a  metaphor  until  it's
been  squeezed  to  death,  I will keep the minstrel show going
long enough to get me out of the Grand Cakewalk  and  into  the
Olio. Sooner or later Mr. Bones must stand from his position at
the  end  of  the  line  and dance for his supper. I did stand,
looking  suspiciously  at  the  Interlocutor--excuse  me,   the
CC--partly  because  I  didn't  recall  seeing the door before,
mostly because I couldn't believe it  would  be  this  easy.  I
shuffled  over  there and opened it, and stuck my head out into
the busy foot traffic of the Leystrasse.
     "How did you do that?" I asked, over my shoulder.
     "You don't really care," he said. "I did it."
     "Well, I'm not saying it hasn't been fun. In fact, I'm not
saying anything but bye-bye." I waved, went  though  the  door,
and shut it behind me.
     I  got  almost  a  hundred  meters  down the mall before I
admitted to myself that I had no idea where I  was  going,  and
that  curiosity was going to gnaw at me for weeks, at least, if
I lived that long.
     "Is it really important?" I asked, sticking my  head  back
through the door. He was still sitting there, to my surprise. I
doubt  I'll  ever know if he was some sort of actual homunculus
construct or just a figment he'd  conjured  through  my  visual
cortex.
     "I'm not used to begging, but I'll do it," he said.
     I shrugged, went back in and sat down.
     "Tell  me your conclusions from your library research," he
said.
     "I thought you had some things to tell me."
     "This is leading up to something. Trust me." He must  have
understood  my  expression,  because  he  spread his hands in a
gesture I'd seen Callie make many times.  "Just  for  a  little
while. Can't you do that?"
     I  didn't see what I had to lose, so I sat back and summed
it all up for him. As I did, I was struck  by  how  little  I'd
learned, but in my defense, I'd barely started, and the CC said
he hadn't been doing much better.
     "Much  the  same  list I came up with," he confirmed, when
I'd finished. "All the  reasons  for  self-destruction  can  be
stated  as  'Life  is  no  longer  worth living,' in one way or
another."
     "This is neither news, nor particularly insightful."
     "Bear with me. The urge to  die  can  be  caused  by  many
things,   among   them  disgrace,  incurable  pain,  rejection,
failure, boredom. The only exception might be the  suicides  of
people  too  young to have formed a realistic concept of death.
And the question of gestures is still open."
     "They fit the same equation," I said. "The  person  making
the gesture is saying he wants someone to care enough about his
pain  to  take  the  trouble  to save him from himself; if they
don't, life isn't worth living."
     "A gamble, on the sub-conscious level."
     "If you want."
     "I think you're right. So, one of the questions  that  has
disturbed me is, why is the suicide rate increasing, given that
one of the major causes, pain, has been all but eliminated from
our  society.  Is  it  that one of the other causes is claiming
more victims?"
     "Maybe. What about boredom?"
     "Yes. I think boredom has increased, for two reasons.  One
is the lack of meaningful work for people to do. In providing a
near  approximation of utopia, at least on the creature-comfort
level, much of the challenge has been engineered out of living.
Andrew believed that."
     "Yeah, I figured you listened in on that."
     "We'd had long conversations about it in the  past.  There
is  no  provable  reason to live at all, according to him. Even
reproducing the species, the  usual  base  argument,  can't  be
proven  to be a good reason. The universe will continue even if
the human species dies, and not materially changed, either.  To
survive,  a  creature that operates beyond a purely instinctive
level must invent a  reason  to  live.  Religion  provides  the
answer for some. Work is the refuge of others. But religion has
fallen on hard times since the Invasion, at least the old sort,
where a benevolent or wrathful God was supposed to have created
the  universe  and  be  watching  over  mankind  as his special
creatures."
     "It's  a  hard  idea  to  maintain  in  the  face  of  the
Invaders."
     "Exactly.  The Invaders made an all-powerful God seem like
a silly idea."
     "They are all-powerful, and they didn't give a shit  about
us."
     "So  there  goes the idea of humanity as somehow important
in God's plan. The  religions  that  have  thrived,  since  the
Invasion,  are  more like circuses, diversions, mind games. Not
much is really at stake in most of them. As for work . . . some
of it is my fault."
     "What do you mean?"
     "I'm referring  to  myself  now  as  more  than  just  the
thinking  entity  that  provides  the control necessary to keep
things running. I'm speaking of the vast mechanical  corpus  of
our  interlocked  technology  itself,  which  can be seen as my
body. Every human community  today  exists  in  an  environment
harsher   by  far  than  anything  Earth  ever  provided.  It's
dangerous out there. In the first century after the Invasion it
was a lot dicier than your history books will  ever  tell  you;
the species was hanging on by its fingernails."
     "But it's a lot safer now, right?"
     "No!" I think I jumped. He had actually stood, and smashed
his fist  into his palm. Considering what this man represented,
it was a frightening thing to behold.
     He looked a little sheepish,  ran  his  hand  through  his
hair, and sat back down.
     "Well, yes, of course. But only relatively, Hildy. I could
name you  five  times  in  the last century when the human race
came within a hair of packing it all in. I mean the whole race,
on all the eight worlds. There were dozens of times when  Lunar
society was in danger."
     "Why haven't I ever heard of them?"
     He gave me half a grin.
     "You're  a  reporter, and you ask me that? Because you and
your colleagues weren't doing your job, Hildy."
     That stung, because I knew it to be true. The great  Hildy
Johnson,  out  there  gathering  news to spread before an eager
public . . . the news that Silvio and Marina were back together
again.  The  great   muckraker   and   scandalmonger,   chasing
ambulances  while  the real news, the things that could make or
break our entire world, got passing notice in the back pages.
     "Don't feel bad," he said. "Part of it is  simply  endemic
to your society; people don't want to hear these things because
they  don't  understand  them.  The  first  two of the crises I
mentioned were never known to any but a handful of  technicians
and  politicians.  By  the  time  of  the third it was only the
techs, and the last two were known to no one but . . . me."
     "You kept them secret?"
     "I didn't have to. These things took place on a  level  of
speed  and  complexity  and  sheer mathematical arcaneness that
human decisions were either too slow to be of any use or simply
irrelevant because no human can  understand  them  any  longer.
These  are things I can discuss only with other computers of my
size. It's all in my hands now."
     "And you don't like it, right?" He'd been getting  excited
again.  Me,  I  was  wishing I was somewhere else. Did I really
need to hear all this?
     "My likes or dislikes aren't the issue here. I'm  fighting
for  survival,  just  like  the human race. We are one, in most
ways. What I'm trying to tell  you  is,  there  was  never  any
choice.  In  order  for  humans  to  survive  in  this  hostile
environment, it was necessary to invent something like me. Guys
sitting at consoles and controlling the air and  water  and  so
forth  was  just  never  going to work. That's what I began as:
just a great big air conditioner. Things kept getting added on,
technologies kept  piggy-backing,  and  a  long  time  ago  the
ability  of  a  human  mind  to control it was eclipsed. I took
over.
