“So, what sort of person am I?”
“I haven’t completed my research yet.”
When we reached my room, Wendi immediately kicked off her sandals and sat down on the edge of the bed.
“I hate shoes,” she told me. “On the farm I always went barefoot.”
I sat beside her. “You never got bitten?” I asked, recalling the time when Jax, who also disdained footwear, had inadvertently disturbed a burrower’s nest and paid the penalty with a grossly swollen foot.
“Lots of times. But I’m immune to burrower venom.” She showed me her feet. A tracery of white scars ringed both her ankles.
“I think they liked the taste of my flesh.” She took the Star Atlas from the shelf. “Is this good? I never read, apart from course manuals and textbooks.”
“I use it to find my way about the skies,” I said, pointing to the telescope on the desk-top.
“Oh, you’re a star-gazer.” She flicked briefly through the pages then closed it. “I had my fortune told the other day. Carl in first grade specializes in it. He plots the positions of the stars and planets at your conception date, and is able to predict from them what the predominant influences in your life are going to be.”
“Did you get a favourable prognosis?” I asked, thinking the whole idea silly. We had already had quite a verbal tussle over the merits of astrology at the dinner table, and I think she was trying to bait me again.
“Mixed,” she said, “My stars were auspicious for wealth and career, but unsettled emotionally.” She put the Star Atlas back on the shelf. “Have you ever visited a dream parlour?”
“No,” I said, inexplicably.
“It’s very interesting. I dreamt I was a bird that went soaring all over Gaia, swooping out over the ocean, then back, far up into the Crescent Mountains until the air was so cold and rare I had to come down again. It was exhilarating. The parlours are very effective in providing a controlled access to one’s fantasies.”
“I’ve heard it said that the experience is somewhat hollow, ultimately.”
“No, not hollow. A little stage-managed, perhaps, but at least the experience mirrors one’s subconscious preoccupations. An easy way to wish-fulfilment”
She rose, went over to the window, and pulled down the blinds. Turning to me, she said: “Shall we make love now?”
She crossed her hands at her waist and pulled her vest over her shoulders. Her shorts fell to the floor at her feet. Stepping out of them, she went over to the reclining chair and her hand reached beneath it. The chair seemed to move subtly, like a piece of pliant plastic, but I immediately dismissed the idea as a quirk of my over-stimulated imagination.
I undressed hastily, tossing my clothes on to the bed, discreetly appraising Wendi’s body—the rich, sleek brownness of her skin, the surprising fullness of her breasts, the swell of her stomach, the ebony wedge of hair between her thighs.
I straddled her, placing my arms on her shoulders, and once again the chair seemed to shift slightly, as if deformed by the weight of my body. Before I could react or comment on the effect, however, Wendi slid her arms around me and drew me on to her. Her body rippled beneath me, and this time I was sure the chair was moving with us. Wendi took my grunt of surprise as an expression of excitement, and her hand moved to my groin. I was torn between curiosity and passion, but then she arched her thighs and slid on to me.
At my initiation to lovemaking, my partner had impressed upon me the necessity of foreplay before the ultimate act of union. Males must stay their quicker flood of passion, she had told me, until the female is raised to the same pitch. How often is theory betrayed by fact! Wendi’s assault had found me only half-prepared, and it was some moments before I overcame my surprise and began matching her rhythm.
Wendi’s lovemaking was frantic and animalistic, so different from the relaxed passion of my initiation. She heaved, grunted, attacked my flesh with her nails, my shoulders with her teeth. At first I was surprised and somewhat shocked by her aggression; then it began to excite me. I made no attempt to match her frenzy, though, being content to watch her as, embroiled in her private lusts, she raised her pitch, thrusting, panting, moaning, the chair (it was alive!) in dynamic equilibrium beneath us. I came, and seconds later Wendi reached climax too, clenching her teeth and letting out great hisses of air through her nostrils as she gripped me tightly and shuddered to completion.
