by Ted White
She was wearing a one-piece shiftlike dress. It clung to her curves and yet fell away when she moved. Some sort of static-electricity effect, I guessed. The same thing seemed to hold closed the seam which ran down her back from her neck. I fumbled with it—I could tell it was the seam, but I couldn’t find the zipper—while I knotted my other fist in the hair at the nape of her neck and kissed her full, ready lips. Then she reached behind her, and suddenly the dress was hanging loosely, and then falling forward. She stepped momentarily away from me, and shrugged it from her shoulders.
She was wearing brief but conventional-looking undergarments: bra and panties. Her breasts were large and firm, and high on her chest. Only their nipples were masked by the low cup of the bra. The bra itself was strapless, and had no visible means of support. But I hardly had time to examine it closely. She touched a point between her breasts and it parted, from the front, and fell down in the dress at our feet.
The feel of her—the silky smooth feel! She was like no other woman I had ever touched before. She had no real hair on her body; only the faintest of peach fuzz. Her skin was smooth and warm and firm, and it filled my coarse hands with warm delight. I caught her waist, where her hips began to swell out, and raised my hands up along her sides, up into her armpits—neither hairy nor bristly—and then forward and down to cup her hard-tipped breasts. Then, pulling her close again, up and down her spine, from the base of her neck to the small of her back, kissing her all of the time.
We moved—I can’t recall it—to a low couch, and I found myself rapidly divested of my own clothing. At last I pulled her panty briefs from her hips, and admired the totality of her nude form.
No hair. It was even more startling, now. I caressed the smooth raised mound, then settled between her legs. She opened legs and arms, and received me joyfully.
I would like to be able to say that our first time together was magical, blissful, and unlike any other moment I had ever known.
Except for that last, it wouldn’t be true.
Why do people assume that the instinct for sex is always so certain? That if two people have that special spark, that their first time in bed will be a perfect, magical moment?
I’ve* never yet known a first night that wasn’t surpassed by those whiclrfollowed. That first time, as full of surprise and discovery as it is, is also a time of fumbling and failing, of misunderstanding and the fear of not satisfying. All women may have been cast from the same master plan—including Angel women—but there are plenty of individual variations, both physical and emotional, to be discovered and adjusted for. Perhaps that’s one reason I’ve lost interest in one-night stands. The thrill of the hunt, the pleasure of conquest may still be there, but after a while it pales; the point is made, virility proven.
Also, I’m no longer a young man. First times are not always successful for me. Sometimes I need to know and feel relaxed with my partner—for a bond of more than a few hours to exist between us.
I’m not making excuses. It was not at all the way it had been—or, rather, had not been—with Alma. I had nothing to be ashamed of in my performance ... at first.
What happened was, purely and simply, a distraction.
I had been stroking her flanks as we clove together, and my hand had slipped under her, caressing her firm buttocks. Then I encountered something I had never felt before.
It felt like a warm, skin-covered tentacle—a snake, or an obscenely large worm.
I was shocked. I cursed and yanked my hand away like I’d been stung.
Sharna in turn gave a sudden yelp of pain. She opened her eyes and stared up at me in total fright and confusion.
It was my fault—entirely my own fault. She’d had no idea what had happened to me—what had made me react that way.
“That thing!” I said. “There’s something alive—under you!”
“What?” she said tearfully. “What do you mean? I don’t understand you.”
I’d pulled away from her, tearing myself from her imploring arms. Now I stood up. “Get up,” I said harshly.
Without understanding, she rose to her feet, facing me.
There was nothing on the couch, of course.
She turned around to see what I’d been looking at.
That’s when I saw it. It was about a foot long, hanging down lifelessly between her buttocks: her tail.
“You have a tail!” I said stupidly.
She turned again to face me. She looked up at me from those deep purple eyes, her lashes still glistening. Slowly a smile tugged at one corner of her mouth. “My tail?” she asked. “That’s what startled you so?”
