by Lisa Yaszek
Fanu regarded John with compassion. “No, not that. I mean that, compared to our race, your own sexual differences seem minute. It would be a relatively simple matter to convert one to the other. I recall in the tapes several instances in which this sort of change occurred naturally, and others in which the changes were brought about medically.”
Everett knew his eyes were bulging, and he felt the anger rising in his throat. He beat it down. Fanu wouldn’t know. He could read about the taboos of another race without fully appreciating . . . in spite of his revulsion, Everett gave a spluttering laugh. “Yes, yes, I see your point, Fanu. It’s an interesting theory, but even if it would work, it, well, it wouldn’t work that way.”
“Why?”
“Well, it’s a matter of—my men wouldn’t stand for it. We’re not guinea pigs,” he finished, testily.
“No.” The voice was compassionate again. “You are a race doomed to extinction, with a possible way out. My race had no such second chance.”
Fanu glided away toward the laboratory and Everett stared after him, one thought drumming through his mind. “My God! He wasn’t theorizing! He—he meant it!”
The slight noise finally made him look up. He hadn’t heard anyone come in, and started involuntarily at seeing Chord’s great hulk before him.
“Sorry to disturb you, Cap’n.”
“That isn’t necessary, Chord. What can I do for you?”
The big man smiled sheepishly. “Hard to break habits, sir. Guess I never will.” Despite his size and demeanor, Chord was not stupid, though hampered by poor education and embarrassment for his giant clumsy body. Now he shifted uneasily from foot to foot as he mumbled. “I—guess I’ve been picked out as a representative, sir. For—for the men.”
“Gripe committee? Look, I’m not really your superior any more, Chord. We’re all together now.”
“Yes, sir, but—you’re still Captain.”
Everett sighed, waited for the big man to continue. “Some—some of us would like to build private quarters, sir. I mean—not fights, or anything like that, we just—we’d like some privacy—you know—homes, sir, like—”
“Like back on Earth?” Chord nodded dumbly and Everett said, “Well, I see no objection to that. You didn’t need to consult me.”
“It’s just—well, sir, some of the guys thought you might get the wrong idea, sir.”
“Wrong idea?” Everett asked stupidly, startled by Chord’s red face.
“Well, you know, a couple of men living alone. It’s nothing like that, sir. Honest.”
He waited until Chord left before he permitted the embarrassed amusement to boil over into his face; and knew that the amusement covered some strange unease that was almost fear.
“He actually worried about it,” he laughed, telling Fanu later.
“Shouldn’t he?” Fanu inquired gently. “John, don’t stare. I’m not sure of the word in your tongue, but I think your people sense that the—the last person to approve of such a matter would be yourself.”
Everett got to his feet, angrily. “Are you implying that my men would actually—”
“You said they were free agents. You said they were not your men.”
Everett turned away, rubbing a tired hand across his eyes. “Yes, so I did. Habit.”
“Habit in morals too, John?”
“Fanu! Look, I appreciate that you don’t know our taboos, probably they’re idiotic, but—they’re ours. As for the men—”
“Do you know them, John?”
“Of course.”
“How long did you expect to be here?”
He opened his mouth, then paused to consider, mentally counting. “Six months on planet, eight months coming, eight months back.”
“How long have you been here now?”
“Eighteen—months.” His face worked, remembering some of the material on those cursed tape reels. “Fanu, you’re my friend, but what you’re suggesting is ridiculous. You haven’t known Earthmen long enough to make an adequate appraisal.”
Fanu shook his head solemnly. “There is a folk saying on your tapes—we have a similar one—that one may be too close to the forest to see the trees.” He gestured John to the window and pointed. “Count them, John. Seven small huts, and three are smaller than the others. Why?”
Trying to swallow the horror in his throat, the suspicion that both frightened and sickened him, he shook his head in denial. “They’re friends. You wouldn’t understand.”
