UNDER THE MOONS OF EDEN

         Copyright 1996, by Christopher Leeson



                       Chapter 1

     *The sly slow hours shall not determinate
      The dateless limit of thy dear exile.*
                              KING RICHARD II


     Our outfit, the 54th Battle Group Earth Alliance,
was in transit to Cathara when an Asymmetric search-
and-destroy mission caught us off Ophir.  Our light
escorts had no firepower like theirs and so they were
doing a good job turning our fleet into slag before the
escort commander broadcast the general order for a cold
jump.  

     A cold jump for hyperspace!  You have to be
desperate to the point of suicide to try that.  But
with our ships going out like Christmas lights on the
day after New Years, the surviving fighters and
freighters flooded their unprepared converters with
antimatter, pushed the button, and hoped for the best. 
As the ships blinked out of this spacial continuum, our
own was not one of them; a disabling shot had fused our
Morrison stabilator and made us the last sitting duck
in a pond full of sharks.

     The Asymmetrics -- or Assies as we usually called
them -- must have known that our systems were down
because they didn't come circling back with guns
blazing.  Our colonel, lieutenant colonel, and our two
senior majors had either gone down with their own ships
or had jumped away, so circumstances had left me to be
senior officer present.  And it was one hell of an
introduction to independent command.

     We knew that the Assies took prisoners; the kicker
was that we didn't know what the enemy did with
prisoners once they had them!  There had been no P.O.W.
exchanges between belligerents over the course of the
war, and not even the most routine sort of
communication.  Surrender was a hard call, but I made
it understanding that the enemy would gain little from
either the personnel or the equipment on board.  For a
long time afterwards I would be kicking myself.

     The Assies came on board.  Odd-looking critters. 
They shut down our cannons, took our light weapons, and
then locked our transport into a tractor beam.  A few
days of towing through hyperspace brought us to the
destination intended, a new planet in Assie-space.  It
didn't look so bad from high orbit:  clouds, oceans,
patches of foliage and dry land.  In fact, it seemed
like a prime piece of real estate.

     This blue-and-green planet had never been seen on
any Earther's chart, so it had no name and the Assies
didn't volunteer one.  In fact, our captors didn't talk
at all, except to have us pack our gear into the pods
and prepare for a drop.  That prospect was better than
a blaster in the back of the head, but the Assies
weren't wasting much time with send-offs.  We were
shoved into the planet's upper atmosphere without
ceremony and that was it.  The aliens, for all we could
tell, just jumped away and forgot about us.  We were
abandoned, marooned.  Our prison walls were the .9G
gravity of a nameless planet.  They had left us with no
additional instructions, no fare-thee-well.  No
nothing.
  
     We supposed that we had been deposited on an Assie
P.O.W world and from here on in we were expected to
live or die on our own.  We definitely preferred to
live and got to work setting up.  It wasn't too long
before the rank and file got to calling our new home
"Klink."  Well, why not?  With everything going wrong,
a low joke sometimes helps.  Had we been able to see
the future, we would have called it something much less
polite.

                           #

     Klink was an earth-type world with an ecology of
chlorophyll plants, furry animals, and even flyers
that, if you didn't look too close, could pass for
Terran birds.  It has always amazed me to what degree
alien evolution can parallel that of Earth.  Of course,
some people say that all the worlds in space originally
came off the palette of the same Artist way back when. 
But metaphysics was never my strong suit.  

     The first temperature reading we took on Klink was
18 degrees Centigrade.  That was disappointingly
chilly, but one of the fleet techs corralled with us
was soon able to calculate that we had set down during
the winter season in the northern hemisphere.  He
estimated from the axial tilt and the latitude that the
climate might turn out to be something like that of the
Upper South in the USA, with a long warm-to-hot summer,
a short, mild spring and fall, and a winter of
intermediate length in which the temperature would only
occasionally drop below freezing.  That didn't sound
too bad, considering.

     Klink was orbited by two moons and, as we learned,
every thirty-seven days the pair of them looked like
they were about to collide.  In fact, they had only
shortly before finished their last conjunction when we
arrived.  We called them Big Boob and Little Boob
because we were a sex-obsessed bunch of S.O.B's.  Who
could blame us?  Women were non-existent in our corner
of the galaxy.  The chance for sexual recreation aside,
we were otherwise pretty well off.  As Captain
Montgomery Ames put it, "We've got everything we need
for a party, except the dames."

     As I have said, there were no Assie guards to
bother us, no camp administration breathing down our
necks, no rules imposed from above.  Weapons-wise we
were down to bayonets, knives, and hatchets, but though
we occasionally found the tracks of large animals and
sometimes sighted them from a distance, the wildlife
seemed to be shy of our human scent and gave us a wide
berth.  As far as we knew, Klink had no intelligent
life.  Therefore the lack of hardware did not add up to
any immediate problem.  

     More than the confiscated arms, we missed the
communicators.  Without them we could hope for no early
contact with other human beings upon Klink -- assuming
that other prisoners had actually been made.  The
planet seemed so fertile and the climate so mild that
we wondered why the Assies hadn't developed Klink for
themselves instead of "infesting" with enemy aliens. 
Assies and humans liked the same kind of world and
that's the reason that war had blazed along the border
for a decade.  It seemed damnably strange that the
Assies would invade human space and take large losses
in material and life while they had an unused high
order T-type world right in their own back yard.  It
was hard to shake off the suspicion that there might be
a serpent of some kind hidden in this new Eden of ours,
one just waiting for the chance to bite.

     But the soldier wastes his time trying to
understand alien psychology.  The welfare of our exiled
fraction of the 54th Battle Group Earth Alliance was
the first order of business.  Defeat is a unmanning
thing and we had to keep our troopers busy to maintain
their morale.  A good share of the them had had
families back home, wives and even children.  The idea
of a permanent separation from loved ones is a bitter
pill for a family man, and it's pure poison if you let
him wallow in his loss.  For that reason, I had my five
captains and ten lieutenants drive the men hard,
especially during those first few weeks -- exploring,
cutting timber, constructing shelters and latrines, and
foraging for a food supply.  

     We were out of the war, probably for good, but our
outfit had always been first-rate and I intended to
keep it that way.  Very few of the rank and file were
career men and so didn't like the idea of living in the
army for the rest of their days.  I sympathized, but
discipline had to be preserved.  It was better to live
in a well-ordered organization indefinitely than to
degenerate into a pack of bewiskered, self-pitying bums
on a camp-out.  

     Our survey had selected a campsite located a
couple miles from our original landing, a slight rise
overlooking a fast-running creek which analyzed pure
and would supply all our needs for water.  Though our
men were kept hard at it, the private soldier on a
detail can put his shovel down when the sergeant or
lieutenant is out of sight and gripe to his buddies for
a few minutes, but I had no such chance, especially not
in front of my officers.  Capture had badly shaken them
all and so, to keep them steady, I had to preserve
their confidence in me.  That meant acting like I knew
all the answers.  The trouble was, I didn't know half
of them.

     That was pressure -- and loneliness -- of the
worst kind, the kind that will buckle a man if he
doesn't have a friend with whom he can be honest.  The
closest thing I had to a buddy on Klink was Dr.
Sebastian Lowry, the only surgeon who had been aboard
our ship when the Assies took it.  Unlike most of my
other officers, Lowry was not a careerist, but had been
drafted as warrant officer for the medical corps.  Dr.
Lowry had formerly run a civilian practice and even
after spending a year in military-specific medical
training no real soldier would ever have mistaken him
for an army man.  But Sebastian was a good doctor, a
clear thinker, and always game for a round of poker.  

                           #

     Our encampment of 537 men and officers was hardly
up and running before IT happened for the first time.  

     The moons over Klink were beginning their next
conjunction, pairing up like a pair of women's knobs,
when Pvt. Rick Halder disappeared.  The man had simply
been standing in front of the members of his squad
when, at 14:07, he turned into a silhouette of white
light and faded from view without even leaving a sooty
spot behind.  We knew of no weapon that acted on human
flesh that way, but as soon as I received the report I
put the battle group on alert and sent every available
man out searching for enemy snipers.  Because of the
confusion, it was only a little later that we realized
that a second private, Lionel Olson, was also
unaccounted for.  No one had seen him "go," but it
seemed likely that he had vanished in the same bizarre
fashion as Halder.  

     But there was no follow-up attack and search
failed to identify anything unusual in the vicinity. 
At sunset, I ordered the perimeter heavily patrolled,
though what men armed with knives might do against a
serious attack was left open to doubt.  Our pickets
were not disturbed during the night and we recommenced
the search at sunup.  The morning patrols soon turned
up something that we weren't looking for.

     Two women were discovered not far from camp,
sleeping side by side, unconscious but apparently
unhurt.  Each was about nineteen or twenty -- a dark-
honey blonde and a brunette.  Each was wearing uniforms
like ours -- exactly like ours and much too large for
them.

     You might have thought that our men had found
treasure.  "Isn't this an answer to our prayers, Major
Breen!" crowed Sgt. Gold into my ear as we followed the
two females as they were borne back to camp on
makeshift stretchers.  "I only hope that there's plenty
more sleeping beauties where these came from."

                           #

     I followed the stretchers into the newly-finished
hospital where Dr. Lowry, assisted by his young medic,
Alan Drew, transferred the newly-arrived women to the
cots.  Lowry's first observation was that they appeared
to be anesthetized.    

     I thought back upon Gold's excitement just then. 
Once Lowry had brought the girls around, I could
foresee all kinds of discipline problems.  We now had
about five hundred men starved for female companionship
and only two of the latter to go around.  The visitors
would have to be sent home as soon as possible for
their own good -- and ours.
 
     "They're not comatose, are they, Doc?" I asked.

     "You'll be the first to know, Rupe," he promised.

     "They must be lost colonists from some earlier
prisoner drop --" I conjectured, knowing that the
aliens had captured several Terran outposts during the
last ten years and had evacuated the settlers to parts
unknown.  Was it so impossible that they, like us, had
been deported to Klink?  

     Just then Lowry opened the brunette's shirt and
read the tag around her neck.  "What the -- ?!" 

     "What is it, Doctor?" asked Drew. 

     "It says `Richard Halder!'" Lowry replied, his
face a mask of bewilderment.
  
     I read the tag for myself; it was Halder's all
right.  "How in hell did this girl get it?!" I
exclaimed.  "It should have been vaporized with Halder,
but here it is.  Does that mean that Halder might be
alive, too?"

     Lowry had no answer, but just then Drew began
searching the blonde and found a similar tag around her
neck.  It said "Lionel Olson." 

     "You've got to bring them around, Doc," I urged. 
"We've got to know what we're up against."

     "Then give me some working space, Rupe!  I mean
it! -- Get out of here!"

     In the infirmary a doctor's order was final, so I
contained my impatience and left the two men to their
work.  There was not much I could do except wait. 
Because of the crisis I had suspended even the
construction teams.  Our men were getting good at
carpentry and every day we had been packing away some
of our modular shelters as more permanent barracks
replaced them.  The most useful thing I was able to do
was to send word to the search squads that the missing
men's tags had been found and the troopers might
possibly be alive.  We were, I guessed, up against
alien kidnappers using matter-to-energy-to-matter
technology.  BEM's who had that kind of hardware would
very likely turn out to be tough customers.

     But through it all I remained preoccupied by the
mystery of the women and a strange thought occurred to
me.  Was this bizarre affair some sort of exchange, a
trade, a couple of "their" people for a couple of ours? 
Who would do such a thing, and why?  That wasn't human
thinking at work -- it was a trade rat's!  It could
also be an exercise of alien intelligence.

     I had not been back in my quarters long before Dr.
Lowry burst in looking like he'd just run at full tilt
for a kilometer -- not just the couple hundred feet
from his infirmary.  This shaken, perspiring man was
hardly the same steady professional who had thrown me
out of his facility just an hour before.  He started
jabbering out a report that made me think that he must
have been breathing chemical vapors.  More to confirm
that diagnosis than to credit what he was telling me, I
followed Lowry back to the infirmary at the double-
quick.

     Once inside the rough-plank structure, I saw that
both females were awake.  One, the brunette, was
sitting up, but trembling, as if suffering from shock
-- head bent, fists clenched, shoulders quaking.  The
other was in a fetal position and seemed even more far
gone.  I addressed the brunette: 

     "Excuse me, Miss --" I began, but stopped myself. 
What if what the girl had told Lowry was true?  I
suddenly realized that I didn't know how to address the
patient.  I softened my tone so as not to frighten her. 

     "Can you -- can you tell me your name?" I queried. 


     The girl didn't even raise her head.  I lifted her
chin with my fingertips.  I had seen expressions like
hers on men who had just been gut-shot.   "What's you
name?!" I repeated firmly.

     Her glance was frantic; she was trying to speak,
but the words wouldn't come.  

     "That's all right," I coaxed.  "Take all the time
you need."

     "P-Private Halder, sir." she finally answered. 
"D-Don't you kn-know me, sir --?!  Christ, don't you
know me?!"

                           #

     What the girl was trying to tell me was beyond
credibility.  I fought against the whole idea until
long after the facts could no longer be denied.  I had
questioned the young woman who claimed to be Halder
intensely, growing ever more unnerved until she had
broken down and Lowry made me desist.  The blonde, for
her part, remained unfit for interrogation.  I was
trying hard to doubt that the brunette was Pvt. Rick
Halder, but she was absolutely desperate to convince me
otherwise.  I went away, still not a believer.

     But two more men disappeared that afternoon and we
realized then that we could be on the brink of a
disaster.  It was deja vu when two more girls were
found the next morning.  Just as we feared, once able
to speak they identified themselves as the missing
soldiers.  It was the same story when a fifth and sixth
man disappeared, and the fifth and sixth woman was
found.  

     This thing was a nightmare that we couldn't wake
up from.  It defied all rational explanation.  Every
day the number of affected personnel grew.  For some
strange reason none of the transformed men possessed
any memory of the time in which they had been away.

     In their strange new female incarnations, the
affected soldiers usually looked about eighteen to
twenty, though there was a range of variation.  The age
of the original male seemed to be irrelevant; there
appeared to be a fountain of youth on Klink, but not a
man of us would have taken the treatment had we been
offered the choice.  According to Dr. Lowry's
observations, the transformed men -- the
"transformees," as we were soon calling them -- usually
came back in very good physical condition, with any
previously obtained scars and physical defects
removed -- including the last phalanx of the little
finger that Sergeant Pitts had once lost and had now
apparently regrown.  

     Psychologically the transformees were all
suffering.  Lowry thought that this was not a condition
deliberately induced into the victims, nor even the
effects of being terrorized during their period of
captivity.  Instead he believed that it came from the
soldiers' traumatic loss of identity.  Also, it was the
nature of males, especially men accustomed to military
life, to be repulsed by the very idea of effeminacy. 
It was as though the patients' minds were interpreting
what had happened to them as a profound kind of
physical violation.  They were showing what the doctor
thought was something very like post-rape trauma in
women.  

     Lowry had no treatment, not even a theory of a
treatment, for the metamorphosis.  As for the trauma,
he had nothing to recommend except a sparing dole of
tranquilizers and anti-depressants and the prescription
of rest.  Sometimes the transformees' reaction to their
condition was so violent or hysterical that restraint
had to be called for.  

     There was no more space in the infirmary for them
all after the first few days and so Sebastian farmed
his patients out to the huts.  After all, their problem
was mental and emotional, not physical.  Nonetheless,
both he and Drew worked long hours, calling upon the
new-made women each day and monitoring how they were
coming along.

     Meanwhile, we were still trying to discover what
was responsible for this incomprehensible phenomenon. 
Over the next couple weeks we sent search parties as
far out as a hundred kilometers, looking primarily for
aliens.  They discovered nothing whatsoever -- nothing
except dismaying fact that when a group went beyond a
certain vague range from our main body the same unseen
powers began to act upon them also, abducting and
transforming searchers exactly as if they were a
separate group which required separate attention.  

     The men's fear grew daily as the transformation
count rose.  Since dispersion only increased our
problems, I decided to keep our men close together. 
That at least kept the number of sex-changes down to
just two per day while we tried to figure out what was
going on.
  
     Whatever lay behind our predicament, it didn't
respect rank.  Captain Ames vanished about two weeks
after the first incident, only to reappear the next
morning as a hard-bodied young female with a halo of
fluffy blonde hair and a face like an angel.  It
occurred to me that his fate was brutally ironic.  It
had been Ames who not so long before had said, "We have
everything we need for a party, except the dames."  Now
we had more "dames" than we wanted -- and we were
getting more every day.

     At first none of the stricken soldiers were fit
for work.  They spent much of their time in bed,
suffering from deep depression, huddling out of sight,
ashamed to be seen, but sometimes wandered about the
camp like somnambulists.  Most of the time the
transformees remained quiet and easy to handle,
although there was the occasional fit of whimpering or
outbreak of screaming.  
  
     None of the rest of us knew how to react and our
morale plummeted.  Comrades were becoming
unrecognizable strangers and everyone was afraid that
he'd be next.   That was the worst of it -- the fear. 
Sometimes friends came through for their transformed
comrades, but to the majority the transformees were
pariahs.  

     I saw groups dissolve without a word spoken when a
woman, perhaps not looking where she was going or
desperate for companionship, came near.  Fear makes the
human animal cruel, alas.  The mere sight of the
transformees evoked terror in most soldiers.  The 54th
had been a cohesive outfit, its members used to looking
out for one another.  They were not able to act that
way now and were deeply ashamed of themselves.  All our
men, both the transformed and the others, were taking a
heavy mental beating and we didn't have a clue where it
was it all leading.
  
     Then something ghastly happened, something that
most of us still carry like an open wound to this day. 
Lionel Olson, one of the first two transformees, had
been lodged with Halder in a hut of their own.  Olson
had never really become rational and, a couple days
after leaving the infirmary, she opened one of her own
arteries with a utility knife and bled to death before
we found her in the morning.  

