Eventually, maybe I would no longer be surprised at the way this world casually solved its problems. Bulbs grew in profusion. And in the valley, there was enough water to nurture them to maturity. Naturally. Because the valley flooded every year and bamboo was needed to make stilt huts, so the population wouldn't drown. There were no bulbs, then, but there were silvergators, who revived themselves annually when needed, then returned to their fossilized state after the general emergency. All of this, as I explained to Rhamik, was quite impossible. The hipbone's connected to the thigh bone, etcetera.
I found it difficult to believe there were really such peculiar laws of nature at work on this world. Such things simply did not happen. Somewhere, there was a logical explanation. Or so I assumed. But that was before the new person growing in my garden turned into Melisa Mills.
There was a fever that went with the ankle. Complicated, I suppose, by exposure in the water. When it was better, Rhamik announced that he could leave me for a while, and I said that was fine, I had greatly appreciated his help, and that when he left, he could take it with him.
"No, Andrew," he explained, "the new person is yours. I could not take her with me."
"It," I corrected. And I did not glance at the creature that had decided to look like Melisa Mills. It huddled quietly in its corner, and did not look at me, either.
"It, Rhamik. That's not what it seems to be. I want it out of here."
Rhamik shrugged. He had heard all this before. "Andrew, what a new person becomes is determined by its patterning. In this case, the patterning is yours."
"I had nothing to do with that."
"But you did, Andrew. We have talked about this before. The female desired you and accepted your patterning."
"I did not touch the female. Therefore—"
"Andrew," Rhamik sighed, "we have discussed this before, too."
"Fine. We've discussed this before. When you go, take it with you."
I was doing a great deal of sleeping at the time. And during one of those times, Rhamik left, and of course he did not take the new person with him.
I'm a normal enough male and I have daydreams and fantasies. Even when I'm not marooned on other worlds. I've dreamed about Melisa Mills. More than once. And I have sat at the edge of the grove in the evening and looked out across the flatlands and thought about people I remember.
There should not be much to remember about Melisa. I spoke to her maybe a half dozen times in the course of a semester, just as I spoke to a great many other students. However, I cannot remember any of the others. I have no trouble remembering Melisa.
Seated in the front row. Not overly enthralled with economics. A little too tall for her build. Lank-slender. But the planes of her face and body were softened to the proper degree. Her angularity only served to accentuate the delightful curves and hollows. Small-breasted. Hips that flared gently into tearfully long legs. Her skin was olive-gold, stretched over high cheekbones. A too-wide mouth and oversized eyes. I used to wonder if the olive-gold skin was the same texture and color all over, and this led to some improbable mental scenarios.
So I had forgotten nothing at all. And the new person, of course, was not Melisa Mills. It had come out of a smelly cocoon in my garden. Before that, from the dun belly of a female commuter. And however implausible it might appear to me, that love-starved ugly had drawn the Melisa-dream from the dark and moist regions of my mind, and set the image breathing.
It sat on the other side of my hut. Olive-gold and naked-lovely. It did not look as if it had come out of a cocoon.
During those first few weeks in the hut, after Rhamik's desertion, there were several conversations of note with the Melisa Mills thing. Some of them one-way. It talked, but I didn't answer. This didn't bother it at all, and eventually I tired of monologues and joined the fray. It was there, and wouldn't go away. And I had talked with less likely creatures on this planet.
"You are really being an ass about this, Andy. You know that, don't you?"
"Don't call me Andy. I hate that. I've told you about it before."
"Sure. But you think of yourself as Andy sometimes. I know that because it's in my head, and it wouldn't be there if it wasn't true."
"Just because something is in one's head doesn't make it true."
"It does for me. Because it wouldn't be in my head unless it was in yours, too."
"Quit saying that. You don't have the slightest idea what's in my head."
"We went over that, Andy—Andrew. I'm not reading your mind or anything, it's just there like a lot of other things. You made the pattern, not me."
"Don't keep reminding me."
"If you didn't want me to know things you shouldn't—"
"What else is in your head? About me?"
"Ho!" A quick little laugh. "What's the matter—afraid I know all your dark fuzzy secrets?"
"I am not in the least interested, one way or the other."
"You are. And I don't. Know all about you, I mean. Just some things. Patterning's like that. You come into the world with little bits and pieces from the—what's the word? Donor. Mostly, they're not facts at all. Just feelings about things. It's the same for everybody on this world. When you get here, you know things. It's there in your head."
"But you learn things, too."
"Well, of course."
"We do it a little differently. To say the least."
"I know. And that scares me, Andrew."
"It does?"
"It's something I already knew; you didn't have to tell me. So I guess you gave it to me. A lot of me is you, Andrew, but I was, born here. And I can't really imagine that. It frightens me."
"What?"
"About your world. Being born very small. And helpless. Not knowing anything at all. It scares me to think about that."
"Don't, then. Think about something else."
"Andrew?"
"What?"
"Why do you try not to look at me when you really want to?"