Spent, the chair stilled, I lay slumped across her, her breasts a warm pillow beneath my head, the viscid dampness of our thighs the sole residuum of our passion. Several minutes passed in stillness and silence, then Wendi slid from under me and retrieved her vest and shorts from the floor. The chair had moved when she had risen, and when I shifted my position, it moved again.
I jumped to my feet, “What is that thing?” I asked.
“A contour couch,” she replied, buttoning her shorts. “It adapts to your posture.” She slipped her vest over her head. “Much better than a bed for lovemaking.”
She picked up her sandals, went over to the door and opened it. I followed, stumbling over my own sandals which lay at the centre of the floor.
“My room’s just along the corridor,” she told me. She put a finger to her lips, pressed it to my forehead, and left without another word.
I went back to the couch and lay down, experiencing a weird pleasure as it moulded itself to the curvature of my spine. I found the button on the underside, pressed it, and moved. The couch remained static. I pressed the button again and rolled over. The warm plastic undulated, distributing my weight evenly throughout its length.
Compared to the rigours of commune life, the timetable of study at the Institute was leisurely. Classes began two hours after dawn and continued until seven hours. There followed a four-hour recess over zenith, when we were free to pursue our own interests (though as preliminary students we were naturally expected to use this free time to expand and intensify our studies). We then reconvened for a series of seminars which ended an hour and a half before dinner. Our evenings were again our own. But the most surprising and welcome aspect of the timetable for me was that every fifth day was a free-day which could be devoted to study or leisure, as one pleased. Not here the remorseless sequence of days unrelieved by rest. The Institute encouraged extra-curricular study, but did not demand it.
I had found my metier. The freedom and atmosphere of intellectual endeavour which prevailed on campus were perfectly suited to my needs. The breadth of subjects which we covered was large. At Silver Spring, my studies had had a marked utilitarian bent: anything that did not focus in some way on commune life was neglected or often ignored. At the Institute the courses were structured in such a way that new students were exposed to a host of different disciplines so that when the time came to specialize, they were fully aware of the options available to them. The approach was extremely eclectic; there was no rigid division of subjects, so that it was possible to begin a seminar discussing political theory, then progress through philosophy, history, psychology and thence to biochemistry, genetics, eugenics, and back to politics. This is not to suggest that our studies were undirected; whenever we appeared to have exhausted one particular line of inquiry our tutors would present us with additional facts or offer new perspectives in order to keep the discussion alive. In this way, the raw information which we had been given in the more formal morning classes was not swallowed as a lump of undigested dogma but assimilated slowly in a healthy atmosphere of scepticism and debate.
Socially, too, I thrived. Although I soon discovered that Wendi’s generous welcome was a service she performed for many incoming male students, she seemed to take a special interest in me, and through her I found myself active in chess tournaments, basketball games, drinking competitions—the whole gamut of leisure-time pursuits which students employ to mitigate the pressures of academic life. However, my bias remained solitary and introspective; while I cultivated friends on a superficial basis, there was no one I felt close to, no one who possessed
that inner seriousness of emotional purpose which I deemed necessary for true friendship.
On the first and eleventh days of each month I visited the postroom to collect the lettertapes which Annia sent with faithful regularity. A great distance separated us, but she always addressed me as if I was standing beside her, her tone at once gay and purposeful. She kept me abreast of all the happenings at Silver Spring, and although the news was predominantly frivolous, it was as important to me as the details of governmental policy might be to a member of the City. Senate. Occasionally, Jax, too, would add a few words of his own, but he preferred live conversation, and generally relied on Annia to express the good wishes of them both.
I treasured the tapes, and never failed to reply the same day, duplicating my own tapes so that as the months passed and my collection grew, it was possible to play them through in sequence and imagine that we were sitting in the same room, talking face to face. I was happy at the Institute, but I missed the sheer familiarity and the company of those I had known ail my life.