     Olson's sudden death hit every one of us like a
laser cannon.  What idiots we had been!  We should have
anticipated the possibility of suicide.  I cursed
myself for an incompetent, unthinking fool.  But
neither had it occurred to the mystified and harried
Dr. Lowry, and I think that weighed heavily upon him,
also.  

     Despite our regrets, it was too late to help
Olson.  All we could do was lay her into a grave and
put over it a board explaining that Lionel Olson had
died "a good man, a beloved comrade, and a soldier of
only twenty-six."  

     After that ordeal we knew what we were up against
and every new transformee was placed under a suicide
watch.  This was intended to continue until Lowry felt
confident that the soldier's -- the woman's --
emotional state was no longer life-threatening.  This
tied up a lot of people, more each day, and the work on
our camp drastically slowed.

     Everyone's nerves were frayed.  How long would it
be before there had to be an explosion?

                      **********


                       Chapter 2

     *But, being awaked, I do despise my dream.*        
                         KING HENRY IV, Part II

     I visited Ames in -- her? his? -- hut.  

     We often found ourselves referring to our
miserable comrades as "hers" and "shes," but guiltily. 
We did it unconsciously at first, but couldn't help
ourselves and it finally became too commonplace to
notice, but the pronouns always reeked of insult and
betrayal.  It was as if we were telling these
unfortunate soldiers that they were out of the club,
that they didn't belong anymore, that they had become
something different and apart.

     Ames shared a hut with her friend and suicide
watcher, Capt. Philbrick.  I found the transformed
soldier sprawled lifelessly upon her cot, staring at
the ceiling with an expression of inner torment.  She
didn't seem to see me at first and I heard her murmur a
one-word question:  "Why?"  

     "Captain Ames," I addressed the traumatized woman
carefully.

     She looked my way, her eyes full of pain -- a real
pain, though not of the physical kind.  I thought that
I had come prepared, but now found myself pitying the
sad, sorry ruin that was all that was left of the once
personable and jocular Montgomery Ames.  

     I had no words to offer beyond the blandest
inquiry after her health.  Duty and common curtesy had
required the call of me, but what could I say or do to
give comfort?   I was no psychologist, no clergyman.  I
didn't know how to avoid doing possible harm.  Should I
coddle the captain like the nineteen year-old girl that
she resembled, or comport myself with the kind of
reserve that a soldier such as Ames expected of his
superior officer?  Should I lie, tell her -- him --
what he -- she -- wanted to hear -- that she -- he --
would soon be all right, that Lowry was working on a
way to reverse the metamorphosis?

     I couldn't sink so low and Ames would have to be
pretty far gone to believe any such rot.  She knew as
well as I did that Dr. Lowry believed the
transformations to be genetic, not surgical.  How could
we, with our limited means and resources, ever hope to
unscramble a human being's chromosomes?  Of course,
given a major medical facility, a good deal could be
done cosmetically by cutting and transplanting, by
applying hormone therapy, but Lowry possessed neither
the equipment, the pharmaceuticals, nor the training to
attempt anything so sophisticated.

     Unless we managed to capture the people or the
equipment responsible and make them or it reverse the
process, the transformees were almost certainly doomed
to remain physiological females for -- well, if not for
life, for as long as our unknown enemy wanted to keep
them that way.

     I excused myself after a few minutes, but I kept
thinking about what Ames had said.  The captain was not
the first transformee whom I had heard asking the
question "Why?" in that same desperate, despairing
tone.  It struck me as strange.  I would have supposed
that their burning question should have been "How?" 

                           #

     I tried to visit my transformed officers and
N.C.O.'s with some regularity, all of them in pretty
much the same state as Capt. Ames -- able to shake
their heads despondently to direct questions, if asked
insistently enough, but seldom spontaneous or
conversational.  For that reason, my visits to Ames and
the others degraded into an ordeal.  How could I help
them?  How should another human being relate to these
unhappy creatures, either as a commander or a comrade? 

     Fortunately, over the passing weeks, Lowry
confirmed what common sense had been telling us from
the beginning, that the transformees responded best if
not treated differently from others, but were accepted
as the men they had been -- men who perhaps were
somewhat impaired by stress neuroses and/or physically
wounding.  Our regard and respect seemed to be the best
tonic for our unfortunate mates.

                           #

     Our command staff was still working on the theory
of alien hostility.  One idea we floated was that the
Assies' were subjecting us to psychological torture to
break our spirit.  But why so?  We were already their
prisoners.  If they wanted to break us, they had a
thousand simpler methods to go about it.  In fact, they
had given no sign that they were interested in us at
all.  Or was it to test a new weapon for use against
the Alliance?  Not likely.  A "sex-change ray" seemed
like a damned fool tool for a military campaign.  Even
if the enemy had such a thing, what was the strategic
gain?  Why not just kill humans in the tried and true
fashion?

     At one staff meeting Lieutenant Chih wondered out
loud whether transformation was like counting coup to
some alien mind, a practice which existed among Amerind
warriors in frontier days.  Some of the others argued
that we weren't in battle.  Our attackers were
"counting coup" in a jail cell, the act of a coward,
not a hero.

     Then there was another idea -- that we were being
progressively changed into a population of slaves.  As
women -- demoralized and physically weaker -- we'd be
easier to handle by overseers.  Also, we could be
reduced to sex objects, should the aliens suffered from
the same lewd drives that aliens seemed to in bad
adventure sim vids.  It all sounded like sci-fi porn to
me and, anyway, if the Assies or some indigenous race
of Klink were intent upon reducing us to slavery, why
were they returning the "slave girls" to their friends
instead of putting them to work as soon as they were
created?  

     An even more repulsive theory postulated that the
Assies or some other alien race was female-poor and
needed breeding stock.  That was food for nightmare if
anything could be, but Lowry nixed it.  He thought that
while it might be remotely possible for a human womb to
incubate an alien fetus following in vitro
fertilization, it seemed too far-fetched for his taste. 
Moreover, none of the women had been returned pregnant.

     Even so, his examinations did turn up something
strange -- a tiny anomalous particle buried in the
medulla of each transformee's brain.  What could this
tiny bead-in-the-brain mean? I had demanded.  Lowry had
no clue and, with his limited equipment and inadequate
staff, he was not going to perform such anything like
brain surgery upon physically healthy soldiers.

     The only good news that came along in those first
few weeks was that Private First Class Hitchcock, an
early transformee, seemed to be pulling out of her
traumatic phase.  Undoubtedly, we had to thank Pvt.
Harold Roberts for her rapid progress.  Roberts had
stayed by Hitchcock's side night and day through some
pretty bad episodes and eventually the transformee had
begun to respond to TLC.  Lowry was impressed with
Roberts' results and made recommendations to other
suicide watchers based upon his observations.  

     But while I knew she was on the mend, Pvt.
Hitchcock appeared at my hut asking for a duty
assignment much sooner than I had expected her to.  She
still looked somewhat shaken, but Lowry had advised me
that a return to a semi-normal routine might be the
best thing to bring her along to full recovery.  A
person functions best, he thought, when he feel himself
to be a useful and contributing member of a team.  I
couldn't argue with that logic.  It was my hope, in
fact, that all the women could very soon be
reintegrated into the life of the camp.  If it didn't
happen, we would soon become one large, paralyzed
mental ward.

     How strange it was to sit there, taking stock of a
soldier who was very familiar to me, but whom I could
not recognize by appearance and hardly by mannerism. 
To the eye, Mark Hitchcock was a red-hair girl wearing
a uniform ludicrously too large for her.  I now
anticipated that clothing would become yet another
problem as things developed.  Pvt. Hitchcock had been a
big, barrel-chested male.  Now he -- she -- was only
some sixty kilos in weight and about l60-l70
centimeters in height.   Her sleeves and pantslegs had
to be rolled up to keep them out of the way and she had
also needed to bore a new notch in the middle of her
belt to hold her pants up, even given the added
purchase of her womanly hips. 

     I intended to put Hitchcock to work at something
light and K.P. might have been a logical choice.  But
Lowry had advised me against imposing anything that
would smack of "housekeeping."  He was worried that the
transformees might react negatively to "women's work." 
So, instead, I decided to attach the recovering
Hitchcock to a foraging detail.  It would give her a
good deal of exercise in the open air but require
little heavy exertion of her.  On second thought, I
added Roberts to the same group.  We didn't know yet
how the men would react to having a transformee working
side by side with them, and so having Roberts on hand
to look after his friend made sense.  Hitchcock seemed
happy enough with my decision and so I dismissed her. 

     Watching her go, I remembered that it had been
Hitchcock who had led Lowry into a disturbing new
theory.  The transformee had insisted that she had
recognized her face -- her present female face -- in
the mirror.

     That seemed impossible.  Hitchcock looked nothing
like the thirtyish, prematurely bald, black-bearded man
of her former life.  As with most of the transformees,
there was not even a family resemblance between her old
shape and her new.  Lowry had nonetheless accepted the
unlikely premiss as a possibility worth investigating
and encouraged Hitchcock to try to remember everything
she could.  Finally the girl was able to say that she
had often seen her present face in her daydreams when
she had been a man!  What Mark Hitchcock was telling
us, in essence, was that "she" had been changed into
"his" own fantasy girl.
                           #

     Lowry couldn't put much credence in this bizarre
notion at first, but he and young Drew had nonetheless
tested the theory, going around to some of the other
transformees equipped with mirrors and carefully-
crafted questions.  Many of the women, they found, had
never looked carefully at their own reflection and even
now had to be carefully coaxed before they would do so. 
To Lowry's and Drew's surprise, a good many
transformees reacted like Hitchcock, claiming that
their faces did indeed look familiar.  But one, an
Arab-American named Ulad Jami, was even more specific. 
She had, to her horror,  had found herself looking into
a face that she recognized very well indeed -- the face
of a fantasy belly dancer whose undulating image she --
as a he -- had been assiduously masturbating to since
high school.  

     Dr. Lowry thought that he was on to something, so
he worked out a theory and ran it by me.

     Every heterosexual man, the doctor alleged,
harbors the immensely strong image of a particular
woman in his unconscious mind.  This image may be know
to him only as a masturbation fantasy or a daydream
lover, but she actually represents the deeply-buried
feminine aspect of his own psychology.  She is his
intuitive, emotional side, his "inner woman," so to
speak.  Psychologists have long been aware of her
existence and have referred to her as the "anima."  

     In a healthily-integrated male personality this
anima, as counterpoised to the animus, the inner man,
provided the emotional depth and dimension that a man
needed for achieving and maintaining friendships, for
appreciating and loving his mate, for enjoying and
treasuring his children.  In the same way, women
possessed an unconscious animus as a guiding principle
in her struggle against odds, in approaching the world
logically, and in striving for long-ranged goals.  The
anima in man and the animus in woman gave the two 
sexes a common ground, a capacity for sympathy and
understanding that prevented them from reacting to one
another as though they were two different alien races.

     In most Earth cultures, masculine logic and
feminine emotion remained in eternal conflict.  The
more masculine a man was, or sought to become, the more
he instinctively repressed and denied his anima.  By
young adulthood a man usually accomplished this to a
great degree.  For example, while women seemed to make
friends easily over their entire lifetime, males were
normally capable of doing so only in childhood and
youth.  These were the true friends which he carried
with him through life, until they were inevitably
attritioned away and he was left pretty much alone. 
The adult male, in contrast, might acquire new chums,
buddies, comrades, pals along the way, but rarely that
deep sort of camaraderie that would invite him to touch
upon subjects that were more than impersonal or
superficial, such as  discussions of hopes, fears, or
expectations.  

     Women, for their part, often had their own battles
with their animus, but there were fewer social
sanctions against a woman behaving in a masculine
manner, and so this reduced the individual's inherent
psychological tension.  During the short-lived feminist
era, in fact, some women deliberately gave free reign
to their harshest animus-inspired qualities.  Instead
of sanctioning these extremist and excitable females,
society regarded them as courageous and "ballsy."  But,
alas, animus-worship only resulted in the creation of
seriously dysfunctional personalties of another kind. 
Psychologists differed in their recommendations but,
within reasonable limits, it seemed that a little
repression was actually healthy for both men and women.

     Lowry had drifted, but now he got back to his main
point.  He thought that a man's anima, though held
prisoner in the dark, was always engaged in a struggle
for its free expression.  As clever and seductive as
any flesh-and-blood female, the wily anima early on
discovered that at least one route of escape lay open
to her -- by way of a man's libido.  The male libido
welcomed, even sought out, the image of Woman, but in
entering into the libido, the anima, like any alien
intruder, was forced to blend into the territory lest
she be discovered and expelled.  

     The inner woman, therefore, will usually incarnate
herself as a fantasy image, usually of a young and
sexually alluring temptress or sweetheart, a form that
the male unconscious would not reject but cherish.  So
strong is this image, in fact, that males seeking a
mate in the real world very often measured the
qualities of the women they met not, as once commonly
believed, by the standards of his mother, but of his
own anima.

     I could actually follow Lowry's theory for a short
distance.  It was well known that a man possessed a
squeamish side which, unfortunately, got in the way of
his being a good soldier.  One aim of basic training
was to burn off that weakness.  The young man was put
through hell-on-earth, driven past his own imaginary
boundaries, required to be all that he could be -- but
only as a male.  Whenever a soldier seemed to be
flagging, seemed to be accepting any sort of personal
limit, a bawling drill sergeant, his judgmental father
figure, was johnny-on-the-spot calling him a "girl," a
"pussy," a "faggot," or a "woman."  That kind of
treatment usually inspired the recruit to redouble his
efforts to be a man.  But Lowry was saying that,
despite this, the "inner woman" was never completely
killed off, she was just locked away in the back of
human awareness.  

     In the cauldron of the ultra-masculine male
psyche, even more so than in that of the man in the
street, the anima was transformed from what perhaps had
been a well-rounded persona to a powerful distillation
of pure feline sexuality.  Once she existed in the
psyche, men sought her out in the real world -- women
of immediate and obvious sexuality:  strippers,
hookers, b-girls.  But while Nature allowed the anima
to be transformed, it was very rarely killed.  In fact,
to actually kill her, or even hermetically lock her
away without any possible means of expression, would
have proven fatal to a man's mental health.  The loss
of what amounted to his emotional resources had to
produce a madman --  possibly a dangerous one.   

     I had always taken Lowry's ideas seriously, but I
could not bring myself to cross over the final bridge
in this case.  That my men were trained, hardened
fighters, could be taken for granted.  They had seen
slaughter and been the agents of it, had watched
friends die in their arms and had taken life with their
own hands.  Hard and disciplined though they were, none
of them were without feelings.  Men had their full
compliment of emotion, but it was simply men's emotion. 
A male might have sex fantasies, but that didn't mean
that he had a full-blown female persona inside himself. 
In fact, it probably meant exactly the opposite.  

     After Lowry had said his piece, I asked, "What are
you really driving at, Doc?"

     As expected, Sebastian didn't have a theory, just
a wild guess.  "If you assume advanced enough genetics,
it's not hard to make a female out of a male.  You only
have to take away his Y chromosomes and clone his X
chromosomes to replace them, or leave his Y's where
they are, but enhance them to an X status."

     I just shook my head.  It seemed that the good
doctor had crawled out upon the limb of pure fantasy. 
There was much I could have said to set him right, but
I didn't see any need to be harsh.  "Surely there's
more going on than just genetic alteration," I
suggested with a tone of calculated mildness.

     "That's true," affirmed Lowry, perhaps not picking
up on my skepticism.  "There's also some sort of
morphing going on.  My theory is this:  Aliens don't
necessarily know what human females look like, but yet
for some reason they want them to be cosmetically
perfect here on Klink.  So, to do this, they're looking
for some sort of pattern to follow.  If these assumed
aliens can telepathically tap into a male's mind,
they'll readily isolate a powerful image of a healthy
young female.  This is, of course, the subject's own
favorite sex fantasy, or rather his own anima repressed
into one."

     I advised Lowry to keep this theory to himself. 
If word ever got out that our respected healer believed
that the soldiers of the 54th would soon all transform
into their own masturbation fantasies, the morale of
bravest of them would break like a strand of dry
spaghetti.

                           #

     The role call of transformees grew steadily with
no end in sight -- two a day, every day.  Fortunately,
another early transformee, Marduke, was giving signs of
recovery.  I put her on Hitchcock's detail, hoping that
the two might provide sympathy and moral support for
one another.

     The worst blow of all was the loss of Dr. Lowry.
The morning after his disappearance the stretcher-
bearers brought him back in the shape of a fine-
featured, dark-haired woman who was, physically at
least, in her mid- to late- twenties.  

     I studied Lowry's new face with consternation as
she lay unconscious in the infirmary, tended by Alan
Drew.  She looked exactly like the sort of woman that I
would have expected a man like Sebastian to conjure up,
assuming that his fantasy theory was true -- not a
dame, not a babe, but a lady -- a lady of grace and
dignity, not the hormonal show girl and sex-sim types
who were gradually making our camp look like a girlie
revue.  

     "Anything I can do?" I asked the medic.

     "You're needed everywhere, Major Breen," came
Drew's slow, heavy reply.  "I'll take care of -- of 
Dr. Lowry -- and the other one. -- But if you could,
sir --"

     "Yes?"

     "I don't know much about the sergeant's friends. 
We're going to need to find a suicide watcher for him
-- for her."  I nodded and I looked across at Sgt. Gold
on the other cot.  It had been Gold who had once
remarked that he hoped that there would be "plenty
more" sleeping beauties where the first two -- Halder
and Olson -- had come from.  I hoped that when he --
she -- awakened, that foolish wish would not add fuel
to the furnace of her torment.