"I think I've made it clear that I don't want to discuss that."
"Does it make that much difference? Really? That I'm not Melisa Mills? It's what you wanted, Andrew. Or I wouldn't be here."
"I did not intentionally will you here. So I do not feel burdened with any responsibility, if that's what you mean."
"I am here, though."
"Yes. You certainly are."
"And do you like the way I look, Andrew? I think you do. You watch me move around. When you think I won't notice. You won't touch me—but your eyes do. I can feel them on every part of me. They—"
"Well, what the hell do you expect! You look enough like her to—"
The big eyes flashed anger, then "—to be human? Right?" The laugh again, a true Melisa-type laugh. Full of hurt, this time, and I was instantly sorry. That hadn't been necessary.
"Look—"
"No. You look. What's the big thing about being human, Andrew? And what's human, anyway? What you are, and everybody else isn't? Is that it? If I'm so goddamned repulsive, why do you want to do the things that you think about doing every time you look at me?"
"I do not want to do things to you, I assure you."
"Crap, Andrew. You've already done everything to me in your mind. I can feel that."
I didn't answer.
"I am not Melisa Mills, Andrew. I don't suppose I'm human, either, according to your definition. But I am what you ordered, whether you like it or not. And you are too damn pompous and stubborn to realize what you have is probably a great deal better than the true Melisa Mills ever was."
"Just how do you figure that?"
"How do you figure it, Andrew? Don't you have things a little turned around? She's the fantasy, not me. She never really existed for you because she was never yours in the first place. Only in your mind. I'm the real one, Andrew." Admittedly, that little piece of logic left me somewhat shaken. I decided not to pursue it further.
She was leaning against the far wall of the hut. This had become an establis
hed routine. I would sit in the doorway and stare at nothing, simply because I could not watch the naked, tawny-skinned creature that shared my hut for any length of time.
I was aware that she was not leaning against the wall anymore. I could feel her feet touching the bamboo flooring, and hear the whisper of one thigh against another.
"Look. I've asked you—"
"I know." She was standing above me in the doorway. It was a small door. No matter how hard I stared at the leaden water, I could still see honey-colored legs. It occurred to me that I had probably made the legs somewhat longer than Melisa's. This sort of thing is allowable in the patterning business.
"I know I'm supposed to stay on my side of the hut."
"Good. I'm glad you understand that. I'd appreciate it if you'd remember."
"I know why, too."
No comment.
She laughed lightly. "You're not doing badly, Andrew."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"You've lived in a tiny hut with a naked girl for two weeks. More than that, now."
"Look—"
The legs disappeared, and I let out a lungful of air I had not recalled inhaling.
"You know what they say," she called to me. She was back on her own side of the hut again. "And I never knew this before, so it must come from your head. The longer you're on the islands, the better the natives start to look. . . ."
There is no need to go into details.
The creature was not human and it was not Melisa. I vowed never to give in to the temptation of believing it was anything but what it was.
I did not break that vow. My new person solved the dilemma by simply choosing a night that suited its purposes, and moving to my side of the hut. A great deal of very warm female flesh—never mind the species—moved against mine, and that, essentially, was that.
I sullied the banners of humanity as we know it. It was an alien coupling. A meeting of diverse cultures. And, certainly, all a poor castaway could hope for.
The next morning Melisa prepared our breakfast of water and raw silvergator steak and announced that she was pregnant.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
"That's impossible," I told her. "And even if you were, you wouldn't know about it yet. Three or four hours is a little early to tell, Melisa."
"Andrew. . . ." She gave me one of those patient female smiles. "You forget—the body part of me comes from this world. We natives may be simple folk, but we know when we've been patterned." She laughed smugly and wrapped bare arms about me. "Mmm, have I been patterned!"
"Don't call it that."
She let me go and walked to the door and stretched, and brushed her fingers through her hair. "OK. I am pregnant. Knocked up. Whatever you want to call it, Andrew. I am, though."
I looked at her, and she met my eyes. I had to believe her, whether I liked the idea or not. "Great," I said, and sat down and leaned against the wall. "Just what we needed." A sudden thought struck me. "Melisa—how will you . . . I mean, is it—"
She shook her head. "I don't know yet? Anyway, you kind of decide that."
"I do?"
"You want to know how I'll have it, right? The way it's done on your world, or mine. How much do you know about female insides?"
"Huh?"
"How a girl's put together. Where all the equipment goes."
I shrugged. "I don't know; I've got a vague idea. Why?"
She laughed. "Well, I don't feel vaguely put together, Andrew. And if you didn't imagine any parts for me, I must be built like everyone else here."
"Believe me," I said, "you are not built like anyone else here that I have seen, Melisa."
"That's not what I'm talking about. Anyway"—she forced a sleepy smile—"you know what to do with everything, Andrew—seems like you'd have some idea what it's all for—I mean besides that."
"An economist cannot be all things to all people," I told her. "There simply wasn't time in my academic schedule for a course in gynecology."