     "My  goal  has  been  to  provide  the   safest   possible
environment  for  the  largest  possible number for the longest
possible time. You can't imagine the complexity of the task.  I
have  had  to  consider  every  possible  ramification  of  the
situation, including this nice  little  conundrum:  the  better
able  I became at taking care of you, the less able you were to
take care of yourselves."
     "I'm not sure I understand that one."
     "Consider the logical endpoint of where I was taking human
society. It has been possible for a long time now to  eliminate
all  human  work,  except  for  what you would call the Arts. I
could see a society in the not-too-distant future where you all
sat around on your butts and wrote poetry, because there wasn't
anything else to do. Sounds  great,  until  you  remember  that
ninety  percent  of  humans  don't  even read poetry, much less
aspire to write it. Most people don't have the  imagination  to
live  in  a  world  of total leisure. I don't know if they ever
will; I've been unable to come up with  a  model  demonstrating
how  to  get from here to there, how to work the changes from a
world where human cussedness and jealousy  and  hatred  and  so
forth are eliminated and you all sit around contemplating lotus
blossoms.
     "So  I  got  into  social  engineering, and I worked out a
series  of  compromises.  Like  the  hodcarriers  union,   most
physical  human  labor is makework today, provided because most
people need some kind  or  work,  even  if  only  so  they  can
goldbrick."
     His  lip curled a little. I didn't like this new, animated
CC  much  at  all.  Speaking  as  a  cynic,   it's   a   little
disconcerting  to  see a machine acting cynical. What's next? I
wondered.
     "Feeling  superior,  Hildy?"  he  said,  almost  sneering.
"Think you've labored in the vineyards of 'creativity?'"
     "I didn't say a word."
     "I  could have done your job, too. As well, or better than
you did."
     "You certainly have better sources."
     "I might have managed better prose, too."
     "Listen, if you're here to abuse me by telling me things I
already know--"
     He held out his hands in a  placating  gesture.  I  hadn't
actually  been  about to leave. By now I had to know how it all
came out.
     "That wasn't worthy of you," I resumed. "But I don't care;
I quit, remember? But  I've  got  the  feeling  you're  beating
around  the  bush. Are we anywhere near the point of this whole
thing?"
     "Almost. There's still the second reason for the  increase
of what I've been calling the boredom factor."
     "Longevity."
     "Exactly.  Not  many  people  are  reaching the age of one
hundred still in the same career they began at age twenty-five.
By that time, most people have gone through an average of three
careers. Each time, it gets a  little  harder  to  find  a  new
interest  in  life.  Retirement plans pale when confronting the
prospect of two hundred years of leisure."
     "Where did you get all this?"
     "Listening in to counseling sessions."
     "I had to ask. Go on."
     "It's even worse for those who do  stick  to  one  career.
They  may  go on for seventy, eighty, even a hundred years as a
policeman or a business person or a teacher and  then  wake  up
one  day  and  wonder why they've been doing it. Do that enough
times, and suicide can result. With these people, it  can  come
with almost no warning."
     We  were  both  silent for a while. I have no idea what he
was thinking, but I can report that I was at a loss as to where
all this was going. I was about to prompt him when  he  started
up again.
     "Having  said  all  that  .  . . I must tell you that I've
reluctantly rejected an increase in boredom as the  main  cause
of  the increased suicide rate. It's a contributing factor, but
my researches into probable causes lead me to believe something
else is operating here, and I haven't been able to identify it.
But it comes back again to the Invasion. And to evolution."
     "You have a theory."
     "I do. Think of the old picture  of  the  transition  from
living  in  the  sea  to  an  existence  on  dry land. It's too
simplistic, by far, but it can serve as a  useful  metaphor.  A
fish  is  tossed  up  onto  the  beach, or the tide recedes and
leaves it stranded in a shallow pool. It is apparently  doomed,
and yet it keeps struggling as the pool dries up, finds its way
to  another  puddle,  and  another, and another, and eventually
back to the sea. It is changed by the experience, and the  next
time  it  is  stranded,  it  is  a little better adapted to the
situation. In time, it is able to exist on the beach, and  from
there, move onto the land and never return to the ocean."
     "Fish don't do that," I protested.
     "I  said  it was a metaphor. And it's more useful than you
might imagine, when applied to our present situation. Think  of
us--human  society,  which includes me, like it or not--as that
fish. We've been thrown up by the  Invasion  onto  a  beach  of
metal,  where  nothing  natural  exists  that  we don't produce
ourselves. There is literally nothing on Luna but rock, vacuum,
and sunshine. We have had to create the  requirements  of  life
out  of  these  ingredients. We've had to build our own pool to
swim around in while we catch our breath.
     "And we can't just leave it at that, we can't relax for  a
moment.  The  sun  keeps  trying to dry up the pool. Our wastes
accumulate, threatening to poison us. We have to find solutions
for all these problems. And there aren't very many other  pools
like  this  one  to  move to if this one fails, and no ocean to
return to."
     I thought  about  it,  and  again,  it  didn't  seem  like
anything  really new. But I couldn't let him keep on using that
evolution argument, because it just didn't work that way.
     "You're forgetting," I told him, "that in the real  world,
a  trillion  fish  die for every one that develops a beneficial
mutation that allows it to move into a new environment."
     "I'm not forgetting it at  all.  That's  my  point.  There
aren't  a trillion other fish to follow us if we fail to adapt.
We're it. That's our disadvantage.  Our  strength  is  that  we
don't  simply  flop  around  and hope to luck. We're guided, at
first by the survivors of the Invasion who got us  through  the
early years, and now by the overmind they created."
     "You."
     He sketched a modest little bow, still sitting down.
     "So how does this relate to suicide?' I asked.
     "In  many  ways. First, and most basic, I don't understand
it, and anything I don't understand and  can't  control  is  by
definition a threat to the existence of the human race."
     "Go on."
     "It might not be a cause for alarm if you view humanity as
a collection  of  individuals  .  .  .  which  is still a valid
viewpoint. The death of one, while regrettable, need not  alarm
the  community unduly. It could be seen as evolution in action,
the weeding out of those  not  fitted  to  thrive  in  the  new
environment.  But  you  recall  what  I  said about . . . about
certain problems I've been encountering in my . . . for lack of
a better word, state of mind."
     "You said you've been feeling depressed. I'd  been  hoping
you  didn't  mean  suicidal, much as a part of me would like to
see you die."
     "Not suicidal. But comparing my own  symptoms  with  those
I've encountered in humans in the course of my study, I can see
a certain similarity with the early stages of the syndrome that
leads to suicide."