     No transformation up to that morning had shocked
me more than Lowry's.  Perhaps I had unconsciously 
taken it for granted that our physician would himself
prove immune to the disease, or at least that he would
be the last to succumb.  It hadn't happened that way
and now I was left thinking that if this fate could
befall Sebastian Lowry himself, who in the world could
resist it?

     No one?  

     I took stock.  Olson's suicide had left 536 men --
persons  -- in our encampment.  In about two months
almost a quarter of our command had been transformed. 
In another six months, what?   

     I refused to look that far ahead.

     While I considered our ongoing dilemma, another
disaster struck.  Lowry's fate had affected me on a
profound personal level, but I had underestimated the
effect that it might have upon others -- those who had
been trusting in our doctor to find an antidote to the
transformations.  Our measures had so far prevented any
more transformee suicides, but what we hadn't
anticipated was suicide among the males.  Herb
Woolenska, a demolitions specialist, had left his
comrades without a word of explanation shortly after
Dr. Lowry was brought back.  He had climbed the steep
hill overlooking our camp and, from its highest cliff,
had jumped to his death.    

     I felt again what I had felt when Olson died.  But
what most bothered me most this time was that some part
of me thought that it understood Herb Woolenska.

                           #

     We buried Woolenska the next day, and that night I
did my best to block out the image of his grave plot. 
I had lost men in combat before, but these suicides
bespoke a fundamental failure on my part.  I wished so
much that I could talk my troubles to someone, to let
out all that was eating on me, but that had never been
possible except, to a small degree, with Sebastian
Lowry.  But now he was gone.

     Emotionally at least, I was equating Lowry's
transformation with his death.  I visited his -- or, as
I might as well put it -- her bedside several times
each day, a generosity with my time which I never had
extended to any of the others.  Though she had
recovered consciousness quickly, Sebastian seemed to be
suffering just like all the others.  Somehow I had
expected -- or at least had hoped -- that the same
doctor who had carefully studied the phenomenon of
transformation trauma would prove more resilient
against it than anyone else -- and a little less human.

     In the dark of night I found myself trying not to
think of transformees, of women, and especially not of
Woman.  Woman with a capital W.  From an ideal of
beauty and pleasure, I'm sure that to most men upon
Klink Woman had become an image of terror and loathing. 
She was the witch, the evil goddess, the Medusa.  She
was Scylla reaching out; she was Charybdis swallowing
entire crews.  She was every image of fear and
degradation that Mankind had ever conceived of.  I
could almost wish there was no such thing as a woman in
the entire universe.

     Each night the phantasms of my unconscious mind
were invariably transformed into amazing shapes -- and
all too often into the shape of a woman.  Not Scylla,
not Charybdis, but Another.  I didn't know her name;
she existed nowhere except in my own mind and, despite
our close association over the years, I never named
her.  Or, more honestly said, I had given her a
thousand names, but none that were a part of her; they
were like the names that a script-writer might give to
a character.  The Nameless Woman had had many starring
roles in my fantasies:  the sexpot in the bustier, the
show girl in feathers, the bar girl with the slit
skirt, the barbarian slave with the steel collar around
her neck, awaiting the touch of her master -- who was
himself the symbol of the primordial, conquering male. 

     She was lovely, this Nameless One.  Lithe, light
of complexion, her breasts, full and firm, were the
kind of breasts that a man longed to cup in his hands,
to knead with eager fingers.  Her narrow waist curved
into bewitching hips and her black hair was ajiggle
with bouncing ringlets.  At times she seemed to come so
close to me that I could see deeply into those gleaming
aquamarine eyes.  If she had been a vehicle, her motor
would have raced, powered by a supercharge of passion
and sexuality.  But at other times she was not a
machine at all, but a warm and gentle pet.  And in this
role she could transform effortlessly from the bikinied
beauty upon the sunlit beach, to the sultry
lover-companion waiting for her man in the ruddy light
of an open fire, a last greeting him with brimming
champaign glasses held in each of her beautiful hands,
her red lips lifted for a kiss, her flesh fragrant with
exotic scent.

     "Damn it!"  I muttered into the stifling darkness. 
With an effort of will, I drove the Nameless One away
and kept her away by counting mathematical tables
determinedly -- until I dropped off into a fitful
sleep.

     I awoke with a headache, but felt disinclined to
seek relief in my bottle of ILW tablets.  I could still
work even as my head throbbed and all of us had to go
easy on our medical supplies; the truly sick might be
in dire need of them someday.  

     Crossing the camp after breakfast, a delegation --
a mob, really -- engulfed me.  I demanded to know what
was on their minds and it became clear that Lowry's
transformation had shocked them all out of their wits. 
They had given up hope of defeating the phenomenon and
were demanding to leave the camp, to escape from
whatever it was that had us in its sights.  I tacitly
reminded them that our detached parties had always
suffered separate transformations of their own and even
going out a hundred kilometers hadn't helped the
situation.  I speculated that it might be a planet-wide
phenomenon.

     "Maybe not!" shouted a ring leader.  "We'll go out
a thousand kilometers!  Two thousand!  You can stay
behind with the women if you want!"

     I analyzed the explosive quality of the soldiers'
fear.  Terror could easily turn otherwise sensible men
violent and so I maneuvered to bleed off a little of
the pressure before it caused a blow-up.  

     "Possibly you're right, soldier," I admitted
impatiently.  "I'll consider your proposal.  It's
something we should make it the first order of business
at the next staff meeting -- tonight or tomorrow.  But
detachment is a major undertaking and it's going to
have ramifications which you men probably haven't
considered so far.  We can't approach such a serious
matter in a panic."   

     They didn't trust me, but neither were they yet
willing to call me a liar to my face.  Now that the
situation seemed to have calmed somewhat, I pushed my
way through the crowd.  I half-expected a blow from
behind, but the men still hadn't worked themselves up
to outright mutiny.  Even so, I had no doubt that ugly
outcome lay just around the corner and, unless I played
my bad hand very carefully, we were in for trouble.  It
wasn't lost upon me that this was the first serious
challenge to my authority so far and knuckling under to
it would go a long way toward ending my capacity to
command effectively. 

     Moreover, I firmly believed that flight would be
counterproductive.  Men would be transformed along the
trail and what would a panicky mob of refugees do? 
Flee on ahead and leave the poor devils behind, to wake
up alone, traumatized and lost?  Transformees needed
watching, tending.  Had we fallen so low?  Was it dog
eat dog now?  Devil take the hindmost?  Where was the
esprit de corps of the old 54th?  How could a band of
brothers such as ours start turning against one another
even in circumstances as bad as these?

     Given my headache and my gloomy state, I was at
much less than my best when Dr. Lowry paid me a visit.

     This was a call that I had not been expecting.  It
had been only three days since her transformation, much
too soon for a transformee to throw off her trauma. 
While Sebastian had lain asleep on her cot, her face
had been relaxed, innocent, my sympathy had gone out to
her.  Now those same features were tense and hard.  

     "How are you, Doc?" I inquired evenly.  It was
strange to call this woman "Doc."  Despite everything
that my mind knew to be true, my instincts told me that
she was a total stranger.  

     "I'm fine," Lowry informed me in a dead tone. 
"This shape is going to take a little getting used to,
naturally, but I've got work to do and I can't worry
about it."

     "You've been through hell, Doc," I said.  "You
don't have to do anything before you're up to it."

     "Don't make a fuss, Major!" she fired back, not in
a loud manner but harshly just the same.  "A man, a
woman.  What of it?  Two arms, two legs, a head. 
There's not all that much difference.  The mammae get
in the way, of course, and it's inconvenient having to
drop one's pants just to take a piss, but half the
human race gets along that way, so I guess I can, too."

     I wasn't so sure.  I thought that the doctor was
repressing and psychologists always said that
repression wasn't good.  Then again, I was no psych
myself.  Wasn't it possible that Lowry was showing the
very resilience that I had been hoping to see from 
her?  Still, I doubted that to be the case.  I even
doubted, in an emotional sense, that my caller was
Sebastian.  She might still be a competent doctor -- in
fact I prayed that she was -- but I could not convince
myself that this edgy woman had anything to do with the
cool and phlegmatic man I had known for several months
and had just begun to know well.   

     "If you really want to go back to work, you may,"
I told her.  "Just remember that you doctors always
make the worst patients.  If the going gets too hard,
don't push it.  Knock off and let Drew take over.  The
company needs its doctor at h--, uh, his best."

     "You can't hurt me with pronouns, Major," she said
flatly.  "I'll be all right."   

     Would she?  Strain lines were written into her
woman's magazine features and I detected a neurotic
tremble in her eyelids.  The stress bottled up inside
the physician betrayed itself at the corners of her
grim mouth. 

     With misgivings, I consented to her request and my
visitor let herself out.  I watched Lowry go, stepping
along awkwardly in her huge shoes and baggy, over-long
trousers.  What bothered me most was that my former
friend had only addressed me by rank during her visit
and not by name.  It put distance between us and
distance made everything harder.  But possibly her
distance was only a reflection of my own.  I had wanted
to help Sebastian, not to hurt her more, but Lowry was
aching, anyone could see that.  I doubted that she
could work productively at this point, but then again,
work might be the best therapy for her, just as it had
been for Hitchcock and Marduke.  

     I had to talk to Drew.  There was no one else
close enough to Sebastian to give me worthwhile advice.

                       ********


                       Chapter 3

          *Most friendship is feigning, 
           most loving mere folly.*
                         AS YOU LIKE IT

     The medic Alan Drew had had Dr. Lowry's confidence
for as long as I had known him.  Drew also had also
impressed me as being smart and competent.  We threshed
out the subject of Dr. Lowry, though it was only with
considerable reluctance that the private would discuss
his immediate superior in such terms.  

     "I'm worried," he admitted.  "She's pretending
that she's all right, but she's -- not."

     "Of course Lowry's not all right," I said.  "But
what do you think?  Can't she can work through this
better than -- than most of the others have?  She's a
doctor after all."  

     "I don't know.  Maybe she's not so much different
from the rest of us.  I'm most concerned that she's
bolted her suicide watch.  What exactly is it that you
want me to do, sir?"

     "Keep an eye on her.  If she becomes a danger to
herself, or commits any unacceptable medical blunders,
you should be the man who could best judge that."

     "If she suspects that I'm spying it will poison
our working relationship permanently."

     "It's not spying; it's evaluation and observation. 
For now, just watch her perform, listen to what she
says.  If she needs moral support, be there for her. 
You're good with -- these people.  I've seen you."

     "Thank you, Major, but it's no trick to handle
transformees.  They're human and they respond best when
they're treated that way.  But I had an idea that I
wanted to share with Dr. Lowry.  It seemed like the
wrong time to broach it with her, though."

     "What is it?"

     "I'm thinking of a support group."

     "A support group?  For the transformees?  Who'd be
in it?"

     "There's close to a hundred and thirty
transformees now.  Some seem to be settling down and
deciding that life goes on.  They can start helping one
another."

     His proposal made sense.  In fact, in a less
ambitious way, that had been my thinking when had I put
Hitchcock and Marduke together. "You may be right,
Private," I said.  "Any specific recommendations?"

     "Margrave and Hitchcock's progress has been very
encouraging.  And one or two of the others seems to be
shaping up every day.  Why don't we put the most
recovered transformees together in a work group of
their own?  Have them barracks together, too.  They
couldn't help but start talking over things and working
through their problems."

     "We should take this idea to Lowry," I suggested. 
"This sort of thing has to be her call, and unless we
relieve her, we can't go over her head.  If she agrees,
we'll put the recovering transformees in with Margrave
and Hitchcock, and then transfer them all to some
useful chore."

     Working together, we came up with a list of a
dozen women who had ceased to be basket cases,
including Halder and Capt. Ames.  

     "Ames is still having a rough time of it," I said. 
"It would be trouble if she flies off the handle and
starts pulling rank.  We'll have to make clear to
Margrave and Hitchcock that they have the medical
authority to keep her in line."

     "I agree, sir."

     I regarded Drew, unsure whether I should reprimand
him or not.  I wasn't used to privates who thought they
had to sign off on my recommendations.  But neither did
I want to wear a the proverbial chip.  It might have
been an innocent comment, given the pressure and
exhaustion that the medic had been subject too more
than most, and besides Drew was practically
irreplaceable at the moment and dressing him down now
wasn't a good way to kick our new project.  Of course,
the man always did seem to be a little too bold and
forward.  I thought that it came from interacting with
all the ranks as in a technical capacity.  With my head
aching, I decided that to say anything at all at that
moment would be to say too much.

     Keeping to the matter at hand, Drew and I did talk
the project over with Lowry -- and a surreal interview
that was!  It was as if she either didn't understand or
didn't care what we were talking about.  Since it was
clear that I wanted it done, however, the doctor simply
delegated the matter over to Drew and psychologically
took a powder.  That was really the best we could have
expected under the circumstances, and so I started
issuing orders.  

     The women on our list would form a furniture-
making detail.  My greatest misgivings concerned Ames. 
The captain would be expected to carry out work better
suited to an enlisted man while operating under the
supervision of privates.  As it turned out, it never
had to come to that.

                           #

     The matter of the unrest was a subject too
important to put off.  My staff meeting later that day
considered the idea of suppressing the panicky men by
force, but nobody was too keen on that idea.  It would
be like bottle up explosives.  To keep the matter alive
like an anaerobic bacteria in a corked bottle might
swing the majority of the men over to their side and
then break open more powerful than ever.  And, anyway,
if the malcontents weren't allowed to leave by
daylight, they'd probably go anyway, at night.  How
could we hold so many if they were determined to go
AWOL?  We hadn't even built a brig yet.  It had to be a
better solution to let the pressure off, to lance the
boil early.  Therefore, I was willing to detach the
restive men.  I reasoned that once they realized that
they couldn't escape the transformation plague by
flight, they would return more tractable. 

     I decided to place my senior captain, Ted
Crawford, in charge, assisted by Lt. Morrow.  Their
orders were to discover whether or not any geographical
limit to the phenomenon existed and, if not, to
persuade the detachees to return.  

     I summoned the entire muster to an assembly after
the noon mess and recounted the situation as I saw it,
reiterating my doubts about the proposed separation and
of my concern for the soldiers who would be transformed
along the march.  But, I assured the assembled men
that, if every reasonable precaution were taken to give
humane care for their casualties, I would not oppose
the division of the company.  

     I concluded with:  "This is the only detachment we
will be making, men.  If you stay, let it be because
you really intend to stick it out and obey the orders
of your officers."  With a bayonet, drew a line in the
dirt.  "Now, all who want to join the detachment will
step across this line."

     Fifty-three, a tenth of our total number, crossed
over.  This included a disproportionate number of fleet
techs, which was perhaps to be expected, since they had
not completely melded with our Battle Group as yet. 
But it bothered me that there were so many men whom I
knew that were willing to go; it made me feel like a
failure in my role of William B. Travis.  It was sad to
think that a handful of dirt-poor Texas sod-busters
three hundred years ago would have shown so much more
backbone in the hour of danger than had dozens of
former fire-eaters from the 54th.  But then again, the
men of the Alamo were only facing annihilation, not
womanhood.

     "All right," I said, "now I'll need some
additional --- personnel -- willing to accompany the
detachment as a sort of orderly corps. It will be your
duty to care for new transformees, and, as long as it
remains feasible, to return them to us here."

     There was of good turnout of volunteers for this
duty, including Hitchcock, Marduke, and several of the
women whom Drew and I had considered for our proposed
detail.  I actually couldn't accept as many willing
people as offered themselves.  All told, 76 men --
soldiers -- were detached.  At my request, Private Drew
would lead the auxiliaries and get them off to a good
start.  He would remain with the detachment for as long
as possible -- just a few days we thought -- then
return; the camp needed him too much to allow any
longer absence, not as long as Dr. Lowry was such an
uncertain commodity.  Anyway, I was looking forward to
Drew's report, since the more we understood the
psychology of this unrest, the better positioned we
would be for dealing with any similar problems in the
future.

     If we had a future.

     Until dark and through the following day, Crawford
and Morrow were hard at it, overseeing the equipping
and the organization of the detachment.  We hoped that
the mens' absence would be very temporary but, in the
meantime, the camp could only benefit from the
departure of such a panicky element.

     While this was happening, we lost our usual
compliment of men -- including Lipkin, who, ironically,
was going to be one of the detachees, and -- in what
was a heavy blow to our command structure, Captain
Tritcher.  Interestingly, Tritcher who had been black,
returned to us as a very fine-boned and pale-skinned
elfin blonde.  If it were not for their dog tags, I 
honestly would not have had a clue as to which soldier
was which.  This was the first occasion of a race
change accompanying a sex change and so I asked Lowry
for an opinion, but she was uninterested and unhelpful. 
I was pretty sure, though, that Tritcher was the
exception that proved the rule -- that what was
happening to us depended upon a man's psychology, not
his physiology.

     I regarded Lowry, whom, I thought, had been
perfunctory in her examination of the new transformees. 
Maybe this was becoming old stuff to her, or maybe it
was more disturbing  evidence of her stressful state.  

     "You've been through this yourself, Sebastian," I
remarked of a sudden.  "Aren't you able to give these
men some advice that will help them along?"

     "I don't have any advice for anybody, Major."

     So blunt, so cold.  I really missed the old Lowry. 
I made ready to leave, but just then caught sight of a
book of Shakespeare's plays lying on the table.  "Your
book, Doctor?" 

     "No, it's Drew's."

     I picked it up.  Back in high school and college I
had read most of Shakespeare's plays with great
enjoyment.  Unfortunately, over my army career, I would
have been much more likely to have been found reading
Clausewitz or Fuller.  I opened the volume to a random
page and my glance fell upon a line spoken by Petruccio
in "The Taming of the Shew:

     "I am preemptory as she proud-minded;
     And where two raging fires meet together          
     They do consume the thing that feeds their fury:   
     Though little fire grows great with little wind,   
     Yet extreme gusts will blow out fire and all:     
     So I to her and so she yields to me;
     For I am rough and woo not like a babe."

