UNDER THE MOONS OF EDEN Copyright 1996, by Christopher Leeson Chapter 1 *The sly slow hours shall not determinate The dateless limit of thy dear exile.* KING RICHARD II Our outfit, the 54th Battle Group Earth Alliance, was in transit to Cathara when an Asymmetric search- and-destroy mission caught us off Ophir. Our light escorts had no firepower like theirs and so they were doing a good job turning our fleet into slag before the escort commander broadcast the general order for a cold jump. A cold jump for hyperspace! You have to be desperate to the point of suicide to try that. But with our ships going out like Christmas lights on the day after New Years, the surviving fighters and freighters flooded their unprepared converters with antimatter, pushed the button, and hoped for the best. As the ships blinked out of this spacial continuum, our own was not one of them; a disabling shot had fused our Morrison stabilator and made us the last sitting duck in a pond full of sharks. The Asymmetrics -- or Assies as we usually called them -- must have known that our systems were down because they didn't come circling back with guns blazing. Our colonel, lieutenant colonel, and our two senior majors had either gone down with their own ships or had jumped away, so circumstances had left me to be senior officer present. And it was one hell of an introduction to independent command. We knew that the Assies took prisoners; the kicker was that we didn't know what the enemy did with prisoners once they had them! There had been no P.O.W. exchanges between belligerents over the course of the war, and not even the most routine sort of communication. Surrender was a hard call, but I made it understanding that the enemy would gain little from either the personnel or the equipment on board. For a long time afterwards I would be kicking myself. The Assies came on board. Odd-looking critters. They shut down our cannons, took our light weapons, and then locked our transport into a tractor beam. A few days of towing through hyperspace brought us to the destination intended, a new planet in Assie-space. It didn't look so bad from high orbit: clouds, oceans, patches of foliage and dry land. In fact, it seemed like a prime piece of real estate. This blue-and-green planet had never been seen on any Earther's chart, so it had no name and the Assies didn't volunteer one. In fact, our captors didn't talk at all, except to have us pack our gear into the pods and prepare for a drop. That prospect was better than a blaster in the back of the head, but the Assies weren't wasting much time with send-offs. We were shoved into the planet's upper atmosphere without ceremony and that was it. The aliens, for all we could tell, just jumped away and forgot about us. We were abandoned, marooned. Our prison walls were the .9G gravity of a nameless planet. They had left us with no additional instructions, no fare-thee-well. No nothing. We supposed that we had been deposited on an Assie P.O.W world and from here on in we were expected to live or die on our own. We definitely preferred to live and got to work setting up. It wasn't too long before the rank and file got to calling our new home "Klink." Well, why not? With everything going wrong, a low joke sometimes helps. Had we been able to see the future, we would have called it something much less polite. # Klink was an earth-type world with an ecology of chlorophyll plants, furry animals, and even flyers that, if you didn't look too close, could pass for Terran birds. It has always amazed me to what degree alien evolution can parallel that of Earth. Of course, some people say that all the worlds in space originally came off the palette of the same Artist way back when. But metaphysics was never my strong suit. The first temperature reading we took on Klink was 18 degrees Centigrade. That was disappointingly chilly, but one of the fleet techs corralled with us was soon able to calculate that we had set down during the winter season in the northern hemisphere. He estimated from the axial tilt and the latitude that the climate might turn out to be something like that of the Upper South in the USA, with a long warm-to-hot summer, a short, mild spring and fall, and a winter of intermediate length in which the temperature would only occasionally drop below freezing. That didn't sound too bad, considering. Klink was orbited by two moons and, as we learned, every thirty-seven days the pair of them looked like they were about to collide. In fact, they had only shortly before finished their last conjunction when we arrived. We called them Big Boob and Little Boob because we were a sex-obsessed bunch of S.O.B's. Who could blame us? Women were non-existent in our corner of the galaxy. The chance for sexual recreation aside, we were otherwise pretty well off. As Captain Montgomery Ames put it, "We've got everything we need for a party, except the dames." As I have said, there were no Assie guards to bother us, no camp administration breathing down our necks, no rules imposed from above. Weapons-wise we were down to bayonets, knives, and hatchets, but though we occasionally found the tracks of large animals and sometimes sighted them from a distance, the wildlife seemed to be shy of our human scent and gave us a wide berth. As far as we knew, Klink had no intelligent life. Therefore the lack of hardware did not add up to any immediate problem. More than the confiscated arms, we missed the communicators. Without them we could hope for no early contact with other human beings upon Klink -- assuming that other prisoners had actually been made. The planet seemed so fertile and the climate so mild that we wondered why the Assies hadn't developed Klink for themselves instead of "infesting" with enemy aliens. Assies and humans liked the same kind of world and that's the reason that war had blazed along the border for a decade. It seemed damnably strange that the Assies would invade human space and take large losses in material and life while they had an unused high order T-type world right in their own back yard. It was hard to shake off the suspicion that there might be a serpent of some kind hidden in this new Eden of ours, one just waiting for the chance to bite. But the soldier wastes his time trying to understand alien psychology. The welfare of our exiled fraction of the 54th Battle Group Earth Alliance was the first order of business. Defeat is a unmanning thing and we had to keep our troopers busy to maintain their morale. A good share of the them had had families back home, wives and even children. The idea of a permanent separation from loved ones is a bitter pill for a family man, and it's pure poison if you let him wallow in his loss. For that reason, I had my five captains and ten lieutenants drive the men hard, especially during those first few weeks -- exploring, cutting timber, constructing shelters and latrines, and foraging for a food supply. We were out of the war, probably for good, but our outfit had always been first-rate and I intended to keep it that way. Very few of the rank and file were career men and so didn't like the idea of living in the army for the rest of their days. I sympathized, but discipline had to be preserved. It was better to live in a well-ordered organization indefinitely than to degenerate into a pack of bewiskered, self-pitying bums on a camp-out. Our survey had selected a campsite located a couple miles from our original landing, a slight rise overlooking a fast-running creek which analyzed pure and would supply all our needs for water. Though our men were kept hard at it, the private soldier on a detail can put his shovel down when the sergeant or lieutenant is out of sight and gripe to his buddies for a few minutes, but I had no such chance, especially not in front of my officers. Capture had badly shaken them all and so, to keep them steady, I had to preserve their confidence in me. That meant acting like I knew all the answers. The trouble was, I didn't know half of them. That was pressure -- and loneliness -- of the worst kind, the kind that will buckle a man if he doesn't have a friend with whom he can be honest. The closest thing I had to a buddy on Klink was Dr. Sebastian Lowry, the only surgeon who had been aboard our ship when the Assies took it. Unlike most of my other officers, Lowry was not a careerist, but had been drafted as warrant officer for the medical corps. Dr. Lowry had formerly run a civilian practice and even after spending a year in military-specific medical training no real soldier would ever have mistaken him for an army man. But Sebastian was a good doctor, a clear thinker, and always game for a round of poker. # Our encampment of 537 men and officers was hardly up and running before IT happened for the first time. The moons over Klink were beginning their next conjunction, pairing up like a pair of women's knobs, when Pvt. Rick Halder disappeared. The man had simply been standing in front of the members of his squad when, at 14:07, he turned into a silhouette of white light and faded from view without even leaving a sooty spot behind. We knew of no weapon that acted on human flesh that way, but as soon as I received the report I put the battle group on alert and sent every available man out searching for enemy snipers. Because of the confusion, it was only a little later that we realized that a second private, Lionel Olson, was also unaccounted for. No one had seen him "go," but it seemed likely that he had vanished in the same bizarre fashion as Halder. But there was no follow-up attack and search failed to identify anything unusual in the vicinity. At sunset, I ordered the perimeter heavily patrolled, though what men armed with knives might do against a serious attack was left open to doubt. Our pickets were not disturbed during the night and we recommenced the search at sunup. The morning patrols soon turned up something that we weren't looking for. Two women were discovered not far from camp, sleeping side by side, unconscious but apparently unhurt. Each was about nineteen or twenty -- a dark- honey blonde and a brunette. Each was wearing uniforms like ours -- exactly like ours and much too large for them. You might have thought that our men had found treasure. "Isn't this an answer to our prayers, Major Breen!" crowed Sgt. Gold into my ear as we followed the two females as they were borne back to camp on makeshift stretchers. "I only hope that there's plenty more sleeping beauties where these came from." # I followed the stretchers into the newly-finished hospital where Dr. Lowry, assisted by his young medic, Alan Drew, transferred the newly-arrived women to the cots. Lowry's first observation was that they appeared to be anesthetized. I thought back upon Gold's excitement just then. Once Lowry had brought the girls around, I could foresee all kinds of discipline problems. We now had about five hundred men starved for female companionship and only two of the latter to go around. The visitors would have to be sent home as soon as possible for their own good -- and ours. "They're not comatose, are they, Doc?" I asked. "You'll be the first to know, Rupe," he promised. "They must be lost colonists from some earlier prisoner drop --" I conjectured, knowing that the aliens had captured several Terran outposts during the last ten years and had evacuated the settlers to parts unknown. Was it so impossible that they, like us, had been deported to Klink? Just then Lowry opened the brunette's shirt and read the tag around her neck. "What the -- ?!" "What is it, Doctor?" asked Drew. "It says `Richard Halder!'" Lowry replied, his face a mask of bewilderment. I read the tag for myself; it was Halder's all right. "How in hell did this girl get it?!" I exclaimed. "It should have been vaporized with Halder, but here it is. Does that mean that Halder might be alive, too?" Lowry had no answer, but just then Drew began searching the blonde and found a similar tag around her neck. It said "Lionel Olson." "You've got to bring them around, Doc," I urged. "We've got to know what we're up against." "Then give me some working space, Rupe! I mean it! -- Get out of here!" In the infirmary a doctor's order was final, so I contained my impatience and left the two men to their work. There was not much I could do except wait. Because of the crisis I had suspended even the construction teams. Our men were getting good at carpentry and every day we had been packing away some of our modular shelters as more permanent barracks replaced them. The most useful thing I was able to do was to send word to the search squads that the missing men's tags had been found and the troopers might possibly be alive. We were, I guessed, up against alien kidnappers using matter-to-energy-to-matter technology. BEM's who had that kind of hardware would very likely turn out to be tough customers. But through it all I remained preoccupied by the mystery of the women and a strange thought occurred to me. Was this bizarre affair some sort of exchange, a trade, a couple of "their" people for a couple of ours? Who would do such a thing, and why? That wasn't human thinking at work -- it was a trade rat's! It could also be an exercise of alien intelligence. I had not been back in my quarters long before Dr. Lowry burst in looking like he'd just run at full tilt for a kilometer -- not just the couple hundred feet from his infirmary. This shaken, perspiring man was hardly the same steady professional who had thrown me out of his facility just an hour before. He started jabbering out a report that made me think that he must have been breathing chemical vapors. More to confirm that diagnosis than to credit what he was telling me, I followed Lowry back to the infirmary at the double- quick. Once inside the rough-plank structure, I saw that both females were awake. One, the brunette, was sitting up, but trembling, as if suffering from shock -- head bent, fists clenched, shoulders quaking. The other was in a fetal position and seemed even more far gone. I addressed the brunette: "Excuse me, Miss --" I began, but stopped myself. What if what the girl had told Lowry was true? I suddenly realized that I didn't know how to address the patient. I softened my tone so as not to frighten her. "Can you -- can you tell me your name?" I queried. The girl didn't even raise her head. I lifted her chin with my fingertips. I had seen expressions like hers on men who had just been gut-shot. "What's you name?!" I repeated firmly. Her glance was frantic; she was trying to speak, but the words wouldn't come. "That's all right," I coaxed. "Take all the time you need." "P-Private Halder, sir." she finally answered. "D-Don't you kn-know me, sir --?! Christ, don't you know me?!" # What the girl was trying to tell me was beyond credibility. I fought against the whole idea until long after the facts could no longer be denied. I had questioned the young woman who claimed to be Halder intensely, growing ever more unnerved until she had broken down and Lowry made me desist. The blonde, for her part, remained unfit for interrogation. I was trying hard to doubt that the brunette was Pvt. Rick Halder, but she was absolutely desperate to convince me otherwise. I went away, still not a believer. But two more men disappeared that afternoon and we realized then that we could be on the brink of a disaster. It was deja vu when two more girls were found the next morning. Just as we feared, once able to speak they identified themselves as the missing soldiers. It was the same story when a fifth and sixth man disappeared, and the fifth and sixth woman was found. This thing was a nightmare that we couldn't wake up from. It defied all rational explanation. Every day the number of affected personnel grew. For some strange reason none of the transformed men possessed any memory of the time in which they had been away. In their strange new female incarnations, the affected soldiers usually looked about eighteen to twenty, though there was a range of variation. The age of the original male seemed to be irrelevant; there appeared to be a fountain of youth on Klink, but not a man of us would have taken the treatment had we been offered the choice. According to Dr. Lowry's observations, the transformed men -- the "transformees," as we were soon calling them -- usually came back in very good physical condition, with any previously obtained scars and physical defects removed -- including the last phalanx of the little finger that Sergeant Pitts had once lost and had now apparently regrown. Psychologically the transformees were all suffering. Lowry thought that this was not a condition deliberately induced into the victims, nor even the effects of being terrorized during their period of captivity. Instead he believed that it came from the soldiers' traumatic loss of identity. Also, it was the nature of males, especially men accustomed to military life, to be repulsed by the very idea of effeminacy. It was as though the patients' minds were interpreting what had happened to them as a profound kind of physical violation. They were showing what the doctor thought was something very like post-rape trauma in women. Lowry had no treatment, not even a theory of a treatment, for the metamorphosis. As for the trauma, he had nothing to recommend except a sparing dole of tranquilizers and anti-depressants and the prescription of rest. Sometimes the transformees' reaction to their condition was so violent or hysterical that restraint had to be called for. There was no more space in the infirmary for them all after the first few days and so Sebastian farmed his patients out to the huts. After all, their problem was mental and emotional, not physical. Nonetheless, both he and Drew worked long hours, calling upon the new-made women each day and monitoring how they were coming along. Meanwhile, we were still trying to discover what was responsible for this incomprehensible phenomenon. Over the next couple weeks we sent search parties as far out as a hundred kilometers, looking primarily for aliens. They discovered nothing whatsoever -- nothing except dismaying fact that when a group went beyond a certain vague range from our main body the same unseen powers began to act upon them also, abducting and transforming searchers exactly as if they were a separate group which required separate attention. The men's fear grew daily as the transformation count rose. Since dispersion only increased