask to be studied. And what could be a more massive violation of privacy than to treat an entire sentient species as research subjects without their knowing consent?
Drifting to the edge of sleep, Pat imagines Wagner pregnant. Would it change even his kind? But how could it not?
A little fear scrapes up that cold pit in her stomach again. Joshua won't approve when he finds out. And Sam will know who's responsible. But she struck no "bargains" with either of them. And Joshua did not even ask her first. And besides, the privilege Joshua's bestowed on her confers its obligations. She may not choose to bear a child in her womb like Joshua, but she can be another kind of mother, mother to an age, mother to the Age of the Hermaphrodite. . . .
At nineteen, yet.
When Pat drops off to sleep she's smiling. It's a big job, changing the world. But she's ready for it.
Table of Contents
Preface
The Other Celia
Residuals
Eight O'clock in the Morning
Expendable
The Reality Trip
Decency
The Mindworm
Popeye and Pops Watch the Evening World Report
The Autopsy
Or All the Seas with Oysters
Angel
Among the Hairy Earthmen
I'm Too Big But I Love to Play
The Hero as Werwolf
Motherhood, Etc.
Aliens Among Us Page 31