by John Varley
“I don’t think I have that perspective,” I said, carefully. “They know in a few years you’ll mature again. I know it too, but it still feels like . . .”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re abandoning me. I’m sorry, that’s just how it feels.”
He sighed, and pulled me close to him. He hugged me fiercely for a while, and it felt so good.
“Listen,” he said, finally. “I guess there’s no avoiding this. I could tell you that you’ll get over it—you will—but it won’t do any good. I had this same problem with every child I’ve taught.”
“You did?” I hadn’t known that, and it made me feel a little better.
“I did. I don’t blame you for it. I feel it myself. I feel a pull to stay with you. But it wouldn’t work, Argus. I love my work, or I wouldn’t be doing it. There are hard times, like right now. But after a few months you’ll feel better.”
“Maybe I will.” I was far from sure of it, but it seemed important to agree with him and get the conversation ended.
“In the meantime,” he said, “we still have a few weeks together. I think we should make the most of them.” And he did, his hands roaming over my body. He did all the work, letting me relax and try to get myself straightened out.
So I folded my arms under my head and reclined, trying to think of nothing but the warm circle of his mouth.
But eventually I began to feel I should be doing something for him, and knew what was wrong. He thought he was giving me what I wanted by making love to me in the way we had done since we grew older together. But there was another way, and I realized I didn’t so much want him to stay thirteen. What I really wanted was to go back with him, to be seven again.
I touched his head and he looked up, then we embraced again face to face. We began to move against each other as we had done since we first met, the mindless, innocent friction from a time when it had less to do with sex than with simply feeling good.
But the body is insistent, and can’t be fooled. Soon our movements were frantic, and then a feeling of wetness between us told me as surely as entropy that we could never go back.
On my way home the signs of change were all around me.
You grow a little, let out the arms and legs of your pressure suit until you finally have to get a new one. People stop thinking of you as a cute little kid and start talking about you being a fine young person. Always with that smile, like it’s a joke that you’re not supposed to get.
People treat you differently as you grow up. At first you hardly interact at all with adults, except your own mother and the mothers of your friends. You live in a kid’s world, and adults are hardly even obstacles because they get out of your way when you run down the corridors. You go all sorts of places for free; people want you around to make them happy because there are so few kids and just about everybody would like to have more than just the one. You hardly even notice the people smiling at you all the time.
But it’s not like that at all when you’re thirteen. Now there was the hesitation, just a fraction of a second before they gave me a child’s privileges. Not that I blamed anybody. I was nearly as tall as a lot of the adults I met.
But now I had begun to notice the adults, to watch them. Especially when they didn’t know they were being watched. I saw that a lot of them spent a lot of time frowning. Occasionally, I would see real pain on a face. Then he or she would look at me, and smile. I could see that wouldn’t be happening forever. Sooner or later I’d cross some invisible line, and the pain would stay in those faces, and I’d have to try to understand it. I’d be an adult, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to be.
It was because of this new preoccupation with faces that I noticed the woman sitting across from me on the Archimedes train. I planned to be a writer, so I tended to see everything in terms of stories and characters. I watched her and tried to make a story about her.
She was attractive: physically mid-twenties, straight black hair and brownish skin, round face without elaborate surgery or startling features except her dark brown eyes. She wore a simple thigh-length robe of thin white material that flowed like water when she moved. She had one elbow on the back of her seat, absently chewing a knuckle as she looked out the window.
There didn’t seem to be a story in her face. She was in an unguarded moment, but I saw no pain, no big concerns or fears. It’s possible I just missed it. I was new at the game and I didn’t know much about what was important to adults. But I kept trying.
Then she turned to look at me, and she didn’t smile.
I mean, she smiled, but it didn’t say isn’t-he-cute. It was the sort of smile that made me wish I’d worn some clothes. Since I’d learned what erections are for, I no longer wished to have them in public places.
I crossed my legs. She moved to sit beside me. She held up her palm and I touched it. She was facing me with one leg drawn up under her and her arm resting on the seat behind me.
“I’m Trilby,” she said.
“Hi. I’m Argus.” I found myself trying to lower my voice.
“I was sitting over there watching you watch me.”
“You were?”
“In the glass,” she explained.
“Oh.” I looked, and sure enough, from where she had been sitting she could appear to be looking at the landscape while actually studying my reflection. “I didn’t mean to be rude.”
She laughed and put her hand on my shoulder, then moved it. “What about me?” she said. “I was being sneaky about it; you weren’t. Anyhow, don’t fret. I don’t mind.” I shifted again, and she glanced down. “And don’t worry about that, either. It happens.”
I still felt nervous but she was able to put me at ease. We talked for the rest of the ride, and I have no memory of what we talked about. The range of subjects must have been quite narrow, as I’m sure she never made reference to my age, my schooling, her profession—or just why she had started a conversation with a thirteen-year-old on a public train.
None of that mattered. I was willing to talk about anything. If I wondered about her reasons, I assumed she actually was in her twenties, and not that far from her own childhood.
