Ordinarily he would not bother, but he could not stand to look at himself. When the change was over, delicate thin skin would cover his penis. Not quite a mucous membrane, but skin at least as sensitive as his lips. So far, though, the skin still peeled like sunburn, and his penis and scrotum had begun to withdraw into his body. He felt squeezed.
He did not yet have voluntary control of his genitals. As Zev said, he would have to learn. They were new muscles, or muscles he never knew he had. They ached with tension.
The soft cotton towel rubbed the fine gold hair on his hip, pushing it upward. He pulled off the towel and smoothed his pelt. He slid the towel downward before wrapping it again, so his fur would stay sleek. Now he understood why Zev wore as few clothes as possible.
He washed his T-shirt, swished it around in the sink, squeezed out the water, and held it up.
The stains from the AS bioelectronic guts marred the turquoise silk.
"God dammit!" he shouted. The shirt was ruined. He flung it across the bathroom. It slapped against the glass tiles and lay in a puddle.
It was his favorite shirt. Victoria had brought it back with her on her last trip to Earth. He should have packed it away with his other silk shirts, to save for special occasions. But he could not bear to give it up so soon.
"Dammit, dammit, dammit," he muttered.
He snatched the shirt from the floor, wrung soap and water out of his shorts, and slapped both pieces of clothing over a towel rack to dry. By the time Starfarer
got back to Earth-if Starfarer got back to Earth-he would probably be grateful for anything to wear. Whether it was stained and ruined or not.
He dropped his towel on the floor and got into the shower.
Admit it, he said to himself as water streamed down his body. You aren't mad about the shirt. Yes, I am, said another part of himself. All right. But what you're really mad about is that J.D. got to sleep with Feral and you didn't.
It was so obvious. When J.D. heard that Feral had recorded their conversations, she had blushed from the curve of her breasts to the roots of her hair. Though she was unusually shy about discussing personal subjects, she was transparent, emotionally and physically.
Stephen Thomas felt completely opaque, even to himself. What difference did it make? Why shouldn't they get together? They had spent the whole trip from Earth to Starfarer on the same transport. Feral was alone and J.D. had thought she might never see Zev again. They had spent a lot of time together, tracking down the system crash. If they had found some pleasure in each othcr, he could only be happy for them both.
Would you regret Feral's death any more, he asked himself, if you and he had made love? Would you regret it less?
He answered himself, in his weird monologous dialogue: If I regretted Feral's death any more, I think I'd go nuts. It doesn't make sense to be mad at J.D., to be jealous of her.
As he had when Feral died, when Merry died, he pulled himself away from his anger and his grief. Both were pointless, and he could not afford to let himself fall apart.
Kolya was miserable. Coffee did nothing to ease nicotine withdrawal; neither did beer. Both made him need to pee more often. So now he was sweating an ill-smelling sweat and having to pee all the time. He had drunk
enough beer to disorient himself, to make his balance chancy. He had drunk enough coffee to make him jumpy. He had thrown away the usual easy relaxation and cheer of Gerald Hemminge's best English stout.
He lay folded up in the window seat, the curtains pulled aside, a chill breeze blowing through the open windows. He sought the cold so he would have a sensation to concentrate on besides the need to smoke a cigarette. Someone knocked on his door. He frowned. He had not heard anyone approach. He was not that drunk. . . .
Another knock. Kolya stayed silent, stayed still. Soon they would go away. The door opened a crack. Kolya tensed.
This wits ridiculous. There were no spies for the Mideast Sweep on board Starfarer. If there were, they would have sought him out months ago. Either he would be dead, a victim of the Sweep's death sentence, or he would have killed them in self-defense.
And it would be doubly ridiculous to be stalked by the Sweep during the only time he had been really drunk in the last twenty years.
"Kolya?"
Kolya's body sagged with relief, his reaction magnified by intoxication. Then, angry, he pushed himself to his feet and jerked the door open. Griffith started. For an instant he looked as dangerous as he was.
"I might have known," Kolya said.
Griffith was the only person on campus foolish enough and self-confident enough to enter Kolya's house, or rude enough to enter anyone's house, uninvited.
"What is it?" Kolya snarled.
Taken aback, Griffith hesitated.
"Do you want something?"
"I can't figure you out," Griffith said.
"That suits me well," Kolya said.
"One time I see you, you're friendly. The next time
you threaten to kill me. Then you apologize. Then you bite my head off." "And you suppose," Kolya said irritably, "that your actions have nothing to do with my reactions?"
"I was worried about you. You look like shit, since you ran out of cigarettes."
"Thank you, Marion. I'm grateful for your opinion."
Griffith glowered at him, as he always did when Kolya used his given name. Kolya sometimes could not resist, though he knew he should have more self-discipline. Today, though, getting a rise out of Griffith gave him no satisfaction.
Kolya sighed and stepped back from the door.
"You may as well come in." He did not particularly want to talk to Griffith. But he had neither the energy to make him leave nor the strength to remain standing.
He folded himself back into the window seat. He had never gotten around to getting a chair, for he seldom had visitors. Griffith sat crosslegged on the floor without comment or complaint.
Griffith had changed his clothes. When he came on board he wore the attire of a General Accounting Office middle manager, slacks and shirt and jacket. Now that he had given up pretending to be a GAO accountant, he wore Starfarer regulation pants, cotton canvas in a rather military green with an EarthSpace logo on the thigh, and a similar sweatshirt. If he was trying to fit in, he had, for once, guessed wrong. No one on campus wore regulation clothes without altering them.
The strangest thing about Griffith's clothes was that they were grubby. Griffith looked rumpled, not his usual neat and unnoticeable self. Kolya tried to recall seeing him unkempt before, even after an hour in a survival pouch.
"Where have you been?"
"Camping," Griffith said. "in the wild cylinder. I needed . . . to get away for a while. To survive on my own.,,
An overnight on the wild side, which-as far as Kolya knew-hosted no large predators and few pests,
did not sound very challenging. But, then, Griffith came from the city. Kolya's lips twitched up in an involuntary smile that Griffith saw before Kolya could repress it.
"What's so funny?"
"Marion Griffith, guerrilla accountant."
Kolya thought he had gone too far, as he often did with Griffith. Sometimes he went too far deliberately; this time, he had spoken without thinking because he was past rational thought. He shivered, and wished again for a cigarette.
Griffith opened his mouth to retort, then stopped. He shrugged, and his lips quirked in a smile.
"More or less accurate," he said.
He always had maintained that he really was an accountant. But he usually did not admit that he was anything more.
"Do you want a cup of tea or something?" Griffith said. "When's the last time you ate?"
"Who knows? It isn't tea I want. It's nicotine." He shivered, imagining one long drag on a cigarette. Then he could not stop shivering.