     "Say!" I exclaimed.  "Why couldn't we put on a
play for the camp.  It might be therapeutic."

     "Therapy is my department, Major," Lowry informed
me as nervelessly as a machine. "And that reminds me,
when you sent away my medic, you doubled my work load."

     "I thought our people would need him out there. 
Besides, he'll probably be back in a few days."  

     "Will he?  Maybe I'll have just another useless,
traumatized woman on my hands."  

     I put down the book, then left the infirmary
without another word.

                           #

     Each day I noted the names of the vanished men and
new transformees in my log.  Every day more names.  It
was as if we were a flock of sheep and the farmer was
coming for two of us every day with the gelding knife. 
I had never felt so helpless in all my life.  We were
fighting men, but we couldn't fight this thing.  We
absolutely couldn't understand it.  We couldn't even
run from it, though we were, futility, trying to fight,
understand, and run all at the same time. 

     The departure of the detachment left us a lot of
reorganization to attend to, such as reshuffling the
squads and work details.  Demoralized by events, my
officers performed as if they were pulling sledges
behind their backs.  I wasn't much better off and
welcomed the chance to knock it off at nightfall. 
After a light supper I still felt restless, and so went
outside, just to pace around under the light of Klink's
twin moons, and in that way try to work off my
depressed state.  

     The planet was a beautiful one, especially on
moonlit nights like this one -- the aroma of the
vegetation, the trilling calls of the night-flyers, the
wind in the trees, and the hundred little pipes,
croaks, and squawks whose makers we still did not know. 
At first we had all been too busy to care, and then too
preoccupied.  Would we ever enjoy the presence of mind
to take pleasure in the simple things?  Maybe when we
were all --

     No!  I would not even think about that.

     I continued my walk, my ears alert to the night
sounds.  Suddenly I heard something that didn't fit --
and it was coming from the infirmary.  I drifted over
in that direction and the closer I got, the more I
believed that I heard sobbing.  At first I assumed it
to be either Tritcher or Lipkin, but then remembered
that both of them had been moved out and placed under
their suicide watches.  So, who was still in the
infirmary and crying up a storm?  I poked my head
inside the door.  The sound was coming from Lowry's
sleeping room, so I crossed over and put my ear to the
door.  

     Yes, it was a Lowry's sobbing for certain.  I also
heard her mutter of just a few distinct words, like,
"God" and "please" and "why?"

     There was that damnable question again -- "Why?"  

     Sebastian was having a bad time of it and that
bother me tremendously.  I nearly knocked, but
something stopped me.  I didn't want to get myself
involved in something so personal as the doctor's
emotional ordeal.  I told myself that I hadn't been
asked to help and, like I have said, I was no
psychologist, no clergyman, not even very good at such
things as a layman.  In fact, my every attempt to give
Sebastian support over the last few days had been
rebuffed.  What should I do?  Offer to hold hands with
my old poker buddy?  She'd throw me out in a minute!

     But there was more to it than that.  To give
solace, the comforter has to have a reserve of positive
emotion within himself.  At that moment, in that place,
I had nothing more to give.  And putting thoughts of
our former friendship aside, I couldn't shake the idea
that it wasn't really Lowry behind that door, but
someone different, a stranger.  

     Don't remember making a decision to go, but the
next thing I knew my legs were carrying me away
stepping so softly that my boots couldn't be hear over
my friend's subdued weeping.

                           #

     I dreamed of Olson's grave again that night.  But
this time I saw chiseled into her marker a new name and
epitaph.  It read, "Sebastian Lowry, physician.  A good
man and a good friend."  I awoke in a cold sweat.  What
had I done?  Had I been insane?  The doctor was in no
condition to be left alone!  I thrust  my legs into my
trousers, ran bare-footed to the infirmary, and, not
pausing to knock, I thrust open Lowry's door.

     She lay there curled up, still fully clothed.  On
the floor near the bed lay a syringe.  I stared first
at it and then at her.  Sebastian didn't move, didn't
seem to be breathing.  I scrambled to my comrade's side
and turned her over.

     The woman's eyes opened in startlement.  "Rupe?!"
she gasped," -- Wha?"

     "Are you all right, Doc?  I thought --"

     I had thought she was dead, but I didn't dare
explain why I would believe that.

     Lowry said nothing for a moment, just resting on
her side, her eyes closed.  Then she whispered, "It
started coming out last night."

     "What did?"

     "The horror of it.  The -- grief, the loneliness,
the loss of identity.  The impossibility of facing this
by myself."

     "I'm sorry," I said, without bringing out exactly 
what I was sorry for.

     She shook her head.  "I thought I was doing all
right, but I wasn't.  I was numb, that's all.  When the
shock started to wear off, all of it slammed together
and it almost killed me."  

     I glanced down at the hypodermic on the floor.  
"I almost killed myself," she whispered.

     "W-What's in that thing?"

     "Dicorahylaminophen.  Instant death."

     "Doc!"

     "I felt so useless.  I couldn't help anyone, I
couldn't even help myself."  Then she let out a short,
bitter laugh.  "Also, I wasn't so keen on being a girl
for the rest of my life."

     She kept on laughing, skirting the edge of
hysteria, and then began reciting, "There was a little
girl, who had a little curl, right in the middle of her
forehead ....when she was good....when she was
good...."  She closed her eyes.

     I took her hand between mine and pressed it
reassuringly.  Lowry blinked and looked up at me. 
"Rupe," she whispered.  "I was all alone, more alone
than I've ever been.  I had such a need to talk to
someone."

     I almost asked her why she hadn't talked to me,
but I didn't have the right.

     "I nearly went over to see you," she went on, "but
I didn't want you to see me lose my composure.  It's
was a pride thing, I guess.  And anyway, I'd been
treating you so badly lately that I couldn't stand to
eat the crow.  So I just talked to myself, to the room. 
I guess was really talking to God. I asked Him, I
begged Him, that if he couldn't bring me back, to at
least take away the fear and the pain.  I told Him that
if He didn't, it was going to kill me and that I didn't
want to die.  That was the moment that I was actually
holding my death between my fingers."

     I squeezed her hand.  "God or no God, you made it,
Doc.  You're a pretty strong S.O.B. and you're going to
be all right now, aren't you?"
     "I don't know.  I hope so."

     "I'm going to get Mason back to stay with you like
before, or somebody else that you like better, until
you're yourself again.  It won't be hard to get you
someone.  You've made a lot of friends here."

     She pressed my fingers.  "And you're the best  of
them all."

     I just sat there and stared.  It was like she had
shoved a mirror up to the face and I had seen a
furtive-eyed traitor in it.  I realized then that I'd
rather have had Sebastian yelling at me for a no-good,
double-crossing bastard than telling me that she
considered me her one true friend.

     "There was a voice," Lowry went on.

     "An audio hallucination?"

     She laughed.  Sebastian Lowry had always been a
man of faith.  That fact was not obvious because he had
disliked sparring with skeptics and so rarely brought
up the subject.

     "What did the voice say, Doc?"

     "That I had to be brave.  That this was the
beginning of a new life for me, and while it was going
to be different from what I was used to, it wasn't 
going to be bad.  The voice called it a rebirth."

     "Well, we've called it a lot worse things."   

     "I guess that part must have been a dream."  She
had said that without much conviction.

     "Anything else?"

     Sebastian suddenly sat up.  "Yes.  The voice also
told me that there's a reason for what's been happening
-- and soon we'll know what it is." 

     "Don't worry about voices, Doctor.  It wasn't
real."

     "But you don't understand, Rupe! -- The fear went
away as soon as I heard that."

     I could be glad that Lowry was feeling better
without giving too much meaning to her mystical
experience.  I'll say this, though -- a dose of
religion's was lot better than a shot of dicorahyla-
minophen in the arm.  

     "And the voice said one other thing."

     "What?"   

     "That I can never be free unless the woman is
free, too."

     "What woman?"

     Instead of answering, Lowry eased herself against
me, letting her head press against my chest.  She
seemed so much like any other emotionally-exhausted
woman at that moment that I let her stay as she was.  I
didn't suppose there was anything sexual in her action,
but I still couldn't call it a comfortable position for
me.

     The doctor seemed to grow sleepy while I held her
and, finally, I decided that I could ease her back to
the pillow and throw a sheet over her.  That peaceful,
innocent look, the one which I had seen before, had
come back.  

     I waited by her bedside a while, watching my
friend napping, thinking, hoping, that Sebastian had
met her personal demon and could now start the climb
back.  There was so many others who would have so much
farther to go after this day.  For me, I had plenty 
far to go myself before I could consider myself either
the sort of man or the commander that I had formerly
believed myself to be.

                           #

     Rawson and Lt. Chih were found transformed a
couple days later, Rawson looking like a star club lap
dancer and Chih now possessed of that delicate, toy-
like beauty which oriental taste so esteems in its
women. I knew a couple of Rawson's friends on sight and
so got their agreement to take turns being her suicide
watch.  With a little additional effort, I found
someone for Chih, too.  Her new watcher was a
transformee whom Chih had stood by through some bad
days and nights, and now she wanted to pay him -- her
-- back.  This person, Zeev Yadin, certainly seemed
highly motivated and so I risked putting a soldier in
the care of a transformee for the first time.  Very
possibly, nursing a buddy would be a better exercise of
Yadin's time than making furniture.  

     That afternoon more disappearances, the next
morning more women.  It just went on and on.  In fact,
it was worst now than ever.  The third day after the
departure of the detachment, Halder and Ames returned
leading a couple more transformees.  These, I soon
learned, had formerly been Stark and Big Bear.  They
hadn't gotten far before the curse of Klink had caught
up with them.

     I had been impressed by Ames' manner when she
reappeared.  The captain seemed to have escaped from
her sad state of withdrawal and depression.  After the
Ames' debriefing I let her resume limited duty.  If she
did well, I intended to make her a kind of special
officer for what, in my mind, I was already calling the
"women's battalion."  

     The following day Hardy and Marduke returned with
two more transformees.  The next day it was Hitchcock
and Roberts with yet another pair.

     Now that both Hitchcock and Marduke were back, I
talked to them about the support-group idea.  It meant 
training the recovering transformees as carpenters, but 
Marduke had been on the furniture-making detail before
her transformation and would therefore prove out a 
competent instructor.  Each was willing to give the
idea a try.

     Drew and a man named Cutts were the last of the
auxiliaries to returned with transformees from
Crawford's detachment.  They were now too far out to
make the trip back with traumatized transformees
feasible.  Drew's report was the last word that we were
likely to have from the detachees anytime soon.  It
appeared that Crawford and Morrow were planning to
continue along with the remaining group of 59 until it
became clear that there was no place to go.  

     Evenings had become a mere hiatus between daily
crises -- afternoon disappearances and morning
discoveries.  I was suffering from frequent headaches
which Lowry diagnosed as stress-related.  Oftentimes
these were accompanied by nausea.  I would vomit and
then lay enervated for more than an hour.  I was
recuperating from one such debilitating episode when
the doctor paid me a call.  She seemed to have
something on her mind, which I supposed presaged
another problem.

     "What's the trouble, Doc?" I asked with
misgivings.

     "All work and no play makes Jill a dull girl," she
said wanly.  "I could use a game of cards."  Sebastian
was wearing her hair differently I noticed -- not just
shoved back over her shoulders and neglected as before,
but combed and tied up in a ponytail.  Good grooming
was a sign of a positive state of mind, but I wondered
why the transformees didn't just cut their hair short.

     If this was just a social call, I was glad. 
"What's your game?" I asked.

     She pulled up a chair beside my desk.  "Five card
stud," she suggested.

     I took the pack of cards from my footlocker and
shuffled them carefully.  We were both reverential in
regard to our cards; playing with makeshifts, as we
certainly would have to do in some not-too-distant
future, wouldn't be half so much fun.

     "I've missed our poker games, Rupe," Sebastian
remarked.  Then she added more pointedly, "I've missed
the kind of friendship that we used to have, too."

     "We're still friends!" I reassured her.  "If I've
done anything to make you think otherwise -- well, it's
only this pressure." I put the deck down.  She cut.

     "There's more than that," Lowry said, "but it's to
be expected.  I don't look like the same person, don't
sound like the same person, and I'm so knotted up
inside that I'm sure I don't even act like the same
person."

     "You're the same.  You have to be."

     "Well, I suppose," she shrugged.  "-- Okay, deal
'em out."

     We played hand after hand.

     After a while, Sebastian got around to talking
about the things that had really bothered her since her
transformation.  It seemed strange to be thinking of my
old friend as a "she" -- especially now that Lowry was
speaking and behaving a little more like herself --
himself.

     "It's that sense of violation that gets you down,"
she said with a painful grimace.  "I've never been
raped, but it's got to be a lot like this.  And
afterwards -- well, people look at you like -- like you
scare the hell out of them.  You fight against the
whole idea that you're a monster by pretending that
nothing's happened at all.  That's the denial stage. 
But that leaves you trying to hold up a lie.  It's 
like carrying a mountain around on your back.  Pretty
soon you've got to drop it or it's going to flatten
you."

     "Where do you go from here?" I asked.

     She shook her head, causing her ponytail to
jiggle.  "Well, I suppose I'll get used to it,
eventually.  Life goes on.  I just wonder if this
planet has any more tricks up its sleeve."

     "I sure hope it doesn't," I said.  

                        *******



                       Chapter 4

          *Full fathom five thy father lies;
               Of his bones are coral made;
           Those are pearls that were his eyes:
               Nothing of him doth fade
           But doth suffer a sea-change
           Into something rich and strange.*
                              THE TEMPEST

     One card game went a long way toward healing the
problems that had existed between Sebastian and me. 
Sebastian popped in again the next day, but this time
it wasn't to play poker.

     "Pvt. Hitchcock is pregnant," she said with a
straight face.

     I don't know why I should have been, but I was
dumbfounded.  "Are you sure, Doc?"

     "Even an army doctor could diagnosis this, Rupe. 
Believe me, I know the scan readings of a pregnant
woman."

     "How did it happen?"

     "In the usual way.  And it must have happened a
couple weeks before she went off with the detachment."

     "Roberts?"

     She nodded.

     "That fool!  I'll --"

     "Easy, Rupe.  Hitchcock asked me not to let you go
off on Roberts.  This sort of thing has to be expected. 
Put men and women together in a subtropical paradise
and, abracadabra, you get babies.  It's called the
facts of life."

     "This is insane!  It's against the rules!"

     She put her hands on her hips.  "Rupe, has it ever
occurred to you that we've been writing new rules every
day?"

     "Of course, but for crying out loud -- a baby!
Well, it can be fixed, I suppose.  No doubt Hitchcock
will want an abortion."

     "I'm not so sure."

     "What do you mean?"

     "It was a very confused young woman who left my
office a little while ago.  She needs time to sort this
thing out.  She has to talk to the father, of course,
and those two don't need a commanding officer putting
his two cents into the most important conversation of
their lives."

     "I have responsibilities, Sebastian!"

     "A mother and a father have responsibilities, too,
and they're important ones."

     "What are you driving at?"

     "I'd like you to go slow on this, Rupe.  You've
got to understand the kind of emotional bond which
those two have.  Robert found Mark at the lowest
psychological hell that a person can sink to and helped
to make her a complete human being again.  Looking
back, I don't find it all that surprising that they did
what they did."

     "What would you recommend then?!" I inquired
annoyedly.  With all my other problems, I didn't need
Sebastian acting like the garden-variety stubborn,
know-it-all woman.

     She shook her head.  "I think the best thing is to
do nothing for a while.  Roberts and Hitchcock are
going to be padding through hell for the next few days
at least, even if you don't get on their case."

     "Damn! -- Who would have believed that this was
going on?  -- Or do I sound too naive?"

     "We were both naive.  I'd been thinking all along
that transformation was just a physical thing.  Now I'm
not so sure."

     "I don't like the sound of this, Doc."

     "Do you think I do?"  She looked me right in the
eye.  "-- Rupe, do I seem different to you."

     I gave a short laugh.  "You sure do!  You look --"

     "I don't mean the way I look.  Do I behave
differently."

     "I don't know.  You've been through a lot.  You're
still Sebastian.  I know that much."

     "Well, I hope I am.  But I've been thinking things
lately that I'm pretty damned sure Sebastian wouldn't
be thinking."

     "What?"

     "Like, for instance, about how nice some of these
yard dogs around here would look in formal suits.  And
I've been thinking about bouquets of roses, about
candle-lit dinners in upscale restaurants, about Gypsy
violin serenades, about slow dancing to live bands,
about listening to Rachmaninoff on a sofa cuddled up
with--well, never mind with whom."

     "Hormones?" I suggested lamely.

     She shrugged.  "I'm wondering if I haven't become
my own anima -- emotionally at least."

     "Forget it, Doc.  There's obviously a lot more in
your head than candlelight dinners."

     "Yes.  Our fantasy girls aren't complete people. 
What if there's been a kind of overwriting of certain
files in our personality, while the rest of the program
stays the same?  What else could explain a guy like
Hitchcock accepting a male lover so quickly?"

     "How do you explain Roberts then?"

     She shot me a painful grin.  "If it looks like a
duck, talks like a duck, walks like a duck, you take it
to your nest and get ducklings."

     All I was getting was another headache.  "I hope
you're wrong," I said weakly.  "I really do."

     "I wouldn't be surprised if this thing doesn't go
way beyond just Hitchcock and Roberts."

     "We can't let that happen!"

     "Don't over-react, Major.  It may not be so bad."

     "Not bad?  This is an army camp!  Can you imagine
having it full of babies crying all day and all night! 
Soldiers tied down caring for them?"