“No?” The voice sounded very sad. “Don’t you think we had friends among our own? But you are blessed with bodies that will permit friends to become mates.”
“Stop it!” Everett felt like screaming the words; he held a picture of a large whitewashed wall disintegrating before his eyes, of himself trying to hold it together with his bare hands, of his men standing by, staring at him. Fanu was gesturing again. Unwillingly, his eyes followed the pointing paw. The men had organized an impromptu ball game of some sort, rough house, much laughing, shouting, pushing and tussling. Two of them stumbled and fell together. They were slow in getting up and they moved apart with both reluctance and a touch of conscious guilt.
He jerked away from the window, trying to blot out the sight. The wall had large holes in it, the ravages of inevitability. His mind worked feverishly with brush and plaster; children, horseplaying, a reversion to adolescence—
“Put the question to your men!” For the first time, Fanu’s tones were tense with the beginnings of anger. “You have a second chance, John! They have the right to choose for themselves if they want to die! You can’t decide for them all! Put it to your men, or—” he swung around, to see that the little alien was actually trembling, “or I shall do so on my own initiative.”
Everett felt a sour taste in his mouth. “All right,” he shouted, “I’ll put it to them—but don’t blame me if they tear you to pieces afterward!”
The looks on their faces had been enough. The men knew Fanu, certainly. He was one of them now. They knew the tragic history of his people, respected his knowledge, even loved him. But he was an outsider, and he’d proved it. He didn’t understand mankind.
The knock on the doorframe went through him like a shock.
It was Chord, and another man. Everett blinked in the half light, trying to pick him out. Young Latimer—the apprentice, the one they called Tip—just a kid—my God! Under his nose, right under his nose!
“Cap’n—” Chord began, then trailed off. The big man looked sick, stricken, and Everett became aware that his own expression must be one of outright condemnation. He—the mighty tolerant, benevolent skipper. We’re all together now, eh? In a pig’s eye! Did he think he was God? Everett suddenly hated his own guts, and struggled to bring his face to order. With a new humility, he said, “Come in, Chord. You too, Lat—Tip. What can I do for you?”
“About—about what you said, a couple of days ago. You know, about . . . the . . . about what Dr. Fanu said. Did he mean it?”
“Really mean it?” Tip added. Everett shifted his glance. Young, yes; but there was nothing simpering about him. Clear-eyes, unashamed, he met the Captain’s eyes; a good-looking kid, the athletic, All-Academy type, but not too good-looking. Calloused hands. A faint residue of old acne scars along his jawline.
“Well,” Everett said slowly, trying to keep his voice impersonal, “he says he means it.”
“Dr. Fanu doesn’t strike me as a joker,” the boy continued. The alien had become “Doctor” to them after repairing several broken ribs and a fractured knee or ankle in the last few months.
“No, I don’t think he was joking.”
“How does he—I mean—”
“I didn’t get the details,” Everett cut in quickly. “But if he says he can—his race is advanced enough, biologically—he may be able to do what he says. Let us reproduce.”
&nb
sp; “Have babies,” Tip amended. The bluntness shocked Everett. He’d never put it quite that way even to himself. “Will you—let us talk to him, Captain?”
Chord broke in, shamble-speeched as always. “Tip and me, we talked this over a long while. Funny part, we always—well—thought about something like this, then Dr. Fanu came along and said—thing is—well, will you take us to talk with him?”
He got up slowly, nodding. “If that’s what you want.” They nodded silently and he started toward the door, then turned, still torn by doubt and incredulity.
“Would you answer—one rather blunt question? Have you two—is this something that developed between you here on Prox, or were you—were you like this before touchdown?”
Both men suddenly looked dismayed, disgusted, their faith in an intelligent commander suddenly cracking across the top. Chord’s lips curled in rage, but it was the boy who blurted out “For God’s sake, sir, what do you think we are?”