our problems, I decided to keep our men close together. That at least kept the number of sex-changes down to just two per day while we tried to figure out what was going on. Whatever lay behind our predicament, it didn't respect rank. Captain Ames vanished about two weeks after the first incident, only to reappear the next morning as a hard-bodied young female with a halo of fluffy blonde hair and a face like an angel. It occurred to me that his fate was brutally ironic. It had been Ames who not so long before had said, "We have everything we need for a party, except the dames." Now we had more "dames" than we wanted -- and we were getting more every day. At first none of the stricken soldiers were fit for work. They spent much of their time in bed, suffering from deep depression, huddling out of sight, ashamed to be seen, but sometimes wandered about the camp like somnambulists. Most of the time the transformees remained quiet and easy to handle, although there was the occasional fit of whimpering or outbreak of screaming. None of the rest of us knew how to react and our morale plummeted. Comrades were becoming unrecognizable strangers and everyone was afraid that he'd be next. That was the worst of it -- the fear. Sometimes friends came through for their transformed comrades, but to the majority the transformees were pariahs. I saw groups dissolve without a word spoken when a woman, perhaps not looking where she was going or desperate for companionship, came near. Fear makes the human animal cruel, alas. The mere sight of the transformees evoked terror in most soldiers. The 54th had been a cohesive outfit, its members used to looking out for one another. They were not able to act that way now and were deeply ashamed of themselves. All our men, both the transformed and the others, were taking a heavy mental beating and we didn't have a clue where it was it all leading. Then something ghastly happened, something that most of us still carry like an open wound to this day. Lionel Olson, one of the first two transformees, had been lodged with Halder in a hut of their own. Olson had never really become rational and, a couple days after leaving the infirmary, she opened one of her own arteries with a utility knife and bled to death before we found her in the morning. Olson's sudden death hit every one of us like a laser cannon. What idiots we had been! We should have anticipated the possibility of suicide. I cursed myself for an incompetent, unthinking fool. But neither had it occurred to the mystified and harried Dr. Lowry, and I think that weighed heavily upon him, also. Despite our regrets, it was too late to help Olson. All we could do was lay her into a grave and put over it a board explaining that Lionel Olson had died "a good man, a beloved comrade, and a soldier of only twenty-six." After that ordeal we knew what we were up against and every new transformee was placed under a suicide watch. This was intended to continue until Lowry felt confident that the soldier's -- the woman's -- emotional state was no longer life-threatening. This tied up a lot of people, more each day, and the work on our camp drastically slowed. Everyone's nerves were frayed. How long would it be before there had to be an explosion? ********** Chapter 2 *But, being awaked, I do despise my dream.* KING HENRY IV, Part II I visited Ames in -- her? his? -- hut. We often found ourselves referring to our miserable comrades as "hers" and "shes," but guiltily. We did it unconsciously at first, but couldn't help ourselves and it finally became too commonplace to notice, but the pronouns always reeked of insult and betrayal. It was as if we were telling these unfortunate soldiers that they were out of the club, that they didn't belong anymore, that they had become something different and apart. Ames shared a hut with her friend and suicide watcher, Capt. Philbrick. I found the transformed soldier sprawled lifelessly upon her cot, staring at the ceiling with an expression of inner torment. She didn't seem to see me at first and I heard her murmur a one-word question: "Why?" "Captain Ames," I addressed the traumatized woman carefully. She looked my way, her eyes full of pain -- a real pain, though not of the physical kind. I thought that I had come prepared, but now found myself pitying the sad, sorry ruin that was all that was left of the once personable and jocular Montgomery Ames. I had no words to offer beyond the blandest inquiry after her health. Duty and common curtesy had required the call of me, but what could I say or do to give comfort? I was no psychologist, no clergyman. I didn't know how to avoid doing possible harm. Should I coddle the captain like the nineteen year-old girl that she resembled, or comport myself with the kind of reserve that a soldier such as Ames expected of his superior officer? Should I lie, tell her -- him -- what he -- she -- wanted to hear -- that she -- he -- would soon be all right, that Lowry was working on a way to reverse the metamorphosis? I couldn't sink so low and Ames would have to be pretty far gone to believe any such rot. She knew as well as I did that Dr. Lowry believed the transformations to be genetic, not surgical. How could we, with our limited means and resources, ever hope to unscramble a human being's chromosomes? Of course, given a major medical facility, a good deal could be done cosmetically by cutting and transplanting, by applying hormone therapy, but Lowry possessed neither the equipment, the pharmaceuticals, nor the training to attempt anything so sophisticated. Unless we managed to capture the people or the equipment responsible and make them or it reverse the process, the transformees were almost certainly doomed to remain physiological females for -- well, if not for life, for as long as our unknown enemy wanted to keep them that way. I excused myself after a few minutes, but I kept thinking about what Ames had said. The captain was not the first transformee whom I had heard asking the question "Why?" in that same desperate, despairing tone. It struck me as strange. I would have supposed that their burning question should have been "How?" # I tried to visit my transformed officers and N.C.O.'s with some regularity, all of them in pretty much the same state as Capt. Ames -- able to shake their heads despondently to direct questions, if asked insistently enough, but seldom spontaneous or conversational. For that reason, my visits to Ames and the others degraded into an ordeal. How could I help them? How should another human being relate to these unhappy creatures, either as a commander or a comrade? Fortunately, over the passing weeks, Lowry confirmed what common sense had been telling us from the beginning, that the transformees responded best if not treated differently from others, but were accepted as the men they had been -- men who perhaps were somewhat impaired by stress neuroses and/or physically wounding. Our regard and respect seemed to be the best tonic for our unfortunate mates. # Our command staff was still working on the theory of alien hostility. One idea we floated was that the Assies' were subjecting us to psychological torture to break our spirit. But why so? We were already their prisoners. If they wanted to break us, they had a thousand simpler methods to go about it. In fact, they had given no sign that they were interested in us at all. Or was it to test a new weapon for use against the Alliance? Not likely. A "sex-change ray" seemed like a damned fool tool for a military campaign. Even if the enemy had such a thing, what was the strategic gain? Why not just kill humans in the tried and true fashion? At one staff meeting Lieutenant Chih wondered out loud whether transformation was like counting coup to some alien mind, a practice which existed among Amerind warriors in frontier days. Some of the others argued that we weren't in battle. Our attackers were "counting coup" in a jail cell, the act of a coward, not a hero. Then there was another idea -- that we were being progressively changed into a population of slaves. As women -- demoralized and physically weaker -- we'd be easier to handle by overseers. Also, we could be reduced to sex objects, should the aliens suffered from the same lewd drives that aliens seemed to in bad adventure sim vids. It all sounded like sci-fi porn to me and, anyway, if the Assies or some indigenous race of Klink were intent upon reducing us to slavery, why were they returning the "slave girls" to their friends instead of putting them to work as soon as they were created? An even more repulsive theory postulated that the Assies or some other alien race was female-poor and needed breeding stock. That was food for nightmare if anything could be, but Lowry nixed it. He thought that while it might be remotely possible for a human womb to incubate an alien fetus following in vitro fertilization, it seemed too far-fetched for his taste. Moreover, none of the women had been returned pregnant. Even so, his examinations did turn up something strange -- a tiny anomalous particle buried in the medulla of each transformee's brain. What could this tiny bead-in-the-brain mean? I had demanded. Lowry had no clue and, with his limited equipment and inadequate staff, he was not going to perform such anything like brain surgery upon physically healthy soldiers. The only good news that came along in those first few weeks was that Private First Class Hitchcock, an early transformee, seemed to be pulling out of her traumatic phase. Undoubtedly, we had to thank Pvt. Harold Roberts for her rapid progress. Roberts had stayed by Hitchcock's side night and day through some pretty bad episodes and eventually the transformee had begun to respond to TLC. Lowry was impressed with Roberts' results and made recommendations to other suicide watchers based upon his observations. But while I knew she was on the mend, Pvt. Hitchcock appeared at my hut asking for a duty assignment much sooner than I had expected her to. She still looked somewhat shaken, but Lowry had advised me that a return to a semi-normal routine might be the best thing to bring her along to full recovery. A person functions best, he thought, when he feel himself to be a useful and contributing member of a team. I couldn't argue with that logic. It was my hope, in fact, that all the women could very soon be reintegrated into the life of the camp. If it didn't happen, we would soon become one large, paralyzed mental ward. How strange it was to sit there, taking stock of a soldier who was very familiar to me, but whom I could not recognize by appearance and hardly by mannerism. To the eye, Mark Hitchcock was a red-hair girl wearing a uniform ludicrously too large for her. I now anticipated that clothing would become yet another problem as things developed. Pvt. Hitchcock had been a big, barrel-chested male. Now he -- she -- was only some sixty kilos in weight and about l60-l70 centimeters in height. Her sleeves and pantslegs had to be rolled up to keep them out of the way and she had also needed to bore a new notch in the middle of her belt to hold her pants up, even given the added purchase of her womanly hips. I intended to put Hitchcock to work at something light and K.P. might have been a logical choice. But Lowry had advised me against imposing anything that would smack of "housekeeping." He was worried that the transformees might react negatively to "women's work." So, instead, I decided to attach the recovering Hitchcock to a foraging detail. It would give her a good deal of exercise in the open air but require little heavy exertion of her. On second thought, I added Roberts to the same group. We didn't know yet how the men would react to having a transformee working side by side with them, and so having Roberts on hand to look after his friend made sense. Hitchcock seemed happy enough with my decision and so I dismissed her. Watching her go, I remembered that it had been Hitchcock who had led Lowry into a disturbing new theory. The transformee had insisted that she had recognized her face -- her present female face -- in the mirror. That seemed impossible. Hitchcock looked nothing like the thirtyish, prematurely bald, black-bearded man of her former life. As with most of the transformees, there was not even a family resemblance between her old shape and her new. Lowry had nonetheless accepted the unlikely premiss as a possibility worth investigating and encouraged Hitchcock to try to remember everything she could. Finally the girl was able to say that she had often seen her present face in her daydreams when she had been a man! What Mark Hitchcock was telling us, in essence, was that "she" had been changed into "his" own fantasy girl. # Lowry couldn't put much credence in this bizarre notion at first, but he and young Drew had nonetheless tested the theory, going around to some of the other transformees equipped with mirrors and carefully- crafted questions. Many of the women, they found, had never looked carefully at their own reflection and even now had to be carefully coaxed before they would do so. To Lowry's and Drew's surprise, a good many transformees reacted like Hitchcock, claiming that their faces did indeed look familiar. But one, an Arab-American named Ulad Jami, was even more specific. She had, to her horror, had found herself looking into a face that she recognized very well indeed -- the face of a fantasy belly dancer whose undulating image she -- as a he -- had been assiduously masturbating to since high school. Dr. Lowry thought that he was on to something, so he worked out a theory and ran it by me. Every heterosexual man, the doctor alleged, harbors the immensely strong image of a particular woman in his unconscious mind. This image may be know to him only as a masturbation fantasy or a daydream lover, but she actually represents the deeply-buried feminine aspect of his own psychology. She is his intuitive, emotional side, his "inner woman," so to speak. Psychologists have long been aware of her existence and have referred to her as the "anima." In a healthily-integrated male personality this anima, as counterpoised to the animus, the inner man, provided the emotional depth and dimension that a man needed for achieving and maintaining friendships, for appreciating and loving his mate, for enjoying and treasuring his children. In the same way, women possessed an unconscious animus as a guiding principle in her struggle against odds, in approaching the world logically, and in striving for long-ranged goals. The anima in man and the animus in woman gave the two sexes a common ground, a capacity for sympathy and understanding that prevented them from reacting to one another as though they were two different alien races. In most Earth cultures, masculine logic and feminine emotion remained in eternal conflict. The more masculine a man was, or sought to become, the more he instinctively repressed and denied his anima. By young adulthood a man usually accomplished this to a great degree. For example, while women seemed to make friends easily over their entire lifetime, males were normally capable of doing so only in childhood and youth. These were the true friends which he carried with him through life, until they were inevitably attritioned away and he was left pretty much alone. The adult male, in contrast, might acquire new chums, buddies, comrades, pals along the way, but rarely that deep sort of camaraderie that would invite him to touch upon subjects that were more than impersonal or superficial, such as discussions of hopes, fears, or expectations. Women, for their part, often had their own battles with their animus, but there were fewer social sanctions against a woman behaving in a masculine manner, and so this reduced the individual's inherent psychological tension. During the short-lived feminist era, in fact, some women deliberately gave free reign to their harshest animus-inspired qualities. Instead of sanctioning these extremist and excitable females, society regarded them as courageous and "ballsy." But, alas, animus-worship only resulted in the creation of seriously dysfunctional personalties of another kind. Psychologists differed in their recommendations but, within reasonable limits, it seemed that a little repression was actually healthy for both men and women. Lowry had drifted, but now he got back to his main point. He thought that a man's anima, though held prisoner in the dark, was always engaged in a struggle for its free expression. As clever and seductive as any flesh-and-blood female, the wily anima early on discovered that at least one route of escape lay open to her -- by way of a man's libido. The male libido welcomed, even sought out, the image of Woman, but in entering into the libido, the anima, like any alien intruder, was forced to blend into the territory lest she be discovered and expelled. The inner woman, therefore, will usually incarnate herself as a fantasy image, usually of a young and sexually alluring temptress or sweetheart, a form that the male unconscious would not reject but cherish. So strong is this image, in fact, that males seeking a mate in the real world very often measured the qualities of the women they met not, as once commonly believed, by the standards of his mother, but of his own anima. I could actually follow Lowry's theory for a short distance. It was well known that a man possessed a squeamish side which, unfortunately, got in the way of his being a good soldier. One aim of basic training was to burn off that weakness. The young man was put through hell-on-earth, driven past his own imaginary boundaries, required to be all that he could be -- but only as a male. Whenever a soldier seemed to be flagging, seemed to be accepting any sort of personal limit, a bawling drill sergeant, his judgmental father figure, was johnny-on-the-spot calling him a "girl," a "pussy," a "faggot," or a "woman." That kind of treatment usually inspired the recruit to redouble his efforts to be a man. But Lowry was saying that, despite this, the "inner woman" was never completely killed off, she was just locked away in the back of human awareness. In the cauldron of the ultra-masculine male psyche, even more so than in that of the man in the street, the anima was transformed from what perhaps had been a well-rounded persona to a powerful distillation of pure feline sexuality. Once she existed in the psyche, men sought her out in the real world -- women of immediate and obvious sexuality: strippers, hookers, b-girls. But while Nature allowed the anima to be transformed, it was very rarely killed. In fact, to actually kill her, or even hermetically lock her away without any possible means of expression, would have proven fatal to a man's mental health. The loss of what amounted to his emotional resources had to produce a madman -- possibly a dangerous one. I had always taken Lowry's ideas seriously, but I could not bring myself to cross over the final bridge in this case. That my men were trained, hardened fighters, could be taken for granted. They had seen slaughter and been the agents of it, had watched friends die in their arms and had taken life with their own hands. Hard and disciplined though they were, none of them were without feelings. Men had their full compliment of emotion, but it was simply men's emotion. A male might have sex fantasies, but that didn't mean that he had a full-blown female persona inside himself. In fact, it probably meant exactly the opposite. After Lowry had said his piece, I asked, "What are you really driving at, Doc?" As expected, Sebastian didn't have a theory, just a wild guess. "If you assume advanced enough genetics, it's not hard to make a female out of a male. You only have to take away his Y chromosomes and clone his X chromosomes to replace them, or leave his Y's where they are, but enhance them to an X status." I just shook my head. It seemed that the good doctor had crawled out upon the limb of pure fantasy. There was much I could have said to set him right, but I didn't see any need to be harsh. "Surely there's more going on than just genetic alteration," I suggested with a tone of calculated mildness. "That's true," affirmed Lowry, perhaps not picking up on my skepticism. "There's also some sort of morphing going on. My theory is this: Aliens don't necessarily know what human females look like, but yet for some reason they want them to be cosmetically perfect here on Klink. So, to do this, they're looking for some sort of pattern to follow. If these assumed aliens can telepathically tap into a male's mind, they'll readily isolate a powerful image of a healthy young female. This is, of course, the subject's own favorite sex fantasy, or rather his own anima repressed into one." I advised Lowry to keep this theory to himself. If word ever got out that our respected healer believed that the soldiers of the 54th would soon all transform into their own masturbation fantasies, the morale of bravest of them would break like a strand of dry spaghetti. # The role call of transformees grew steadily with no end in sight -- two a day, every day. Fortunately, another early transformee, Marduke, was giving signs of recovery. I put her on Hitchcock's detail, hoping that the two might provide sympathy and moral support for one another. The worst blow of all was the loss of Dr. Lowry. The morning after his disappearance the stretcher- bearers brought him back in the shape of a fine- featured, dark-haired woman who was, physically at least, in her mid- to late- twenties. I studied Lowry's new face with consternation as she lay unconscious in the infirmary, tended by Alan Drew. She looked exactly like the sort of woman that I would have expected a man like Sebastian to conjure up, assuming that his fantasy theory was true -- not a dame, not a babe, but a lady -- a lady of grace and dignity, not the hormonal show girl and sex-sim types who were gradually making our camp look like a girlie revue. "Anything I can do?" I asked the medic. "You're needed everywhere, Major Breen," came Drew's slow, heavy reply. "I'll take care of -- of Dr. Lowry -- and the other one. -- But if you could, sir --" "Yes?" "I don't know much about the sergeant's friends. We're going to need to find a suicide watcher for him -- for her." I nodded and I looked across at Sgt. Gold on the other cot. It had been Gold who had once remarked that he hoped that there would be "plenty more" sleeping beauties where the first two -- Halder and Olson -- had come from. I hoped that when he -- she -- awakened, that foolish wish would not add fuel to the furnace of her torment. No transformation up to that morning had shocked me more than Lowry's. Perhaps I had unconsciously taken it for granted that our physician would himself prove immune to the disease, or at least that he would be the last to succumb. It hadn't happened that way and now I was left thinking that if this fate could befall Sebastian Lowry himself, who in the world could resist it? No one? I took stock. Olson's suicide had left 536 men -- persons -- in our encampment. In about two months almost a quarter of our command had been transformed. In another six months, what? I refused to look that far ahead. While I considered our ongoing dilemma, another disaster struck. Lowry's fate had affected me on a profound personal level, but I had underestimated the effect that it might have upon others -- those who had been trusting in our doctor to find an antidote to the transformations. Our measures had so far prevented any more transformee suicides, but what we hadn't anticipated was suicide among the males. Herb Woolenska, a demolitions specialist, had left his comrades without a word of explanation shortly after Dr. Lowry was brought back. He had climbed the steep hill overlooking our camp and, from its highest cliff, had jumped to his death. I felt again what I had felt when Olson died. But what most bothered me most this time was that some part of me thought that it understood Herb Woolenska. # We buried Woolenska the next day, and that night I did my best to block out the image of his grave plot. I had lost men in combat before, but these suicides bespoke a fundamental failure on my part. I wished so much that I could talk my troubles to someone, to let out all that was eating on me, but that had never been possible except, to a small degree, with Sebastian Lowry. But now he was gone. Emotionally at least, I was equating Lowry's transformation with his death. I visited his -- or, as I might as well put it -- her bedside several times each day, a generosity with my time which I never had extended to any of the others. Though she had recovered consciousness quickly, Sebastian seemed to be suffering just like all the others. Somehow I had expected -- or at least had hoped -- that the same doctor who had carefully studied the phenomenon of transformation trauma would prove more resilient against it than anyone else -- and a little less human. In the dark of night I found myself trying not to think of transformees, of women, and especially not of Woman. Woman with a capital W. From an ideal of beauty and pleasure, I'm sure that to most men upon Klink Woman had become an image of terror and loathing. She was the witch, the evil goddess, the Medusa. She was Scylla reaching out; she was Charybdis swallowing entire crews. She was every image of fear and degradation that Mankind had ever conceived of. I could almost wish there was no such thing as a woman in the entire universe. Each night the phantasms of my unconscious mind were invariably transformed into amazing shapes -- and all too often into the shape of a woman. Not Scylla, not Charybdis, but Another. I didn't know her name; she existed nowhere except in my own mind and, despite our close association over the years, I never named her. Or, more honestly said, I had given her a thousand names, but none that were a part of her; they were like the names that a script-writer might give to a character. The Nameless Woman had had many starring roles in my fantasies: the sexpot in the bustier, the show girl in feathers, the bar girl with the slit skirt, the barbarian slave with the steel collar around her neck, awaiting the touch of her master -- who was himself the symbol of the primordial, conquering male. She was lovely, this Nameless One. Lithe, light of complexion, her breasts, full and firm, were the kind of breasts that a man longed to cup in his hands, to knead with eager fingers. Her narrow waist curved into bewitching hips and her black hair was ajiggle with bouncing ringlets. At times she seemed to come so close to me that I could see deeply into those gleaming aquamarine eyes. If she had been a vehicle, her motor would have raced, powered by a supercharge of passion and sexuality. But at other times she was not a machine at all, but a warm and gentle pet. And in this role she could transform effortlessly from the bikinied beauty upon the sunlit beach, to the sultry lover-companion waiting for her man in the ruddy light of an open fire, a last greeting him with brimming champaign glasses held in each of her beautiful hands, her red lips lifted for a kiss, her flesh fragrant with exotic scent. "Damn it!" I muttered into the stifling darkness. With an effort of will, I drove the Nameless One away and kept her away by counting mathematical tables determinedly -- until I dropped off into a fitful sleep. I awoke with a headache, but felt disinclined to seek relief in my bottle of ILW tablets. I could still work even as my head throbbed and all of us had to go easy on our medical supplies; the truly sick might be in dire need of them someday. Crossing the camp after breakfast, a delegation -- a mob, really -- engulfed me. I demanded to know what was on their minds and it became clear that Lowry's transformation had shocked them all out of their wits. They had given up hope of defeating the phenomenon and were demanding to leave the camp, to escape from whatever it was that had us in its sights. I tacitly reminded them that our detached parties had always suffered separate transformations of their own and even going out a hundred kilometers hadn't helped the situation. I speculated that it might be a planet-wide phenomenon. "Maybe not!" shouted a ring leader. "We'll go out a thousand kilometers! Two thousand! You can stay behind with the women if you want!" I analyzed the explosive quality of the soldiers' fear. Terror could easily turn otherwise sensible men violent and so I maneuvered to bleed off a little of the pressure before it caused a blow-up. "Possibly you're right, soldier," I admitted impatiently. "I'll consider your proposal. It's something we should make it the first order of business at the next staff meeting -- tonight or tomorrow. But detachment is a major undertaking and it's going to have ramifications which you men probably haven't considered so far. We can't approach such a serious matter in a panic." They didn't trust me, but neither were they yet willing to call me a liar to my face. Now that the situation seemed to have calmed somewhat, I pushed my way through the crowd. I half-expected a blow from behind, but the men still hadn't worked themselves up to outright mutiny. Even so, I had no doubt that ugly outcome lay just around the corner and, unless I played my bad hand very carefully, we were in for trouble. It wasn't lost upon me that this was the first serious challenge to my authority so far and knuckling under to it would go a long way toward ending my capacity to command effectively. Moreover, I firmly believed that flight would be counterproductive. Men would be transformed along the trail and what would a panicky mob of refugees do? Flee on ahead and leave the poor devils behind, to wake up alone, traumatized and lost? Transformees needed watching, tending. Had we fallen so low? Was it dog eat dog now? Devil take the hindmost? Where was the esprit de corps of the old 54th? How could a band of brothers such as ours start turning against one another even in circumstances as bad as these? Given my headache and my gloomy state, I was at much less than my best when Dr. Lowry paid me a visit. This was a call that I had not been expecting. It had been only three days since her transformation, much too soon for a transformee to throw off her trauma. While Sebastian had lain asleep on her cot, her face had been relaxed, innocent, my sympathy had gone out to her. Now those same features were tense and hard. "How are you, Doc?" I inquired evenly. It was strange to call this woman "Doc." Despite everything that my mind knew to be true, my instincts told me that she was a total stranger. "I'm fine," Lowry informed me in a dead tone. "This shape is going to take a little getting used to, naturally, but I've got work to do and I can't worry about it." "You've been through hell, Doc," I said. "You don't have to do anything before you're up to it." "Don't make a fuss, Major!" she fired back, not in a loud manner but harshly just the same. "A man, a woman. What of it? Two arms, two legs, a head. There's not all that much difference. The mammae get in the way, of course, and it's inconvenient having to drop one's pants just to take a piss, but half the human race gets along that way, so I guess I can, too." I wasn't so sure. I thought that the doctor was repressing and psychologists always said that repression wasn't good. Then again, I was no psych myself. Wasn't it possible that Lowry was showing the very resilience that I had been hoping to see from her? Still, I doubted that to be the case. I even doubted, in an emotional sense, that my caller was Sebastian. She might still be a competent doctor -- in fact I prayed that she was -- but I could not convince myself that this edgy woman had anything to do with the cool and phlegmatic man I had known for several months and had just begun to know well. "If you really want to go back to work, you may," I told her. "Just remember that you doctors always make the worst patients. If the going gets too hard, don't push it. Knock off and let Drew take over. The company needs its doctor at h--, uh, his best." "You can't hurt me with pronouns, Major," she said flatly. "I'll be all right." Would she? Strain lines were written into her woman's magazine features and I detected a neurotic tremble in her eyelids. The stress bottled up inside the physician betrayed itself at the corners of her grim mouth. With misgivings, I consented to her request and my visitor let herself out. I watched Lowry go, stepping along awkwardly in her huge shoes and baggy, over-long trousers. What bothered me most was that my former friend had only addressed me by rank during her visit and not by name. It put distance between us and distance made everything harder. But possibly her distance was only a reflection of my own. I had wanted to help Sebastian, not to hurt her more, but Lowry was aching, anyone could see that. I doubted that she could work productively at this point, but then again, work might be the best therapy for her, just as it had been for Hitchcock and Marduke. I had to talk to Drew. There was no one else close enough to Sebastian to give me worthwhile advice. ******** Chapter 3 *Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly.* AS YOU LIKE IT The medic Alan Drew had had Dr. Lowry's confidence for as long as I had known him. Drew also had also impressed me as being smart and competent. We threshed out the subject of Dr. Lowry, though it was only with considerable reluctance that the private would discuss his immediate superior in such terms. "I'm worried," he admitted. "She's pretending that she's all right, but she's -- not." "Of course Lowry's not all right," I said. "But what do you think? Can't she can work through this better than -- than most of the others have? She's a doctor after all." "I don't know. Maybe she's not so much different from the rest of us. I'm most concerned that she's bolted her suicide watch. What exactly is it that you want me to do, sir?" "Keep an eye on her. If she becomes a danger to herself, or commits any unacceptable medical blunders, you should be the man who could best judge that." "If she suspects that I'm spying it will poison our working relationship permanently." "It's not spying; it's evaluation and observation. For now, just watch her perform, listen to what she says. If she needs moral support, be there for her. You're good with -- these people. I've seen you." "Thank you, Major, but it's no trick to handle transformees. They're human and they respond best when they're treated that way. But I had an idea that I wanted to share with Dr. Lowry. It seemed like the wrong time to broach it with her, though." "What is it?" "I'm thinking of a support group." "A support group? For the transformees? Who'd be in it?" "There's close to a hundred and thirty transformees now. Some seem to be settling down and deciding that life goes on. They can start helping one another." His proposal made sense. In fact, in a less ambitious way, that had been my thinking when had I put Hitchcock and Marduke together. "You may be right, Private," I said. "Any specific recommendations?" "Margrave and Hitchcock's progress has been very encouraging. And one or two of the others seems to be shaping up every day. Why don't we put the most recovered transformees together in a work group of their own? Have them barracks together, too. They couldn't help but start talking over things and working through their problems." "We should take this idea to Lowry," I suggested. "This sort of thing has to be her call, and unless we relieve her, we can't go over her head. If she agrees, we'll put the recovering transformees in with Margrave and Hitchcock, and then transfer them all to some useful chore." Working together, we came up with a list of a dozen women who had ceased to be basket cases, including Halder and Capt. Ames. "Ames is still having a rough time of it," I said. "It would be trouble if she flies off the handle and starts pulling rank. We'll have to make clear to Margrave and Hitchcock that they have the medical authority to keep her in line." "I agree, sir." I regarded Drew, unsure whether I should reprimand him or not. I wasn't used to privates who thought they had to sign off on my recommendations. But neither did I want to wear a the proverbial chip. It might have been an innocent comment, given the pressure and exhaustion that the medic had been subject too more than most, and besides Drew was practically irreplaceable at the moment and dressing him down now wasn't a good way to kick our new project. Of course, the man always did seem to be a little too bold and forward. I thought that it came from interacting with all the ranks as in a technical capacity. With my head aching, I decided that to say anything at all at that moment would be to say too much. Keeping to the matter at hand, Drew and I did