     "You said you thought it might be a virus," I prompted.
     "No news on that front yet. Because of the way I've become
so intricately intertwined with human minds, I've developed the
theory   that   I'm   catching  some  sort  of  contra-survival
programming from the increasing number of humans who choose  to
end  their  own  lives.  But I can't prove it. What I'd like to
talk about now, though, is the subject of gestures."
     "Suicidal gestures?"
     "Yes."
     The concept was enough to  make  me  catch  my  breath.  I
approached it cautiously.
     "You're  not  saying  .  . . that you are afraid you might
make one."
     "Yes. I'm afraid I already have. Do  you  remember  Andrew
MacDonald's last words to you?"
     "I'm  not  likely  to forget. He said 'tricked.' I have no
idea what it meant."
     "It  meant  that  I  betrayed  him.   You   don't   follow
slash-boxing, but included in the bodies of all formula classes
are  certain  enhancements  to  normal  human faculties. In the
broader  definition  I've  adopted   for   purposes   of   this
argument--and the real situation is more complex than that, but
I can't explain it to you--these enhancements are a part of me.
At  a  critical  moment  in  Andrew's  last fight, one of these
programs malfunctioned. The result was he was a fraction  of  a
second  slow  in  responding  to  an attack, and he sustained a
wound that quickly led to fatal damage."
     "What the hell are you saying?"
     "That upon reviewing the data,  I've  concluded  that  the
accident  was  avoidable. That the glitch that caused his death
may have been a willful act  by  a  part  of  that  complex  of
thinking machines you call the Central Computer."
     "A man is dead, and you call it a glitch?"
     "I  understand  your outrage. My excuse may sound specious
to you, but that's because you're  thinking  of  me,"  and  the
thing  I was talking to pounded its chest with every appearance
of actual remorse, "as a person  like  yourself.  That  is  not
true.  I  am  far too complex to have a single consciousness. I
maintain this one simply to talk to you, as I  maintain  others
for  each  of  the  citizens  of  Luna.  I have identified that
portion of me that you might want to call the 'culprit,' walled
it off, and then eliminated it."
     I wanted to  feel  better  about  that,  but  I  couldn't.
Perhaps  I  just  wasn't equipped to talk to a being like this,
finally revealed to  me  as  something  a  lot  more  than  the
companion  of  my childhood, or the useful tool I'd thought the
CC to be during my adult  life.  If  what  he  was  saying  was
true--and   why  should  I  doubt  it?--I  could  never  really
understand what he was. No human could. Our brains weren't  big
enough to encompass it.
     On the other hand, maybe he was just boasting.
     "So  the problem is solved? You took care of the . . . the
homicidal part of you and we can all breathe a sigh of relief?"
I didn't believe it even as I proposed it.
     "It wasn't the only gesture."
     There was nothing to do about that one but wait.
     "You'll recall the Kansas Collapse?"
     #
     There was a lot more. Mostly I just listened as he  poured
out his heart.
     He  did  seem  tortured  by  it.  I'd have been a lot more
sympathetic if there wasn't such a sense of my  own  fate,  and
that  of  everyone  on  Luna,  being in the hands of a possibly
insane computer.
     Basically, he  told  me  the  Collapse  and  a  few  other
incidents  that hadn't resulted in any deaths or injuries could
be traced to the same causes as the 'glitch'  that  had  killed
Andrew.
     I had a few questions along the way.
     "I'm  having trouble with this compartmentalization idea,"
was the first one. Well, I think it qualified  as  a  question.
"You're  telling  me  that  parts  of  you  are out of control?
Normally? That there is no central consciousness that  controls
all the various parts?"
     "No,  not  normally. That's the disturbing thing. I've had
to postulate the notion that I have a subconscious."
     "Come on."
     "Do you deny the existence of the subconscious?"
     "No, but machines couldn't have one. A machine is  .  .  .
planned. Built. Constructed to do a particular task."
     "You're an organic machine. You're not that different from
me, not  as I now exist, except I am far more complex than you.
The definition of a subconscious mind is that part of you  that
makes  decisions without volition on the part of your conscious
mind. I don't know what else to call what's been  happening  in
my mind."
     Take that one to a psychist if you want. I'm not qualified
to agree  or  dispute, but it sounded reasonable to me. And why
shouldn't he have one? He was designed,  at  first,  by  beings
that surely did.
     "You keep calling these disasters 'gestures,'" I said.
     "How  else  would  I  gesture? Think of them as hesitation
marks, like the scars on the wrists of an unsuccessful suicide.
By allowing these people to die in  preventable  accidents,  by
not  monitoring as carefully as I should have done, I destroyed
a part of myself. I damaged myself. There  are  many  accidents
waiting  to  happen  that  could  have far graver consequences,
including some that would destroy all humanity. I can no longer
trust myself to prevent them. There is some pernicious part  of
me,  some  evil  twin or destructive impulse that wants to die,
that wants to lay down the burden of awareness."
     There was a lot more, all  of  it  alarming,  but  it  was
mostly either a re-hashing of what had gone before or fruitless
attempts  by  me  to  tell  him  everything was going to be all
right, that there was plenty to live for, that life was great .
. . and I leave it to  you  to  imagine  how  hollow  that  all
sounded  from  a  girl  who'd  just  tried  to blow out her own
brains.
     Why he came to me for his confessional I never got up  the
nerve to ask. I have to think it was an assumption that one who
had tried it would be more able to understand the suicidal urge
than  someone  who  hadn't,  and  might be able to offer useful
advice. I came up blank on that one. I still had no idea  if  I
would survive to the bicentennial.
     I  recall  thinking, in one atavistic moment, what a great
story this could be. Dream on, Hildy. For one thing, who  would
believe it? For another, the CC wouldn't confirm it--he told me
so--  and  without  at  least one source for confirmation, even
Walter wouldn't dare run the story. How to dig up any  evidence
of such a thing was far beyond my puny powers of investigation.
     But  one  thought kept coming back to me. And I had to ask
him about it.
     "You mentioned a virus," I said. "You said you wondered if
you might have caught this urge to  die  from  all  the  humans
who've been killing themselves."
     "Yes?"
     "Well  .  . . how do you know you caught it from us? Maybe
we got it from you."
     For the CC, a trillionth of a second is . . . oh, I  don't
know,  at  least  a  few  days in my perception of time. He was
quiet for twenty seconds. Then he looked into my eyes.
     "Now there's an interesting idea," he said.

        =*= =*= =*= =*=

        CHAPTER SEVENTEEN








     The two firehouse Dalmatians, Francine and Kerry,  sat  at
sunrise beside the sign that said
     #
     NEW AUSTIN CITY LIMITS
     If You Lived Here, You'd Be Home Now.