I felt like a prize ass. “Yeah,” I said. “I guess so. Your tail. Yeah.”
Then she was laughing out loud, and a moment later I was laughing with her.
And that was my first time with Sharna in bed.
That was an altogether strange night. I’d been unconscious—which is the same as asleep, even if it hadn’t felt like it when I’d awakened—for most of the day, and now I was wide awake and feeling my oats. Sharna, in turn, seemed recharged by my own energies, and she responded quickly to my moods.
It was a time of exploration, emotional and physical. It was a time for love-making, and a time for talking. We would lie together, exhausted for the moment, and talk, talking about a thousand things that we wanted to share, and then she would be cuddling closer to me, and my hands would be moving without conscious direction over her impossibly smooth body, and soon we would be making love again. '
Her tail fascinated me, much as my own hairiness attracted her. “It is our one major secret,” she confessed with a giggle. “We presented ourselves to your people as the Angels, and we have been careful to tailor ourselves to meet the psychologically necessary requirements. Why, there is even a religion now that worships us.”
“And that doesn’t bother you?”
“Well . . . yes, it does. I mean, it bothers me a little. It doesn’t bother the others. They say that it’s just another example of the primitive nature of your people.”
“Balls! There are always—always have been—the lunatic fringes. Hell, all these underground groups I’ve been bouncing around between are pretty far out too. But these nuts are a pretty small percentage of the whole.”
“That may be, but our, umm, psychologists decided that we would receive the least opposition if we made ourselves appear slightly supernatural—godlike, you know?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Wow the natives with a handful of beads. So your tails would spoil the image, eh?”
“Yes. You have this complicated mythology, and I don’t really understand it at all well. It has to do with lords and demons, and a man with eight arms, and people with wings and others with tails, and, oh, lots more. But the demons with the tails are supposed to be evil, so we have been careful not to allow it to be known that we have tails.”
“Humph,” I snorted. “It’s a lot less likely you’d be taken for devils than that those Nazi types would say it made you closer to the monkeys.”
On another occasion, in a moment of lucidity, I asked her, “What are you going to do about me? I mean—”
“I don’t know. There are so many problems. There is the problem of this, this thing which brought you into this world. Will it work the other way? What would happen to us if we went through into your universe? Would we find another Condominium, perhaps stronger than our own? Are there an endless succession of parallel universes? We have expanded out and across a portion of this universe —what could we do with an infinity of universes? It makes my head ache to think of it.”
“Well, then; don’t. What about us—here and now?”
“Oh. Well, I haven’t thought too much about it.” She buried her face against my hairy chest. “But we shall have to keep it a secret from Kordamon. He would have a fit!” She gave a sleepy giggle. “You . . . you’ve worn me out, do you know that? I’m sooo sleepy. . .”
We were in her bedroom, in bed. Carefully I pulled
the satiny covers which had slipped from our moving bodies back over us, marvelling as I did so at the strange and beautiful creature who lay beside me. Her eyes were closed, her long hair tumbled loosely about her face and curling over one full breast. And as I slipped into a sated sleep I wondered about the strange fortune which had through its convoluted machinations cast me up on this lovely desert isle. . . .
CHAPTER EIGHT
I awoke to a sunlit nightmare.
I’d been sleeping with Sharna nested snugly against me, and I’d been enjoying it. For years I’d slept alone, and normally I preferred it. I tend to sleep uneasily when I’m sharing a bed. The night that strange Communist handmaiden, Alma, had crawled in with me I’d been too tired to care. But this night with Sharna had been something new—I’d felt as though my whole world was expanding, the tightly clenched bud of my life opening into full flower for the first time. I felt young again.
And then I woke up.
Rather, I was rudely awakened.
The first thing I knew was a high-pitched, screeching voice, followed almost immediately by a jolting blow to my posterior. I was still shaking the sleep from my eyes in confusion when I turned over, and found myself staring at an angry Angel.
I presumed he was an Angel, anyway; he was the first male of the species I’d laid eyes on.