talk the project over with Lowry -- and a surreal interview that was! It was as if she either didn't understand or didn't care what we were talking about. Since it was clear that I wanted it done, however, the doctor simply delegated the matter over to Drew and psychologically took a powder. That was really the best we could have expected under the circumstances, and so I started issuing orders. The women on our list would form a furniture- making detail. My greatest misgivings concerned Ames. The captain would be expected to carry out work better suited to an enlisted man while operating under the supervision of privates. As it turned out, it never had to come to that. # The matter of the unrest was a subject too important to put off. My staff meeting later that day considered the idea of suppressing the panicky men by force, but nobody was too keen on that idea. It would be like bottle up explosives. To keep the matter alive like an anaerobic bacteria in a corked bottle might swing the majority of the men over to their side and then break open more powerful than ever. And, anyway, if the malcontents weren't allowed to leave by daylight, they'd probably go anyway, at night. How could we hold so many if they were determined to go AWOL? We hadn't even built a brig yet. It had to be a better solution to let the pressure off, to lance the boil early. Therefore, I was willing to detach the restive men. I reasoned that once they realized that they couldn't escape the transformation plague by flight, they would return more tractable. I decided to place my senior captain, Ted Crawford, in charge, assisted by Lt. Morrow. Their orders were to discover whether or not any geographical limit to the phenomenon existed and, if not, to persuade the detachees to return. I summoned the entire muster to an assembly after the noon mess and recounted the situation as I saw it, reiterating my doubts about the proposed separation and of my concern for the soldiers who would be transformed along the march. But, I assured the assembled men that, if every reasonable precaution were taken to give humane care for their casualties, I would not oppose the division of the company. I concluded with: "This is the only detachment we will be making, men. If you stay, let it be because you really intend to stick it out and obey the orders of your officers." With a bayonet, drew a line in the dirt. "Now, all who want to join the detachment will step across this line." Fifty-three, a tenth of our total number, crossed over. This included a disproportionate number of fleet techs, which was perhaps to be expected, since they had not completely melded with our Battle Group as yet. But it bothered me that there were so many men whom I knew that were willing to go; it made me feel like a failure in my role of William B. Travis. It was sad to think that a handful of dirt-poor Texas sod-busters three hundred years ago would have shown so much more backbone in the hour of danger than had dozens of former fire-eaters from the 54th. But then again, the men of the Alamo were only facing annihilation, not womanhood. "All right," I said, "now I'll need some additional --- personnel -- willing to accompany the detachment as a sort of orderly corps. It will be your duty to care for new transformees, and, as long as it remains feasible, to return them to us here." There was of good turnout of volunteers for this duty, including Hitchcock, Marduke, and several of the women whom Drew and I had considered for our proposed detail. I actually couldn't accept as many willing people as offered themselves. All told, 76 men -- soldiers -- were detached. At my request, Private Drew would lead the auxiliaries and get them off to a good start. He would remain with the detachment for as long as possible -- just a few days we thought -- then return; the camp needed him too much to allow any longer absence, not as long as Dr. Lowry was such an uncertain commodity. Anyway, I was looking forward to Drew's report, since the more we understood the psychology of this unrest, the better positioned we would be for dealing with any similar problems in the future. If we had a future. Until dark and through the following day, Crawford and Morrow were hard at it, overseeing the equipping and the organization of the detachment. We hoped that the mens' absence would be very temporary but, in the meantime, the camp could only benefit from the departure of such a panicky element. While this was happening, we lost our usual compliment of men -- including Lipkin, who, ironically, was going to be one of the detachees, and -- in what was a heavy blow to our command structure, Captain Tritcher. Interestingly, Tritcher who had been black, returned to us as a very fine-boned and pale-skinned elfin blonde. If it were not for their dog tags, I honestly would not have had a clue as to which soldier was which. This was the first occasion of a race change accompanying a sex change and so I asked Lowry for an opinion, but she was uninterested and unhelpful. I was pretty sure, though, that Tritcher was the exception that proved the rule -- that what was happening to us depended upon a man's psychology, not his physiology. I regarded Lowry, whom, I thought, had been perfunctory in her examination of the new transformees. Maybe this was becoming old stuff to her, or maybe it was more disturbing evidence of her stressful state. "You've been through this yourself, Sebastian," I remarked of a sudden. "Aren't you able to give these men some advice that will help them along?" "I don't have any advice for anybody, Major." So blunt, so cold. I really missed the old Lowry. I made ready to leave, but just then caught sight of a book of Shakespeare's plays lying on the table. "Your book, Doctor?" "No, it's Drew's." I picked it up. Back in high school and college I had read most of Shakespeare's plays with great enjoyment. Unfortunately, over my army career, I would have been much more likely to have been found reading Clausewitz or Fuller. I opened the volume to a random page and my glance fell upon a line spoken by Petruccio in "The Taming of the Shew: "I am preemptory as she proud-minded; And where two raging fires meet together They do consume the thing that feeds their fury: Though little fire grows great with little wind, Yet extreme gusts will blow out fire and all: So I to her and so she yields to me; For I am rough and woo not like a babe." "Say!" I exclaimed. "Why couldn't we put on a play for the camp. It might be therapeutic." "Therapy is my department, Major," Lowry informed me as nervelessly as a machine. "And that reminds me, when you sent away my medic, you doubled my work load." "I thought our people would need him out there. Besides, he'll probably be back in a few days." "Will he? Maybe I'll have just another useless, traumatized woman on my hands." I put down the book, then left the infirmary without another word. # Each day I noted the names of the vanished men and new transformees in my log. Every day more names. It was as if we were a flock of sheep and the farmer was coming for two of us every day with the gelding knife. I had never felt so helpless in all my life. We were fighting men, but we couldn't fight this thing. We absolutely couldn't understand it. We couldn't even run from it, though we were, futility, trying to fight, understand, and run all at the same time. The departure of the detachment left us a lot of reorganization to attend to, such as reshuffling the squads and work details. Demoralized by events, my officers performed as if they were pulling sledges behind their backs. I wasn't much better off and welcomed the chance to knock it off at nightfall. After a light supper I still felt restless, and so went outside, just to pace around under the light of Klink's twin moons, and in that way try to work off my depressed state. The planet was a beautiful one, especially on moonlit nights like this one -- the aroma of the vegetation, the trilling calls of the night-flyers, the wind in the trees, and the hundred little pipes, croaks, and squawks whose makers we still did not know. At first we had all been too busy to care, and then too preoccupied. Would we ever enjoy the presence of mind to take pleasure in the simple things? Maybe when we were all -- No! I would not even think about that. I continued my walk, my ears alert to the night sounds. Suddenly I heard something that didn't fit -- and it was coming from the infirmary. I drifted over in that direction and the closer I got, the more I believed that I heard sobbing. At first I assumed it to be either Tritcher or Lipkin, but then remembered that both of them had been moved out and placed under their suicide watches. So, who was still in the infirmary and crying up a storm? I poked my head inside the door. The sound was coming from Lowry's sleeping room, so I crossed over and put my ear to the door. Yes, it was a Lowry's sobbing for certain. I also heard her mutter of just a few distinct words, like, "God" and "please" and "why?" There was that damnable question again -- "Why?" Sebastian was having a bad time of it and that bother me tremendously. I nearly knocked, but something stopped me. I didn't want to get myself involved in something so personal as the doctor's emotional ordeal. I told myself that I hadn't been asked to help and, like I have said, I was no psychologist, no clergyman, not even very good at such things as a layman. In fact, my every attempt to give Sebastian support over the last few days had been rebuffed. What should I do? Offer to hold hands with my old poker buddy? She'd throw me out in a minute! But there was more to it than that. To give solace, the comforter has to have a reserve of positive emotion within himself. At that moment, in that place, I had nothing more to give. And putting thoughts of our former friendship aside, I couldn't shake the idea that it wasn't really Lowry behind that door, but someone different, a stranger. Don't remember making a decision to go, but the next thing I knew my legs were carrying me away stepping so softly that my boots couldn't be hear over my friend's subdued weeping. # I dreamed of Olson's grave again that night. But this time I saw chiseled into her marker a new name and epitaph. It read, "Sebastian Lowry, physician. A good man and a good friend." I awoke in a cold sweat. What had I done? Had I been insane? The doctor was in no condition to be left alone! I thrust my legs into my trousers, ran bare-footed to the infirmary, and, not pausing to knock, I thrust open Lowry's door. She lay there curled up, still fully clothed. On the floor near the bed lay a syringe. I stared first at it and then at her. Sebastian didn't move, didn't seem to be breathing. I scrambled to my comrade's side and turned her over. The woman's eyes opened in startlement. "Rupe?!" she gasped," -- Wha?" "Are you all right, Doc? I thought --" I had thought she was dead, but I didn't dare explain why I would believe that. Lowry said nothing for a moment, just resting on her side, her eyes closed. Then she whispered, "It started coming out last night." "What did?" "The horror of it. The -- grief, the loneliness, the loss of identity. The impossibility of facing this by myself." "I'm sorry," I said, without bringing out exactly what I was sorry for. She shook her head. "I thought I was doing all right, but I wasn't. I was numb, that's all. When the shock started to wear off, all of it slammed together and it almost killed me." I glanced down at the hypodermic on the floor. "I almost killed myself," she whispered. "W-What's in that thing?" "Dicorahylaminophen. Instant death." "Doc!" "I felt so useless. I couldn't help anyone, I couldn't even help myself." Then she let out a short, bitter laugh. "Also, I wasn't so keen on being a girl for the rest of my life." She kept on laughing, skirting the edge of hysteria, and then began reciting, "There was a little girl, who had a little curl, right in the middle of her forehead ....when she was good....when she was good...." She closed her eyes. I took her hand between mine and pressed it reassuringly. Lowry blinked and looked up at me. "Rupe," she whispered. "I was all alone, more alone than I've ever been. I had such a need to talk to someone." I almost asked her why she hadn't talked to me, but I didn't have the right. "I nearly went over to see you," she went on, "but I didn't want you to see me lose my composure. It's was a pride thing, I guess. And anyway, I'd been treating you so badly lately that I couldn't stand to eat the crow. So I just talked to myself, to the room. I guess was really talking to God. I asked Him, I begged Him, that if he couldn't bring me back, to at least take away the fear and the pain. I told Him that if He didn't, it was going to kill me and that I didn't want to die. That was the moment that I was actually holding my death between my fingers." I squeezed her hand. "God or no God, you made it, Doc. You're a pretty strong S.O.B. and you're going to be all right now, aren't you?" "I don't know. I hope so." "I'm going to get Mason back to stay with you like before, or somebody else that you like better, until you're yourself again. It won't be hard to get you someone. You've made a lot of friends here." She pressed my fingers. "And you're the best of them all." I just sat there and stared. It was like she had shoved a mirror up to the face and I had seen a furtive-eyed traitor in it. I realized then that I'd rather have had Sebastian yelling at me for a no-good, double-crossing bastard than telling me that she considered me her one true friend. "There was a voice," Lowry went on. "An audio hallucination?" She laughed. Sebastian Lowry had always been a man of faith. That fact was not obvious because he had disliked sparring with skeptics and so rarely brought up the subject. "What did the voice say, Doc?" "That I had to be brave. That this was the beginning of a new life for me, and while it was going to be different from what I was used to, it wasn't going to be bad. The voice called it a rebirth." "Well, we've called it a lot worse things." "I guess that part must have been a dream." She had said that without much conviction. "Anything else?" Sebastian suddenly sat up. "Yes. The voice also told me that there's a reason for what's been happening -- and soon we'll know what it is." "Don't worry about voices, Doctor. It wasn't real." "But you don't understand, Rupe! -- The fear went away as soon as I heard that." I could be glad that Lowry was feeling better without giving too much meaning to her mystical experience. I'll say this, though -- a dose of religion's was lot better than a shot of dicorahyla- minophen in the arm. "And the voice said one other thing." "What?" "That I can never be free unless the woman is free, too." "What woman?" Instead of answering, Lowry eased herself against me, letting her head press against my chest. She seemed so much like any other emotionally-exhausted woman at that moment that I let her stay as she was. I didn't suppose there was anything sexual in her action, but I still couldn't call it a comfortable position for me. The doctor seemed to grow sleepy while I held her and, finally, I decided that I could ease her back to the pillow and throw a sheet over her. That peaceful, innocent look, the one which I had seen before, had come back. I waited by her bedside a while, watching my friend napping, thinking, hoping, that Sebastian had met her personal demon and could now start the climb back. There was so many others who would have so much farther to go after this day. For me, I had plenty far to go myself before I could consider myself either the sort of man or the commander that I had formerly believed myself to be. # Rawson and Lt. Chih were found transformed a couple days later, Rawson looking like a star club lap dancer and Chih now possessed of that delicate, toy- like beauty which oriental taste so esteems in its women. I knew a couple of Rawson's friends on sight and so got their agreement to take turns being her suicide watch. With a little additional effort, I found someone for Chih, too. Her new watcher was a transformee whom Chih had stood by through some bad days and nights, and now she wanted to pay him -- her -- back. This person, Zeev Yadin, certainly seemed highly motivated and so I risked putting a soldier in the care of a transformee for the first time. Very possibly, nursing a buddy would be a better exercise of Yadin's time than making furniture. That afternoon more disappearances, the next morning more women. It just went on and on. In fact, it was worst now than ever. The third day after the departure of the detachment, Halder and Ames returned leading a couple more transformees. These, I soon learned, had formerly been Stark and Big Bear. They hadn't gotten far before the curse of Klink had caught up with them. I had been impressed by Ames' manner when she reappeared. The captain seemed to have escaped from her sad state of withdrawal and depression. After the Ames' debriefing I let her resume limited duty. If she did well, I intended to make her a kind of special officer for what, in my mind, I was already calling the "women's battalion." The following day Hardy and Marduke returned with two more transformees. The next day it was Hitchcock and Roberts with yet another pair. Now that both Hitchcock and Marduke were back, I talked to them about the support-group idea. It meant training the recovering transformees as carpenters, but Marduke had been on the furniture-making detail before her transformation and would therefore prove out a competent instructor. Each was willing to give the idea a try. Drew and a man named Cutts were the last of the auxiliaries to returned with transformees from Crawford's detachment. They were now too far out to make the trip back with traumatized transformees feasible. Drew's report was the last word that we were likely to have from the detachees anytime soon. It appeared that Crawford and Morrow were planning to continue along with the remaining group of 59 until it became clear that there was no place to go. Evenings had become a mere hiatus between daily crises -- afternoon disappearances and morning discoveries. I was suffering from frequent headaches which Lowry diagnosed as stress-related. Oftentimes these were accompanied by nausea. I would vomit and then lay enervated for more than an hour. I was recuperating from one such debilitating