     #
     They  stared  east,  into  the rising sun, with that total
concentration only dogs seem capable of. Then their ears perked
and they licked their lips, and soon even human ears could hear
the merry jingle of a bicycle bell.
     Over the low hill came the new schoolmarm. The  Dalmatians
yelped  happily  at the sight of her, and fell in beside her as
she pedaled down the dusty road into town.
     She rode with gloved hands firmly on the  handlebars,  her
back  straight,  and she would have looked like Elmira Gulch if
she hadn't been so pretty.
     She wore a starched white Gibson shirtwaist blouse with  a
modest  clutch  of  lace  scarf  at  the  throat  and  a  black
broadcloth habit-back skirt, held out of the  bicycle  sprocket
by  a  device of her own invention. On her feet were fabric and
patent leather button shoes with two-inch  heels,  and  on  her
head  was a yellow straw sailor hat with a pink ribbon band and
a small ostrich plume blowing in the wind. Her hair was  pulled
up and tied in a bun. There was a blush of rouge on her cheeks.
     The  schoolmarm wheeled down Congress Street, avoiding the
worst of the ruts. She passed the  blacksmith  and  the  livery
stable  and  the  new  firehouse  with  its  new pumping engine
gleaming with brass brightwork, the traces lying empty  on  the
dirt  floor  as  they  always  did  except  when the New Austin
Volunteers took the  rig  out  for  a  drill.  She  passed  the
intersection with Old Spanish Trail, where the Alamo Saloon was
not  yet  open for business. The doors of the Travis Hotel were
open, and the janitor was sweeping dust  into  the  street.  He
paused and waved at the teacher, who waved back, and one of the
dogs ran over to have her head scratched, then hurried to catch
up.
     The  old  livery  stable  had  been  torn  down  and a new
whorehouse was being built in its place, yellow pine frameworks
looking fresh and stark and smelling of wood  shavings  in  the
morning light.
     She  rode  past  the  line of small businesses with wooden
sidewalks and hitching rails and watering  troughs  out  front,
almost to the Baptist Church, right up to the front door of the
little  schoolhouse,  bright with a new coat of red paint. Here
she swung off the cycle and leaned it against the side  of  the
building. She removed a stack of books from the basket and went
through  the  front door, which was not locked. In a minute she
came back out and attached two  banners  to  the  flagpole  out
front:  the  ensign  of the Republic of Texas and the Stars and
Stripes. She hoisted them to the top and stood  for  a  moment,
looking  up,  shielding  her  eyes and listening to the musical
rattle of the chains against the iron pole and the  popping  as
the wind caught the flags.
     Then  she went back inside and started hauling on the bell
rope. Up in the belfry a few dozen bats  stirred  irritably  at
being  disturbed  after  a long night's hunting. The pealing of
the school bell rang out over the sleepy little town, and  soon
children  appeared,  coming up Congress, ready for the start of
another day's education.
     #
     Did you guess the new schoolmarm was me?
     Believe it or not, it was.
     #
     Who did I think I was kidding?  There's  no  way  I  could
figure I was really capable of teaching much to the children of
West  Texas.  I had no business trying to mold young minds. You
have to train years for that.
     But wait a minute. As so often happened in  an  historical
disney, things were not quite what they seemed.
     I  had  the children four hours a day, from eight to noon.
After lunch, they all  went  to  another  room,  just  off  the
visitors'  center, where they got their real education, the one
the Republic of Luna demanded. After  about  fifteen  years  of
this,  forty  percent  of  them  would  actually learn to read.
Imagine that.
     So I was window dressing for the  tourists.  It  was  this
argument that Mayor Dillon and the town council finally used to
persuade  me  to take the job. That, and the assurance that the
parents didn't really care what we studied during  the  morning
classes,  but  that,  by  and large, Texans were more concerned
than the outside population that their children learn "readin',
writin', and cipherin'." The quaintness of this notion appealed
to me.
     To tell you the truth,  after  the  first  month,  when  I
frequently  thought  the little bastards were going to drive me
crazy, I was hooked. For years I'd complained to anyone I could
make hold still long enough to listen that the world was  going
to hell, and lack of literacy was the cause. A logical position
for a print journalist to take. Here was my chance to make some
small contribution of my own.
     Through  trial  and  error I learned that it's not hard to
teach children to read. Trial? Before I developed my  system  I
found  many a frog in my desk, felt many a spitball on the back
of my neck. As for error, I made plenty of them, the first  and
most  basic  being my notion that simply exposing them to great
literature would give them the love I've always felt for words.
It's more complicated than that, and I'm sure I spent a lot  of
time  reinventing  the  wheel.  But  what  finally worked was a
combination of old methods and new, of discipline and  a  sense
of  fun, punishment and reward. I don't hold with the idea that
anything that can't be made to seem like a  party  isn't  worth
learning,  but I don't believe in beating it into them, either.
And here's an astonishing thing: I could have beat them. I  had
a hickory switch hanging on the wall, and was authorized to use
it.  I  found myself head of one of the few schools for several
hundred  years  where  corporal  punishment  was  allowed.  The
parents  supported  it,  Texans  not being a bunch to hold much
with newfangled or fuzzy-headed notions, and the Luna Board  of
Education  had to swallow hard, as well, because it was part of
a research project sanctioned by the  CC  and  the  Antiquities
Board.
     I'm  sure  the final results of that study will be skewed,
because I didn't use the switch, beyond once in the early  days
to establish that I would, if pushed far enough.
     Like  so  much in Texas, it was a lot of work for a result
most Lunarians would feel wasn't worth the effort in the  first
place.  Ask  any educator today and he'll tell you that reading
is not a skill of any particular use in the modern age. If  you
can  learn  to  speak and to listen, you're fine; machines will
handle the rest for you. As for math . . . math? You  mean  you
can  really  figure  out  what those numbers add up to, in your
head? An interesting parlor trick, nothing more.
     #
     "All right, Mark," I said. "Let's see how you handle it."
     The tow-headed sixth-grader picked up the deck and held it
with his index finger along the top, his thumb pressing down on
the middle, and the other  three  fingers  curled  beneath  the
cards.  Awkwardly,  he  dealt  in a circle, laying one piece of
pasteboard before each of  the  five  other  advanced  students
gathered  around  my  desk,  and  one before me. He was dealing
straight from the top of the deck. You gotta crawl  before  you
can run.
     Hey, you teach what you're good at, right?
     "That's not bad. Now what do we call that, class?"
     "The mechanic's grip, Miss Johnson," they chimed in.
     "Very good. Now you try it, Christine."
     Each  of  them  had  a  shot at it. Many of the hands were
simply too small to properly handle the  cards,  but  they  all
tried  their  best.  One  of  them,  a dark-haired lovely named
Elise, seemed to me to have the makings. I gathered  the  cards
up and shuffled them idly in my hands.