“Are you in a hurry?” she asked at one point, giving her head a little toss.
“Me? No. I’m on my way to see—” No, no, not your mother. “—a friend. She can wait. She expects me when I get there.” That sounded better.
“Can I buy you a drink?” One eyebrow raised, a small motion with the hand. Her gestures were economical, but seemed to say more than her words. I mentally revised her age upward a few years. Maybe quite a few.
This was timed to the train arriving at Archimedes; we got up and I quickly accepted.
“Good. I know a nice place.”
The bartender gave me that smile and was about to give me the customary free one on the house toward my legal limit of two. But Trilby changed all that.
“Two Irish whiskeys, please. On the rocks.” She said it firmly, raising her voice a little, and a complex thing happened between her and the bartender. She gave him a look, his eyebrow twitched and he glanced at me, seemed to understand something. His whole attitude toward me changed.
I had the feeling something had gone over my head, but didn’t have time to worry about it. I never had time to worry when Trilby was around. The drinks arrived, and we sipped them.
“I wonder why they still call it Irish?” she said.
We launched into a discussion of the Invaders, or Ireland, or Occupied Earth. I’m not sure. It was inconsequential, and the real conversation was going on eye to eye. Mostly it was her saying wordless things to me, and me nodding agreement with my tongue hanging out.
We ended up at the public baths down the corridor. Her nipples were shaped like pink valentine hearts. Other than that, her body was unremarkable, though wonderfully firm beneath the softness. She was so unlike Trigger and Denver and Cathay. So unlike me. I catalogued the differences as I sat behind her in the big pool and massaged her soa
py shoulders.
On the way to the tanning room she stopped beside one of the private alcoves and just stood there, waiting, looking at me. My legs walked me into the room and she followed me. My hands pressed against her back and my mouth opened when she kissed me. She lowered me to the soft floor and took me.
What was so different about it?
I pondered that during the long walk from the slide terminus to my home. Trilby and I had made love for the better part of an hour. It was nothing fancy, nothing I had not already tried with Trigger and Denver. I had thought she would have some fantastic new tricks to show me, but that had not been the case.
Yet she had not been like Trigger or Denver. Her body responded in a different way, moved in directions I was not used to. I did my best. When I left her, I knew she was happy, and yet felt she expected more.
I found that I was very interested in giving her more.
I was in love again.
With my hand on the doorplate, I suddenly knew that she had already forgotten me. It was silly to assume anything else. I had been a pleasant diversion, an interesting novelty.
I hadn’t asked for her name, her address or call number. Why not? Maybe I already knew she would not care to hear from me again.
I hit the plate with the heel of my hand and brooded during the elevator ride to the surface.
My home is unusual. Of course, it belongs to Darcy, my mother. She was there now, putting the finishing touches on a diorama. She glanced up at me, smiled, and offered her cheek for a kiss.
“I’ll be through in a moment,” she said. “I want to finish this before the light fails.”
We live in a large bubble on the surface. Part of it is partitioned into rooms without ceilings, but the bulk forms Darcy’s studio. The bubble is transparent. It screens out the ultraviolet light so we don’t get burned.
It’s an uncommon way to live, but it suits us. From our vantage point at the south side of a small valley only three similar bubbles can be seen. It would be impossible for an outsider to guess that a city teemed just below the surface.
Growing up, I never gave a thought to agoraphobia, but it’s common among Lunarians. I felt sorry for those not fortunate enough to grow up with a view.
Darcy likes it for the light. She’s an artist, and particular about light. She works two weeks on and two off, resting during the night. I grew up to that schedule, leaving her alone while she put in marathon sessions with her airbrushes, coming home to spend two weeks with her when the sun didn’t shine.
That had changed a bit when I reached my tenth birthday. We had lived alone before then, Darcy cutting her work schedule drastically until I was four, gradually picking it up as I attained more independence. She did it so she could devote all her time to me. Then one day she sat me down and told me two men were moving in. It was only later that I realized how Darcy had altered her lifestyle to raise me properly. She is a serial polyandrist, especially attracted to fierce-faced, uncompromising, maverick male artists whose work doesn’t sell and who are usually a little hungry. She likes the hunger, and the determination they all have not to pander to public tastes. She usually keeps three or four of them around, feeding them and giving them a place to work. She demands little of them other than that they clean up after themselves.
I had to step around the latest of these household pets to get to the kitchen. He was sound asleep, snoring loudly, his hands stained yellow and red and green. I’d never seen him before.
Darcy came up behind me while I was making a snack, hugged me, then pulled up a chair and sat down. The sun would be out another half hour or so, but there wasn’t time to start another painting.
“How have you been? You didn’t call for three days.”
“Didn’t I? I’m sorry. We’ve been staying on the bayou.”
She wrinkled her nose. Darcy had seen the bayou. Once.
“That place. I wish I knew why—”
“Darcy. Let’s not get into that again. Okay?”
“Done.” She spread her paint-stained hands and waved them in a circle, as if erasing something, and that was it. Darcy is good that way. “I’ve got a new room-mate.”