     She smiled tolerantly.  "What are soldiers for,
Rupe, except to protect the families back home, and
make the world save enough to have children of one's
own?  I had a family and it frankly kills me to think
that I'll never see any of them again, especially the
kids.  If you ever tried raising children yourself,
you'd know that there's a lot more to babies than just
crying.  There's a magic in every one of them like you
wouldn't believe.  And, anyway, the situation is only
temporary."

     "What's temporary?" I asked, dreading her answer.

     "Babies grow up to be men and women.  Just think
of them as future recruits."

     "This isn't funny!"
     
     "We either have to laugh or go crazy, Rupe.  How
can you stop it?  -- And do you really think that you
should?"

     "I don't follow you."

     "There were families before their were armies. 
There were communities before there were military
camps.  The world got along just fine in those days."

     "That was called the Old Stone Age, Doc!  Anyway,
we're not a community.  We're --  Oh, hell, I'm out of
my depth.  I'd like to knock some heads, but I've never
hit a pregnant woman in my life!"

     She leaned forward over the desk.  "We have to let
the men -- the men of both sexes -- know that from now
on actions have consequences.  If they're going to be
choosing up partners and having children they'll have
to take responsibility for them."

     "That's a quagmire, Doc.  Go too far and we won't
be a military unit anymore.  Couldn't I just forbid all
sexual liaisons instead?"

     "That's like forbidding alcohol or stimmers at a
base.  You know how much good prohibition does when
people really need something.  And here you're talking
about an addiction that's a little olden than alcohol,
and a whole lot older than stimmers."

     "What about contraception?"

     "No got.  I suppose I can do tubal ligations and
vasectomies, but don't expect me to force anything like
that on an unwilling patient --  And, really, the
problem will probably take care of itself in a couple
months.  Considering our rate of transformation, there
soon won't be anyone left to ---"

     She couldn't miss the look in my eyes.  "Sorry,
Major."

                           #

     I decided to treat Hitchcock's condition as a
medical problem and wait to see how things shook down. 
Meanwhile, I called an assembly and had Dr. Lowry
explain the newly-discovered problem.  Then I stepped
in to warn the troops that sexual relationships were
not to be recommended because they carried important
and very long-term consequences with them.  It was like
one of those critical moments in history that changed
the outlook of whole civilizations.  I could tell from
the troopers' reaction that none of them had been
entertaining the remotest thought of parenthood.  The
women looked thunderstruck, while the men looked mostly
irritated and cheated.

     The next day, shortly after the noon mess, Harold
Roberts stopped by my quarters.  It was as if he had
decided it was his duty to let me know -- as if he
needed to -- that Klink still had more than a few
surprises in store for me.

     "Sir," he said stiffly, "I'd like permission to
marry Pvt. Hitchcock."

     That threw me for a loop.  "Are you trying to make
a joke, soldier?" I queried with a frown.

     "No, sir!  Mary -- I mean, Mark and I --"

     "Mary?"

     "It's a nickname, sir."  He shuffled uneasily. 
"It doesn't feel right calling the girl in your arms
Mark."

     My reply dripped sarcasm:  "I suppose it's not
very romantic, either."

     He swallowed hard and went on:  "As I was saying,
sir, Pvt. Hitchcock and I have talked it over and we
think marriage would be the best thing."

     "Best for which one of you?"

     "Best for the child, of course, sir!"

     "The child?"  There was no child; at least not
yet.

     "May I speak freely, Major?"

     I threw up my hands.  "Please!"

     "Sir, in a couple months I might be a woman
myself.  But I'm a man at the moment and -- well -- I
want to be the sort of man that I was brought up to be. 
That means doing what's right.  I think I'd be able to
live with myself much better afterwards, whatever
happens, and, besides, I'd like to have a son -- or
daughter -- with my name.  It's probably my only chance
be a father."

     It was his sincerity that kept my reply moderate. 
"I can almost understand your reasoning, soldier.  But
no one here has the authority to perform marriages."

     "Begging the Major's pardon --" Roberts began
hesitantly.

     "Yes?"

     "I mean to say, sir, that we're sort of a
community of our own here.  If any small town can elect
a justice of the peace who can perform legal marriages,
why can't we do the same?"

     There was that word again, "community."  

     "We're not a community, Private," I shot back,
"and we don't have elections!"

     "I know, sir, but I was thinking that you could 
-- appoint someone."

     I paused, trying to make head or tail out of the
whole crazy situation.  "I suppose we could improvise
almost anything, if we had to," I adjudged.  "But would
our actions be deemed legal and valid under the laws of
the Alliance?"

     "Sir, it seems to me that the Alliance has its
problems and we have ours."

     So we did.  "I think I'd better talk to -- Mary,"
I said.

                           #

     I went over to Hitchcock's barracks afterwards and
found her with several of her transformee friends.

     "At ease," I told the girls as they threw
themselves into attention.  Then I inquired of the
pregnant private, "How are you doing, Hitchcock?" 

     "Very well, sir."  She sounded a little shaky.

     "Would you like to sit down?"

     "No, sir, I'm fine.  -- Just a little nauseous now
and then."

     "I see.  Do you know that Pvt. Roberts spoke to me
a few minutes ago?"

     "Yes, sir."

     "How do you feel about -- his idea?"

     Her glance rolled up to the thatched ceiling. 
"It's my idea, too, sir.  But I suppose it does sound a
little strange."

     "You could -- terminate -- instead," I suggested,
with as much tact as I could summon up.

     The girl practically turned white.  "I -- I don't
think I'd like to do that, sir."

     I eyed her curiously.  "Many in your position
would, soldier."

     "I'm sure they would, sir."  

     "I'd not trying to make you do anything," I
assured her, "but are you sure that you know what
you're getting into?"

     "No, sir, I really don't.  But now that this
thing's happened, I guess we have to just try and make
the best of it."

     "You have to think about your own welfare."

     She shook her head.  "It isn't just my welfare
that's important, Major.  Hal has a stake in this, too. 
He stood by me.  He helped me when I really needed
somebody.  I owe him something."

     "Do you think you owe him a baby?"

     "Well, sir, it's not really my choice anymore. 
The baby is coming.  Anyway, I always thought that I'd
like to have a of couple kids someday.  If I'm still
going to be a parent, this is the way it has to be. 
Isn't that right, sir?"

     "I suppose it is," I conceded flatly.
  
     "There's just one thing I've been concerned
about."

     "Dr. Lowry should be able to meet your pediatric
needs," I assured her.

     "No, it's not about the care, sir.  It's about
milk."

     "Milk?"

     "Yes.  Babies need lots of milk.  We don't have
any and -- well, that could be bad."

     The room was very quiet for a moment, then  -- as
much to my surprise as Hitchcock's -- Marduke's
laughter pealed raucously.  The other women caught on
to the joke and they joined in.

     "What's so funny?!" demanded Hitchcock.  "I don't
want my son to starve to death!  It's not like we've
got a herd of cows around here!"

     "We'll have at least one cow!" cackled Marduke. 
"That should be enough."

     Hitchcock still didn't seem to get it.  My
headache was thundering back and so I decided to retire
and let Hitchcock's ho-ho friends enlighten her in
their own good time.  I bade them all goodby and was
glad to be out of there.

     I returned to my hut and sat down behind my desk,
wondering if I dared to let the men of the 54th start
marrying one another.  I knew damned well that it
wouldn't stop with just Hitchcock and Roberts once the
ball started rolling.  I would have had to be a
psychiatrist to properly lead the Group through all of
its mental and emotional chaos.  But I had been trained
as a soldier; that was my whole life and the only thing
I knew.  I had no ready answers for the questions which
were cropping up every day.  

     And besides the new uncertainty, there was always
the old certainty -- that soon we would have two more
disappearances.  In the morning we'd have two more --- 

                           #

     So tired.  I reached out to steady myself against
my desk, but may arms groped empty air -- there was
nothing in front of me.  I realized at that instant
that I was lying on my back.  I opened my eyes.  The
ceiling seemed to be turning broad gyrations.  What was
wrong with me?  Had I fainted and fallen to the floor? 
No, that wasn't it.  My groping fingers told me that
there was a cot under me.  

     Someone was approaching.  I blinked hard; my
vision was fuzzy.  I could only make out a white coat. 
"Rupe," she said.  

     Sebastian.

     "Take it easy, Rupe.  We'll get you through this."

     "Through what?"

     I had only managed a low murmur, but my voice had
sounded thin and resonated strangely in my chest
cavity.  My hand went to my throat, but instead of the
Adam's apple and familiar bristle which I expected
there, I found soft, taut skin.

     A jolt shot through me.  I my hands leapt to my
chest -- and they found what I didn't want to find. 

     Horrified, I groped lower.

     And then I screamed!  

     I couldn't hear my own voice.  Instead some woman
was wailing loudly in my ears, filling the infirmary
with a deafening shrill.  I tried to rise, I tried to
run -- God alone knows where to -- but mercifully I
blacked out.

     When I next came to, Lowry had her arms around me. 
"Easy, Rupe!  Easy!  It's not as bad as it seems.  I've
been there.  I know."

     "Lowry --!"  I mewed but couldn't bear to hear the
sound of my voice.  I turned my face away.  Lowry could
do nothing for me.  There were no cures for this. 
Transformation was forever.

     "It's not so bad," Sebastian reiterated.  "It's a
little strange at first, but you can beat it.  People
are beating it every day.  And you're a fighter, Rupe."

     I looked up at her.  

     "If you want to shout or swear, it's all right,"
Lowry was saying.  "Don't hold what you're feeling
inside or it'll be rough on you.  Cry if you want to. 
Get those emotions out.  You were a human being before
you were a commanding officer.  There's no reason to be
ashamed."

     "Were?"  I echoed, choking the word out crosswise.

     "You're still are our commander!" she reassured me
hastily.  Then her voice lowered a little:  "And you're
more than that.  You're my friend.  You can depend on
me for whatever you need."

     I turned my face into the pillow.  Was the
universe mocking me?  Sebastian was saying that I could
depend on her, without knowing that she couldn't depend
on me.  I didn't deserve that kind of a friend.  What
kind of a man was I anyway?  No, I wasn't a man at all,
not now.  Was this my punishment?  Was this my --?

     I suddenly realized that the two of us were not
alone.  Drew was moving about the room, tending to the
other patient.  Yes, there were always two patients.  I
didn't want to know who it was this time.  I couldn't
take any more.

     Suddenly, as I lay there in Lowry's arms, I began
to wonder what I looked like.  None of the other men
had become ugly, of course, but I wouldn't have wanted
to look like any of them if my life had depended on it. 
My trembling fingers went to my cheek where a thick
strand was tickling me and grasped a tuft of strange-
feeling hair.  It was very long, though I had worn it
cropped short just that morning -- or what still seemed
like that morning.  I pulled a lock in front of my
eyes, so I could get a look at its color and texture. 
I gasped.  It was black, not my natural sandy brown. 
And it was a veritable mass of large ringlets and
corkscrew curls!

     A thousand sex fantasies came rushing back, like a
past life into the mind of a drowning man.  I screamed
again, then realized that Lowry was hugging me to her
breast.  I didn't want to be held that way -- it wasn't
the way one man should hold another -- but I was so
overcome that I couldn't focus enough to tear loose.

     Now the Terrible Thing had happened.  I had feared
this awful fate; night and day I had lived with the
terror of it until it had almost strangled me.  Now
what was left of my life?

     The answer had to be, "Nothing."

     As Sebastian cradled me, one burning question
tormented me.  Why had this happened?  Why had the all-
powerful, all-knowing intelligence that haunted Klink
done this to me?  Why would it put its godlike power so
determinedly against just one miserable individual, and
why would it wish to waste its incomprehensible
omnipotence in the act of destroying a single
insignificant captive human being?  

     "Why?!" I cried.  Then, breathless, I could speak
no more.

                           #

     I dreamed that I was standing, frozen in place,
with my back to darkness.  I couldn't run from the
abyss, nor even turn about to confront it.  I heard
nothing, saw nothing moving, not even a shadow.  I felt
no breathing on my neck, but I knew something was
there, just behind me.  And then, and then. . . 

     I awoke.  I felt wasted, hung over.  Then I
recalled my last awakening and the horror came surging
back.  I touched myself frantically, hoping that 
everything that I remembered had only been part of the
nightmare, but -- but --

     Lowry gave my wrist a firm squeeze.  "Rest is the
best thing for you right now, Rupert.  I know how tough
it is, but we'll have you up and around in no time."

     "No -- no. . . ." I managed to mumble.  I didn't
want to be up and around.  I wanted to escape into the
darkness, to live, and die, alone, unseen,
unremembered, my bones gnawed to nothingness by
scavenging animals.  I wanted to have no grave --
nothing at all to remind another human being that
Rupert Breen had ever existed.  If my better days were
remembered, so, too, would my infamy.

     Lowry left me momentarily and returned with a
bitter drink, which I at first rejected.  She was not
to be refused, however, and so I obligingly forced it
down.  Then the doctor remained faithfully by me, until
I fell slept again.

                           #

     "What are you doing?!" Lowry demanded as I pulled
on my oversized britches.

     "What does it look like I'm doing, Doc?  I've got
to get back to work!"  

     "You'll do no such thing!  You're not ready."

     "You were back at the grind in three days," I
reminded her.

     "That was stupidest thing I ever.  It almost
killed me.  It'll kill you, too!"

     "I don't need a mother hen."

     "You need rest and time to cope.  Yell, cry,
scream, beat your head against the wall, but don't
pretend that nothing has happened!  Let Capt. Philbrick
run the camp for a while."

     "What you're saying is that I've got nothing left
to give anymore."

     "No, that's not it at all."
     
     "Where does this copping out stop?  What happens
when Philbrick becomes a -- ?"  I couldn't say it, not
even now.

     "Then someone will step in for him.  Hopefully, it
will be you."

     "It will be me -- and it'll be today!"

     "Yeh?  What are you going to do when you crash? 
And believe me, if you try to fly this soon you're
going to crash hard."

     "I'll be fine, Doctor.  Now get off my back!"

     "You're the walking wounded.  You're a basket case
and you don't even know it."

     "I know what I need to know!"

     She shook her head.  "It's like you're treading on
a thin ice, Rupe.  In a day or two day, certainly in
less than a week, it's going break under your feet and
you're going to go down -- deep.  Good God, don't you
think I know what I'm talking about?  Have you
forgotten what I was almost driven to?"
     
     "I've still got two arms, two legs, one head. 
What more do I need?"

     Sebastian caught my sleeve.  "Rupe, don't do this. 
I can help you.  Hitchcock and Marduke can help you. 
Even Captain Ames wants to do what she can."

     To be ghettoized with the transformees was the
last thing in the universe that I wanted.  It would be
like being put into a zoo.  "Am I supposed to start
making furniture with Pvt. Hitchcock for my commander?"

     "You thought it was good enough for Ames --"

     "It's not good enough for me!  I'd rather be dead
than be a laughingstock!"

     "You think you can take it?  Well, let's just
see."  Lowry picked up a mirror.  

     "What's that for?" I asked, just as if she were
holding a pistol to my head.

     "If you're really on top of this thing, let's see
you if you can look at your own face without breaking
into a cold sweat."

     I shivered then and hoped that Lowry did not
notice.  I remembered a time just like this one, when I
was a kid and my cousin had brought a horror comic home
from the strip mall.  It had a cover that terrified
me -- the picture of an earthman turned into a hideous
mutant.  I couldn't look at it.  Whenever I closed my
eyes that ugly cover was all that I could see.  The
next day my mother wondered why I was being so
difficult about going over to my uncle's place.  When I
got there, all I wanted to do was stay down in the
kitchen.  I certainly didn't even want to go up to my
cousin's room where his new comics were lying face up
on the dresser.  

     Joe was a smart guy and it didn't take him long to
figure out what was spooking me.  For a joke he forced
me to go up to his room and took me right over for a
look at the comic.  Joe was a jackass at that age and
he wanted to see me get scared and start to cry.  I
controlled my fear instead and looked straight down at
the hideous illustration while betraying nothing, as if
I didn't have a clue to explain his -- Joe's -- strange
behavior.  I simply said, "Yeh, what?"

     I had successfully shucked him.  He wasn't so sure
now that he had read the situation right -- and since
he couldn't get a rise out of me, he immediately let
the subject drop and found something better to do than
psychologically torture a six-year old.  But for years
afterwards I would only probe his box of comic books
warily, trying to find something to read without being
confronted by with that awful picture.  Even when I
became a teenager the sight of it still repelled me.

     "Give it here," I told Dr. Lowry, taking the
mirror from her hand.

     I had steeled myself to disassociate myself from
whatever I would see.  It would be somebody else, not
me.  The glass reflected a clear, pale Celtic face --
aquamarine eyes full of suffering, a slender neck, and
heavily ringletted black hair.  It was The Face for
certain, the face of the Nameless One.  The stranger's
mouth was a pinkish bow, its lips like those of the
prettiest models in cosmetics ads.  The eyebrows were
ended with a flare, just as if they had been drawn with
the calculation of a cosmetologist.

     "Yeh, what?" I remarked, as if I believed that
Lowry was out of her tree.

     "Bullshit!" she said

                           #

     I kept dressing.  Not even my last belt notch
would hold my pants up, and that was unsettling.  What
had Shakespeare said?  "Now does he feel his title hang
loose about him, like a giant's robe upon a dwarfish
thief."

     What had my mind dredged up that quote?  I was no
thief.  No pretender.  It had nothing to do with me!

     "At least let Drew go along with you," pleaded
Lowry, "in case something happens."

     "What could happen?" I asked irascibly.

     "We could lose you, Major, we really could."

     "Doctor, I need to get back into my routine or
I'll --"  I rephrased that:  "I just need to keep busy
-- especially now.  Anyway, the men need to know that
their C.O. is well and on top of things."

     "But you're not!"