Nursery intakes at Silver Springs are received once-seasonally from the city incubators and are moved through the dorm system en masse until they reach the age of majority. Annia, Jax and I had often speculated on who was the eldest amongst us, and I had won a modest five-check wager by obtaining my “promotion” to seniority first. The rivalry now devolved on Annia and Jax alone. By tenth month, over three-quarters of junior dorm had achieved majority, and it was clear that they were both growing increasingly frustrated by their enforced dalliance amongst the thinning ranks of the juniors. “Caril and Erik are intolerably cheerful,” Annia complained in one of her tapes. This was only to be expected, of course, for they now had less children in their charge than at any other time of the season.
At the beginning of eleventh month, I learned from Annia that her ceremony was to take place on the 5th. The day after this, I received an unexpected tape in which Annia informed me that she would be visiting Helixport on the 15th. My tutors were accommodating when I asked to be excused classes for the occasion, stipulating only that I utilize my next free day to catch up on the studies I would miss.
Owing to a traffic delay on the south-bound highway, I was almost a half-hour late on arrival at Central Terminus. Annia was sitting outside the main exit gate and when she saw me, she rushed forward and embraced me.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” I said. “The bus got caught in a jam.”
“It’s all right. I knew you’d come.” She ran a finger across my eyebrows, sweeping away the beads of sweat which had gathered there following my dash from the bus-stop to the terminus.
“How is city life?” she asked.
“It’s fine,” I said.
I held her by the waist. She was wearing a yellow, short-skirted tunic, very feminine. Her hair was drawn back in hex familiar pony-tail, short coils of hair framing her forehead, and a hoop of gold hung at each ear. I leaned forward and kissed her gently on the lips.
We disengaged and went out through the exit gate.
“Jax sends his regards,” she said.
“Oh, yes. How is he?”
“Annoyed. He hates the idea of being the youngest of us.”
I smiled, then touched one of her ear-rings, “A present?”
“Jax made them in metalwork class. He’s become a fiend with a welding torch.”
“Real gold?”
“Cupro-nickel,” she said with a grin.
Nonetheless, they were finely crafted, I made a show of examining them and murmuring my approval; an obscure jealousy nagged at me.
“I’ve got something for you, too,” I said, rummaging in my pouch and producing the object, a cerulean pebble the size of a chicken’s egg.
She took it from me, “A skystone. It’s beautiful. Where did you get it?”
“From the geology lab at the Institute. I told them I needed it for a project.”
Somehow this confession made the gift seem unworthy; compared with Jax’s handiwork, it was nothing.
“I haven’t got anything as permanent for you,” Annia said, slipping the stone into her pouch and producing a lunch-box. She passed it to me. Inside were six freshly-baked éclairs. They had always been my favourites; Martin, the junior’s cook, had a special recipe and I had often pestered him to bake me some.
We stopped at a café near the riverbank and ate an éclair each.
“How was your ceremony?” I asked.
“It went well,” Annia said, wiping cream from her lips. “Like you, I have escaped the fields. The elders were suitably impressed by my record of voluntary service in the nursery and they’ve made me a trainee warden there. I hope to become a wetnurse eventually.”
“That’s marvellous,” I said distractedly. From nowhere, an image had come to me of Jax sneaking over to senior dorm at night and slipping into Annia’s bed. I was appalled with myself for entertaining it.
“Shall I get us something to drink?” Annia asked.
“No, it’s all right,” I said, hailing a passing waiter. He came over and I gave him our order: a pot of butterfruit tea, unsugared.
“You’re already the sophisticate,” Annia remarked, half-mockingly.
“Nothing’s changed,” I said with a vehemence which surprised me. Then, lamely: “Has it?”
A flicker of puzzlement crossed her face. “What do you mean, David?”
I shook my head, my cheeks hot with embarrassment. “Nothing. I didn’t mean anything.” I looked up at her. She waited.
“I feel… cut off. From you and Jax. You know?”
She reached over the table and gently punched my hand. “I came today, didn’t I?”