episode when the doctor paid me a call. She seemed to have something on her mind, which I supposed presaged another problem. "What's the trouble, Doc?" I asked with misgivings. "All work and no play makes Jill a dull girl," she said wanly. "I could use a game of cards." Sebastian was wearing her hair differently I noticed -- not just shoved back over her shoulders and neglected as before, but combed and tied up in a ponytail. Good grooming was a sign of a positive state of mind, but I wondered why the transformees didn't just cut their hair short. If this was just a social call, I was glad. "What's your game?" I asked. She pulled up a chair beside my desk. "Five card stud," she suggested. I took the pack of cards from my footlocker and shuffled them carefully. We were both reverential in regard to our cards; playing with makeshifts, as we certainly would have to do in some not-too-distant future, wouldn't be half so much fun. "I've missed our poker games, Rupe," Sebastian remarked. Then she added more pointedly, "I've missed the kind of friendship that we used to have, too." "We're still friends!" I reassured her. "If I've done anything to make you think otherwise -- well, it's only this pressure." I put the deck down. She cut. "There's more than that," Lowry said, "but it's to be expected. I don't look like the same person, don't sound like the same person, and I'm so knotted up inside that I'm sure I don't even act like the same person." "You're the same. You have to be." "Well, I suppose," she shrugged. "-- Okay, deal 'em out." We played hand after hand. After a while, Sebastian got around to talking about the things that had really bothered her since her transformation. It seemed strange to be thinking of my old friend as a "she" -- especially now that Lowry was speaking and behaving a little more like herself -- himself. "It's that sense of violation that gets you down," she said with a painful grimace. "I've never been raped, but it's got to be a lot like this. And afterwards -- well, people look at you like -- like you scare the hell out of them. You fight against the whole idea that you're a monster by pretending that nothing's happened at all. That's the denial stage. But that leaves you trying to hold up a lie. It's like carrying a mountain around on your back. Pretty soon you've got to drop it or it's going to flatten you." "Where do you go from here?" I asked. She shook her head, causing her ponytail to jiggle. "Well, I suppose I'll get used to it, eventually. Life goes on. I just wonder if this planet has any more tricks up its sleeve." "I sure hope it doesn't," I said. ******* Chapter 4 *Full fathom five thy father lies; Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him doth fade But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange.* THE TEMPEST One card game went a long way toward healing the problems that had existed between Sebastian and me. Sebastian popped in again the next day, but this time it wasn't to play poker. "Pvt. Hitchcock is pregnant," she said with a straight face. I don't know why I should have been, but I was dumbfounded. "Are you sure, Doc?" "Even an army doctor could diagnosis this, Rupe. Believe me, I know the scan readings of a pregnant woman." "How did it happen?" "In the usual way. And it must have happened a couple weeks before she went off with the detachment." "Roberts?" She nodded. "That fool! I'll --" "Easy, Rupe. Hitchcock asked me not to let you go off on Roberts. This sort of thing has to be expected. Put men and women together in a subtropical paradise and, abracadabra, you get babies. It's called the facts of life." "This is insane! It's against the rules!" She put her hands on her hips. "Rupe, has it ever occurred to you that we've been writing new rules every day?" "Of course, but for crying out loud -- a baby! Well, it can be fixed, I suppose. No doubt Hitchcock will want an abortion." "I'm not so sure." "What do you mean?" "It was a very confused young woman who left my office a little while ago. She needs time to sort this thing out. She has to talk to the father, of course, and those two don't need a commanding officer putting his two cents into the most important conversation of their lives." "I have responsibilities, Sebastian!" "A mother and a father have responsibilities, too, and they're important ones." "What are you driving at?" "I'd like you to go slow on this, Rupe. You've got to understand the kind of emotional bond which those two have. Robert found Mark at the lowest psychological hell that a person can sink to and helped to make her a complete human being again. Looking back, I don't find it all that surprising that they did what they did." "What would you recommend then?!" I inquired annoyedly. With all my other problems, I didn't need Sebastian acting like the garden-variety stubborn, know-it-all woman. She shook her head. "I think the best thing is to do nothing for a while. Roberts and Hitchcock are going to be padding through hell for the next few days at least, even if you don't get on their case." "Damn! -- Who would have believed that this was going on? -- Or do I sound too naive?" "We were both naive. I'd been thinking all along that transformation was just a physical thing. Now I'm not so sure." "I don't like the sound of this, Doc." "Do you think I do?" She looked me right in the eye. "-- Rupe, do I seem different to you." I gave a short laugh. "You sure do! You look --" "I don't mean the way I look. Do I behave differently." "I don't know. You've been through a lot. You're still Sebastian. I know that much." "Well, I hope I am. But I've been thinking things lately that I'm pretty damned sure Sebastian wouldn't be thinking." "What?" "Like, for instance, about how nice some of these yard dogs around here would look in formal suits. And I've been thinking about bouquets of roses, about candle-lit dinners in upscale restaurants, about Gypsy violin serenades, about slow dancing to live bands, about listening to Rachmaninoff on a sofa cuddled up with--well, never mind with whom." "Hormones?" I suggested lamely. She shrugged. "I'm wondering if I haven't become my own anima -- emotionally at least." "Forget it, Doc. There's obviously a lot more in your head than candlelight dinners." "Yes. Our fantasy girls aren't complete people. What if there's been a kind of overwriting of certain files in our personality, while the rest of the program stays the same? What else could explain a guy like Hitchcock accepting a male lover so quickly?" "How do you explain Roberts then?" She shot me a painful grin. "If it looks like a duck, talks like a duck, walks like a duck, you take it to your nest and get ducklings." All I was getting was another headache. "I hope you're wrong," I said weakly. "I really do." "I wouldn't be surprised if this thing doesn't go way beyond just Hitchcock and Roberts." "We can't let that happen!" "Don't over-react, Major. It may not be so bad." "Not bad? This is an army camp! Can you imagine having it full of babies crying all day and all night! Soldiers tied down caring for them?" She smiled tolerantly. "What are soldiers for, Rupe, except to protect the families back home, and make the world save enough to have children of one's own? I had a family and it frankly kills me to think that I'll never see any of them again, especially the kids. If you ever tried raising children yourself, you'd know that there's a lot more to babies than just crying. There's a magic in every one of them like you wouldn't believe. And, anyway, the situation is only temporary." "What's temporary?" I asked, dreading her answer. "Babies grow up to be men and women. Just think of them as future recruits." "This isn't funny!" "We either have to laugh or go crazy, Rupe. How can you stop it? -- And do you really think that you should?" "I don't follow you." "There were families before their were armies. There were communities before there were military camps. The world got along just fine in those days." "That was called the Old Stone Age, Doc! Anyway, we're not a community. We're -- Oh, hell, I'm out of my depth. I'd like to knock some heads, but I've never hit a pregnant woman in my life!" She leaned forward over the desk. "We have to let the men -- the men of both sexes -- know that from now on actions have consequences. If they're going to be choosing up partners and having children they'll have to take responsibility for them." "That's a quagmire, Doc. Go too far and we won't be a military unit anymore. Couldn't I just forbid all sexual liaisons instead?" "That's like forbidding alcohol or stimmers at a base. You know how much good prohibition does when people really need something. And here you're talking about an addiction that's a little olden than alcohol, and a whole lot older than stimmers." "What about contraception?" "No got. I suppose I can do tubal ligations and vasectomies, but don't expect me to force anything like that on an unwilling patient -- And, really, the problem will probably take care of itself in a couple months. Considering our rate of transformation, there soon won't be anyone left to ---" She couldn't miss the look in my eyes. "Sorry, Major." # I decided to treat Hitchcock's condition as a medical problem and wait to see how things shook down. Meanwhile, I called an assembly and had Dr. Lowry explain the newly-discovered problem. Then I stepped in to warn the troops that sexual relationships were not to be recommended because they carried important and very long-term consequences with them. It was like one of those critical moments in history that changed the outlook of whole civilizations. I could tell from the troopers' reaction that none of them had been entertaining the remotest thought of parenthood. The women looked thunderstruck, while the men looked mostly irritated and cheated. The next day, shortly after the noon mess, Harold Roberts stopped by my quarters. It was as if he had decided it was his duty to let me know -- as if he needed to -- that Klink still had more than a few surprises in store for me. "Sir," he said stiffly, "I'd like permission to marry Pvt. Hitchcock." That threw me for a loop. "Are you trying to make a joke, soldier?" I queried with a frown. "No, sir! Mary -- I mean, Mark and I --" "Mary?" "It's a nickname, sir." He shuffled uneasily. "It doesn't feel right calling the girl in your arms Mark." My reply dripped sarcasm: "I suppose it's not very romantic, either." He swallowed hard and went on: "As I was saying, sir, Pvt. Hitchcock and I have talked it over and we think marriage would be the best thing." "Best for which one of you?" "Best for the child, of course, sir!" "The child?" There was no child; at least not yet. "May I speak freely, Major?" I threw up my hands. "Please!" "Sir, in a couple months I might be a woman myself. But I'm a man at the moment and -- well -- I want to be the sort of man that I was brought up to be. That means doing what's right. I think I'd be able to live with myself much better afterwards, whatever happens, and, besides, I'd like to have a son -- or daughter -- with my name. It's probably my only chance be a father." It was his sincerity that kept my reply moderate. "I can almost understand your reasoning, soldier. But no one here has the authority to perform marriages." "Begging the Major's pardon --" Roberts began hesitantly. "Yes?" "I mean to say, sir, that we're sort of a community of our own here. If any small town can elect a justice of the peace who can perform legal marriages, why can't we do the same?" There was that word again, "community." "We're not a community, Private," I shot back, "and we don't have elections!" "I know, sir, but I was thinking that you could -- appoint someone." I paused, trying to make head or tail out of the whole crazy situation. "I suppose we could improvise almost anything, if we had to," I adjudged. "But would our actions be deemed legal and valid under the laws of the Alliance?" "Sir, it seems to me that the Alliance has its problems and we have ours." So we did. "I think I'd better talk to -- Mary," I said. # I went over to Hitchcock's barracks afterwards and found her with several of her transformee friends. "At ease," I told the girls as they threw themselves into attention. Then I inquired of the pregnant private, "How are you doing, Hitchcock?" "Very well, sir." She sounded a little shaky. "Would you like to sit down?" "No, sir, I'm fine. -- Just a little nauseous now and then." "I see. Do you know that Pvt. Roberts spoke to me a few minutes ago?" "Yes, sir." "How do you feel about -- his idea?" Her glance rolled up to the thatched ceiling. "It's my idea, too, sir. But I suppose it does sound a little strange." "You could -- terminate -- instead," I suggested, with as much tact as I could summon up. The girl practically turned white. "I -- I don't think I'd like to do that, sir." I eyed her curiously. "Many in your position would, soldier." "I'm sure they would, sir." "I'd not trying to make you do anything," I assured her, "but are you sure that you know what you're getting into?" "No, sir, I really don't. But now that this thing's happened, I guess we have to just try and make the best of it." "You have to think about your own welfare." She shook her head. "It isn't just my welfare that's important, Major. Hal has a stake in this, too. He stood by me. He helped me when I really needed somebody. I owe him something." "Do you think you owe him a baby?" "Well, sir, it's not really my choice anymore. The baby is coming. Anyway, I always thought that I'd like to have a of couple kids someday. If I'm still going to be a parent, this is the way it has to be. Isn't that right, sir?" "I suppose it is," I conceded flatly. "There's just one thing I've been concerned about." "Dr. Lowry should be able to meet your pediatric needs," I assured her. "No, it's not about the care, sir. It's about milk." "Milk?" "Yes. Babies need lots of milk. We don't have any and -- well, that could be bad." The room was very quiet for a moment, then -- as much to my surprise as Hitchcock's -- Marduke's laughter pealed raucously. The other women caught on to the joke and they joined in. "What's so funny?!" demanded Hitchcock. "I don't want my son to starve to death! It's not like we've got a herd of cows around here!" "We'll have at least one cow!" cackled Marduke. "That should be enough." Hitchcock still didn't seem to get it. My headache was thundering back and so I decided to retire and let Hitchcock's ho-ho friends enlighten her in their own good time. I bade them all goodby and was glad to be out of there. I returned to my hut and sat down behind my desk, wondering if I dared to let the men of the 54th start marrying one another. I knew damned well that it wouldn't stop with just Hitchcock and Roberts once the ball started rolling. I would have had to be a psychiatrist to properly lead the Group through all of its mental and emotional chaos. But I had been trained as a soldier; that was my whole life and the only thing I knew. I had no ready answers for the questions which were cropping up every day. And besides the new uncertainty, there was always the old certainty -- that soon we would have two more disappearances. In the morning we'd have two more --- # So tired. I reached out to steady myself against my desk, but may arms groped empty air -- there was nothing in front of me. I realized at that instant that I was lying on my back. I opened my eyes. The ceiling seemed to be turning broad gyrations. What was wrong with me? Had I fainted and fallen to the floor? No, that wasn't it. My groping fingers told me that there was a cot under me. Someone was approaching. I blinked hard; my vision was fuzzy. I could only make out a white coat. "Rupe," she said. Sebastian. "Take it easy, Rupe. We'll get you through this." "Through what?" I had only managed a low murmur, but my voice had sounded thin and resonated strangely in my chest cavity. My hand went to my throat, but instead of the Adam's apple and familiar bristle which I expected there, I found soft, taut skin. A jolt shot through me. I my hands leapt to my chest -- and they found what I didn't want to find. Horrified, I groped lower. And then I screamed! I couldn't hear my own voice. Instead some woman was wailing loudly in my ears, filling the infirmary with a deafening shrill. I tried to rise, I tried to run -- God alone knows where to -- but mercifully I blacked out. When I next came to, Lowry had her arms around me. "Easy, Rupe! Easy! It's not as bad as it seems. I've been there. I know." "Lowry --!" I mewed but couldn't bear to hear the sound of my voice. I turned my face away. Lowry could do nothing for me. There were no cures for this. Transformation was forever. "It's not so bad," Sebastian reiterated. "It's a little strange at first, but you can beat it. People are beating it every day. And you're a fighter, Rupe." I looked up at her. "If you want to shout or swear, it's all right," Lowry was saying. "Don't hold what you're feeling inside or it'll be rough on you. Cry if you want to. Get those emotions out. You were a human being before you were a commanding officer. There's no reason to be ashamed." "Were?" I echoed, choking the word out crosswise. "You're still are our commander!" she reassured me hastily. Then her voice lowered a little: "And you're more than that. You're my friend. You can depend on me for whatever you need." I turned my face into the pillow. Was the universe mocking me? Sebastian was saying that I could depend on her, without knowing that she couldn't depend on me. I didn't deserve that kind of a friend. What kind of a man was I anyway? No, I wasn't a man at all, not now. Was this my punishment? Was this my --? I suddenly realized that the two of us were not alone. Drew was moving about the room, tending to the other patient. Yes, there were always two patients. I didn't want to know who it was this time. I couldn't take any more. Suddenly, as I lay there in Lowry's arms, I began to wonder what I looked like. None of the other men had become ugly, of course, but I wouldn't have wanted to look like any of them if my life had depended on it. My trembling fingers went to my cheek where a thick strand was tickling me and grasped a tuft of strange- feeling hair. It was very long, though I had worn it cropped short just that morning -- or what still seemed like that morning. I pulled a lock in front of my eyes, so I could get a look at its color and texture. I