“Sorry,” he said quickly, “I—sorry. It’s good of you to volunteer.” He turned and led them toward the hilltop laboratory, but in his thoughts the unspoken answer drummed, over and over. “God in Heaven, I don’t know! I honestly don’t know! And what’s worse, I don’t know what you’re going to be, and neither will God!”
“It’s really an elementary process from a surgical point of view,” Fanu began academically.
Everett squirmed, his eyes straying toward the closed door of the hospital room, as Fanu went on. “Chemically, of course, we’re on less sure ground. The hormones must be reproduced synthetically, pituitary stimulation, a great deal of chanciness. It’s fortunate that your sexes produce enough of the hormones of each so that I could test them for synthesis. But there’s no reason it shouldn’t work.”
He glared at the alien, taking out his emotion in fury at the scientific coldness of that voice. “In other words, they’re just laboratory animals! Guinea pigs!”
“Not at all. It will work. It may take time for adjustment of the glandular system, and much will depend on physical adjustment. Now if I had been able to get him younger, before puberty—”
“Why Tip?” he demanded, interrupting, wanting to shift the attention from disgusting medical matters, hang on to his sanity. “I’d think Chord was so much bigger, he’d be better able to—”
“To carry a fetus? Not at all. Unfortunately it’s a matter of pelvic development. Chord is much too masculine, his pelvis much too narrow to accommodate—”
Everett exploded in hysterical laughter. “Too masculine! That’s a jolt, isn’t it! Too masculine!”
“I can give you a sedative,” the alien said tonelessly. “You sound as if you needed one.” But the hand on his shoulder was faintly comforting. Everett pulled himself together a little, and Fanu said “John, it must be. If your race is to survive—”
“Maybe we shouldn’t survive!” he snarled. “Wouldn’t it be more decent to die, die clean and human and what we were intended to be, than as some—some obscene imitation of—it’s not natural!”
“Neither is the presence of your race on this planet.”
“That’s different,” he countered weakly. “That’s mechanics. This—”
“You bred domestic animals into alternate phenotypes for your own use. You bred humans to some extent, with your limitations on marriage, compulsory sterilization for defective types—”
“I opposed that!” Everett defended. “That was different—”
“And so is your situation—different from anything that ever happened to your race,” the alien said. The Earthman stared bleakly, his prejudices and his intelligence warring. “I asked you to put it to your men, John. You did. You considered it only fair that they should make their own decision. They did. Now you oppose it.”
“I brought them here, didn’t I?”
“Yes, and I thank you for that. Some day you shall thank yourself.”
“I doubt that. Oh, I know by your reasoning, I’m an anachronism, but I still can’t—” he trailed off, glancing back at the hospital door. “Why both of them, if you can only—convert one?”
Fanu blinked in surprise. “For their physical pleasure, John. I understand that is quite important to your species, whether or not as a means of reproduction. Certain anatomical rearrangements—”
“Spare me!” He saw the alien did not understand the phrase and made some elaboration.
“Oh,” the alien murmured an apology. “I thought you would wish to know.”
“I—” Everett swallowed. “I’d rather know about the scientific part of it. I still don’t understand. I mean, there are males and there are females, and that’s that.”
“Not at all, not in your species. There are members, like your crew, with predominantly male organs and vestigial female organs, and—presumably, I’ve only seen films—predominantly female organs and only rudimentary male organs.” He paused. “Shall I go on?”
The Captain found that he wanted a stiff drink, but nodded for Fanu to continue.
“There are vestigal organs, as I say, and certain common elements. The DNA factor can be cross-stimulated by hormones, certain chemicals—it was done long ago, to a limited extent, by your own scientists.” Everett watched the alien doctor pick up a phial and hold the contents to the light. “It’s most fortunate that your race comes equipped with pairs of everything, including the reproductive organs.”
“It gives you a guinea pig expendable.”