     Ignoring her, I started toward the door.  Just
then I suffered an attack of anxiety.  Was Lowry
thinking about evoking her medical authority to relieve
me from command?  She was my friend; that would be an
act of incredible treachery.  I couldn't trust that she
wouldn't do it, and so I walked swiftly away.  For some
reason she let me escape.

     Outside, my confidence did not immediately stiffen
as I had hoped it would.  Instead I was suddenly afraid
that my men wouldn't know who I was, that I would have
to explain my right to command them.  But the fact was
that I had not gone far before I realized that everyone
knew exactly who I was.  They were all looking at me
when they thought I couldn't' see.  I felt like Klink's
newest monster on display every time I returned a
salute.  

     "Tuong," I addressed the Korean-born sergeant in
my path, "where can I find Captain Philbrick?"

     He seemed embarrassed; his eyes darted to the left
and right, but wouldn't fix squarely upon me.  "In his
quarters, I think -- sir."

     That stumble at the word, "sir" and his furtive
glance hit me hard.  Nonetheless, I tried to ignore
both the stare and the stammer and turned off toward
the row of officers' huts.  I found Philbrick
conferring with the lieutenants Stokes and Evans.  Ames
was there, too, of course.  It was as much her hut as
Philbrick's.

     The officers snapped to attention.  "At ease. 
Report, Captain Philbrick," I said.  "What's happened
over the last three days?"

     Philbrick replied with worried eyes which, like
Tuong's, tried to avoid looking at me.  "No more word
from the detachees, of course -- sir."  There was that
damnable stumble again, but the captain hurried past
it.  "Perhaps Dr. Lowry mentioned that Pvts. Brouwer
and Marietta were -- transformed -- the day after
Gonzales and --"

     "And me?  Yes, go on," I told him stiffly.

     "And yesterday it was Petoska and Bakshi.  That
makes 237 transformees our of a current muster of 475."

     I was more interested in the nervous flutter in
Philbrick's lids.  There was qualm also in the faces of
Stokes and Evans.  I sensed that they all would have
liked to have me gone, like a family rejecting a
disgraced member.  Ames' expression bothered me most of
all.  What was she feeling?  Pity?  Was she jealous
that I still presumed to command while I had kept her
on suspension for so long?  Did she think of this as my
comeuppance?  The echoes of resentment and disdain
filled the air of the cramped space and left me short
of breath.  My shoulders began to shake.

     "Major -- are you all right?" queried Philbrick.

     "Of course!" I barked, or tried to -- to my own
ears my reply sounded more like a shrill piping.  "I
need to rest.  Carry on, Captain."  I turned to go.

     Ames pursued me to the door.  "Major Breen?"

     Turning with gritted teeth.  "Captain Ames?"  

     "Sir, is there anything that I -- that I can do? 
Would you like to talk?"

     "I don't know what you mean, soldier," I replied
rigidly.

     She looked like she had a good deal to say, but my
icy glare must have warned her to keep mum.  "I mean --
nothing, sir."

     "Very good," I nodded -- and left.

                       ********


                       Chapter 5

     *When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
     I all alone beweep my outcast state,
     And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
     And look upon myself, and curse my fate.*
                                   SONNET XXIX


     Once back in my quarters, I opened my log book to
jot down the names of the new transformees, but
suddenly realized that I couldn't remember who they
were.  Try as I might, I just couldn't organize my
thoughts.  It was an appalling feeling, like being high
on stimmers.  As I sat there in a kind of profound
mental confusion, my hands began to tremble.  I dropped
the pen and, trying to pick it up again, I just kept
dropping it, until it rolled over the edge and fell to
the floor.  At that point I gave up and rested my head
against the tabletop, drawing deep, ragged drags of
air.

     "Excuse me, Major Breen."

     I looked up.  Drew was looming at the door.  

     "Come in, Private," I muttered, sitting back,
hiding my quaking hands under the table.

     "Dr. Lowry's asked me to look in on you."

     "Lowry should have more important things to worry
about," I grumbled.

     "I don't think so, sir."

     "Are you trying to be impudent, soldier?!"

     "No, sir.  I only mean that it's her duty to give
our commanding officer the attention that he deserves."

     "Then why didn't s--, the doctor -- come here her
-- himself?"

     "I assume that she, -- he -- feels that you might
feel more comfortable if your attending medic was --"

     "Was what?"

     "A man."

     That suggestion stung, but I didn't know why. 
"All right, go back and tell Dr. Lowry that you saw me,
and that I was well!"  I wanted very much to get rid of
Drew; the shaking of my hands was worsening and
spreading up to my shoulders.  Did Drew see?  He was
watching me uncertainly.

     "Is there anything else, Private?"

     "It's just that neither the doctor nor I think
that it's a good idea for you to be alone for the next
few days."

     "Are you volunteering to be my suicide watch?" I
asked coldly.

     "With your permission, sir."

     I threw my log book at him.  "Get out of here!"  

     Drew dodged, threw back a worried glance, then
withdrew.

     Instantly I regretted having lost my temper.  Drew
would report me to the doctor!  It would look bad and
she might not understand to what degree I had been
provoked.  It might give her just the excuse she was
looking for to remove me from command, make me a
patient, a virtual prisoner!

     I struggled for breath.  The walls seemed to be
closing in.  I opened my collar, sucking in rapid
breaths.  My head began to throb.  I grew nauseous,
weak.  I staggered to the empty food carton that served
for my nighttime chamber pot and, since I had had
little solid food for three days, what I vomited up was
mostly regurgitated water.  The worst of the nausea
soon passed, but when I could finally get up I was
still unsteady on my feet.  

     I thought about going to the infirmary, but I
didn't want Lowry to see me in such a state.  Another
part of me wanted someone's -- anyone's -- company, but
a C.O. couldn't betray such weakness.  Also, I hadn't
been there for Lowry when she had needed me and so now
I was stuck.

     My headache wasn't getting any better.  I put a
couple tablets of LWI into my mouth and crushed them
between my teeth.  The bitter chemical started me
choking and I fell to the floor.  I crawled on hands
and knees to my canteen and guzzled down a couple
mouthfuls of water.  That ended the coughing and a
moment later I found the strength to rise.  I managed
the few steps to my bed, then fell into it like a stone
statue.  I drew a towel over my eyes to shut out the
bright noonday light of Klink.

     I didn't sleep, but lay in a semi-trance for what
seemed like a long while.  Then I heard a tapping at my
door.  As I raised my head, it felt hot and tight. 
"Come in," I gasped.

     "Major Breen!" Philbrick blurted excitedly.  "One
man has disappeared!"

     I couldn't understand his dramatics.  "We expected
it, didn't we, Captain?"

     "Sir -- only one man has disappeared -- not two!" 

     "One?  Are you sure?"

     "I've taken roll!  Every man, every transformee,
has been accounted for, except Culligan."

     "Maybe it means something," I mumbled.

     "But what, sir?  What?!"
     For my answer, I let my head sink back into my
pillow and lay there in silence until he left.

                           #

     After a nearly-sleepless night, I rose and joined
the searchers.  We soon found the feminine incarnation
of Marcus Culligan -- the younger double of Lola
Carlita, a Latin sex-symbol who had been setting off
international shock-waves at about the time that
Culligan must have been a hormonal teenager.  But the
Culligan episode had broken the mold.  Never before had
only a single new transformee been made in a day, and
any change in the hated pattern could mean something
significant.

     Lowry had no theory.  I didn't like her
uncharacteristic display of denseness and so I said
something sharp and angry.

     "This just isn't like you, Rupe," she replied
calmly.  "Please, don't drive yourself this way.  Take
a break."  Her eyes were dewy, just as Ames' had been
the day before when she had stopped me at the door of
her hut.

     I didn't want sympathy.  It was like salt in an
already painful wound, so I stormed out of the
infirmary.  But as I did so, I began to shake again
and, afraid of being seen, I hid myself in a grove of
trees until I bucked up.

     Then I hurried off to work.  I had to keep busy,
to carry on despite my nervous condition.  I decided to
inspect Capt. Komisar's work on soil and water testing. 
The officer filled me in on his men's latest analyses,
and I realized that nothing too interesting had come up
since the last time.  Maybe that was why I let my mind
wander and couldn't follow the officer's report too
clearly, asking the same questions over and over.

     Komisar began to look at me strangely, and panic
rippled through me.  Why was everyone staring, treating
me so differently?  Mine was only a was only a physical
change.  It didn't affect the person that I was.  Half
the camp had suffered what I had suffered, so why did
they still gape?  They'd all be women themselves in a
few weeks!  It would serve them right, too!  At least
then they'd stop looking at me as if I were a freak!

     I stormed back through the center of camp,
ignoring people who tried to address me.  There were
transformees all around.  So many transformees.  What
did they think as their eyes followed me?  That I was
like them?  Well, I wasn't!  

     And what were the men thinking?  Why were their
expressions so strange?  Did they believe that no --
transformee -- was fit to command them?  Damn them! 

     The trembling came upon me again, and so I started
to walk faster, trying to retreat into my hut before
anyone noticed.  This time I couldn't reach my bed
before I collapsed to the floor like a marionette with
its strings cut.  I crawled to the cot, covered my face
with a pillow, and curled up into a fetal position.

     "Major!" someone shouted.  I opened my eyes and
cast away the pillow.  It was later.  Much later.  The
sun was sagging low in the west.

     Philbrick again.

     "What is it now, Captain?!" I asked blearily.

     "The disappearances --" he babbled excitedly.

     "Who now?" 

     "No one, sir!  No one at all!" 

                    #

     Transformation trauma had nearly halved our
officer staff, except that Ames and Lowry had returned
to it.  Of my five captains, Philbrick and Komisar were
still sound, but Tritcher was suspended, in bad shape,
and my senior captain, Crawford, was absent, his fate
unknown.

     "What does it mean?" I demanded of no one in
particular.  "Why no disappearances yesterday?"

     "It may be that the enemy has simply decided to
cease his attacks, sir," conjectured Komisar.

     "Why?  We're as helpless as ever!  This process
has been as predictable as a machine up until now.  Why
the change?"

     "I've been thinking, Major. . . ." Lowry began.

     "Oh, so now your thinking?!"

     She swallowed my insult and continued gracefully: 
"The transformation yesterday bought us up to exactly
50% women and 50% percent men, with the odd individual
going over to the female side -- Culligan."
     "Yes, yes!" I remarked impatiently.

     "Yesterday there were no disappearances, and I'm
guessing that there aren't going to be any today."

     "So why not?!  What are you driving at, damn it?!"

     "Maybe whatever intelligence or force has been
assailing us is satisfied with a sexual balance of 50-
50 --" suggested the doctor.

     "Why!" I demanded.

     "It's just an idea but --

     "But what?"

     "I can only guess."

     "So what's your guess?"

     "It might be that unisexual communities are taboo
on this planet and so it -- or someone on it -- changed
the proportion."

     "This isn't a community!  We're a military camp!"

     "Yes, sir," Sebastian humored me.  "But an alien
mind with godlike powers might not have seen it in the
same way.  Then, again --"

     "Then again what?!"

     "Then, again, this sexual balancing act might have
been intended to prepare us for some specific purpose."

     "We've been speculating on that since the start!"

     "I'm suggesting, sir, that there may be some --
function -- that a -- group -- half male and half
female might serve -- one which a group all male or all
female couldn't satisfy."

     "What purpose?"

     "I was thinking about Roberts and Hitchcock."

     "I don't follow you, Doctor."

     "It's possible that we may be expected to become a
breeding population."

     "Shit!"

                           #

     I accompanied Sebastian back to the infirmary,
half mad with frustration.  If I had only been able to
keep winning the transformation lottery for just three
days more, I would have still been myself as of that
moment!  God Almighty!  The odds had been seven out of
two-hundred and four-five in my favor, and I'd lost! 
I'd lost it all, and I'd lost it forever!

     "Major -- Rupert -- you don't look so good." 
Lowry said, placing her hand lightly upon my shoulder. 
I didn't like being patronized, so I pushed it away and
turned sharply.

     "So, let's get to the point, Doctor!  You think
that this could be a breeding experiment?"

     "It's just a guess, like I said."  She gave a
bitterly brief laugh.  "Call it woman's intuition."

     "Lowry!"

     "Ease up, Major.  A sense of humor can help. 
There's nothing much to do except try to keep up our
morale and make more observations."    

     "We have to show the enemy that we're not going to
be guinea pigs for any of their fucking experiments!"

     "I like the way you phrased that."

     I balled my fists.  "Can't you be serious?"

     She shrugged apologetically.

     "Sex has to be absolutely forbidden," I
pronounced.  "I still think your theory is a crock, but
we can't do anything that the enemy might interpret as
cooperation."

     "Prohibition won't work.  At least not for long."

     "In this case I think it will."

     She shook her head.  "In a few more months, with
loneliness and sexual frustration building up, with the
women reconciling themselves to their fate and the men
feeling more secure --"

     "What are you trying to say?"

     "I'm saying that pairing up is going to look like
the path of least resistance --"

     "Damn it Lowry --"  My voice cut off as I started
to shake all over -- and, blast it, this time Lowry was
right there, taking it all in.

     I sank down to my knees, covering up my eyes.  I
saw spots; the air took on a shimmering texture.  The
next thing I knew I was in bed, fighting to get up.

     "Lie back, Rupe!  You blacked out.  You're not
well!"

     "Like hell I'm not!"  This time I managed to get
around her and scramble to my feet.  Sebastian stood
back a pace, her mouth tight and grim.

     "I've been derelict, Major.  I've let you subject
yourself to these pressures despite your condition and
you obviously can't take them.  You need rest, you need
quiet.  You have to take a vacation from the troubles
of whole outfit."

     "Don't say any more!"

     "I have no choice but to relieve you for medical
reasons, Rupe.  I'm going to have to tell Philbrick
that he has to take over until you're back on your
feet."

     "I'm on my feet already!"

     "Face the facts!  You've been denying reality. 
You're wound up so tight that your spring is about to
break.  You changed into your own favorite sex fantasy
and it's driving you crazy.  I know how that is -- it
almost drove me crazy -- it still does, a little."

     "Don't call me crazy, Doctor!"

     She paused.  I sensed the wheels turning behind
her worried face.  "Are you willing to take the mirror
test again, Major?" 

     "Are you still on that kick?  I could look at
myself all day, because I know that that face isn't
mine and it doesn't mean anything."

     "It is yours!  It's yours for the rest of your
life.  It's the face that you're going to have to come
to grips with.  If you're still pretending otherwise,
you're disconnection is even worse than I thought." 
She placed her hand behind my back  "Come on," she
coaxed, leading me to the infirmary "mirror" -- a
polished metal sheet hanging on the wall.

     "Look," she said.

     I didn't want to look, but I had toughed this
rubbish out once before and trusted that I could once
more.  Confronting the reflection, I saw the Nameless
One again, and only for the second time.  She was a
mess! -- her hair in snarls, her complexion sallow,
dark rings under her eyes, an expression like a beaten
dog.  That big cap slouching on her head looked
ridiculous.  Her sloppy, much-too-large uniform was no
better.

     "If you wouldn't let yourself go, you'd be a
lovely woman," observed Lowry.

     "Don't say that!" I told her angrily.  In reply
she locked her hands on my shoulders and made me face
front again.

     "She's really a very pretty woman.  It's her
instincts that you're having trouble coping with right
now, Rupe, so we'd better get to know her, understand
her.  I think you already do.  Tell me what she's
like."

     "That's none of your damned business!"

     "Maybe I can guess.  Is she into filmy negligees
and hot tubs?  Bikinis and volley ball at the beach? 
Scandalous doing in ski cabins?  She's not much of a
soldier, I bet.  Maybe she's really only really good at
one thing --"

     "I said --!"

     "I know what you said, and your not being honest! 
Tell me what you know about that girl.  Like, for
instance, is she a good fuck?"

     Shocked, I tried to tear away, but Sebastian
grabbed my arm and twisted it behind my back, giving me
pain.  

     "Lowry!  Are you nuts?!"

     "You're going to keep looking at yourself until
you can start to talk about the girl you see
rationally, or until you admit that you're not fit for
command."

     It was all I could do to keep myself from slamming
my heel into my tormentor's shin and ramming my free
elbow into her ribs to break her hold, but it seemed a
crazy thing to come to physical blows with my attending
physician.  Even so, I couldn't keep looking at my
disheveled reflection; it was torment, and I certainly
couldn't talk about the Nameless One.  Worse, I was
feeling another fit of panic coming on.  I closed my
eyes.

     "Come on, Rupe, describe her.  Can she carry on a
conversation, or is she one of those airheads
interested only in cock?  What does she wear to bed? 
How does she look in a Lycra nightgown?  Does she
prefer them long or short?  I've seen her legs; I'd
recommend short."

     "What are you doing, Lowry?!" I gnashed.

     "I'm just introducing you to yourself.  You two
are going to be shacked up together for a long, long
time, so you're going to have to start getting along."

     "Damn you, bitch!"

     I began to struggle in earnest and the doctor did
her best to hold me in a wrestler's lock.  I didn't
want to hurt Lowry, but I had to silence her, stop her
from bringing up things that I couldn't bear to hear.

     "Lowry, I warn you, let me go or I'll kill you --"

     "Sure!  And you're just crazy enough to do it,
too.  That's why I can't let you go on this way, Rupe. 
You're already a danger to yourself; you could become a
danger to others, too."

     With a roar, I put my foot against the wall and
pushed, throwing her off.  She fell back against a
table and I whirled, possessed by the impulse to tear
at her with my bare hands.  But I didn't see the face
of a taunting foe when I spun around, just the stunned
and worried look of a physician -- one who knew a that
desperate, improvised treatment had failed.

     But what sort of treatment had it been?  

     "I'm sorry, Rupert," she began haltingly. 
"Sometimes you have to rebreak a fracture to set it
right --"

     I wasn't listening anymore.  I no longer wanted to
do violence, but I was beginning to tremble and my
breathing came hard and rapid.  I had to get away.