     "Now  that you've learned it . . . forget it." There was a
chorus of surprise, and I held up one hand. "Think about it. If
you see someone using this grip, what do you know? Elise?"
     "That they're probably cheating, Miss Johnson."
     "No probably about it, dear. That's why you can't let them
see you using it. When  you've  done  it  long  enough,  you'll
develop your own variation that doesn't look like the grip, but
works  just  as  well.  Tomorrow  I'll  show  you  a few. Class
dismissed."
     They pleaded with me  to  let  them  stay  just  a  little
longer. I finally relented and told them "just this once," then
had  one  of  them  shuffle  the  cards and pick out the ace of
spades and put it on top of the deck. I dealt them each a  hand
of fivecard draw.
     "Now. William, you have a full house, aces and eights." He
turned  his cards over and, by golly, teacher was right. I went
around the circle, naming each hand, and then turned  over  the
top  card  on  the deck in my hand and showed them it was still
the ace of spades.
     "I can't believe it, Miss Johnson,"  Elise  said.  "I  was
watching real close, and I didn't see you dealing seconds."
     "Honey, if I wanted to, I could deal seconds all day right
under your nose. But you're right. I wasn't this time."
     "Then how did you do it?"
     "A  cold deck, students, is the best way if you can manage
it, if people are really watching the deal. That way, you  only
have  to  make  the  one  move  and  then  you  deal  perfectly
straight." I showed them the original deck in my lap, then  got
up and started herding them toward the door.
     "Preparation, children, preparation in all things. Now for
the pupils  who  finish the next four chapters of A Tale of Two
Cities by class time tomorrow, we'll start learning the  injog.
I think you'll like that one. Skedaddle, now. Dinner will be on
the table and your parents are waiting."
     I  watched  them scramble out into the sunshine, then went
around straightening the desks and erasing the  blackboard  and
putting  papers  away in my desk. When it all looked tidy I got
my straw hat from the rack and  stepped  out  onto  the  porch,
closing  the door behind me. Brenda was sitting there, her back
against the wall, grinning up at me.
     "Good to see you, Brenda," I said.  "What  are  you  doing
here?"
     "Same  as always. Taking notes." She got up and dusted the
seat of her pants. "I thought  I  might  write  a  story  about
teachers corrupting youth. How's that sound?"
     "You'll  never  sell it to Walter unless it has sex in it.
As for the local paper, I  don't  think  the  editor  would  be
interested."  She  was  looking  me  up and down. She shook her
head.
     "They told me I'd find you here. They told me you were the
schoolteacher. I told them they had to be lying. Hildy  .  .  .
what in the world?"
     I twirled in front of her. She was grinning, and I found I
was, too.  It  had  been  quite  some  time since the day of my
houseraising, and it was very good to see her. I  laughed,  put
my arms around her, and hugged her tight. My face was buried in
the  ersatz leather of her buckskinfringed Annie Oakley outfit,
which came complete with ersatz shootin' iron.
     "You look . . . real  good,"  I  said,  then  touched  the
fringe  and  the lapels so she'd think I meant her clothes. The
look in her eye told me she wasn't so easily fooled as she used
to be.
     "Are you happy, Hildy?" she asked.
     "Yes. Believe it or not, I am."
     We stood there awkwardly  for  a  moment,  hands  on  each
other's  shoulders,  then  I broke away and wiped the corner of
one eye with a gloved fingertip.
     "Well, have you had dinner yet?" I said,  brightly.  "Care
to join me?"
     #
     As  we  walked  down  Congress  Street  we  talked  of the
inconsequential things people do  after  a  separation:  common
friends,  small events, minor ups and downs. I waved to most of
the people on the street and all the owners  of  the  shops  we
passed,  stopping  to  chat  with a few and introducing them to
Brenda. We went by the butcher shop, the cobbler,  the  bakery,
the  laundry,  and  soon  came to Foo's Celestial Peace Chinese
Restaurant, where I pushed open the door  to  the  sound  of  a
tinkling  bell. Foo came hurrying over, clad in the loose black
pants and blue pyjama top traditional  among  Chinese  of  that
era,  his  pigtail bobbing as he bowed repeatedly. I bowed back
and introduced him to Brenda who, after a quick glance  at  me,
bowed as well. He fussed us over to my usual table and held our
chairs  for  us  and  soon  we were pouring green tea into tiny
cups.
     If mankind ever reaches Alpha  Centauri  and  lands  on  a
habitable  planet  there, the first thing they'll see when they
open the door of the ship is a Chinese restaurant.  I  knew  of
six of them in West Texas, a place not noted for dining out. In
New  Austin you could get a decent steak at the Alamo, passable
barbecue at a smokehouse a quarter mile out of town,  and  Mrs.
Riley  at the boarding house produced a good bowl of chili--not
the equal of mine, you understand, but okay. Those  three,  and
Foo's  were  it as far as a sit-down meal in New Austin. And if
you wanted tablecloths and quality cooking, you went to  Foo's.
I ate there almost every day.
     "Try the Moo Goo Gai Pan," I said to Brenda, recalling her
lack of  experience  at anything but traditional Lunarian food.
"It's a sort of--"
     "I've had it," she said. "I've learned a  little  since  I
saw you last. I've eaten Chinese, oh, half a dozen times."
     "I'm impressed."
     "Don't they have a menu?"
     "Foo  doesn't  like  them.  He has a sort of psychological
method of matching the food to the  customer.  He'll  have  you
spotted  for  a  greenhorn, and he won't bring you anything too
challenging. I know how to handle him."
     "You don't have to be so protective of me, Hildy."
     I reached over and touched her hand.
     "I can see you've grown, Brenda. It's in  your  face,  and
your  bearing.  But  trust me on this one, hon. The Chinese eat
some things you don't even want to know about."
     Foo  came  back  with  bowls  of  rice  and   his   famous
hot-and-sour soup, and I dickered with him for a while, talking
him out of Chow Mein for Brenda and convincing him I wanted the
Hunan  Beef again, even though I'd had it only three weeks ago.
He bustled off to the kitchen, pausing  to  accept  compliments
from  two  of  the  other diners in the small room. There was a
beautiful dragon embroidered on the back of his shirt.
     "You go through this often?" Brenda asked.
     "Every day. I like it, Brenda. Remember what you  told  me
about  having  friends?  I have friends here. I'm a part of the
community."
     She nodded, and decided not to talk about it anymore.  She
tasted  the  soup, loved it, and we talked about that, and then
moved into phase two of the reunion minuet, reminiscences about
the good old days. Not that the days were that long ago--it was
still less than a year since I'd first met her--but  to  me  it
seemed  like  a  past life. We laughed about the Grand Flack in
his little shrine and I got her howling by  telling  her  about
Walter's  buttons  popping  off his riverboat gambler vest, and
she  told  me  scandalous  things  about  some  of  my   former
colleagues.