“I nearly stumbled over him.”
She ran one hand through her hair and gave me a lopsided grin. “He’ll shape up. His name’s Thogra.”
“Thogra,” I said, making a face. “Listen, if he’s housebroken, and stays out of my way, we’ll—” But I couldn’t go on. We were both laughing and I was about to choke on a bite that went down wrong. Darcy knows what I think of her choice in bedmates.
“What about . . . what’s-his-name? The armpit man. The guy who kept getting arrested for body odor.”
She stuck her tongue out at me.
“You know he cleaned up months ago.”
“Hah! It’s those months before he discovered water that I remember. All my friends wondering where we were raising sheep, the flowers losing petals when he walked by, the—”
“Abil didn’t come back,” Darcy said, quietly.
I stopped laughing. I’d known he’d been away a few weeks, but that happens. I raised one eyebrow.
“Yeah. Well, you know he sold a few things. And he had some offers. But I keep expecting him to at least stop by to pick up his bedroll.”
I didn’t say anything. Darcy’s loves follow a pattern that she is quite aware of, but it’s still tough when one breaks up. Her men would often speak with contempt of the sort of commercial art that kept me and Darcy eating and paying the oxygen bills. Then one of three things would happen. They would get nowhere, and leave as poor as they had arrived, contempt intact. A few made it on their own terms, forcing the art world to accept their peculiar visions. Often Darcy was able to stay on good terms with these; she was on a drop-in-and-make-love basis with half the artists in Luna.
But the most common departure was when the artist decided he was tired of poverty. With just a slight lowering of standards they were all quite capable of making a living. Then it became intolerable to live with the woman they had ridiculed. Darcy usually kicked them out quickly, with a minimum of pain. They were no longer hungry, no longer fierce enough to suit her. But it always hurt.
Darcy changed the subject.
“I made an appointment at the medico for your Change,” she said. “You’re to be there next Monday, in the morning.”
A series of quick, vivid impressions raced through my mind. Trilby. Breasts tipped with hearts. The way it had felt when my penis entered her, and the warm exhaustion after the semen had left my body.
“I’ve changed my mind about that,” I said, crossing my legs. “I’m not ready for another Change. Maybe in a few months.”
She just sat there with her mouth open.
“Changed your mind? Last time I talked to you, you were all set to change your sex. In fact, you had to talk me into giving permission.”
“I remember,” I said, feeling uneasy about it. “I just changed my mind, that’s all.”
“But Argus. This just isn’t fair. I sat up two nights convincing myself how nice it would be to have my daughter back again. It’s been a long time. Don’t you think you—”
“It’s really not your decision, Mother.”
She looked like she was going to get angry, then her eyes narrowed. “There must be a reason. You’ve met somebody. Right?”
But I didn’t want to talk about that. I had told her the first time I made love, and about every new person I’d gone to bed with since. But I didn’t want to share this with her.
So I told her about the incident earlier that day on the bayou. I told her about the pregnant woman, and about the thing Cathay had done.
Darcy frowned more and more. When I got to the part about the mud, there were ridges all over her forehead.
“I don’t like that,” she said.
“I don’t really like it, either. But I didn’t see what else we could do.”
“I just don’t think it was handled well. I think I should call
Cathay and talk to him about it.”
“I wish you wouldn’t.” I didn’t say anything more, and she studied my face for a long, uncomfortable time. She and Cathay had differed before about how I should be raised.
“This shouldn’t be ignored.”
“Please, Darcy. He’ll only be my teacher for another month. Let it go, okay?”
After a while she nodded, and looked away from me.
“You’re growing more every day,” she said, sadly. I didn’t know why she said that, but was glad she was dropping the subject. To tell the truth, I didn’t want to think about the woman anymore. But I was going to have to think about her, and very soon.
I had intended to spend the week at home, but Trigger called the next morning to say that Mardi Gras ’56 was being presented again, and it was starting in a few hours. She’d made reservations for the four of us.
Trigger had seen the presentation before, but I hadn’t, and neither had Denver. I told her I’d come, went in to tell Darcy, found her still asleep. She often slept for two days after a Lunar Day of working. I left her a note and hurried to catch the train.
It’s called the Cultural Heritage Museum, and though they pay for it with their taxes, most Lunarians never go there. They find the exhibits disturbing. I understand that lately, however, with the rise of the Free Earth Party, it’s become more popular with people searching for their roots.
Once they presented London Town 1903, and I got to see what Earth museums had been like by touring the replica British Museum. The CHM isn’t like that at all. Only a very few art treasures, artifacts, and historical curiosities were brought to Luna in the days before the Invasion. As a result, all the tangible relics of Earth’s past were destroyed.
On the other hand, the Lunar computer system had a capacity that was virtually limitless even then; everything was recorded and stored. Every book, painting, tax receipt, statistic, photograph, government report, corporate record, film, and tape existed in the memory banks. Just as the disneylands are populated with animals cloned from cells stored in the Genetic Library, the CHM is filled with cunning copies made from the old records of the way things were.