     I staggered to the door like a drunken man, then
stumbled outside, falling back against the jamb for
support.  

     "Rupert!  Don't go!" Lowry cried behind me. 

     I walked swiftly away, and only the crumbling rags
of my dignity prevented me from running wildly.

     When I was out of Sebastian's sight, out of
anyone's sight, I did start to race away, blindly. 
Where I was running to I didn't know, until I saw the
foot of Woolenska's Bluff up ahead, and realized
exactly what fate my legs were carrying me to.

                    #

     Somehow I climbed the rocky incline -- clambering
on all fours sometimes.  I didn't even see the way
ahead; all I could see was the face of a snarled-haired
girl with circled, aquamarine eyes.  I tried my
strength to its very limit -- the strength of the
woman's body that I was trapped in.  From time to time,
sheer exhaustion forced me to lie belly-down upon the
sun-heated stones.  Whether such pauses were long or
short, I wasn't aware.

     Weakling!  I was not in the body of a pioneering
girl, I knew that now for sure.  I hadn't dreamed the
Nameless One up to be my sporting buddy or to compete
with me physically.  She had been a woman who would be
there for her man -- and the rest of the world needn't
have existed for her at all.  Making her man happy was
her driving purpose.  She was compassionate, soft-
spoken, faithful, and loving.  But a mountain-climber? 
Never.

     My lungs burning, my limbs aching, I pressed on. 
I was now high above the camp and strange thoughts were
pummelling me as I gazed blearily down the stony slope.
The camp looked so small, so orderly, like rows of toy
huts in a child's sandbox.  What was the camp to me? 
Just a place.  I felt completely estranged from it at
that moment.  The camp was no one's home -- certainly
not mine.

     I looked up into the blue sky, piled high with
cumulus ice cream castles.  Did I have a home up there
either -- anywhere?  

     No, no home.  I had only a place, a job.  A duty. 
Without my place, without my duty, I was nothing.  If I
died this moment, who would care?

     A foolish thought.  To the 54th Major Rupert Breen
was already dead.  He had lingered on where he didn't
belong, like Jacob Marley.  But unlike Marley he didn't
have anything wise to say, had no gift to give those he
left behind.  It was time to lay the ghost, to go where
the dead belonged.  That was for the best.  Let no one
pause to fret over my grave.  Let no one be sorry that
I was gone.

     I pressed on up the incline and, finally, dragged
myself onto the table rock which topped Woolenska's
Hill.  I was utterly spent by that time, not able to
rise immediately.  My lungs were aflame, my breath came
in hot pants.  I shoved a mass of greasy snarls out of
my face. 

     This damnable hair!  It was always there, draping
my neck like a veil, falling into my eyes, brushing my
shoulders, tickling my throat and cheeks.  I should 
have cut it off.  Well, it wouldn't matter what the
length of my hair was in the tomb.

     Suddenly I felt ashamed.  Was I going to kill
myself?  Had I become Olson?  Woolenska?  Others had
found the courage to endure my strange fate --  Ames,
Lowry, Hitchcock, Marduke.  Why couldn't I?  Was I like
Woolenska, giving up, or Olson, too distraught to
reason?  Was I a coward?

     At that moment I felt warm teardrops pattering
upon the dirty hands that held my face off the stones.

     Tears!  Woman tears!

     I could die, and gladly, but not as a weeping,
hysterical woman!

     I collapsed flush to the ground.  My thoughts were
like the meanderings of a dreamer.  I shouldn't have
given in to pity for myself, because pity was a torture
for me.  And pity didn't lighten my grief.  Lowry had
reached out, Drew had, also, but my pride couldn't
accept a hand from either.  How could it?  I had
betrayed my friend and it was only fair that I die now,
abandoned, as I had left her to die.  My body again
shook, but this time with hard, choking sobs.

     I rose to my feet at last.  All around, as if in
vertigo, whirled trees, bushes, boulders.  They were
just shapes to me; the plant life and geology of Klink
had few names.  Maybe a tree would be named after me
once I was deed, or even a hill.  But not this hill. 
Woolenska's had given his life to make it his hill
forever.  

     My legs were still weak, strained and aching from
the climb.  I had demanded much from this small woman's
body, but now my demands upon it were over.  I
understood what I must do to end my agony.  Sucking a
raw breath into my famished lungs, I staggered toward
the overlook --

     -- the overlook from which Herbert Woolenska had
launched himself into eternity. . . . 

                       ********


                       Chapter 6

     *Would I were dead! if God's good will were so;    
      For what is in this world but grief and woe?*     
                         KING HENRY VI, Part III      

     As I inched closer to the brink, I sank down to my
hands and knees.  Why did I bother?  Was I afraid of
falling to my death? Insane!  What else did I intend? 
But the will to life is a terrible, tenacious thing and
it takes all of human will to suppress it, even for a
little while.

     I took one more look at the world just then,
supposing that it would be my last.  Wild rock
pinnacles and forests rose up as far as the eye could
see, the hills and ridges stretching jaggedly to the
horizon, dwarfing Woolenska's little bluff. The
familiar earth- and vegetation-colors were softened by
the gradual hazing of the distance, making the
landscape resemble a painting by a nineteenth century
master.

     I gazed down at the jagged rubble below, blinking
away the blur of my saltine tears.  Out of what might
have been mere morbidity, I regarded the camp graveyard
with its two tiny markers, the ground where Olson and
Woolenska already lay -- and where I, too, must lie
tomorrow.  Strange thoughts filled my mind -- Would the
living pass me by with just a shrug, or would there be
someone left behind who would pause over my grave from
time to time, hating himself for my death?  I hoped
not.  No one was to blame -- except chance, that is,
and myself.

     Tears wet my collar and mucus filled my nose.  I
wanted to live, and I wanted to die, but I was forcing
myself to choose.  I could not go back and I was afraid
to explore what lay ahead. The emotion that I had kept
pent up for months now ran from me now like a river
flooding over the top of a dam, threatening to tear it
away.  I sank to my knees, lying belly-flat against the
stone of the ledge, cradling my head upon my forearms. 
I sobbed, perhaps from the simple grief of life,
perhaps at the much more complex grief of leaving it.

                           #

     Suddenly, behind me, I heard the crunch of gravel.

     "Easy, Major," said a man.  "Don't move."

     I glanced back.  It was Drew!  I gasped at the
thought that he should see me so -- my face wet, nose
running, eyes red and swollen.  The medic looked
winded, as if from coming very far without rest, his
tunic darkened with sweat, his stride slow and lame.

     "Be careful, Major.  Please.  Come back from
there.  It's a long way down."

     He was talking to me almost like a child -- or a
woman!  Again I felt the wild impulse to throw myself
over the ledge.

     Drew inched closer, fearing that any sudden move
on his part would make me take wing into the air like a
frightened pigeon.

     "Don't come any closer!" I warned.

     He paused, then extended his hand to me, a hand
gray with calciferous silt, and red where he had cut
his knuckles while climbing.

     "That's an order, solider!" I yelled.

     Lowering his arm, he contemplated my figure with a
bitten lip and agitated eyes.  "Then you'll have to
come to me, Major Breen," he finally said.

     "Return to the camp, Drew.  I want to be alone."

     "I can't.  Dr. Lowry told me to bring you back. 
She says you're not yourself and that I should
disregard your orders."

     "Lowry has no right!"

     "Of course she has the right, Major.  It's for
your own good."

     Frustrated, I retreated a few additional inches
toward the precipice.

     "Don't, sir!  Don't do that!"

     "Lowry's the one who's not herself!" I hissed
back.

     "Please, Major.  There's no disgrace in what's
happened to you.  We only want to help."

     "How can you help?  By making me a prisoner?"

     "We just want to keep you from doing what you're
doing now.  There's no reason to die."

     I flared, angry with myself arguing with a mere
private, and stood up.  I swayed precariously over the
edge ---

     "Major!" Drew ejaculated.

     -- but then caught my balance.

     "Leave me alone!" I cried.

     The medic moved a step backwards, to reassure me. 
"All right, sir.  We'll both just stay where we are and
talk."

     I searched his anxious blue eyes, trying to find
mockery in his address of "sir."

     "Let it go, Drew," I said, almost whispering. 
"I've sunk too low.  I can't bear the way I look."

     "There's nothing wrong with the way you look.  No
one can help what looks like."

     "That's Psych 101 talking!"

     "No, it's only a soldier talking to his
commander."

     I was no commander.  I couldn't make a private
obey my simplest order.  I had lost authority.  I had
lost my place.  I had lost my identity.  And it was
the same as losing my life.  I shifted my weight in the
excitement of the moment.  Doing so, my foot slipped .
. . .

     . . . .and then there was nothing below me except
empty space. . . .

                           #

     With an action more rapid than thought, I caught
hold of a tree root projecting through a fissure.  I
held on for all I was worth while my legs sought for
support over a bottomless void.  I saw my biography as
a projection upon the blank screen of my inner eye, a
thousand fleeting snapshots of a futility.

     I looked up in desperation and saw Drew's arm
waving above me.

     "Thank God!" he shouted.

     I said nothing, too excited to cry out.  He was
reaching down toward me, but his grasp came up at least
a foot short of my clinging hands.

     "I can't reach you where you are, Major.  You'll
have to give me your arm!"

     My mind raced.  I couldn't reach out with one hand
and hold on with the other for more than a few seconds. 
But I could brace my feet against the rock face and
spring upwards, I thought. That would give me a few
more inches.  It was just possible to reach Drew, if
both of us were quick enough.  But I would have only
that one chance, a chance lasting only a second, before
I fell to my death immediately afterwards. . . .

     Time seemed suspended my mind roiled.  I wondered
whether I should accept Drew's offer or let my
existence end.

     Death had suddenly become so easy, almost as if it
were Old Grandfather Time opening his gate for me,
extending loving arms. I might simply relax my grip and
let Death catch me; even Drew would not be certain
whether I died by my own choice.  I need not bear the
infamy of suicide, and yet escape the mockery which my
life had become.

     But what if, instead, I accepted Life, took the
bad cards dealt to me and played them out the best I
could?  It must be a totally new kind of life.  Now was
the time to revolt that life, to show that I would not
play Fate's game, not later.  Now was the time to
choose honor above life.  To choose to life, and yet
groan and complain about it later on, would be
contemptible.

     "Major -- please," the young man above was
pleading.  "You have so much to live for.  Can't you
see it?"

     No, I didn't see it, but for some reason I found
myself making a desperate leap, an all or nothing toss
of the dice that meant life or death --

     -- And Drew's strong fingers locked tight around
my wrist.

                           #

     I was amazed by the soldier's strength, forgetting
that my weight had recently been reduced from nearly
hundred kilos to only about some sixty or sixty-five.

     As the soldier could gain little purchase upon the
ledge, he had to scuttle backwards on his belly, like a
sun-warmed lizard, using whatever irregularities the
stone offered, but mostly depending upon friction and
his greater weight to support me against the force of
gravity.  The rock hurt my breasts, but when my belly,
legs, and finally my toes were dragged up over the lip
of the precipice, I knew for certain that I was saved
-- that I had returned to life, like a lost soul
reincarnated -- but could any human being have felt
less joy for it than I did?

     Releasing my wrist, the young trooper swung about
to my side and carefully turned me over on my back.

     "Are you hurt?" he asked concernedly.

     "You shouldn't have --" I stammered.

     "I had to."

     I closed my eyes.  Drew had done his job.  He
would have done no less for any other person, even a
felon condemned to die before a firing squad at sun-up.

     "I want to help you, Major."

     My eyes began to burn, to get wet.  I couldn't
speak.

     "If you feel like crying, that's all right," Drew
assured me, his tone doctor-like.  "There's a lot of
pain inside you, I know, and this is the best time to
let it out.  No one can see or hear you up here."

     I didn't want to do anything unmanly in front of a
witness, but my life had become such a twisted,
unrecoverable wreck that I just couldn't help it.

     Drew squeezed my hands empathetically for a
moment, then to my surprise, scooped me up into his
arms and carried me to the shade of some small trees. 
He eased me to the ground again and, before I realized
it, my cheek was pressing against his shoulder and my
arms wrapping tightly about his neck.  Now I broke down
utterly.
     "I don't want to be like this," I heard myself
saying.

     "I know," he whispered.  "I wouldn't either, but
we'll get you through.  You can depend on it."

     After a while my sobbing ceased and my breathing
came quieter, more even.

     "I'm a woman --,"  I choked, wondering what that
would mean from now on.

     "Yes you are, Major," Drew replied finally.  "So
what are you going to do with the rest of your life?"

     I was taken aback by such a question.  "I don't
know," I stammered.

     "Of course you don't, sir.  But sometime soon
you'll know, and then you'll be all right."

     I shook my head.  I couldn't be all right again. 
Not ever.

                           #

     When I tried to squirm out of the young soldier's
grasp he let me go.

     "We should climb back down," suggested Drew.  "Do
you feel strong enough to walk?"

     "I don't want to go back," I said, still unable to
look him in the eye.

     "You have to.  The only other place you can go is
over that ledge, and I really wouldn't want to see that
happen."

     "All right," I said, fatalistically.

     Drew helped me to my feet, watching me carefully,
gaging my strength.  "Good, now let's go," he coaxed.

     Then, steadied by his strong hands, we descended
the slope. Many times I had to stop to rest and
sometimes Drew was practically carrying me.  By the
time we reached the bottom I was so used up that he
actually did take me up into his arms again and tote me
along.  I did not even protest, so exhausted, so
despondent was I, but as we neared the grove which was
the last barrier screening us from the full view of the
camp, I got anxious.

     "Let me down!  I can't let them see me like this!"

     He complied and I was relieved to find that my
legs felt fairly firm once they touched the soil.

     "Are my eyes red?" I inquired hastily.

     "No, they're quite --"  Whatever his intended
observation might have been, he dropped it.

     "Drew, please," I asked, as one person merely
asking a favor of another, not trying to make it a
command, "don't tell anyone what I almost did."

     "I have to tell Dr. Lowry."

     "Yes, but nobody else!" I insisted.

     "It'll be our secret," he promised.

                           #

     I avoided looking at the men -- and the women --
along the way to my hut.  How much did they know?  That
I had I been seen racing for the hill like a lunatic? 
That Drew had to be sent to bring me home?  I would
lose all respect if it became known that I had nearly
committed suicide.

     Drew put me to bed.  I grew drowsy and, very
quickly, slept. When I woke up Lowry was seated beside
me.

     "We've got to stop meeting like this" I murmured.

     She smiled in relief.  "If you can tell jokes
after what you've been through, Rupe, your prognosis is
excellent."

     "Excellent, sure," I said without much enthusiasm. 
"I'm alive, but what kind of life is it going to be?"

     "That's what I still ask myself every time I wake
up in the morning." the physician grinned.  "When I
stop asking it, I'm sure I'll be dead."

     When I didn't reply, a new thought crossed her
brow like a dark cloud.  "Rupe, I'm as sorry as I can
be.  I never should have talked to you the way I did. 
-- At least not without a couple of husky orderlies on
hand to keep you from running off."

     "It's all right.  I suppose shock therapy is the
least that I deserve."
     "What do you mean?"

     I looked away.  "If I told you, we couldn't be
friends anymore."

     She put her hand upon the blanket covering me. 
"That's not going to happen, Rupe.  Whatever's
bothering you, it can't be so bad.  I know you.  You're
probably the most decent -- person -- in the service. 
I'm proud to know you."

     "You must have met some real scum buckets then."

     "Buddy, what is it?"

     I swallowed hard.  "I let you down."

     "Me?  When?  How?"

     I told her.  I don't know why I had to tell Lowry
my secret at just that time, but I had to, I had to let
her know exactly what sort of person I was.

     She had grown silent; I looked up at her, thinking
that her face was paler than usual.

     But there was no anger in it, just that dewy look.

     "Neither one of us are very good in the feelings
department, are we?" Sebastian sighed softly.

     "I guess not."

     I reached out and touched her hand.  "Can you
forgive me?"

     "Look, Rupe, I've made mistakes, too -- like
making my best friend and most important patient
suicidal.  I'd say that we're about even."

     I shrugged, still feeling that what I had done had
been far worse.

     "Now, cheer up," she went on.  "What's happened --
what's happened to both of us -- is damned strange, but
I don't see any reason why it has to be terminal.  It's
mostly a lifestyle problem, and at least we're not
alone in it."

     "No, we have a whopper of a leper colony here."

     "Hardly that."

     "Can't we just go on like as if it hasn't happen? 
Do we have to make a big thing out of sex?"

     "Sex is a big thing, Rupe.  Wait until you're
having your first period.  Wait until you look at a
some soldier and start thinking that he sizes up pretty
damned well."

     "You're still doing that?"

     "Well, I'm trying to control it.  The important
thing is not to give in."

     That's right, don't give in, I thought.  Chastity
wasn't so onerous, after all.  I had already imagined
myself living out my last days on Klink with the sex
life of a monk.  Anyway, I couldn't imagine myself ever
being attracted to a man, despite Lowry's experience. 
If I couldn't hack it as a nun, I'd probably end up a
lesbian.  What a fate!

     I changed the subject:  "Doc, you'd better be off. 
I don't have the right to keep you from your work."

     "You're part of my work, Rupe!  There's no way I'm
leaving you unattended after so serious a crisis."

     "Then I'm stuck with you, I suppose.  Say, how
long did I sleep?  Are there any new problems today?"

     "That's none of your business," she said with a
sympathetic smile.

                           #

     Two days had passed with no new disappearances and
Lowry's prediction seemed to be bearing out.  If her
theory actually held water, I realized, our whole
situation, our whole future outlook, had changed --
radically.

     "Maybe we have a chance to reverse this thing," I
remarked. "If someone wants Klink to have a
half-and-half population it might work in the other
direction, too.  If we put all the women together maybe
they'll start reverting!"