If Fanu had been capable of human expression, he would probably have looked hurt; Everett, increasingly sensitive to the alien gestures and intonations, knew he was wounded. He blinked solemnly. “It makes it possible for him, guinea pig if you prefer, to be both sexes. What must be done is to transfer one set of lobes, and the nature of these makes it possible to separate, and increase the chances of success. We can subject the interstitial tissue to massive doses of hormones, and DNA mutating materials.” Everett evidently looked skeptical, for Fanu hurried to the laboratory animal cages and extracted a furry little native mammal, about the size of a squirrel. “It works, John. It works. This is proof. Not changed at infancy or at puberty, but as a full-grown male!”
Everett stroked the animal absently, glumly. “Yes, but it’s not human. And—will they be?”
Fanu didn’t answer. Everett hadn’t expected him to answer.
*
A few of the comments were lewd, as he’d expected, but most of the men were kind. He had gone down to the recreation hall, gotten a glass of their home-brewed ale and listened, fading into the background. No more than three or four of the men had made cracks, and they were the ones who’d make cracks about anything, simply for lack of anything better to do. Good workers, but dense in the empathy department.
“May I sit down, sir?”
It was Tsen. Everett gestured and watched the little navigator seat himself. Tsen made an expression of distaste toward the gossipers. “You do not approve, either, of what Chord and the youngster have done?”
“It’s not a question of approval, Tsen. It’s a question of survival. They feel, and Fanu feels, it’s the only way.” He gave a short, bitter laugh. “They’re right, of course.”
“But you do not approve.”
He took a long pull at his glass and muttered “I was taught it was a sin. The sin.”
“It? Homosexuality?” Everett winced, saw Tsen’s expression and tried to depersonalize himself. “But, Captain, wasn’t the very base of that sinfulness, the fact that they could not reproduce?”
He stared. He knew his jaw was dropping, but he stared, anyway.
“Do you think Doctor Fanu would accept me as a second—volunteer?”
“You!” He looked around quickly and lowered his voice. “Tsen, I never suspected that—”
“That I am human, sir? We’ve been here nearly two years, and we are not monks, not ascetics. If
anyone here has been reared in such a tradition of asceticism, it is myself. Yet affection, physical need—they overwhelm some people. We are not all blessed with your control, sir. Some seek satisfaction from themselves. For some, it requires an attraction to others, and if the others happen to be of the same sex, that is unfortunate, but—under these circumstances—unavoidable, sir.”
Everett flinched. That was getting it straight between the eyes. “Who, if I might ask?”
“Would it make you feel better, sir, or only more bitter?” Everett, trapped in his own prejudice, could not look into the dark eyes. “Will Doctor Fanu accept me for consideration? Are things—well with Chord and Tip?”
“Fanu seems satisfied, and if he isn’t, no one will be.” Everett tilted up his glass, drained the dregs and set it down hard. “Yes, I’m sure Fanu will consider you. You think alike, modern. You should get along very well.”
He hadn’t thought about the situation for weeks. Tsen was out of the hospital, and there were other things to consider. Supplies from the ship were running out. Everett applied all his skill and energy to working out substitute methods, converting some machinery, utilizing native products. The men continued to surprise him with jury riggings and inspired minor inventions. The planet offered a mild climate and two growing seasons a year. Still, as their equipment disintegrated, they were forced to resort to native beasts of burden, and to do more manual labor.
How long had Chord been doing the work of two men on the community farm? He confronted the giant late one afternoon as they straggled back to the mess hall.
“I can handle it, Cap’n. I grew up on a farm.”
“That’s not the point, Chord. Where’s Tip?”
“At home.” There was no apology and no anger, mere honest confusion.
“Chord, it’s not fair for you to do his work. I don’t care if you’re the strongest man here. He’s imposing on you.”
“No sir. No, he’s not. He’s sick. Doctor Fanu—”
But Everett was already striding purposefully toward the small hut shared by Chord and young Latimer. The big man loped behind him, protesting, but the Captain could think of nothing but the rotten laziness of the younger man, who would let his lover do his work, and idle here—