gasped. It was black, not my natural sandy brown. And it was a veritable mass of large ringlets and corkscrew curls! A thousand sex fantasies came rushing back, like a past life into the mind of a drowning man. I screamed again, then realized that Lowry was hugging me to her breast. I didn't want to be held that way -- it wasn't the way one man should hold another -- but I was so overcome that I couldn't focus enough to tear loose. Now the Terrible Thing had happened. I had feared this awful fate; night and day I had lived with the terror of it until it had almost strangled me. Now what was left of my life? The answer had to be, "Nothing." As Sebastian cradled me, one burning question tormented me. Why had this happened? Why had the all- powerful, all-knowing intelligence that haunted Klink done this to me? Why would it put its godlike power so determinedly against just one miserable individual, and why would it wish to waste its incomprehensible omnipotence in the act of destroying a single insignificant captive human being? "Why?!" I cried. Then, breathless, I could speak no more. # I dreamed that I was standing, frozen in place, with my back to darkness. I couldn't run from the abyss, nor even turn about to confront it. I heard nothing, saw nothing moving, not even a shadow. I felt no breathing on my neck, but I knew something was there, just behind me. And then, and then. . . I awoke. I felt wasted, hung over. Then I recalled my last awakening and the horror came surging back. I touched myself frantically, hoping that everything that I remembered had only been part of the nightmare, but -- but -- Lowry gave my wrist a firm squeeze. "Rest is the best thing for you right now, Rupert. I know how tough it is, but we'll have you up and around in no time." "No -- no. . . ." I managed to mumble. I didn't want to be up and around. I wanted to escape into the darkness, to live, and die, alone, unseen, unremembered, my bones gnawed to nothingness by scavenging animals. I wanted to have no grave -- nothing at all to remind another human being that Rupert Breen had ever existed. If my better days were remembered, so, too, would my infamy. Lowry left me momentarily and returned with a bitter drink, which I at first rejected. She was not to be refused, however, and so I obligingly forced it down. Then the doctor remained faithfully by me, until I fell slept again. # "What are you doing?!" Lowry demanded as I pulled on my oversized britches. "What does it look like I'm doing, Doc? I've got to get back to work!" "You'll do no such thing! You're not ready." "You were back at the grind in three days," I reminded her. "That was stupidest thing I ever. It almost killed me. It'll kill you, too!" "I don't need a mother hen." "You need rest and time to cope. Yell, cry, scream, beat your head against the wall, but don't pretend that nothing has happened! Let Capt. Philbrick run the camp for a while." "What you're saying is that I've got nothing left to give anymore." "No, that's not it at all." "Where does this copping out stop? What happens when Philbrick becomes a -- ?" I couldn't say it, not even now. "Then someone will step in for him. Hopefully, it will be you." "It will be me -- and it'll be today!" "Yeh? What are you going to do when you crash? And believe me, if you try to fly this soon you're going to crash hard." "I'll be fine, Doctor. Now get off my back!" "You're the walking wounded. You're a basket case and you don't even know it." "I know what I need to know!" She shook her head. "It's like you're treading on a thin ice, Rupe. In a day or two day, certainly in less than a week, it's going break under your feet and you're going to go down -- deep. Good God, don't you think I know what I'm talking about? Have you forgotten what I was almost driven to?" "I've still got two arms, two legs, one head. What more do I need?" Sebastian caught my sleeve. "Rupe, don't do this. I can help you. Hitchcock and Marduke can help you. Even Captain Ames wants to do what she can." To be ghettoized with the transformees was the last thing in the universe that I wanted. It would be like being put into a zoo. "Am I supposed to start making furniture with Pvt. Hitchcock for my commander?" "You thought it was good enough for Ames --" "It's not good enough for me! I'd rather be dead than be a laughingstock!" "You think you can take it? Well, let's just see." Lowry picked up a mirror. "What's that for?" I asked, just as if she were holding a pistol to my head. "If you're really on top of this thing, let's see you if you can look at your own face without breaking into a cold sweat." I shivered then and hoped that Lowry did not notice. I remembered a time just like this one, when I was a kid and my cousin had brought a horror comic home from the strip mall. It had a cover that terrified me -- the picture of an earthman turned into a hideous mutant. I couldn't look at it. Whenever I closed my eyes that ugly cover was all that I could see. The next day my mother wondered why I was being so difficult about going over to my uncle's place. When I got there, all I wanted to do was stay down in the kitchen. I certainly didn't even want to go up to my cousin's room where his new comics were lying face up on the dresser. Joe was a smart guy and it didn't take him long to figure out what was spooking me. For a joke he forced me to go up to his room and took me right over for a look at the comic. Joe was a jackass at that age and he wanted to see me get scared and start to cry. I controlled my fear instead and looked straight down at the hideous illustration while betraying nothing, as if I didn't have a clue to explain his -- Joe's -- strange behavior. I simply said, "Yeh, what?" I had successfully shucked him. He wasn't so sure now that he had read the situation right -- and since he couldn't get a rise out of me, he immediately let the subject drop and found something better to do than psychologically torture a six-year old. But for years afterwards I would only probe his box of comic books warily, trying to find something to read without being confronted by with that awful picture. Even when I became a teenager the sight of it still repelled me. "Give it here," I told Dr. Lowry, taking the mirror from her hand. I had steeled myself to disassociate myself from whatever I would see. It would be somebody else, not me. The glass reflected a clear, pale Celtic face -- aquamarine eyes full of suffering, a slender neck, and heavily ringletted black hair. It was The Face for certain, the face of the Nameless One. The stranger's mouth was a pinkish bow, its lips like those of the prettiest models in cosmetics ads. The eyebrows were ended with a flare, just as if they had been drawn with the calculation of a cosmetologist. "Yeh, what?" I remarked, as if I believed that Lowry was out of her tree. "Bullshit!" she said # I kept dressing. Not even my last belt notch would hold my pants up, and that was unsettling. What had Shakespeare said? "Now does he feel his title hang loose about him, like a giant's robe upon a dwarfish thief." What had my mind dredged up that quote? I was no thief. No pretender. It had nothing to do with me! "At least let Drew go along with you," pleaded Lowry, "in case something happens." "What could happen?" I asked irascibly. "We could lose you, Major, we really could." "Doctor, I need to get back into my routine or I'll --" I rephrased that: "I just need to keep busy -- especially now. Anyway, the men need to know that their C.O. is well and on top of things." "But you're not!" Ignoring her, I started toward the door. Just then I suffered an attack of anxiety. Was Lowry thinking about evoking her medical authority to relieve me from command? She was my friend; that would be an act of incredible treachery. I couldn't trust that she wouldn't do it, and so I walked swiftly away. For some reason she let me escape. Outside, my confidence did not immediately stiffen as I had hoped it would. Instead I was suddenly afraid that my men wouldn't know who I was, that I would have to explain my right to command them. But the fact was that I had not gone far before I realized that everyone knew exactly who I was. They were all looking at me when they thought I couldn't' see. I felt like Klink's newest monster on display every time I returned a salute. "Tuong," I addressed the Korean-born sergeant in my path, "where can I find Captain Philbrick?" He seemed embarrassed; his eyes darted to the left and right, but wouldn't fix squarely upon me. "In his quarters, I think -- sir." That stumble at the word, "sir" and his furtive glance hit me hard. Nonetheless, I tried to ignore both the stare and the stammer and turned off toward the row of officers' huts. I found Philbrick conferring with the lieutenants Stokes and Evans. Ames was there, too, of course. It was as much her hut as Philbrick's. The officers snapped to attention. "At ease. Report, Captain Philbrick," I said. "What's happened over the last three days?" Philbrick replied with worried eyes which, like Tuong's, tried to avoid looking at me. "No more word from the detachees, of course -- sir." There was that damnable stumble again, but the captain hurried past it. "Perhaps Dr. Lowry mentioned that Pvts. Brouwer and Marietta were -- transformed -- the day after Gonzales and --" "And me? Yes, go on," I told him stiffly. "And yesterday it was Petoska and Bakshi. That makes 237 transformees our of a current muster of 475." I was more interested in the nervous flutter in Philbrick's lids. There was qualm also in the faces of Stokes and Evans. I sensed that they all would have liked to have me gone, like a family rejecting a disgraced member. Ames' expression bothered me most of all. What was she feeling? Pity? Was she jealous that I still presumed to command while I had kept her on suspension for so long? Did she think of this as my comeuppance? The echoes of resentment and disdain filled the air of the cramped space and left me short of breath. My shoulders began to shake. "Major -- are you all right?" queried Philbrick. "Of course!" I barked, or tried to -- to my own ears my reply sounded more like a shrill piping. "I need to rest. Carry on, Captain." I turned to go. Ames pursued me to the door. "Major Breen?" Turning with gritted teeth. "Captain Ames?" "Sir, is there anything that I -- that I can do? Would you like to talk?" "I don't know what you mean, soldier," I replied rigidly. She looked like she had a good deal to say, but my icy glare must have warned her to keep mum. "I mean -- nothing, sir." "Very good," I nodded -- and left. ******** Chapter 5 *When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state, And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, And look upon myself, and curse my fate.* SONNET XXIX Once back in my quarters, I opened my log book to jot down the names of the new transformees, but suddenly realized that I couldn't remember who they were. Try as I might, I just couldn't organize my thoughts. It was an appalling feeling, like being high on stimmers. As I sat there in a kind of profound mental confusion, my hands began to tremble. I dropped the pen and, trying to pick it up again, I just kept dropping it, until it rolled over the edge and fell to the floor. At that point I gave up and rested my head against the tabletop, drawing deep, ragged drags of air. "Excuse me, Major Breen." I looked up. Drew was looming at the door. "Come in, Private," I muttered, sitting back, hiding my quaking hands under the table. "Dr. Lowry's asked me to look in on you." "Lowry should have more important things to worry about," I grumbled. "I don't think so, sir." "Are you trying to be impudent, soldier?!" "No, sir. I only mean that it's her duty to give our commanding officer the attention that he deserves." "Then why didn't s--, the doctor -- come here her -- himself?" "I assume that she, -- he -- feels that you might feel more comfortable if your attending medic was --" "Was what?" "A man." That suggestion stung, but I didn't know why. "All right, go back and tell Dr. Lowry that you saw me, and that I was well!" I wanted very much to get rid of Drew; the shaking of my hands was worsening and spreading up to my shoulders. Did Drew see? He was watching me uncertainly. "Is there anything else, Private?" "It's just that neither the doctor nor I think that it's a good idea for you to be alone for the next few days." "Are you volunteering to be my suicide watch?" I asked coldly. "With your permission, sir." I threw my log book at him. "Get out of here!" Drew dodged, threw back a worried glance, then withdrew. Instantly I regretted having lost my temper. Drew would report me to the doctor! It would look bad and she might not understand to what degree I had been provoked. It might give her just the excuse she was looking for to remove me from command, make me a patient, a virtual prisoner! I struggled for breath. The walls seemed to be closing in. I opened my collar, sucking in rapid breaths. My head began to throb. I grew nauseous, weak. I staggered to the empty food carton that served for my nighttime chamber pot and, since I had had little solid food for three days, what I vomited up was mostly regurgitated water. The worst of the nausea soon passed, but when I could finally get up I was still unsteady on my feet. I thought about going to the infirmary, but I didn't want Lowry to see me in such a state. Another part of me wanted someone's -- anyone's -- company, but a C.O. couldn't betray such weakness. Also, I hadn't been there for Lowry when she had needed me and so now I was stuck. My headache wasn't getting any better. I put a couple tablets of LWI into my mouth and crushed them between my teeth. The bitter chemical started me choking and I fell to the floor. I crawled on hands and knees to my canteen and guzzled down a couple mouthfuls of water. That ended the coughing and a moment later I found the strength to rise. I managed the few steps to my bed, then fell into it like a stone statue. I drew a towel over my eyes to shut out the bright noonday light of Klink. I didn't sleep, but lay in a semi-trance for what seemed like a long while. Then I heard a tapping at my door. As I raised my head, it felt hot and tight. "Come in," I gasped. "Major Breen!" Philbrick blurted excitedly. "One man has disappeared!" I couldn't understand his dramatics. "We expected it, didn't we, Captain?" "Sir -- only one man has disappeared -- not two!" "One? Are you sure?" "I've taken roll! Every man, every transformee, has been accounted for, except Culligan." "Maybe it means something," I mumbled. "But what, sir? What?!" For my answer, I let my head sink back into my pillow and lay there in silence until he left. # After a nearly-sleepless night, I rose and joined the searchers. We soon found the feminine incarnation of Marcus Culligan -- the younger double of Lola Carlita, a Latin sex-symbol who had been setting off international shock-waves at about the time that Culligan must have been a hormonal teenager. But the Culligan episode had broken the mold. Never before had only a single new transformee been made in a day, and any change in the hated pattern could mean something significant. Lowry had no theory. I didn't like her uncharacteristic display of denseness and so I said something sharp and angry. "This just isn't like you, Rupe," she replied calmly. "Please, don't drive yourself this way. Take a break." Her eyes were dewy, just as Ames' had been the day before when she had stopped me at the door of her hut. I didn't want sympathy. It was like salt in an already painful wound, so I stormed out of the infirmary. But as I did so, I began to shake again and, afraid of being seen, I hid myself in a grove of trees until I bucked up. Then I hurried off to work. I had to keep busy, to carry on despite my nervous condition. I decided to inspect Capt. Komisar's work on soil and water testing. The officer filled me in on his men's latest analyses, and I realized that nothing too interesting had come up since the last time. Maybe that was why I let my mind wander and couldn't follow the officer's report too clearly, asking the same questions over and over. Komisar began to look at me strangely, and panic rippled through me. Why was everyone staring, treating me so differently? Mine was only a was only a physical change. It didn't affect the person that I was. Half the camp had suffered what I had suffered, so why did they still gape? They'd all be women themselves in a few weeks! It would serve them right, too! At least then they'd stop looking at me as if I were a freak! I stormed back through the center of camp, ignoring people who tried to address me. There were transformees all around. So many transformees. What did they think as their eyes followed me? That I was like them? Well, I wasn't! And what were the men thinking? Why were their expressions so strange? Did they believe that no -- transformee -- was fit to command them? Damn them! The trembling came upon me again, and so I started to walk faster, trying to retreat into my hut before anyone noticed. This time I couldn't reach my bed before I collapsed to the floor like a marionette with its strings cut. I crawled to the cot, covered my face with a pillow, and curled up into a fetal position. "Major!" someone shouted. I opened my eyes and cast away the pillow. It was later. Much later. The sun was sagging low in the west. Philbrick again. "What is it now, Captain?!" I asked blearily. "The disappearances --" he babbled excitedly. "Who now?" "No one, sir! No one at all!" # Transformation trauma had nearly halved our officer staff, except that Ames and Lowry had returned to it. Of my five captains, Philbrick and Komisar were still sound, but Tritcher was suspended, in bad shape, and my senior captain, Crawford, was absent, his fate unknown. "What does it mean?" I demanded of no one in particular. "Why no disappearances yesterday?" "It may be that the enemy has simply decided to cease his attacks, sir," conjectured Komisar. "Why? We're as helpless as ever! This process has been as predictable as a machine up until now. Why the change?" "I've been thinking, Major. . . ." Lowry began. "Oh, so now your thinking?!" She swallowed my insult and continued gracefully: "The transformation yesterday bought us up to exactly 50% women and 50% percent men, with the odd individual going over to the female side -- Culligan." "Yes, yes!" I remarked impatiently. "Yesterday