"We'll come back," he said. "Don't worry about it. We'll come back.
Let's just drive a little...?" he pulled out past my car, and turned
and looked at me for a minute. "You don't want to go now, do you?
Right away?"
I shook my head, but he wasn't looking at me any more, so I took a
breath and said out loud, "No."
We came off a twisty street onto the highway. "So that's how it hits
you," he said. He wasn't exactly talking to me; more like thinking out
loud. "Twenty-seven years a cool cat, and now it has to be a crazy
little midget that gets to you." He had to stop then, for a red
light--the same light I'd stopped at the first time on the way in.
That seemed a long long time before.
Larry turned around and took my hand. He looked hard at my face, "I'm
sorry, hon. I didn't mean that the way it sounded."
"What?" I said. "What do you mean?" I hadn't even tried to make sense
out of what he was saying before; he wasn't talking to me anyhow.
"Kid," he said, "maybe that was the first time for you, but in a
different way it was the first time for me too." His hand opened and
closed around mine, and his mouth opened and closed too, but nothing
came out. The light was green; he noticed, and started moving, but it
turned red again. This time he kept watching it.
"I don't suppose anybody ever told you about the birds and the bees
and the butterflies," he said.
"Told me _what_ about them?" He didn't answer right away, so I thought
about it. "All I can think of is they all have wings. They all fly."
"So do I. So does a fly. What I mean is ... the hell with it!" He
turned off the highway, and we went up a short hill and through a sort
of gateway between two enormous rocks. "Have you ever been here?" he
asked.
"I don't think so...."
"They call it The Garden of the Gods. I don't know why. I like it here ...
it's a good place to drive and think."
There was a lot of moonlight, and the Garden was all hills and drops
and winding roads between low-growing brush, and everywhere, as if the
creatures of some giant planet had dropped them, were those towering
rocks, their shapes scooped out and chiseled and hollowed and twisted
by wind, water and sand. Yes, it was lovely, and it was non-intrusive.
Just what he said--a good place to drive and think.
Once he came to the top of a hill, and stopped the car, and we looked
out over the Garden, spreading out in every direction, with the
moonlight shadowed in the sagebrush, and gleaming off the great rocks.
Then we turned and looked at each other, and he reached out for me and
kissed me again; after which he pulled away as if the touch of me hurt
him, and grabbed hold of the wheel with a savage look on his face, and
raced the motor, and raised a cloud of dust on the road behind us.
I didn't understand, and I felt hurt. I wanted to stop again. I wanted
to be kissed again. I didn't like sitting alone on my side of the
seat, with that growl in his throat not quite coming out.
I asked him to stop again. He shook his head, and made believe to
smile.
"I'll buy you a book," he said. "All about the birds and the bees and
a little thing we have around here we call sex. I'll buy it tomorrow,
and you can read it--you _do_ know how to read, don't you?--and then
we'll take another ride, and we can park if you want to. Not tonight,
baby."
"But I _know_...." I started, and then had sense enough to stop. I
knew about sex; but what I knew about it didn't connect with kissing
or parking the car, or sitting close ... and it occurred to me that
maybe it did, and maybe there was a lot I _didn't_ know that wasn't on
Television, and wasn't on the Ship's reference tapes either. Morals
and mores, and nuances of behavior. So I shut up, and let him take me
back to the hotel again, to my own car.
He leaned past me to open the door on my side, but he couldn't quite
make it, and I had my fourth kiss. Then he let go again, and almost
pushed me out of the car; but when I started to close the door behind
me, he called out, "Tomorrow night?"
"I ... all right," I said. "Yes. Tomorrow night."
"Can I pick you up?"
There was no reason not to this time. The first time I wouldn't tell
him where I lived, because I knew I'd have to change places, and I
didn't know where yet. I told him the name of the motel, and where it
was.
"Six o'clock," he said.
"All right."
"Good night."
"Good night."
* * * * *
I don't remember driving back to my room. I think I slept on the bed
that night, without ever stopping to determine whether it was
comfortable or not. And when I woke up in the morning, and looked out
the window at a white-coated landscape, the miracle of snow (which I
had never seen before; not many planets have as much water vapor in
their atmospheres as Earth does.) in summer weather seemed trivial in
comparison to what had happened to me.