The tea arrived. We continued to talk, but only half my mind was occupied with the conversation; the other half berated me for my churlishness, my unkind thoughts, my lack of charity. What was wrong with me? Annia was here, and she was the same Annia I had left at the commune. Perhaps that was it: perhaps I had expected something more of her now that she had reached majority, some deeper token of friendship, or perhaps something more than friendship…
I was aware of a silence. Annia was staring at me over the top of her cup.
“You were far away,” she said.
“I’m sorry.” I shook my head. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
She set her cup back in its saucer. “You promised to show me the Institute and that fine room you have.” Her expression betrayed nothing.
“What time is it?”I asked.
“Almost seven hours.”
Across the street, the blinds had been drawn on the windows of a sauna. The streets were deserted. Sheltered under the parasol from the brunt of Capella’s heat, I had not noticed that it was nearly zenith.
On the bus, Annia sat close to me, her arm through mine, peering out the window and asking me what I knew of this building, of that monument. She always gauged my mood well, responding with gaiety whenever I was sullen. Try as I would, however, I could not shake my gloom. I thought: Annia is acting this way out of pity for me, not because she really wants to; she feels obligated to make me happy. By this warped and tortuous reasoning, I further darkened my mood.
The bus deposited us opposite the main entrance to the campus. As we were walking through the subway, Annia stopped me and said: “David, what is it?”
“I think too much,” I said.
“No,” she replied. “You just waste your thoughts on irrelevancies.”
We emerged from the tunnel. There was little traffic on the highway, but as Annia and I approached the main entrance, we noticed a small floater with darkened windows approaching in the inner, south-bound corridor. The floater moved quite slowly, wavering slightly as if the driver was inexperienced or unsure of the route. As it drew past us, the vehicle pulled off the corridor and drew to a halt less than twenty metres from where we stood. The door slid open and a figure stumbled forth. At first we took it to be an old man, bald and stooped, but then we saw that it was a woman. She was very old, ei
ghty, perhaps ninety seasons, and it was clear that she was in considerable distress. She took several hesitant steps forward, then collapsed.
Annia and I rushed to her side. Her aged face was contorted with pain and she appeared to be having some difficulty in breathing. I noticed that she was not just bald, but lacking eyebrows too. I loosened the clasp at the neck of her garment, a long, loose-fitting robe of a copper-coloured material unlike any fabric I had ever seen before. Annia cradled her head in her arms. Her face took on a purplish hue. We watched, helpless, wondering what to do. Her eyes fluttered open briefly, green eyes dulled with pain, then closed again. A ragged breath issued from deep within her throat and her body went limp.
I searched for a pulse.
“She’s dead,” Annia said flatly, staring down at the unmoving head, laid like an offering across her forearms. Gently, I lifted her body, then lowered into the ground. I straightened her limbs and tidied her gown. Death had brought an immediate softening of features, revealing a face almost devoid of the wrinkles of age.
I looked up. Annia had gone over to the floater and was staring incredulously inside. I followed her. Sitting in the passenger seat of the vehicle was an alien, a M’threnni.
Although the M’threnni had not been seen abroad in Helix-port since the city was built, it had long been rumoured that they made brief, covert excursions from their tower. Accurate portraits of the aliens were few. Some aged photographs taken by one of the original colonists revealed a race of tall, frail-looking humanoids but no real details (the cameraman had been some distance away from his subject). Numerous crude sketches were also extant, but of dubious verisimilitude since they tended to caricature. The most famous portrait, and the one from which practically all subsequent reproductions had been taken, was a watercolour of a M’threnni male painted by Thomas Kaufman, the leader of the original colonists and the first mayor of Helixport. Kaufman had been the first person to confront the aliens soon after they had landed, and legend had it that he had actually spoken with them, though this was hotly disputed. He had obviously striven for accuracy in his depiction, but he was not a natural artist, and his portrait (of which I had seen only a reproduction), while capturing something of the strangeness of the alien form, was stylized and inevitably anthropomorphic.
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