“No more than you,” he replied, shaking his head wonderingly. “Wow!”
“But—but, why a man?” she asked.
His face grew serious. “I’ll tell you sometime. But, good old Nathan! He sure came through!”
The storm broke, then, and the rain started coming down heavily.
They were both soaked through in seconds, and her fancy hairdo collapsed. He laughed, and she laughed, and he picked her up and started running in the mud. Just ahead he saw his shack, outlined in the lightning flashes, but he misjudged the turn to his walk with his burden. They both tumbled into the road, splashing around and covered with thick black mud.
“You all right?” he shouted over the torrent.
“I’m drowning in mud!” she called back, and they both got up, laughing at each other.
“The barn’s closer!” he shouted. “See it over there? Run for it!”
He started off, and she followed, the rain getting heavier and heavier. He reached the door way ahead of her, and slid it aside on its rollers. She reached it, and they both fell in. The place had an eerie, hollow sound, the rain beating on the sheet-metal roof and wood sides of the barn. It was dark, and smelled like the barn it was. A few cows mooed nervously in their stalls.
“Wooj?” she called.
“Here,” he said, near her, and she turned.
“Might as well sit it out here,” he told her. “There’s a pile of hay over there, and it’s a thousand meters to the shack. Might as well not go through the deluge twice.”
“Okay,” she replied, exhausted, and plopped into the hay. The rain continued to beat a percussion symphony on the barn.
He plopped beside her. She was fussing with her lace pants.
“The mud’s all caked in them, and the sequins are scratching me,” she said. “Might as well get them off, for all the good they’ll do as clothing anyway, even if they are all I’ve got in the world.”
She did, and they lay for a while side by side. He put his arm around her and fondled her breast.
“That feels good,” she whispered. “Is—is that what I’ve been feeling? I thought it was still the pills. Is this what you felt with Brazil?”
“I’ll be damned!” he said to himself. “I always wondered what an erection felt like to a man!” He turned and looked at her. “I’ll show you what it’s really like, if you want,” he said softly.
“I—I think that’s what he wanted,” she replied.
“Is it what you want?” he asked seriously.
“I think I do,” she whispered, and realized that it was what she wanted. “But I don’t even know how.”
“Leave that to an expert,” he replied. “Although I’m not used to this end of things.” He put both arms around her, kissed her and fondled her.
And he kicked off his pants, and showed her the other side of being a woman, while discovering himself what it was to be a man.
The rain was over. It had been over for a couple of hours, but they just lay there, content in the nearness of each other.
The door was still half-open, and Vardia, still dazed and dreamy from her first sexual experience, saw the clouds roll back and the stars appear. “We’ll get you some clothes in the morning,” he said at last. “Then we’ll tour the farm. This rain should do everything good. I was born on a farm, you know, but not my own farm.”
“People—non-Com people—they do that every day?” she asked.
He chuckled. “Twice if they’re horny enough. Except for a couple of days each month.”
“You—you’ve done it both ways,” she said. “Is it different?”
“The feeling’s definitely different, but it’s the same charge,” he replied. “An important part, male or female, is that you do it when you want with someone you want.”
“Is that love?” she asked. “Is that what Brazil was talking about?”
“Not the sex,” he replied. “That’s just a—a component, as he would say. Without the object—without love, without feeling for the other person, without caring, it’s not pleasant at all.”
“That’s why you’re a man now,” she said. “All the other times—they were the wrong kind, weren’t they?”
“Yes,” he replied distantly, and looked out at the stars. She clenched his hand tightly in hers.
“Do you think he was really God?” Vardia asked quietly.
“I don’t know,” he replied with a sigh. “What if he wasn’t? When he was in the Well he had the power. He gave me my farm, a good, healthy young body, a new chance. And,” he added softly, “he sent you.”
She nodded. “I’ve never lived like this,” she said. “Is it all as wonderful as tonight?”
“No,” he replied seriously. “There’s a lot of hard work, and pain, and heartache—but, if it all comes together, it can be beautiful.”
“We’ll try it here,” she said resolutely. “And when the fun is gone, if ever, or when we’re old and gray, we’ll take off for a Markovian world, and go back and do it again. That’s a good future.”
“I think it is,” he responded. “It’s more than most people ever get.”
“This world,” she said. “It must never become like the others, like the Com. We must make sure of that.”
At that moment there was a glow far beyond the horizon, and suddenly a bright arrow streaked upward in the dark sky and vanished. A few seconds later, a distant, roaring sound came to them.
“Poor Nathan,” he said sadly. “He can do it for everyone but himself.”
“I wonder where he is now?” she mused.
“I don’t know what form he’s in,” he replied, “but I think I know where he is and what he’s doing, and thinking, and feeling.”
They continued to gaze at the stars.
ABOARD THE FREIGHTER STEHEKIN
Nathan Brazil lay in the command chair on the bridge and gazed distantly at the fake starfield projected in the two window screens. He glanced over to the table atop the ancient computer.
That same pornographic novel was there, spread open to where he had last been reading it. He couldn’t remember it at all, but, he reflected, it didn’t matter. They were all alike anyway, and there was plenty of time to read it again.
He sighed and picked up the cargo manifest, idly flipping it open.
Cargo of grain, bound for Coriolanus, it read. No passengers.
No passengers.
They were elsewhere now—the rotten ones in their own private hells, the good ones—and the potentially good—with their chances. He wondered whether their dreams were as sweet as they had imagined. Would they forget the lessons of the Well, or try for change?
In the end, of course, it didn’t really matter.
Except to them.
He closed the manifest and threw it across the control room. It banged against the wall and landed askew on the floor. He sighed a long, sad sigh, a sigh for ages past and the ages yet to be.
The memories would fade, but the ache would remain.
For, whatever becomes of the others or of this little corner of the universe, he thought, I’m still Nathan Brazil, fifteen days out, bound for Coriolanus with a load of grain.
Still waiting.
Still caring.
Still alone.