there were no disappearances, and I'm guessing that there aren't going to be any today." "So why not?! What are you driving at, damn it?!" "Maybe whatever intelligence or force has been assailing us is satisfied with a sexual balance of 50- 50 --" suggested the doctor. "Why!" I demanded. "It's just an idea but -- "But what?" "I can only guess." "So what's your guess?" "It might be that unisexual communities are taboo on this planet and so it -- or someone on it -- changed the proportion." "This isn't a community! We're a military camp!" "Yes, sir," Sebastian humored me. "But an alien mind with godlike powers might not have seen it in the same way. Then, again --" "Then again what?!" "Then, again, this sexual balancing act might have been intended to prepare us for some specific purpose." "We've been speculating on that since the start!" "I'm suggesting, sir, that there may be some -- function -- that a -- group -- half male and half female might serve -- one which a group all male or all female couldn't satisfy." "What purpose?" "I was thinking about Roberts and Hitchcock." "I don't follow you, Doctor." "It's possible that we may be expected to become a breeding population." "Shit!" # I accompanied Sebastian back to the infirmary, half mad with frustration. If I had only been able to keep winning the transformation lottery for just three days more, I would have still been myself as of that moment! God Almighty! The odds had been seven out of two-hundred and four-five in my favor, and I'd lost! I'd lost it all, and I'd lost it forever! "Major -- Rupert -- you don't look so good." Lowry said, placing her hand lightly upon my shoulder. I didn't like being patronized, so I pushed it away and turned sharply. "So, let's get to the point, Doctor! You think that this could be a breeding experiment?" "It's just a guess, like I said." She gave a bitterly brief laugh. "Call it woman's intuition." "Lowry!" "Ease up, Major. A sense of humor can help. There's nothing much to do except try to keep up our morale and make more observations." "We have to show the enemy that we're not going to be guinea pigs for any of their fucking experiments!" "I like the way you phrased that." I balled my fists. "Can't you be serious?" She shrugged apologetically. "Sex has to be absolutely forbidden," I pronounced. "I still think your theory is a crock, but we can't do anything that the enemy might interpret as cooperation." "Prohibition won't work. At least not for long." "In this case I think it will." She shook her head. "In a few more months, with loneliness and sexual frustration building up, with the women reconciling themselves to their fate and the men feeling more secure --" "What are you trying to say?" "I'm saying that pairing up is going to look like the path of least resistance --" "Damn it Lowry --" My voice cut off as I started to shake all over -- and, blast it, this time Lowry was right there, taking it all in. I sank down to my knees, covering up my eyes. I saw spots; the air took on a shimmering texture. The next thing I knew I was in bed, fighting to get up. "Lie back, Rupe! You blacked out. You're not well!" "Like hell I'm not!" This time I managed to get around her and scramble to my feet. Sebastian stood back a pace, her mouth tight and grim. "I've been derelict, Major. I've let you subject yourself to these pressures despite your condition and you obviously can't take them. You need rest, you need quiet. You have to take a vacation from the troubles of whole outfit." "Don't say any more!" "I have no choice but to relieve you for medical reasons, Rupe. I'm going to have to tell Philbrick that he has to take over until you're back on your feet." "I'm on my feet already!" "Face the facts! You've been denying reality. You're wound up so tight that your spring is about to break. You changed into your own favorite sex fantasy and it's driving you crazy. I know how that is -- it almost drove me crazy -- it still does, a little." "Don't call me crazy, Doctor!" She paused. I sensed the wheels turning behind her worried face. "Are you willing to take the mirror test again, Major?" "Are you still on that kick? I could look at myself all day, because I know that that face isn't mine and it doesn't mean anything." "It is yours! It's yours for the rest of your life. It's the face that you're going to have to come to grips with. If you're still pretending otherwise, you're disconnection is even worse than I thought." She placed her hand behind my back "Come on," she coaxed, leading me to the infirmary "mirror" -- a polished metal sheet hanging on the wall. "Look," she said. I didn't want to look, but I had toughed this rubbish out once before and trusted that I could once more. Confronting the reflection, I saw the Nameless One again, and only for the second time. She was a mess! -- her hair in snarls, her complexion sallow, dark rings under her eyes, an expression like a beaten dog. That big cap slouching on her head looked ridiculous. Her sloppy, much-too-large uniform was no better. "If you wouldn't let yourself go, you'd be a lovely woman," observed Lowry. "Don't say that!" I told her angrily. In reply she locked her hands on my shoulders and made me face front again. "She's really a very pretty woman. It's her instincts that you're having trouble coping with right now, Rupe, so we'd better get to know her, understand her. I think you already do. Tell me what she's like." "That's none of your damned business!" "Maybe I can guess. Is she into filmy negligees and hot tubs? Bikinis and volley ball at the beach? Scandalous doing in ski cabins? She's not much of a soldier, I bet. Maybe she's really only really good at one thing --" "I said --!" "I know what you said, and your not being honest! Tell me what you know about that girl. Like, for instance, is she a good fuck?" Shocked, I tried to tear away, but Sebastian grabbed my arm and twisted it behind my back, giving me pain. "Lowry! Are you nuts?!" "You're going to keep looking at yourself until you can start to talk about the girl you see rationally, or until you admit that you're not fit for command." It was all I could do to keep myself from slamming my heel into my tormentor's shin and ramming my free elbow into her ribs to break her hold, but it seemed a crazy thing to come to physical blows with my attending physician. Even so, I couldn't keep looking at my disheveled reflection; it was torment, and I certainly couldn't talk about the Nameless One. Worse, I was feeling another fit of panic coming on. I closed my eyes. "Come on, Rupe, describe her. Can she carry on a conversation, or is she one of those airheads interested only in cock? What does she wear to bed? How does she look in a Lycra nightgown? Does she prefer them long or short? I've seen her legs; I'd recommend short." "What are you doing, Lowry?!" I gnashed. "I'm just introducing you to yourself. You two are going to be shacked up together for a long, long time, so you're going to have to start getting along." "Damn you, bitch!" I began to struggle in earnest and the doctor did her best to hold me in a wrestler's lock. I didn't want to hurt Lowry, but I had to silence her, stop her from bringing up things that I couldn't bear to hear. "Lowry, I warn you, let me go or I'll kill you --" "Sure! And you're just crazy enough to do it, too. That's why I can't let you go on this way, Rupe. You're already a danger to yourself; you could become a danger to others, too." With a roar, I put my foot against the wall and pushed, throwing her off. She fell back against a table and I whirled, possessed by the impulse to tear at her with my bare hands. But I didn't see the face of a taunting foe when I spun around, just the stunned and worried look of a physician -- one who knew a that desperate, improvised treatment had failed. But what sort of treatment had it been? "I'm sorry, Rupert," she began haltingly. "Sometimes you have to rebreak a fracture to set it right --" I wasn't listening anymore. I no longer wanted to do violence, but I was beginning to tremble and my breathing came hard and rapid. I had to get away. I staggered to the door like a drunken man, then stumbled outside, falling back against the jamb for support. "Rupert! Don't go!" Lowry cried behind me. I walked swiftly away, and only the crumbling rags of my dignity prevented me from running wildly. When I was out of Sebastian's sight, out of anyone's sight, I did start to race away, blindly. Where I was running to I didn't know, until I saw the foot of Woolenska's Bluff up ahead, and realized exactly what fate my legs were carrying me to. # Somehow I climbed the rocky incline -- clambering on all fours sometimes. I didn't even see the way ahead; all I could see was the face of a snarled-haired girl with circled, aquamarine eyes. I tried my strength to its very limit -- the strength of the woman's body that I was trapped in. From time to time, sheer exhaustion forced me to lie belly-down upon the sun-heated stones. Whether such pauses were long or short, I wasn't aware. Weakling! I was not in the body of a pioneering girl, I knew that now for sure. I hadn't dreamed the Nameless One up to be my sporting buddy or to compete with me physically. She had been a woman who would be there for her man -- and the rest of the world needn't have existed for her at all. Making her man happy was her driving purpose. She was compassionate, soft- spoken, faithful, and loving. But a mountain-climber? Never. My lungs burning, my limbs aching, I pressed on. I was now high above the camp and strange thoughts were pummelling me as I gazed blearily down the stony slope. The camp looked so small, so orderly, like rows of toy huts in a child's sandbox. What was the camp to me? Just a place. I felt completely estranged from it at that moment. The camp was no one's home -- certainly not mine. I looked up into the blue sky, piled high with cumulus ice cream castles. Did I have a home up there either -- anywhere? No, no home. I had only a place, a job. A duty. Without my place, without my duty, I was nothing. If I died this moment, who would care? A foolish thought. To the 54th Major Rupert Breen was already dead. He had lingered on where he didn't belong, like Jacob Marley. But unlike Marley he didn't have anything wise to say, had no gift to give those he left behind. It was time to lay the ghost, to go where the dead belonged. That was for the best. Let no one pause to fret over my grave. Let no one be sorry that I was gone. I pressed on up the incline and, finally, dragged myself onto the table rock which topped Woolenska's Hill. I was utterly spent by that time, not able to rise immediately. My lungs were aflame, my breath came in hot pants. I shoved a mass of greasy snarls out of my face. This damnable hair! It was always there, draping my neck like a veil, falling into my eyes, brushing my shoulders, tickling my throat and cheeks. I should have cut it off. Well, it wouldn't matter what the length of my hair was in the tomb. Suddenly I felt ashamed. Was I going to kill myself? Had I become Olson? Woolenska? Others had found the courage to endure my strange fate -- Ames, Lowry, Hitchcock, Marduke. Why couldn't I? Was I like Woolenska, giving up, or Olson, too distraught to reason? Was I a coward? At that moment I felt warm teardrops pattering upon the dirty hands that held my face off the stones. Tears! Woman tears! I could die, and gladly, but not as a weeping, hysterical woman! I collapsed flush to the ground. My thoughts were like the meanderings of a dreamer. I shouldn't have given in to pity for myself, because pity was a torture for me. And pity didn't lighten my grief. Lowry had reached out, Drew had, also, but my pride couldn't accept a hand from either. How could it? I had betrayed my friend and it was only fair that I die now, abandoned, as I had left her to die. My body again shook, but this time with hard, choking sobs. I rose to my feet at last. All around, as if in vertigo, whirled trees, bushes, boulders. They were just shapes to me; the plant life and geology of Klink had few names. Maybe a tree would be named after me once I was deed, or even a hill. But not this hill. Woolenska's had given his life to make it his hill forever. My legs were still weak, strained and aching from the climb. I had demanded much from this small woman's body, but now my demands upon it were over. I understood what I must do to end my agony. Sucking a raw breath into my famished lungs, I staggered toward the overlook -- -- the overlook from which Herbert Woolenska had launched himself into eternity. . . . ******** Chapter 6 *Would I were dead! if God's good will were so; For what is in this world but grief and woe?* KING HENRY VI, Part III As I inched closer to the brink, I sank down to my hands and knees. Why did I bother? Was I afraid of falling to my death? Insane! What else did I intend? But the will to life is a terrible, tenacious thing and it takes all of human will to suppress it, even for a little while. I took one more look at the world just then, supposing that it would be my last. Wild rock pinnacles and forests rose up as far as the eye could see, the hills and ridges stretching jaggedly to the horizon, dwarfing Woolenska's little bluff. The familiar earth- and vegetation-colors were softened by the gradual hazing of the distance, making the landscape resemble a painting by a nineteenth century master. I gazed down at the jagged rubble below, blinking away the blur of my saltine tears. Out of what might have been mere morbidity, I regarded the camp graveyard with its two tiny markers, the ground where Olson and Woolenska already lay -- and where I, too, must lie tomorrow. Strange thoughts filled my mind -- Would the living pass me by with just a shrug, or would there be someone left behind who would pause over my grave from time to time, hating himself for my death? I hoped not. No one was to blame -- except chance, that is, and myself. Tears wet my collar and mucus filled my nose. I wanted to live, and I wanted to die, but I was forcing myself to choose. I could not go back and I was afraid to explore what lay ahead. The emotion that I had kept pent up for months now ran from me now like a river flooding over the top of a dam, threatening to tear it away. I sank to my knees, lying belly-flat against the stone of the ledge, cradling my head upon my forearms. I sobbed, perhaps from the simple grief of life, perhaps at the much more complex grief of leaving it. # Suddenly, behind me, I heard the crunch of gravel. "Easy, Major," said a man. "Don't move." I glanced back. It was Drew! I gasped at the thought that he should see me so -- my face wet, nose running, eyes red and swollen. The medic looked winded, as if from coming very far without rest, his tunic darkened with sweat, his stride slow and lame. "Be careful, Major. Please. Come back from there. It's a long way down." He was talking to me almost like a child -- or a woman! Again I felt the wild impulse to throw myself over the ledge. Drew inched closer, fearing that any sudden move on his part would make me take wing into the air like a frightened pigeon. "Don't come any closer!" I warned. He paused, then extended his hand to me, a hand gray with calciferous silt, and red where he had cut his knuckles while climbing. "That's an order, solider!" I yelled. Lowering his arm, he contemplated my figure with a bitten lip and agitated eyes. "Then you'll have to come to me, Major Breen," he finally said. "Return to the camp, Drew. I want to be alone." "I can't. Dr. Lowry told me to bring you back. She says you're not yourself and that I should disregard your orders." "Lowry has no right!" "Of course she has the right, Major. It's for your own good." Frustrated, I retreated a few additional inches toward the precipice. "Don't, sir! Don't do that!" "Lowry's the one who's not herself!" I hissed back. "Please, Major. There's no disgrace in what's happened to you. We only want to help." "How can you help? By making me a prisoner?" "We just want to keep you from doing what you're doing now. There's no reason to die." I flared, angry with myself arguing with a mere private, and stood up. I swayed precariously over the edge --- "Major!" Drew ejaculated. -- but then caught my balance. "Leave me alone!" I cried. The medic moved a step backwards, to reassure me. "All right, sir. We'll both just stay where we are and talk." I searched his anxious blue eyes, trying to find mockery in his address of "sir." "Let it go, Drew," I said, almost whispering. "I've sunk too low. I can't bear the way I look." "There's nothing wrong with the way you look. No one can help what looks like." "That's Psych 101 talking!" "No, it's only a soldier talking to his commander." I was no commander. I couldn't make a private obey my simplest order. I had lost authority. I had lost my place. I had lost my identity. And it was the same as losing my life. I shifted my weight in the excitement of the moment. Doing so, my foot slipped . . . . . . . .and then there was nothing below me except empty space. . . . # With an action more rapid than thought, I caught hold of a tree root projecting through a fissure. I held on for all I was worth while my legs sought for support over a bottomless void. I saw my biography as a projection upon the blank screen of my inner eye, a thousand fleeting snapshots of a futility. I looked up in desperation and saw Drew's arm waving above me. "Thank God!" he shouted. I said nothing, too excited to cry out. He was reaching down toward me, but his grasp came up at least a foot short of my clinging hands. "I can't reach you where you are, Major. You'll have to give me your arm!" My mind raced. I couldn't reach out with one hand and hold on with the other for more than a few seconds. But I could brace my feet against the rock face and spring upwards, I thought. That would give me a few more inches. It was just possible to reach Drew, if both of us were quick enough. But I would have only that one chance, a chance lasting only a second, before I fell to my death immediately afterwards. . . . Time seemed suspended my mind roiled. I wondered whether I should accept Drew's offer or let my existence end. Death had suddenly become so easy, almost as if it were Old Grandfather Time opening his gate for me, extending loving arms. I might simply relax my grip and let Death catch me; even Drew would not be certain whether I died by my own choice. I need not bear