Passing as human gets one over on the side of privilege; it does not end resentment against the system. The pressure builds up even more because it can't be expressed. The day came when it was more important to me to find out whether my adopted family could accept me as I truly am, an artificial person, than it was to preserve my happy relationship.
I found out. Not one of them stood up for me... just as none of them had stood up for Ellen. I think I knew that they would reject me as soon as I learned that they had failed Ellen. But that level of my mind is so far down that I'm not well acquainted with it-that's the dark place where, according to Boss, I do all my real thinking.
I reached Auckland too late for the daily SB to Winnipeg. After reserving a cradle for the next day's trajectory and checking everything but my jumpbag, I considered what to do with the twenty-one hours facing me, and at once thought of my curly wolf, Captain Ian. By what he had told me, the chances were five-to-one against his being in town-but his flat (if available) might be pleasanter than a hotel. So I found a public terminal and punched his code.
Shortly the screen lighted; a young woman's face-cheerful, rather pretty-appeared. "Hi! I'm Torchy. Who're you?"
"I'm Marj Baldwin," I answered. "Perhaps I've punched wrong. I'm seeking Captain Tormey."
"No, you're with it, luv. Hold and I'll let him out of his cage." She turned and moved away from the pickup while calling out, "Bubber! A slashing tart on the honker. Knows your right name."
As she turned and moved away I noticed bare breasts. She came fully into view and I saw that she was jaybird to her heels. A good body-possibly a bit wide in the fundament but with long legs, a slender waist, and mammaries that matched mine... and I've had no complaints.
I quietly cursed to myself. I knew quite well why I had called the captain: to forget three men in the arms of a fourth. I had found him but it appeared that he was fully committed.
He appeared, dressed but not much-a lava-lava. He looked puzzled, then recognized me. "Hey! Miss... Baldwin! That's it. This is sonky-do! Where are you?"
"At the port. I punched on the off chance of saying hello."
"Stay where you are. Don't move, don't breathe. Seven seconds while I pull on trousers and shirt, and I'll come get you."
"No, Captain. Just a greeting. Again I am simply making connections."
"What is your connection? To what port? What time is departure?"
Damn and triple damn-I had not prepared my lies. Well, the truth is often better than a clumsy lie. "I'm going back to Winnipeg."
"Ah so! Then you are looking at your pilot; I have the noon lift tomorrow. Tell me exactly where you are and I'll pick you up in, uh, forty minutes if I can get a cab fast enough."
"Captain, you are very sweet and you are out of your mind. You already have all the company you can handle. The young woman who answered my call. Torchy."
"Torchy isn't her name; that's her condition. She's my sister Betty, from Sydney. Stays here when she's in town. I probably mentioned her." He turned his head and shouted. "Betty! Come here and identify yourself. But get decent."
"It's too late to get decent," her cheerful voice answered, and I saw her, past his shoulder, returning toward the pickup and wrapping a lava-lava around her hips as she did so. She seemed to be having a little trouble with it and I suspected that she had had a few. "Oh, the hell with it! My brother is always trying to get me to behave-my husband has given up. Look, luv, I heard what you said. I'm his married sister, too true. Unless you are trying to marry him, in which case I am his fiancée. Are you?"
"Good. Then you can have him. I'm about to make tea. Do you take gin? Or whisky?"
"Whatever you and the Captain are having."
"He must not have either; he's lifting in less than twenty-four hours. But you and I will get smashed."
"I'll drink what you do. Anything but hemlock."
I then convinced Ian that it was better for me to find a hansom at the port where they were readily available than it was for him to send for one, then make the round trip.
Number 17, Locksley Parade, is a new block of flats of the double-security type; I was locked through the entrance to Ian's flat as if it were a spaceship. Betty greeted me with a hug and a kiss that showed that she had indeed been drinking; my curly wolf then greeted me with a hug and a kiss that showed that he had not been drinking but that he expected to take me to bed in the near future. He did not ask about my husbands; I did not volunteer anything about my family-my former family. Ian and I got along well because we both understood the signals, used them correctly, and never misled the other.
While Ian and I held this wordless discussion, Betty left the room and returned with a red lava-lava. "It's formal high tea," she an-
nounced, with a slight belch, "so out of those street clothes and into this, luv."
Her idea? Or his? Hers, I decided, before long. While Ian's simple, wholesome lechery was as clear as a punch in the jaw, he was basically rather cubical. Not so Betty, who was utterly outlaw. I didn't care, as it moved in the direction I wanted to go. Bare feet are as provocative as bare breasts, although most people do not seem to know it. A female packaged only in a lava-lava is far more provocative than one totally nude. The party was shaping up to suit me, and I would depend on Ian to shake off his sister's chaperonage when the time came. If necessary. It seemed possible that Betty would sell tickets. I didn't fret about it.
I got smashed.
Just how thorough a job I did on it I did not realize until next morning when I woke up in bed with a man who was not Ian Tormey.
For several minutes I lay still and watched him snore while I poked through my gin-beclouded memories, trying to fit him in. It seemed to me that a woman really ought to be introduced to a man before spending a night with him. Had we been formally introduced? Had we met at all?
In bits and pieces it came back. Name: Professor Federico Farnese, called either "Freddie" or "Chubbie." (Not very chubby- just a little pot from a swivel-chair profession.) Betty's husband, Ian's brother-in-law. I recalled him somewhat from the evening before but could not now (next morning) recall just when he had arrived, or why he had been away... if I ever knew.
Once I placed him I was not especially surprised to find that I (seemed to have) spent the night with him. The frame of mind I had been in the night before no male would have been safe from me. But one thing bothered me: Had I turned my back on my host in order to chase after some other man? Not polite, Friday-not gracious.
I dug deeper. No, at least once I decidedly had not turned my back on Ian. To my great pleasure. And to Ian's, too, if his commerits were sincere. Then I had indeed turned my back but at his request. No, I had not been ungracious to my host, and he had
been very kind to me, in exactly the fashion I needed to help me forget how I had been swindled, then tossed, by Anita's gang of selfrighteous racists.
Thereafter my host had had some help from this late arrival, I now remembered. It is never surprising that an emotionally troubled woman may need more soothing than one man can supply- but I could not remember how the transaction was achieved. Fair exchange? Don't snoop, Friday! An AP cannot empathize with or understand the various human copulation taboos-but I had most carefully memorized all the many, many sorts while taking basic doxy training, and I knew that this one was one of the strongest, one that humans cover up even where all else is wide open.