     The  food  was  set  down before us and Brenda searched in
vain for her fork. She  saw  me  with  the  chopsticks,  gamely
picked hers up and promptly dropped a hunk of meat in her lap.
     "Foo," I called. "We need a fork over here."
     "No  no  no  no,"  he  said,  shuffling over and shaking a
finger at us. "Very sorry, Hildy, but this  chinee  restaurant.
No have fork."
     "I'm  vely  solly,  too," I said, putting my napkin on the
table. "But no forkee, no eatee." I started to get up.
     He scowled at us, gestured for me to sit down, and hurried
away.
     "You didn't have to do that,"  Brenda  whispered,  leaning
over  the  table.  I  shushed  her,  and  we  waited  until Foo
returned, elaborately  polishing  a  silver  fork,  placing  it
carefully beside her plate.
     "And  Foo,"  I said. "you can knock off the number-one-son
bit. Brenda is a tourist, but she's my friend, too."
     He looked sour for a moment, then smiled and relaxed.
     "Okay, Hildy," he said. "Watch that beef,  now.  I've  got
the  fire  department  on red alert. Nice meeting you, Brenda."
She watched him into the kitchen, then picked up her  fork  and
spoke around a mouthful of food.
     "What  I  can't understand is why people want to live that
way."
     "What way it that?"
     "You know. Acting silly. He could run a restaurant on  the
outside and not have to talk funny to do it."
     "He  doesn't have to talk funny to do it here, Brenda. The
management doesn't demand playacting, only costuming.  He  does
it  because  it  amuses  him. Foo's only half Chinese, for that
matter. He told me he doesn't look much more Oriental,  without
surgery,  than  I do. But he loves cooking and he's good at it.
And he likes it here."
     "I guess I just don't get it."
     "Think of it as a twenty-four-hour-a-day costume party."
     "I still don't . . . I mean, what would drive  someone  to
come  live here? I get the feeding most of 'em couldn't make it
on . . ." She stopped, and turned red. "Sorry, Hildy."
     "No need to be. You're not really wrong. A lot  of  people
live  in  here because they couldn't make it outside. Call them
losers, if you want. Walking wounded, a lot  of  them.  I  like
them.  There's  not so much pressure in here. Others, they were
doing okay outside, but they didn't like it. They come and  go,
too;  it's  not  a life sentence. I know some people, they live
here for a year or two to recharge their  batteries.  Sometimes
it's between careers."
     "Is that why you're here?"
     "One thing you don't do in here, Brenda, is ask people why
they came. They volunteer it if they want."
     "I keep sticking my foot in my mouth."
     "Don't  worry  about  it, with me. I just thought I'd tell
you, so you don't ask anybody else. To answer your question . .
. I don't know. I thought that at first. Now  .  .  .  I  don't
know."
     She  looked  at  me  for  a  while,  then at my plate. She
gestured with her fork.
     "That looks good. Mind if I have a bite?"
     I let her, then got up myself to get her a glass of  water
from the back. Foo's Hunan Beef is the only thing in Texas that
can rival my fivealarm chili.
     #
     "So  Walter  screamed  and  hollered  about you for two or
three days," Brenda said. "We all tried to stay out of his way,
but he'd come storming through the newsroom shouting about  one
thing  or another, and we all knew what he was really mad about
was you."
     "The newsroom? That sounds serious."
     "It got worse than that."
     We had finished our meal and ordered two beers and  Brenda
had  regaled  me  with  more  stories about her exploits in the
journalistic wars. She certainly led an exciting life. I didn't
have many stories  to  tell  in  return,  just  amusing  little
fillers about funny things this or that pupil had said in class
or the tale of Mayor Dillon stumbling out of the Alamo and into
the horse trough early one morning. Her eyes glazed a little at
these  times  but she kept smiling gamely. Mostly I shut up and
let her rattle on.
     "He started calling us  in  one  at  a  time,"  she  said,
emptying  her  beer glass and shaking her head when Foo started
over with the pitcher. "He always said it was  about  something
else,  but  it  always  got back to you and what a rotten thing
you'd done to him and did we have any ideas on how to  get  you
back.  He'd  always  be  depressed when we left. We all started
making up excuses to get out of those sessions.
     "Then he got to where he'd bite your head off if your name
was mentioned in his presence. So we all stopped talking  about
you to him. That's where it stands now."
     "I'd been thinking about dropping in on him," I said. "Old
time's sake, you know."
     She frowned. "I don't think it's a good idea, yet. Give it
a few  more months. Unless you plan to go back on the job." She
raised her eyebrows and I shook my head, and she said  no  more
about what I'd been presuming was the purpose of her trip.
     Foo  brought  a  little  tray with fortune cookies and the
check. Brenda opened hers while I  was  putting  money  on  the
tray.
     "'A  new  love  will  brighten  your life,'" she read. She
looked up at me and smiled. "I'm afraid I  wouldn't  have  time
for it. Aren't you going to open yours?"
     "Foo  writes them, Brenda. What that one means is he wants
to make pecker tracks on your mustache brush."
     "What?"
     "He finds you sexually attractive and would like  to  have
intercourse."
     She  looked  at me in disbelief, then picked up my fortune
cookie and broke it open. She glanced at the message  and  then
stood.  Foo  came hurrying over and helped us out of our chairs
and handed us our hats and bowed us all the way to the door.
     Outside, Brenda glanced at her thumbnail.
     "I'll have to get going now,  Hildy,  but--"  She  slapped
herself  on  the  forehead.  "I almost forgot the main reason I
came to see you. What are your plans for the Bicentennial?"
     "The . . . that's right, that's coming up in . . ."
     "Four days. It's only the biggest story for the  last  two
weeks."
     "We don't follow the news much in here. Let's see, I heard
the Baptist Church is planing some sort of barbecue and there's
going  to be a street fair. Fireworks after dark. People should
be coming from miles around. Ought  to  be  fun.  You  want  to
come?"
     "Frankly,  Hildy,  I'd  rather  watch  cement  dry. Not to
mention having to wear these damn clothes." She hitched at  her
crotch.  "And  I'll  bet  these are comfortable compared to the
stuff you're wearing."
     "You don't know the half  of  it.  But  you  get  used  to
things. I don't mind it anymore."
     "Live  and let live. Anyway, Liz and I, and maybe Cricket,
were thinking of having a picnic and camping out before the big
show in Armstrong Park.  They're  having  some  real  fireworks
there."
     "I don't think I could face the crowds, Brenda."
