Steel Beach

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

And what happened to the girl we last saw speaking to an inhuman golem in a padded cell off the Leystrasse, hearing things no human ear was meant to hear, her insides all atremble? How came this quivering wreck, freshly tossed by the twin tempests of another botched suicide attempt and the CC's ham-fisted attempt to "cure" her, to her present tranquility? How did the young Modern butterfly with the ragged wings retromorphose into the plain but outwardly-stable Victorian caterpillar?

She did it one day at a time.

As I had hinted to Brenda, no matter how much the governing boards might say concerning the functions of the historical disneys, an unexpected and unmentioned side benefit they had provided was to work as sanctuaries-all right, as very big un-fenced asylums-for the societally and mentally shell-shocked. In Texas and the other places like it, we could cease our unfruitful baying at our several lunatic moons and, without therapy per se, retire to a quieter, gentler time. Living there was therapy in itself. For some, the prescription would have to be carried on forever; for others, an occasional dose was enough. It wasn't established yet which applied to me.

The Texian had been a big step for me, and lo, I found it good. I was prevailed on to become a teacher, and that, too, was good. Learning to not only have friends, but to open up to them, to understand that a true friend wanted to hear my problems, my hopes and my fears, didn't happen overnight and still wasn't an accomplished fact, but I was getting there. The important thing was I was creating my new world one brick at a time, and so far, it was good.

It was also, compared to my old life, boring as hell. Not to me, you understand; I found every new crayon drawing by one of my students an object of amazement. Each new trivial news story dug up by Charity made me as proud as if she were my own daughter. Publishing the Texian was so much more satisfying than working at the Nipple that I wondered how I'd labored there so long. It's just that, to an outsider, the attraction was a little hard to explain. Brenda found it all very dull. I fully expected Cricket to, as well. You may agree with them. This is why I've omitted almost seven months that could really be of interest only to my therapist, if I had one.

Which all makes it sound as if I were well and truly cured. And if I was, how come I still woke up two or three times a week in the empty hours before dawn, drenched in sweat, heart hammering, a scream on my lips?

"Why in heaven's name are you sitting out here?" I asked him. "It's getting chilly. Why didn't you go inside?"

He just looked blankly at me, as if I'd said something foolish. To someone who hadn't spent time in Texas, I suppose it was. So I opened the door, showing him it hadn't been locked. You can bet he had never tried it himself.

I struck a lucifer and went around the room lighting the 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 mild-mannered 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 single-sexer," 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.