the infamy of suicide, and yet escape the mockery which my life had become. But what if, instead, I accepted Life, took the bad cards dealt to me and played them out the best I could? It must be a totally new kind of life. Now was the time to revolt that life, to show that I would not play Fate's game, not later. Now was the time to choose honor above life. To choose to life, and yet groan and complain about it later on, would be contemptible. "Major -- please," the young man above was pleading. "You have so much to live for. Can't you see it?" No, I didn't see it, but for some reason I found myself making a desperate leap, an all or nothing toss of the dice that meant life or death -- -- And Drew's strong fingers locked tight around my wrist. # I was amazed by the soldier's strength, forgetting that my weight had recently been reduced from nearly hundred kilos to only about some sixty or sixty-five. As the soldier could gain little purchase upon the ledge, he had to scuttle backwards on his belly, like a sun-warmed lizard, using whatever irregularities the stone offered, but mostly depending upon friction and his greater weight to support me against the force of gravity. The rock hurt my breasts, but when my belly, legs, and finally my toes were dragged up over the lip of the precipice, I knew for certain that I was saved -- that I had returned to life, like a lost soul reincarnated -- but could any human being have felt less joy for it than I did? Releasing my wrist, the young trooper swung about to my side and carefully turned me over on my back. "Are you hurt?" he asked concernedly. "You shouldn't have --" I stammered. "I had to." I closed my eyes. Drew had done his job. He would have done no less for any other person, even a felon condemned to die before a firing squad at sun-up. "I want to help you, Major." My eyes began to burn, to get wet. I couldn't speak. "If you feel like crying, that's all right," Drew assured me, his tone doctor-like. "There's a lot of pain inside you, I know, and this is the best time to let it out. No one can see or hear you up here." I didn't want to do anything unmanly in front of a witness, but my life had become such a twisted, unrecoverable wreck that I just couldn't help it. Drew squeezed my hands empathetically for a moment, then to my surprise, scooped me up into his arms and carried me to the shade of some small trees. He eased me to the ground again and, before I realized it, my cheek was pressing against his shoulder and my arms wrapping tightly about his neck. Now I broke down utterly. "I don't want to be like this," I heard myself saying. "I know," he whispered. "I wouldn't either, but we'll get you through. You can depend on it." After a while my sobbing ceased and my breathing came quieter, more even. "I'm a woman --," I choked, wondering what that would mean from now on. "Yes you are, Major," Drew replied finally. "So what are you going to do with the rest of your life?" I was taken aback by such a question. "I don't know," I stammered. "Of course you don't, sir. But sometime soon you'll know, and then you'll be all right." I shook my head. I couldn't be all right again. Not ever. # When I tried to squirm out of the young soldier's grasp he let me go. "We should climb back down," suggested Drew. "Do you feel strong enough to walk?" "I don't want to go back," I said, still unable to look him in the eye. "You have to. The only other place you can go is over that ledge, and I really wouldn't want to see that happen." "All right," I said, fatalistically. Drew helped me to my feet, watching me carefully, gaging my strength. "Good, now let's go," he coaxed. Then, steadied by his strong hands, we descended the slope. Many times I had to stop to rest and sometimes Drew was practically carrying me. By the time we reached the bottom I was so used up that he actually did take me up into his arms again and tote me along. I did not even protest, so exhausted, so despondent was I, but as we neared the grove which was the last barrier screening us from the full view of the camp, I got anxious. "Let me down! I can't let them see me like this!" He complied and I was relieved to find that my legs felt fairly firm once they touched the soil. "Are my eyes red?" I inquired hastily. "No, they're quite --" Whatever his intended observation might have been, he dropped it. "Drew, please," I asked, as one person merely asking a favor of another, not trying to make it a command, "don't tell anyone what I almost did." "I have to tell Dr. Lowry." "Yes, but nobody else!" I insisted. "It'll be our secret," he promised. # I avoided looking at the men -- and the women -- along the way to my hut. How much did they know? That I had I been seen racing for the hill like a lunatic? That Drew had to be sent to bring me home? I would lose all respect if it became known that I had nearly committed suicide. Drew put me to bed. I grew drowsy and, very quickly, slept. When I woke up Lowry was seated beside me. "We've got to stop meeting like this" I murmured. She smiled in relief. "If you can tell jokes after what you've been through, Rupe, your prognosis is excellent." "Excellent, sure," I said without much enthusiasm. "I'm alive, but what kind of life is it going to be?" "That's what I still ask myself every time I wake up in the morning." the physician grinned. "When I stop asking it, I'm sure I'll be dead." When I didn't reply, a new thought crossed her brow like a dark cloud. "Rupe, I'm as sorry as I can be. I never should have talked to you the way I did. -- At least not without a couple of husky orderlies on hand to keep you from running off." "It's all right. I suppose shock therapy is the least that I deserve." "What do you mean?" I looked away. "If I told you, we couldn't be friends anymore." She put her hand upon the blanket covering me. "That's not going to happen, Rupe. Whatever's bothering you, it can't be so bad. I know you. You're probably the most decent -- person -- in the service. I'm proud to know you." "You must have met some real scum buckets then." "Buddy, what is it?" I swallowed hard. "I let you down." "Me? When? How?" I told her. I don't know why I had to tell Lowry my secret at just that time, but I had to, I had to let her know exactly what sort of person I was. She had grown silent; I looked up at her, thinking that her face was paler than usual. But there was no anger in it, just that dewy look. "Neither one of us are very good in the feelings department, are we?" Sebastian sighed softly. "I guess not." I reached out and touched her hand. "Can you forgive me?" "Look, Rupe, I've made mistakes, too -- like making my best friend and most important patient suicidal. I'd say that we're about even." I shrugged, still feeling that what I had done had been far worse. "Now, cheer up," she went on. "What's happened -- what's happened to both of us -- is damned strange, but I don't see any reason why it has to be terminal. It's mostly a lifestyle problem, and at least we're not alone in it." "No, we have a whopper of a leper colony here." "Hardly that." "Can't we just go on like as if it hasn't happen? Do we have to make a big thing out of sex?" "Sex is a big thing, Rupe. Wait until you're having your first period. Wait until you look at a some soldier and start thinking that he sizes up pretty damned well." "You're still doing that?" "Well, I'm trying to control it. The important thing is not to give in." That's right, don't give in, I thought. Chastity wasn't so onerous, after all. I had already imagined myself living out my last days on Klink with the sex life of a monk. Anyway, I couldn't imagine myself ever being attracted to a man, despite Lowry's experience. If I couldn't hack it as a nun, I'd probably end up a lesbian. What a fate! I changed the subject: "Doc, you'd better be off. I don't have the right to keep you from your work." "You're part of my work, Rupe! There's no way I'm leaving you unattended after so serious a crisis." "Then I'm stuck with you, I suppose. Say, how long did I sleep? Are there any new problems today?" "That's none of your business," she said with a sympathetic smile. # Two days had passed with no new disappearances and Lowry's prediction seemed to be bearing out. If her theory actually held water, I realized, our whole situation, our whole future outlook, had changed -- radically. "Maybe we have a chance to reverse this thing," I remarked. "If someone wants Klink to have a half-and-half population it might work in the other direction, too. If we put all the women together maybe they'll start reverting!" Sebastian's brow wrinkled. "I've thought about that, too, Rupe. But even if it did work, it would be like lengthening a blanket with a strip cut from the other end. It doesn't get us anywhere. If we're going to be 50-50 no matter what we do, what's the difference which half is which? What we have to do is make sure that there are no new transformations. We have to achieve some kind of stability; we've got a tall order just surviving on Klink without all this distraction." "I suppose you're right," I replied glumly, though it certainly seemed no small matter to me which half of the human race I belonged to. "We'll have to make sure that no men are ever isolated from female association for very long. We've got to look over our records and estimate about how far out a man can go from camp before transforming -- What are you grinning about, Doc?" "It sounds like women are going to have a lot of power on this planet. If they don't cooperate, the men will be up the creek." I shook my head. "Women's power is always an illusion, Sebastian. It only exists when men refuse to use force, or where men for whatever reason enforce it against other men. That happened in America a couple centuries ago, but it never happened before and it hasn't happened since." "Haven't you heard of those old time matriarchies?" "Sure, I've done some reading. Matriarchies are a crock. In the Egyptian royal families, the throne belonged to the women, so that meant that brothers insisted on marrying sisters so that they could be king. Men will always rule, Sebastian. Strength always rules, whether it's the strength of courtly knights idolizing women, or of street gangs terrorizing them." "Sounds pretty grim." "It doesn't have to be. You just have to zero in on the best qualities of manhood and reenforce them. It's a child-rearing process. That's what made human society work before the Twentieth Century -- and that's what got it working again after that bloody, stupid century was over." "We can't be knights, Rupe, so where does that leave you and me?" "I don't have a clue," I admitted. "Anyhow, I'm more interested in what Philbrick said." "What about?" "About relieving me." "Philbrick understood." "Oh, he'd understand, all right! He knows a nut case when he sees one," I mused. "Okay, now that I have no duties, no responsibilities, no conceivable function in life, what am I good for?" "We'll just have to figure that one out," she said with a wan smile. ******** Chapter 7 *There is something in this more than natural, if philosophy could find it out.* HAMLET Transformation trauma was a roller coaster. Sometimes one was up, but most of the time he was so far down that he wished that he were dead. Any death- wish is dangerous and so, because Drew and Lowry couldn't watch me all the time, they brought in others -- usually Halder or Cutts -- to pick up the slack. During the worst of it, I could barely get four or five hours sleep on a good night. The depression I felt was like a physical ache permeating every corner of my body -- a interminable, grinding despair, the fear that life could never again be meaningful, purposeful, or even tolerable. I was asking myself endlessly: "Who am I?" "What am I?" "Why am I living?" When I was feeling more or less up, as I sometimes was, I could at least read. Unfortunately, worthwhile material was scarce, outside of Drew's book of Shakespeare and Lowry's Bible. Before long Sebastian was encouraging me to get off my back and take daily walks. I don't remember much about those first excursions. It was an ordeal just to have to place one foot in front of the other. I was always accompanied by someone to look out for me, since it wouldn't do to have Major Breen climbing Woolenska's Hill again. As my spirits improved, I could once again enjoy playing cards with Sebastian. Whenever we felt like making it a foursome, we brought in other players, usually Drew and Ames. The blonde captain, when she was around, did her best to be my friend, but something -- maybe our respective ranks or our past association -- proved to be an obstacle, especially to me. The camp seemed to operate smoothly. I had given Philbrick to understand that I expected him to run it as best he saw fit. I assured him that I wouldn't be allowing anyone to come to me and go over his head. He appreciated my pledge. As he gained confidence, Philbrick took to operating in his own distinct way. He early-on made some decisions that wouldn't have occurred to me -- decisions which, in fact, I probably would have rejected. I had pretty much run things by the "Book." That wasn't because I was an unimaginative martinet, but because I wanted to give the Group a sense of stability, a center, a focus. The Book wasn't perfect, but doing things strictly by the rules lets everyone know exactly where he stands. Philbrick, on the other hand, was an experimenter. His most noticeable change was the relaxation of the uniform requirements. Because we had no clothes to fit the women, he set up a committee charged with prescribing ways to make the transformees' clothing more comfortable and utilitarian. Before long, the transformed troopers were cutting away extraneous material, such as floppy, dragging pantslegs and over-long sleeves. Cutoffs suddenly became a common sight. Off duty, women were even allowed to go about clad in just shirttails and drawers. To my mind, the latter fashion made them look like b-girls who had just climbed out of the beds of real soldiers. Even though the change in the dress code gave me new concerns about discipline, I did not bestir myself to intervene. Capt. Ames, who had chaired the uniform committee, heartily approved of the new dispensations. I suspected that she had strongly influenced Philbrick to authorize them. Philbrick was, after all, Ames' hut mate, her long-time friend, and even -- perhaps -- her current lover. I wondered about that last possibility sometimes, but I neither confronted them with the subject nor sought for gossip. At least one innovation which I approved of was the design of new sort of footwear. Mr. Chesterton, one of the fleet techs, got the idea of stripping the Carodite insulation sheets out of the now-useless drop pods and cutting from it tough soles for shoes. With the addition of straps for and aft, the space-farer produced sandals which that were many times more comfortable than the oversized army boots that we had been condemned to wear beforehand. # I was now wearing the new sandals for my daily exercise. All along Drew had been my most frequent suicide watch and companion upon these walks. Very quickly ours became more than a strictly professional relationship, although fraternizing with a serviceman ran against the very Book that I valued so highly. But, if the truth be told, rank can be a mighty lonely thing. If I was ever needed to abandon ceremony, now was the time. It may seem ironic that I should let Drew get as close to me as I did, since he had been the one with me up on Woolenska's Hill. The young soldier, like Lowry, knew my weaknesses, knew my breaking point -- and a person usually isn't comfortable around someone who knows his limits. But it may be that our relationship wasn't so unlikely at all. Part of being a friend is letting down the mask, of admitting that you have shortcomings, failings. While this was something that I had the greatest difficulty doing in front of my officers, something about the medic's manner, or his personality, encouraged me to open up. Anyway, I had to have help from the "inside" or I couldn't cope. Over a couple weeks I gradually accepted that Drew's offer of camaraderie was solid and genuine, not merely a suicide watcher's duty expressed artfully. For his part, the medic seemed to gain confidence that I would not suddenly do an about-face and start treating him like an orderly. We began talking about our respective backgrounds. He listened attentively to everything that I told him and I repaid the compliment. I learned that Drew was from Missouri and had attended the University at Rolla, where he had studied pre-med. He was well-read and sorely missed his library of English-language literature back on Earth. He also enjoyed classic songs, many of which he had memorized. It never had been Drew's intention to be a professional soldier and had been unenthusiastic about being drafted straight out of college. Previously, he had looked forward to attending the University of Illinois in Chicago -- there to specialize in prostatic surgery and research. Now his goal was to learn as much advanced medicine as he could from Doctor Lowry. I laughed suddenly and he asked me why. It was only because I was able to recognize one of the few advantages of being transformed: I would not need to worry about prostatic problems in my latter years. As the days passed, we became quite relaxed and natural together. I even persuaded Drew to sing some of those old-time songs of his -- such as "Venus in Blue Jeans," "Graduation Day," and "A White Sports Coat." He had a strong, melodious singing voice and I grew determined, if we ever put on a company show, to try and get him to perform for it. We shared a love for Shakespeare and we talked over the idea that I had once had of staging a play. He suggested that I would make a good Portia. I demurred; I was no actor and, personally, I never had liked Portia as a character. "The Merchant of Venice" seemed to go sour at the point where Shakespeare let Portia carry her hoax upon Shylock too far. Harsh as his intended vengeance against his rival had been, Shylock had at least stayed within the letter of the law, but Portia's impersonation of a justice was clearly a felony. In the Twenty-First Century Americans had fought their second revolution, among other things, to tame a despotic judiciary. Most of us still believed that the greatest threat to human ci

Under the Moons of Eden - Christopher Leeson