He was tall and thin, and his height accented the cadaverous quality of his thinness. He was at least seven feet tall, and his face was lined and ascetic. It was hard to imagine him an Angel from anything but the Old Testament, particularly at this moment, when his expression was anything but Angelic. His face was twisted with emotion and he was screaming at us in a language I could make no sense out of at all.
He was all but having a fit—it figured that this would be Kordamon.
Right on cue, “Kordamon!” Sharna gasped from beside me. Her hand crept out to clutch at my arm, my body almost shielding her from Kordamon’s all-too-evident wrath.
When it seemed he was pausing for a moment, I opened my mouth for a mild rejoinder.
“Just a moment here, Buster,” I said. “There’s a lady present.”
“You—!” he sputtered. “You—hairy dog beast! Animal creature of the sewers! Parasite-ridden—”
“Hold on, Buddy!” I clambered to my feet, the sheet falling away from me. “Watch your foul tongue!”
“Ronald—no!” Sharna grabbed at me. “You must cause no more trouble.”
“Quite right, ‘Lady,’ ” said Kordamon, who nonetheless had stepped back a couple of steps from me. His voice had calmed somewhat, but his tone was supercilious. “It is well I came here this morning, is it not, Sharna? You were to notify the officer in charge when the creature revived. I wondered why we had heard nothing. Had it overcome you somehow, I wondered.” He spat. “Hah! I find you intimate with it! Bestiality, they call it, to consort with a lower life form. The sight of the hairy thing lying with you disgusts me. Phah!” And he spat again, this time directly at me. His spittle hit me on my chest.
That was all that had been needed to galvanize me. I slugged him.
I threw a hard right into his gut, and a left into his gangling neck as he started to bend. It was very satisfying.
But it didn’t last long. He could take a lot. I didn’t fold him. He stumbled back from me, and fumbled at his belt. There was a snapping sound, and then a halo surrounded him.
His face was purpling, and his lips moved soundlessly, but he was far from down. I’d underestimated his strength, a fact he proceeded to prove to me.
He advanced towards me. I didn’t know what he had in mind, but I knew it would do me no good to attack him again. I stood my ground and waited.
I didn’t have long. Shama screamed, and Kordamon lunged, flinging his arms out around me. I started to back-pedal, and then he had me pinned, his arms wrapped around me.
I had a terrible suffocating feeling. I couldn’t feel his arms or his body at all. I could only feel a cold, inexorable blanket wrapping around me, damping out my useless struggles and soaking my energy from me, numbing me with a nerve-freezing sensation.
“Kordamon, stop!” Sharna screamed again. Then she switched over to her own language.
Slowly, the manic look left his eyes. His face began to regain its color, and his arms began to relax their stultifying hold on me. When he finally released me, I fell to the floor, my body numb.
He barked a short sentence at her, and Sharna moved quickly from the bed to her dressing room, an adjoining room shielded by a room divider of living vines. Her tail twitched nervously, as she moved from sight.
“How about me?” I asked, gesturing at my clothes, neatly draped over the back of a nearby chair. Kordamon gave a grunt and a nod.
Then he hitched at the left sleeve of his jacket. At first I thought it was an elaborate watch he was wearing, but then I could see it was a bracelet of some sort. He pushed a stud on it, and said something into it.
I climbed hurriedly into my crumpled clothes and wondered fleetingly when I’d have a chance to have them cleaned again. It seemed a little too much to, ask of me that I not only be some sort of bloody hero, but a disheveled one as well.
I was just zipping my fly when I heard a door slam somewhere out in the apartment beyond, and then the measured tread of feet. Sharna reappeared, clothed, when five yellowjackets pushed their way into the room and stood at attention, staring rigidly ahead and waiting orders.
This was the first time I’d been able to just stand and look a yellowjacket over, and one thing was immediately obvious: they weren’t Angels. These were recruits from among my own kind. They were tough, well-scrubbed looking. In my world they’d have been marines, professional football players studying nights for lav, or maybe astronauts. They had that crewcut, anonymous look. And their eyes showed no warmth.