Trivial, but beautiful. I was afraid it would be very cold, but it
wasn't.
I had gathered, from the weather-talk in the place where I ate
breakfast, that in this mountain-country (it was considered to be very
high altitude there), snow at night and hot sun in the afternoon was
not infrequent in the month of April, though it was unusual for May.
It was beautiful to look at, and nice to walk on, but it began melting
as soon as the sun was properly up, and then it looked awful. The red
dirt there is pretty, and so is the snow, but when they began merging
into each other in patches and muddy spots, it was downright ugly.
Not that I cared. I ate oatmeal and drank milk and nibbled at a piece
of toast, and tried to plan my activities for the day. To the library
first, and take back the book they'd lent me. Book ... all right then,
get a book on sex. But that was foolish; I _knew_ all about sex. At
least I knew ... well, what did I know? I knew their manner of
reproduction, and....
Just why, at that time and place, I should have let it come through to
me, I don't know. I'd managed to stay in a golden daze from the time
in the Garden till that moment, refusing to think through the
implications of what Larry said.
Sex. Sex is mating and reproduction. Dating and dancing and kissing
are parts of the courtship procedure. And the television shows all
stop with kissing, because the mating itself is taboo. Very simple.
Also _very_ taboo.
Of course, they didn't _say_ I couldn't. They never said anything
about it at all. It was just obvious. It wouldn't even work. We were
_different_, after all.
Oh, technically, biologically, of course, we were probably
cross-fertile, but....
The whole thing was so obviously _impossible_!
They should have warned me. I'd never have let it go this far, if I'd
known.
Sex. Mating. Marriage. Tribal rites. Rituals and rigamaroles, and stay
here forever. Never go back.
_Never go back?_
There was an instant's sheer terror, and then the comforting knowledge
that they wouldn't _let_ me do that. I had to go back.
Baby on a spaceship?
Well, _I_ was a baby on a spaceship, but that was different. How
different? I was older. I wasn't born there. Getting born is
complicated. Oxygen, gravity, things like that. You can't raise a
_human_ baby on a spaceship.... _Human?_ What's human? What am I?
Never mind the labels. It would be _my_ baby....
I didn't want a baby. I just wanted Larry to hold me close to him and
kiss me.
* * * * *
I drove downtown and on the way to the library I passed a bookstore,
so I stopped and went in there instead. That was better. I could buy
what I wanted, and not have to ask permission to take it out, and if
there was more than one, I could have all I wanted.
I asked the man for books about sex. He looked so startled, I realized
the taboo must apply on the verbal level too.
I didn't care. He showed me where the books were, and that's all that
mattered. "Non-fiction here," he said. "That what you wanted, Miss?"
Non-fiction. Definitely. I thanked him, and picked out half a dozen
different books. One was a survey of sexual behavior and morals;
another was a manual of techniques; one was on the psychology of sex,
and there was another about abnormal sex, and one on physiology, and
just to play safe, considering the state of my own ignorance, one that
announced itself as giving a "clear simple explanation of the facts of
life for adolescents."
I took them all to the counter, and paid for them, and the man still
looked startled, but he took the money. He insisted on wrapping them
up, though, before I could leave.
* * * * *
The next part of this is really Larry's story, but unable as I am,
even now, to be _certain_ about his unspoken thoughts, I can only tell
it as I experienced it. I didn't do anything all that day, except wade
through the books I'd bought, piece-meal, reading a few pages here and
a chapter there. The more I read, the more confused I got. Each writer
contradicted all the others, except in regard to the few basic
biological facts that I already knew. The only real addition to my
factual knowledge was the information in the manual of technique about
contraception--and that was rather shocking, even while it was
tempting.
The mechanical contrivances these people made use of were foolish, of
course, and typical of the stage of culture they are going through. If
I wanted to prevent conception, while engaging in an act of sexual
intercourse, I could, do so, of course, but....
The shock to the glandular system wouldn't be too severe; it was the
psychological repercussions I was thinking about. The idea of pursuing
a course of action whose sole motivation was the procreative urge, and
simultaneously to decide by an act of will to refuse to procreate....