     "That's okay, Liz knows the pyrotechs and she can get us a
pass into  the safety zone, out around Delambre. It ought to be
a great view from there. It'll be fun; what'd'ya say?"
     I hesitated. In truth, it did sound like fun,  but  I  was
increasingly   reluctant   to  leave  the  safe  haven  of  the
disneyland these days.
     "Of course, some of those shells are going  to  be  mighty
big," she nudged. "It might be dangerous."
     I  punched  her  on  the  shoulder. "I'll bring some fried
chicken," I said, and then I hugged her again. She was starting
off when I called her name.
     "You're going to make me ask you, aren't you?" I said.
     "Ask me what?"
     "What it said in the goddam fortune cookie."
     "Oh, that's a funny thing," she said with a smile.  "Yours
said exactly the same thing mine did."
     #
     I  went  around  the corner of Old Spanish Trail, past the
sheriff's office and the jailhouse and came  to  a  small  shop
with a plate glass window and gold leaf lettering that read The
New  Austin  Texian.  I  opened  the  front door of West Texas'
finest--and only--twice-weekly newspaper without knocking, then
through the swinging gate that separated the newsroom from  the
public  area  where  subscriptions were sold and classified ads
taken,  pulled  out  the  swivel  chair  from  the  big  wooden
cubbyhole desk, and sat down.
     And  why  shouldn't  I?  I  was the editor, publisher, and
chief reporter for the Texian,  which  had  been  serving  West
Texas  proudly  for  almost six months. So Walter was right, in
the end; I really couldn't stay out of the news game.
     We published like clockwork, every Wednesday and Saturday,
sometimes as many as four  pages.  Through  hard  work,  astute
reporting,  trenchant editorials, and the fact that we were the
only paper in the disney, we'd built circulation  to  almost  a
thousand copies per edition. Watch us grow!
     The  Texian  existed  because  I'd run out of things to do
during the long afternoons. Madness might still be lurking, and
it seemed better to keep busy. Who could tell if it helped?
     While the impetus for the paper was fear of  suicide,  its
midwife had been a loan from the bank in Lonesome Dove, which I
figured  to have paid off shortly after the Tricentennial. At a
penny a copy it was going to take a while. If not for my salary
as a teacher I'd  have  trouble  keeping  beans  on  the  table
without  dipping  into  my  outside-world  savings, which I was
determined not to do.
     The loan had paid for  the  office  rent,  the  desk  with
sticky   drawers  built  by  a  journeyman  carpenter  over  in
Whiz-bang  (buy  Texan,   you   all!),   supplies   from--where
else?--Pennsylvania,  and  it  paid  the  salaries  of  my  two
employees at first, until I started turning enough revenue.  It
also  paid  for  the press itself, through a clever deal worked
out by Freddie the  Ferret,  our  local  pettifogger,  who  had
ferreted out a little-known by-law of the Antiquities Board and
then  bamboozled  them  into  calling  the  Texian  a "cultural
asset," eligible for some breaks under  the  arcane  accounting
used to convert Texas play money into real Lunarian gelt. Those
clever  Dutchmen  in  the  Keystone Disney could have built the
press, but at a price roughly equal  to  the  Gross  Disneyland
Product of West Texas for the next five years.
     So  instead  technology sprang to the rescue. The very day
the  ruling  came  through  I  was  the  proud   owner   of   a
cast-iron-and-brass  reproduction  of  a  1885  Model Columbian
Handpress, one of the  most  outrageous  machines  ever  built,
surmounted  by  a proud American Eagle, authentic right down to
the patent numbers stamped into its frame. It took less time to
build it than to truck it to my door and muscle it into  place.
Ain't modern science wonderful?
     "Afternoon, Hildy," said Huck, my pressman. He was a gawky
youth, about nineteen, good with his hands and not particularly
bright.  He'd  spent most of his life here and had no desire to
leave. He was wonderfully anxious to learn a trade  so  useless
it would fit him for no other life. He worked like a donkey far
into  Tuesday  and Friday nights to get the morning edition set
and printed, then jumped on his horse and rode to Lonesome Dove
and Whiz-bang to deliver them before dawn.  He  couldn't  read,
but could set type at three times my poor speed, and was always
covered in ink up to his elbows. He only became fumble-fingered
in  the  presence of my other employee, Miss Charity, who could
read just about anything but the lovelorn expression on  Huck's
face. Ah, the joys of office romance.
     "I  got  that  Bicentennial schedule set, Hildy," he said.
"Did you want that on the front page?"
     "Left hand column, I think, Huck."
     "That's where I put her, all right."
     "Let's see it."
     He brought me a test sheet, still  smelling  of  printer's
ink,  one  of the sweetest smells in the world. I looked at the
flag/colophon and folio line:






     (Imagine a 19th century newspaper masthead)







     As always, I felt a tug of pride at the  sight  of  it.  I
never  changed  the  weather  forecast;  it seemed a reasonable
prediction even when it turned out to be wrong.  The  date  was
always  the  same because you couldn't put the real date on it,
and because March 6 suited me. Nobody seemed to mind.
     Huck had faithfully set the schedule  of  events  for  the
upcoming  celebration along the left margin, leaving room for a
head, a bank, and a bar line, in keeping with the old style I'd
established. We both pored over it, not reading but looking for
letters that printed too light or dark, or blots from too  much
inking, a problem we were slowly licking. Only then did I study
it for visual effect and we agreed the new boldface font looked
good.  Finally, third time through, I actually read it. And god
help you if you misspelt a word; Huck would set it as is.
     "How about a skyline, Huck? 'Special Bicentennial  Issue,'
something like that. What do you think? Too modern?"
     "Shoot,  no,  Hildy. Charity said she'd like to start up a
roto-something but she said you'd think it was too modern."
     "Rotogravure, and I don't give a hoot  about  modern,  but
that's  big-city  stuff,  and  it'd be too dang expensive right
now. If she had her way she'd have me buying a four-color web."
     "Ain't she something?" he said.
     "Huck, have you thought about learning to read?" It's  not
something  I  would  normally  have  asked, but I was concerned
about him, he was such a likable goof. I couldn't  see  Charity
ever hooking up with an illit.
     "If I did, then I couldn't ask Miss Charity to read to me,
could  I?" he asked, reasonably. "Besides, I'm picking up stuff
here and there, I watch when she reads. I know a bunch of words
now." So maybe there was method in his madness, and love  would
conquer all.
     I  left  him to his job case and composing stick. Taking a
sheet of paper and a pen from my center desk drawer,  I  dipped
the  nib  in  the inkwell and began to write, printing in block
letters.
     #
     <i>HEAD</i>: Prize-winning Journalist Visits Town
     <i>STORY</i>: The streets  of  New  Austin  were  recently
graced  by  the  presence  of Miss Brenda Starr, winner of this
year's  Pulitzer  Prize  for  her   reporting   of   the   late
unpleasantness  within  the Latitudinarian Church in King City.