There was one other thing about them: they had halos—force-fields.
They took up positions surrounding me, ignoring Sharna at least for the moment. The fifth, the apparent leader of the squad, whose uniform included black sleeves on his forearms, went to Kordamon and handed him a weapon. It was one of those hand-encasing things. Quietly, and without any formalities, Kordamon slipped his hand into it, pointed it at me, and fired it at me.
It hit me before I’d realized what he was doing. I felt a red-hot knife, plugged directly into a 220-volt outlet, cutting right into my chest.
Ever watch what happens when someone picks a cat up wrong by the neck? The cat turns spastic, limbs rigid in every direction, mouth wide open. You’ve put the squeeze on its central nervous system.
That’s what happened to me. I felt the jolt screaming through my outthrust limbs, my muscles knotting uncontrollably, a thousand cramps and Charley horses hitting me all over, all at once.
It lasted only a second or less, real time. It lasted a lot longer, for me.
I lay in a huddle, a heavy red haze before my eyes, and then I reached out and gathered up the strings again, and started the process of pulling myself together. Somewhere there still echoed in my ears a distant scream. Mine—or Sharna’s?
I looked up at Kordamon. He could read what was in my eyes.
“A demonstration,” he said, returning the gun to Blacksleeves. “A ‘sting.’ ” He directed his attention to the yellowjacket again. “Take him to the maximum security wards, on Welfare. And be very, very careful with him. The animal just took a charge that would have knocked one of you unconscious for five minutes.”
Blacksleeves whistled tonelessly and turned to me. “OK, big fella, let’s make it peaceable. We both know you could take any one of us, other things being equal—but they aren’t. We’ve got the screens, the stingers, and the numbers. You have one choice—to come along easily, or just to come.”
“OK,” I said flatly. “I know when to quit.”
He caught the tone in my voice. “Sure,” he said dubiously. “Let’s go.”
They started to close in around me as I turned back to the quiet figure in the co
rner. “Sharna?” I asked.
“They will not harm me,” sue said. “And if they are wise, they will not harm you, either. I shall be returning to the Home Worlds—”
“Enough” said Kordamon tightly, and half raised his hand toward^ her.
“—They cannot discipline me here,” Sharna said quickly, “and I shall be safe among my friends—”
Then they’d hustled me through the door, helpless to do anything but seethe inwardly at myself.
I kept turning the scene over and over in my mind as they took me in an elevator down to a basement garage. I was almost too preoccupied to realize that we’d stepped into an empty shaft and were sinking down through thin air. But what the hell; these were bigshot super scientific aliens—I’d have been disappointed in them if they hadn’t had something like that to show off to us dumb, ignorant, hairy Earth clods.
I glanced at the yellowjackets flanking me. Yeah, hairless faces. No stubble at all. Some sort of permanent depilatory to render them “clean” enough to act as honor guard and garbagemen for their infinite superiors.
Oh, I was in a foul mood all right.
But I couldn’t see what else I could’ve done, short of not bedding Sharna—and somehow I couldn’t quite make the connection between what had happened between us that evening and what was happening now. Could it have been a set up? A more subtle version of the technique the Commies tried?
But that made no sense—Sharna need not have gone to the lengths she did, and once I had voluntarily confessed to her, what point was there in this elaborate charade?
Okay, let’s accept things at face value. The Angels are not a solid, monolithic bloc. There is dissent within. Sharna’s group is basically pretty decent. That figures; Sharna is basically pretty decent too . . . and in fact . • . but let’s not go into that right now. I have to think.
But Sharna represents a thin minority. Her superior, Kordamon, has a vastly different approach. For him we are trained monkeys, clever, useful, and totally unfit for intimate association.
So he finds me about as closely, intimately associated as he could with Sharna. Question: could he be perhaps more than platonically interested in her himself? Could his rage be a trifle greater because of that? A moot point.