That was a word she didn't know, and I explained it. Melisa wanted to know more, or at least pretended a great interest in the correct terminology of the various female parts. And since I had accurately imagined all the visible, and some of the not-so-visible elements, I happily pointed them out, and named them, and we advanced from there to activities normally outside the province of those gynecologists who do not wish to create extra problems for themselves.
The next morning she asked me to kindly leave the hut and go watch the fog drift in for a while, and that she would call me shortly.
When I returned she explained that the new person had arrived, and was receiving nourishment. I looked at her, and she laughed.
"No, the breasts are strictly for decoration, Andrew—and you don't need to comment on that. Not right now, anyway."
I glanced behind her, in a corner of the hut. There was a familiar lemon-sized object hanging on a peg there, wrapped in matting, and something else.
I sniffed and frowned. "What the hell's that for?"
Melisa sighed. "I'm sorry, Andrew. I know you don't like the smell of silvergator, but there isn't anything else. It's got to have something."
I was appalled, but of course she was right. Bulbs were out of season, and the new person had to absorb energy from somewhere. I supposed a little more silvergator around the house couldn't hurt us.
Later, Melisa announced that although she didn't see why I wanted to do it that way, we would be having a young new person, and not an old one. "It seems very inefficient to me," she said, shrugging a bare shoulder in resignation. "It won't know anything at all, Andrew."
"Where I come from," I told her, "new persons aren't supposed to know anything. Anyway, how can you be sure what it's going to be, Melisa? Old, young, or in between? You just now—"
"I knew I was pregnant, didn't I?"
I couldn't argue with that, and in a moment she came over and sat beside me and laid her head against my shoulder.
"I don't know how I know things, Andrew. I honestly don't. And it's very confusing sometimes because I belong to this world and yours too. I know you can't understand that. I'm three weeks old and I was born when I was twenty-two, because that was her age, and that's the way you wanted me. And that doesn't seem peculiar to me at all, really—not as peculiar as your way."
Melisa explained, in detail, how the birth process worked on this particular world, though I didn't really want to know quite that much about it. In the first place, since new persons were normally born as adults, they couldn't very well be carried about in the mother. That concept, incidentally, did not appeal to Melisa.
There was the usual business of the male sperm and the female egg—only, when that process was completed, the story began to differ. Both of these elements were trapped within a porous nurturing organ about the size of a lemon, which detached itself from the female some twenty-four hours after impregnation. It merely dropped down an interior passage, and was retrieved by the new mother, who wrapped it in a thin layer of matting, and gave it a coating of whatever nourishment was available.
That, she said, was all there was to it.
Not for me it wasn't.
I had enough questions about this "simple" process to drive a good physician or biologist to drink. How did the new person grow at such a fantastic rate? If my mental calendar was working properly, Melisa had arrived somewhere around ten weeks after the dun commuter had copulated with Phretci! And most of her growth had been accomplished during the last third of that.
And—how did a new person arrive in the world knowing nearly as much as any other functioning adult?
Most exasperating of all—how in the hell did you pattern someone, without laying a hand on them?
Melisa would have told me anything she could, but she really didn't know much more than I did. Things just happened. You were born knowing that they did—but not necessarily why.
My descriptions of the universe outside her own sent her into alternating gales of laughter, and spel
ls of deep depression. For instance: she thought the concept of horse racing was dismal and distressing. Why would a person desire that one animal get someplace faster than another? Did it really matter, as long as they got there?
Pornography, on the other hand, sounded like more fun than anything. She decided it was a "pretend" game—which was the way I'd described books and motion pictures. Could we play pornography sometime? I said that some might feel we already had a fair start on this, and she said she didn't see how this could be, when she'd just that moment heard of the game.
She reacted with neither joy nor dismay at my announcement that people on other worlds spoke a wide variety of languages, and thus, frequently, did not understand one another. She simply didn't believe me, though she didn't say so.
I missed Rhamik. With all his shortcomings.
He had not returned since the day I'd gone to sleep and he'd disappeared, leaving me to discover Melisa for myself. Did he think I was angry about that? I was, before I came to my senses—or rather, before Melisa resolved the issue for us both.
Several times I walked a few meters down the shaky walkway that led from my hut to his. I could see where he lived, sometimes, through the mist. On a particularly clear day parts of the rest of the village beyond appeared—dark, boxy smudges against a lighter gray.
I debated simply strolling over the walkway and saying hello. I always lost that argument. One would have to be terribly dense to miss Rhamik's point: my hut had not been built at the center of social activity.
I was curious, though, and concerned. And there was, of course, a compromise position. I did not have to go all the way to Rhamik's hut. I could go a little farther. Halfway, perhaps.
And halfway it was. A fairly conclusive answer to my question. A three-meter section of the walkway simply removed and hauled away or dropped into the water. Subtle, no. But effective.
I wondered why. And asked Melisa. No, she had no idea, really—but she turned her head away slightly while we were talking, and I had learned this was a silent signal that the subject in question contained material she did not care to discuss. So I didn't press the matter further.
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