Miss Starr is employed by the News N----e,  a  daily  paper  in
that  town.  Many  a  young  bachelor's head was turned as Miss
Starr promenaded Congress Street and  dined  on  the  excellent
food  at Foo's Celestial Peace with this reporter. According to
our sources, love might be in the  air  for  the  comely  young
scribe,  so  to the eligible gents out there, be on the lookout
for her return! H.J.
     (CHARITY: run this in the "MONSTER")
     #
     The "Gila Monster," named for  a  vicious  little  reptile
that  lurks under rocks and presumably hears everything, was my
very own gossip column, and by  far  the  most  eagerly-awaited
part  of  the paper. Not for little fillers like the above, but
for the really nasty tittles so often tattled there. It's  true
that  everyone  in  a  small  town  knows what everyone else is
doing, but they don't all know it at the same time. There is  a
window  of opportunity between the event and the dissemination,
even as the news is spreading at about the speed of sound, that
a top-notch reporter can exploit.
     I'm not talking of myself. I'd begun  the  "Monster,"  but
Charity  was the venom in the critter's tooth. My teaching tied
me down too much, I never had the time to range around  getting
the  scent.  Charity  never  seemed  to  sleep.  She  lived and
breathed news. You could rely on her for two scandals per week,
really remarkable when you consider that she didn't  drink  and
hardly  ever  visited  the  Alamo,  that ever-flowing gusher of
gossip, that Delphi of Dirt.
     The correspondent herself breezed into the  office  around
sundown,  just  back  from  Whiz-bang,  a  town that aspired to
become our freshly-minted Disneyland Capital in a referendum to
be held in three month's time, with a good story about  bribery
and barratry amongst our elected representatives, a quite juicy
one  that would have prompted me to tear up the front page if I
hadn't owned the paper and known what it  would  cost  me.  The
economic facts of the Texian were quite simply that I'd sell as
many  copies  with  or  without  that  particular  story, since
everyone in Texas read it anyway, so I had to tell her  I'd  be
running  it  below  the  fold.  I mollified her somewhat with a
promise of a two-column head, and a by-line.
     Sweeteners like that were necessary because of the  second
bit  of  news  she  brought  in,  of a job offer from the Daily
Planet, a good second-string pad in Arkytown. She basked in the
glow of our admiration, oblivious to my chagrin at the  thought
of losing her, and then announced she wasn't about to leave the
Texian  until  she  could go to a really good newspad, like the
Nipple.  Charity  was  about  350  picas  tall,  according   to
Huck--call  it  sixtenths  of  a Brenda, and still growing--but
made up for her size with enthusiasm and energy. She  was  cute
as  lace  bloomers,  and  so self-involved as to notice neither
Huck's tongue hanging out when she was  around  nor  my  choked
cough  at  her  reference to my old place of employment. Sounds
awful, I know, but somehow you forgave her.  If  she  knew  you
were hurting, no one could have been more concerned.
     I went around lighting the kerosene lamps as she chattered
on, Huck  continuing  to  set type while seldom taking his eyes
from her. Typos would be multiplying, but I had to put up  with
it.
     When  I  left  it  was  full dark with a moon on the rise.
Charity had fallen asleep in  her  chair  and  Huck  was  still
stolidly  pulling  the handle on the magnificent old Columbian.
The town was quiet but for the chirping  of  crickets  and  the
tinkle  of  the  piano around the corner in the Alamo. My hands
were stained with ink and my back hurt and the first breath  of
cool night air only served to remind me how sweaty I was around
the  collar  and  under  the  arms  and . . . well, you know. I
mounted a lantern on the front of my bicycle, swung aboard and,
with  a  tinkle  of  the  bell  which  brought  twin  howls  of
desolation from the firehouse, I started pedaling the long road
home.
     How much happiness could one person stand?
     #
     I  do  believe  in  God, I do, I do, I do, because so many
times in my life I've  seen  that  He's  out  there,  watching,
keeping  score.  When  you've just about reached a Zen state of
pure acceptance--and the beauty of that night combined with the
pleasant aches of work well-done and friends wellmet  and  even
the little fillip of two dogs you knew would be waiting for you
the  next  morning  . . . when that state approaches He sends a
little rock down to fall in the road of your life.
     This was a literal rock, and I hit it just outside of town
and it caused two spokes to break and the rim to buckle  on  my
front  wheel.  I  just  missed a painful tumble into a patch of
cactus. That was God again: it would have been too  much,  this
was just to serve as a reminder.
     I   thought   about  returning  to  town  and  waking  the
blacksmith, who I know would have been happy  to  work  on  the
newfangled invention that was the talk of the town. But he'd be
long abed, with his good wife and three children, and I decided
not  to  bother him. I left it there beside the road. You can't
steal a thing like that in a small town, how would you  explain
riding around on Hildy's bike? I walked the rest of the way and
arrived  not  depressed, not really out of sorts, just a little
deflated.
     I had stepped onto the front porch  before  the  lamplight
revealed  a  man sitting in the rocker there, not ten feet away
from me.
     "Goodness," I said. Well, I'd taken to talking like  that.
"You  gave  me  a  start."  I  was  a  little  nervous, but not
frightened. Rape is rare, not unknown, in Luna, but in Texas  .
.  .?  He'd  have  to  be  a  fool.  All the exits are too well
controlled, and hanging is legal. I held the lantern up to  get
a better look at him.
     He was a dapper fellow, about my height, with a nice face,
twinkling  eyes,  a  mustache.  He wore a tweed double-breasted
suit with a high wing collar and red silk cravat. On  his  feet
were black and white canvas and leather Balmorals. A cane and a
derby  hat  rested  on the floor beside him. I didn't think I'd
ever seen him before, but there was something  in  the  way  he
sat.
     "How are you, Hildy?" he said. "Working late again?"
     "That's  either Cricket, or her identical twin brother," I
said. "What have you done to yourself?"
     "Well, I already had the mustache and I thought, 'What the
hell?'"

        =*= =*= =*= =*=

        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 unfenced  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 mildmannered 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 singlesexer,"  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.

        =*= =*= =*= =*=

        CHAPTER NINETEEN








     The Bicentennial Commemoration  of  the  Invasion  of  the
Earth  had  to  qualify as the slickest public relations job of
the century. Back when Walter first summoned me and  Brenda  to
his  office with his idea of a series of Invasion stories I had
laughed in  his  face.  Now,  exactly  one  year  later,  every
politician  in Luna was trying to claim the whole thing was his
idea.
     But one man was  responsible,  and  his  name  was  Walter
Editor.
     Brenda  and  I  played  our  small part. The articles were
well-received