She was everybody's sweetheart--but
not every man's at once!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Seven days stranded on Europa. Seven days without hope. The courage
that had sustained me, like the numbness after a fatal blow, was
beginning to slip away. All that seventh day my nerves balanced on a
thin jagged edge. And that night the anamorph visited me in my bubble
cubicle.
I caught the sheathed rustle of a crinoline skirt and a scent of Peri
fragrance, and I knew she had come. Stubbornly I kept my face averted,
and tried my best not to think of her. If I did I was lost. My fingers
dug into the sponge fabric beneath me until they ached. I sucked breath
deep into my lungs and held it.
I wanted no visitors. But that of course was why she had come. She had
a way of divining who needed her most, the one whose morale was nearest
breaking.
"Poor Bill," she murmured. She knelt beside me. I felt her forehead
press against my temple and a tear--from eyes which I knew would
now be a clear candid blue, deep in the shadows, appearing almost
black--traced a salty path down my cheek.
The wall of my resistance broke. I reached up impulsively and pulled
her to me. She was all soft, yielding femininity, live and warm and
vibrant, the antidote to the raw need that was like a bleeding wound
deep within.
Still I tried to resist. I summoned my last dregs of resistance and
pushed her roughly from me. I opened my eyes, deliberately keeping my
mind locked against her.
She swayed back at my shove.
I saw that her features had not yet set into the mold she had probed
from my mind. Her head was round and shapeless, with doughy white skin
and the characterless face of a baby. The auburn mat on her head was
loose and coarse, with a consistency that was hair and yet not hair;
her body was too thin, too rigid, too stringy.
Yet she was Lois. Sweet, gentle, loving Lois, the bride I had left
behind on Earth, the girl I would never see again. Lois.
My breath came out in a ragged sigh of surrender, and my mind opened to
her unconditionally.
She altered visibly as I watched. It was too late to go back now.
Lois stood before me, full-fleshed and delicately tall, with her rich
brown hair curling inward at the ends, and her shapely shoulders all
honeyed-gold from the sun. Her supple body was straight, poised and
proud, her head back and her breasts pressing against her blouse. Just
as I remembered her.
I could have sent her away no more than I could have stopped the beat
of my heart. "Hi, hon," I whispered.
She laughed happily, and sat on the mat beside me and rumpled my hair.
We kissed gently, tentatively. I pulled her closer. As we kissed again
she kept her eyes open, looking at me sidewards in her fondly teasing
way. "It's good to be back, dear," she breathed against my cheek....
Long she lay at my side, regarding me with eyes that were filled with
her love, her only movement the throb of a pulse beneath my fingers as
they fondled her arched throat. I sighed contentedly. At the moment I
was filled with a warm serenity that had quite effectively subdued my
anxiety.
Once a man let himself go, there was no companion, male or female, who
could compare with the anamorph. She caught his every thought, crested
the tides of his every mood. She became the idealization of woman,
without flaws, formed and molded into a perfection beyond possible
actuality, her beauty and desirability greater than any real woman's
could ever be.
When full rapport had been achieved she was able to keep mentally ahead
of a man. She could gauge his every reflex, and match her speech and
actions to every subtle anticipation.
I felt almost happy then. The tragedy of being stranded here was
something apart, and the reality was the delightful woman-creature
warm against me ... until at last my passions grew sated with the
luxuriance of her charms and I slept.
* * * * *
In the morning the anamorph was gone.
Eight other men had fears that must be eased. She might have spent
parts of the night with any one or all of them. The thought would
have been distasteful, except that absence made the sense of her less
all-pervading. I even experienced a kind of grateful relief. I was
able to regard her now, not as the real Lois I wanted, but as merely a
source of solace I had badly needed.
The anamorph's presence during the night had drained all my pent-up
frustrations. I was not happy, but I no longer felt the desperate
loneliness and need that had goaded me before. I dressed leisurely and
went out into the main compartment of the bubble.
Except in the sleeping rooms the plastic walls were transparent. I
looked outside at the surface of Europa, covered with a white material
I had been told was solid carbon dioxide.
A mild storm was brewing. The hydrogen, helium and methane in the
atmosphere were colorless, and the argon and krypton too minute to be
detected without instruments. But I could see and hear small particles
of liquid ammonia as they pattered against the plastic wall. The bubble
sagged in several places. But there was no danger of it collapsing.
In the space ship galley (to which the bubble had been attached) I
found the captain, Mark Burgess, and the anamorph having coffee.
She was no longer Lois. Now she was an older woman, with a bit of added
weight and thickness. She was still beautiful, but more matronly than
she had been as Lois. About her was none of the warm-blooded ardor she
had displayed the night before. And no remembrance of it in her eyes.