     Sebastian's brow wrinkled.  "I've thought about
that, too, Rupe.  But even if it did work, it would be
like lengthening a blanket with a strip cut from the
other end.  It doesn't get us anywhere.  If we're going
to be 50-50 no matter what we do, what's the difference
which half is which?  What we have to do is make sure
that there are no new transformations.  We have to
achieve some kind of stability; we've got a tall order
just surviving on Klink without all this distraction."

     "I suppose you're right," I replied glumly, though
it certainly seemed no small matter to me which half of
the human race I belonged to.  "We'll have to make sure
that no men are ever isolated from female association
for very long.  We've got to look over our records and
estimate about how far out a man can go from camp
before transforming --  What are you grinning about,
Doc?"

     "It sounds like women are going to have a lot of
power on this planet.  If they don't cooperate, the men
will be up the creek."

     I shook my head.  "Women's power is always an
illusion, Sebastian.  It only exists when men refuse to
use force, or where men for whatever reason enforce it
against other men.  That happened in America a couple
centuries ago, but it never happened before and it
hasn't happened since."

     "Haven't you heard of those old time
matriarchies?"

     "Sure, I've done some reading.  Matriarchies are a
crock. In the Egyptian royal families, the throne
belonged to the women, so that meant that brothers
insisted on marrying sisters so that they could be
king.  Men will always rule, Sebastian.  Strength
always rules, whether it's the strength of courtly
knights idolizing women, or of street gangs terrorizing
them."

     "Sounds pretty grim."

     "It doesn't have to be.  You just have to zero in
on the best qualities of manhood and reenforce them. 
It's a child-rearing process.  That's what made human
society work before the Twentieth Century -- and that's
what got it working again after that bloody, stupid
century was over."

     "We can't be knights, Rupe, so where does that
leave you and me?"

     "I don't have a clue," I admitted.  "Anyhow, I'm
more interested in what Philbrick said."

     "What about?"

     "About relieving me."

     "Philbrick understood."
     "Oh, he'd understand, all right!  He knows a nut
case when he sees one," I mused.  "Okay, now that I
have no duties, no responsibilities, no conceivable
function in life, what am I good for?"

     "We'll just have to figure that one out," she said
with a wan smile.

                       ********

                       Chapter 7

     *There is something in this more than natural,    
      if philosophy could find it out.*                
                                             HAMLET

     Transformation trauma was a roller coaster. 
Sometimes one was up, but most of the time he was so
far down that he wished that he were dead.  Any death-
wish is dangerous and so, because Drew and Lowry
couldn't watch me all the time, they brought in others
-- usually Halder or Cutts -- to pick up the slack.

      During the worst of it, I could barely get four
or five hours sleep on a good night.  The depression I
felt was like a physical ache permeating every corner
of my body -- a interminable, grinding despair, the
fear that life could never again be meaningful,
purposeful, or even tolerable.  I was asking myself
endlessly:  "Who am I?"  "What am I?"  "Why am I
living?"  

     When I was feeling more or less up, as I sometimes
was, I could at least read.  Unfortunately, worthwhile
material was scarce, outside of Drew's book of
Shakespeare and Lowry's Bible.  Before long Sebastian
was encouraging me to get off my back and take daily
walks.  I don't remember much about those first
excursions.  It was an ordeal just to have to place one
foot in front of the other.  I was always accompanied
by someone to look out for me, since it wouldn't do to
have Major Breen climbing Woolenska's Hill again.  

     As my spirits improved, I could once again enjoy
playing cards with Sebastian.  Whenever we felt like
making it a foursome, we brought in other players,
usually Drew and Ames.  The blonde captain, when she
was around, did her best to be my friend, but something
-- maybe our respective ranks or our past association
-- proved to be an obstacle, especially to me.  

     The camp seemed to operate smoothly.  I had given
Philbrick to understand that I expected him to run it
as best he saw fit.  I assured him that I wouldn't be
allowing anyone to come to me and go over his head.  He
appreciated my pledge.  

     As he gained confidence, Philbrick took to
operating in his own distinct way.  He early-on made
some decisions that wouldn't have occurred to me --
decisions which, in fact, I probably would have
rejected.

     I had pretty much run things by the "Book."  That
wasn't because I was an unimaginative martinet, but
because I wanted to give the Group a sense of
stability, a center, a focus.  The Book wasn't perfect,
but doing things strictly by the rules lets everyone
know exactly where he stands.  Philbrick, on the other
hand, was an experimenter.  His most noticeable change
was the relaxation of the uniform requirements. 
Because we had no clothes to fit the women, he set up a
committee charged with prescribing ways to make the
transformees' clothing more comfortable and
utilitarian.  Before long, the transformed troopers
were cutting away extraneous material, such as floppy,
dragging pantslegs and over-long sleeves.  Cutoffs
suddenly became a common sight.  Off duty, women were
even allowed to go about clad in just shirttails and
drawers.  To my mind, the latter fashion made them look
like b-girls who had just climbed out of the beds of
real soldiers.

     Even though the change in the dress code gave me
new concerns about discipline, I did not bestir myself
to intervene.  Capt. Ames, who had chaired the uniform
committee, heartily approved of the new dispensations. 
I suspected that she had strongly influenced Philbrick
to authorize them.  Philbrick was, after all, Ames' hut
mate, her long-time friend, and even -- perhaps -- her
current lover.  I wondered about that last possibility
sometimes, but I neither confronted them with the
subject nor sought for gossip.

     At least one innovation which I approved of was
the design of new sort of footwear.  Mr. Chesterton,
one of the fleet techs, got the idea of stripping the
Carodite insulation sheets out of the now-useless drop
pods and cutting from it tough soles for shoes.  With
the addition of straps for and aft, the space-farer
produced sandals which that were many times more
comfortable than the oversized army boots that we had
been condemned to wear beforehand.

                           #

     I was now wearing the new sandals for my daily
exercise.  All along Drew had been my most frequent
suicide watch and companion upon these walks.  Very
quickly ours became more than a strictly professional
relationship, although fraternizing with a serviceman
ran against the very Book that I valued so highly. 
But, if the truth be told, rank can be a mighty lonely
thing.  If I was ever needed to abandon ceremony, now
was the time.

     It may seem ironic that I should let Drew get as
close to me as I did, since he had been the one with me
up on Woolenska's Hill.  The young soldier, like Lowry,
knew my weaknesses, knew my breaking point -- and a
person usually isn't comfortable around someone who
knows his limits.  But it may be that our relationship
wasn't so unlikely at all.  Part of being a friend is
letting down the mask, of admitting that you have
shortcomings, failings.  While this was something that
I had the greatest difficulty doing in front of my
officers, something about the medic's manner, or his
personality, encouraged me to open up.  Anyway, I had
to have help from the "inside" or I couldn't cope.  

     Over a couple weeks I gradually accepted that
Drew's offer of camaraderie was solid and genuine, not
merely a suicide watcher's duty expressed artfully. 
For his part, the medic seemed to gain confidence that
I would not suddenly do an about-face and start
treating him like an orderly.  We began talking about
our respective backgrounds.  He listened attentively to
everything that I told him and I repaid the compliment. 
I learned that Drew was from Missouri and had attended
the University at Rolla, where he had studied pre-med. 
He was well-read and sorely missed his library of
English-language literature back on Earth.  He also
enjoyed classic songs, many of which he had memorized. 

     It never had been Drew's intention to be a
professional soldier and had been unenthusiastic about
being drafted straight out of college.  Previously, he
had looked forward to attending the University of
Illinois in Chicago -- there to specialize in prostatic
surgery and research.  Now his goal was to learn as
much advanced medicine as he could from Doctor Lowry.

     I laughed suddenly and he asked me why.  It was
only because I was able to recognize one of the few
advantages of being transformed:  I would not need to
worry about prostatic problems in my latter years.

     As the days passed, we became quite relaxed and
natural together.  I even persuaded Drew to sing some
of those old-time songs of his -- such as "Venus in
Blue Jeans," "Graduation Day," and "A White Sports
Coat."  He had a strong, melodious singing voice and I
grew determined, if we ever put on a company show, to
try and get him to perform for it.  

     We shared a love for Shakespeare and we talked
over the idea that I had once had of staging a play. 
He suggested that I would make a good Portia.  I
demurred; I was no actor and, personally, I never had
liked Portia as a character.  "The Merchant of Venice"
seemed to go sour at the point where Shakespeare let
Portia carry her hoax upon Shylock too far.  Harsh as
his intended vengeance against his rival had been,
Shylock had at least stayed within the letter of the
law, but Portia's impersonation of a justice was
clearly a felony.  In the Twenty-First Century
Americans had fought their second revolution, among
other things, to tame a despotic judiciary.  Most of us
still believed that the greatest threat to human
civilization, Assies included, was the man or woman in
black robes.
 
     Anyway, Drew was amused by my literary criticism
and said that if I didn't like Portia the second best
role for me had to be Doll Tearsheet.  I slugged him in
the arm and we shared a good laugh.  Afterwards,
reflecting, I was flabbergasted that I had let a
private get away with such a suggestion.

     As my strength and confidence returned, my walks
became more purposeful.  I no longer suffered from
headaches or shaking spells.  Relieved of routine duty,
I was anxious to contribute something nonetheless.  For
some reason, perhaps stemming from the long
agricultural tradition in my family, I grew more and
more preoccupied with the discovery and cultivation of
Klinkian edibles.  

     Our emergency rations would last for about another
year, I estimated, but what was a single year when were
facing old age and death upon Klink?  I encouraged
Lowry and Drew to devote as much of their time as
possible to testing potential food substances.

     The foragers had been honing their hunting
techniques, making snares, deathfalls, and
experimenting with bows and arrows.  The meats of many
mammal-like and bird-like animals had proven
nutritious, though one family of rodent-like creatures
seemed to have a peculiar and disagreeable gastric
effect upon humans.  Local plant matter was, as on
every world, tricky.  We lacked test animals with
Earth-evolved physiologies to experiment upon, so while
Lowry's or Webb's tests might screen food for toxins
(also taking careful note of what might be useful
chemical substances), we nonetheless had to begin a
series of human experiments, starting with the
consumption of very small amounts of plant matter under
close observation.  We had some sickness, and sometimes
what seemed to be allergies, but no fatalities.

                           #

     After about an Earth month in my transformed shape
I seemed to be spending more days "up" than "down." 
Dr. Lowry gaged my recovery rate as very good, though I
realized that it was nowhere so swift as her own had
been.  I wondered at that.  Possibly Sebastian had
possessed more spiritual reserves than the rest of us,
or maybe it helped that she had started out as the
least macho man in camp.  Nevertheless, my constant
harping on the future problems of the camp convinced
her that my mend was well under way.

     I actually was giving the subject a lot of
thought.  It seemed clear that we would soon have to
turn our major attention toward establishing a viable
agriculture.  Pulling that off successfully was a
daunting prospect.  We didn't even know what to select
for crops.  Lt. Webb, one of Komisar's best
technicians, had been pursuing a course in soil
conservation in alien xeno-ecosystems before he was
called to active duty.  Such skills as his were now
precious to us.  Faced with nothing to fight, we
soldiers had little choice but to become good farmers. 
Like Sulla, we had to hang up the sword and get behind
the plow.  But first we had to reinvent the plow.

     About that time Lowry discovered another
pregnancy, this time Pvt. Logan's.  I took the news
without undue excitement.  I had recommended measures
to curtail sexual relationships between the members of
the unit but no one had stepped forward to endorse the
idea.  Now, at least, it was up to others to solve such
problems.  As it happened, Philbrick chose to merely
reiterate a new version of the advisory which Lowry had
earlier authored.  

     Interestingly, Logan, like Hitchcock before her,
was not actively considering termination.  It was her
own business, naturally, but I worried about the
viability of the 54th as a military unit -- even as a
mixed unit of men and women -- if we became saddled
with a large number of children.  Speak of army brats! 

     But I had other things to keep my mind occupied --
like my first onset of bloody cramps.  I hated the
discomfort and the mess but what could one do except
sigh and bear it?  Between babies and periods, it was
small wonder that feminine psychology always seemed so
strange to a man.  I asked Lowry if she had anything
that could stop a person from menstruating, and she
recommended pregnancy.  I didn't ask twice.

                           #

     I had been sleeping and I awoke covered in sweat,
agitated by an erotic dream.  For the first time in a
dream of mine I had not been a man, but a woman.  More
than that, a woman with a man and. . . .

     But even waking up the darkness didn't make me
feel right.  I couldn't help but touch my breasts
fondlingly, and reach between my legs.  I kneaded the
flesh, seeking relief, but there was none to be had. 
The more I masturbated, the greater my craving.  It was
like scratching an insect bite; what had before seemed
bearable if intensely annoying swiftly grew into
something too terrible to endure.

     I don't know if I was still asleep, or awake but
possessed by an obsession.  I found myself getting up
from bed, not even bothering to dress, as if moved by a
primordial drive.  All I had on was an oversized T-
shirt hardly long enough to keep me decent as I hurried
outside into the bright moonlight.  The night breeze
did exactly nothing to cool my ardor.  Where was I
going so swiftly?  What I was I looking for?

     Had I been more myself I would have taken greater
heed of the strange chaos in the camp.  I saw some
women dashing about, chasing men, or being chased by
them, including Sgt. Gold, who was entirely naked. 

     I saw Philbrick struggling with Ames in front of
their hut.  He broke her grasp and shoved her into the
hands of another man, who held fast to the out-of-her-
mind captain as she kicked and swore.  Philbrick, once
disentangled from Ames, started bawling out orders to
everyone within earshot.

     I wasn't listening; I was like an addict searching
for his substance.  I thought I was going crazy and
knew that I had to fine Lowry.  But as I ran barefooted
into the infirmary I found myself face to face not with
the physician, but with Alan Drew.

     "Major!" the young medic blurted.  "Have you seen
the doctor?!  She was acting like the other women, then
she ran off.  She's --"

     Then he gave me a hard stare.  Perhaps my wild,
feral look alarmed him.  Only now did I finally
understood what I had been seeking and -- horrified --
I turned on my heels and fled from it.

                           #

     But Alan followed after me at a swift jog.  The
medic was gaining on me, his stride longer, his breath
capacity greater.  Suddenly my bare foot came down upon
something pointed and, with a cry of pain, I stumbled
to a stop.  Alan was on me instantly, gripping me as if
he thought that I was about to try suicide again,
though I had only wanted to be alone -- alone to
wrestle with my personal demon.

     I fought to get away, but before I realized it, I
was struggling not to escape but to hold onto him,
fighting to get closer.

     "Major!" he gasped, "What's happening to you -- to
all the women?!"

     I released a moan, a incoherent growl.  I wanted
to feel him, to explore the hard muscles and Apollonian
angles of his body.

     While he was doing his best to control me, I
realized that I was fantasying rape -- and with a
blood-stirring excitement!  I gave out with a cry of
dismay when I realized what I was doing and collapsed
to my knees. 

     "Major!" Alan exclaimed, taking me by the
shoulders and raising me up, holding me so firmly that
I could neither come closer nor pull away.  "What is
it?!" he demanded, sounding angry -- as men always do
when they get excited.

     "Hold me," I whispered.

     "Maj--?"

     "Hold me."

     His face, lit by the moonlight, was aghast.  "What
is it?" he asked.  "What?!"

     I pressed my cheek against one of his hands.  The
strength, the energy, that I now sensed in Alan Drew
was like rose perfume to a honey bee.  Strength like
his, if used to subdue a woman, would be overwhelming -
- and that thought sent a hot rush through me, left me
breathless.  But I needed more than just to be held; I
wanted relief for an acute torment -- and knew how this
man could give it to me.

     "Make love to me," I rasped.

     "Major!"

     "I need it -- Alan.  I'm going mad!"  

     "There's something wrong.  We've got to understand
it.  We can't just give in."

     "I can't stand any more!"

     "You have to, Major.  You're strong!"

     The night breeze, sweeping my tear-streaked face,
was chilly, but it didn't douse the fire within me. 
"At least kiss me!"

     "It's not what you want!"

     "I know what I want!"

     He looked at me, intense, unyielding, his grip
rigid.  "No, you don't."

                           #

     "I order you!" I shrieked.

     Alan gritted his teeth and shook his head.  "You
can't give that kind of order."

     Powerlessness!  I hated it.  I sobbed, then struck
at him with my small balled fists.  He ignored my
paltry blows and, as he had done before, scooped me up
into his arms as if I were weightless, to carry me back
the way we had come.  I pressed my body against his as
he bore me along.
  
     Alan endured my advances and, in my state, I was
encouraged to think that he was actually enjoying them. 
My body began to tremble with the anticipation of the
two of us alone together.  I started to kiss his face
and, holding me the way he was, he could do nothing to
make me stop other than shout.  

     There were plenty of other shouts and a great deal
of movement around us, but I was beyond caring. 
Nothing was real anymore, nothing except the clutch of
the man upon my body.  I was almost out of my mind, but
not entirely so.  I was self-aware enough to fear that
the way I was acting was destroying a precious
friendship.  What could Alan feel for me from this
moment on except contempt?  I ceased my demented
assault and collapsed into myself, the loneliest and
most forsaken of all human beings.

     By escort had veered from the direct route to my
hut and now I heard the liquid rush of the neighborhood
stream burbling over the smooth rocks of its bed.  I
looked at the water first in puzzlement, then in fear
as Alan started lowering me down.  

     "No!  It's cold!" I shrilled in vain as he
submerged me into the creek, as if into a therapeutic
bath.  The chill was all the more shocking because he
allowed only my face to remain above the surface.  How
I struggled, and how uselessly.  There was no way to
resist his male strength.

     I was numb and shivering as he drew me out.  I
clung to him more closely than before, needing his
warmth.  Muttering something I couldn't understand,
Alan carried me to my hut and set me on my feet next to
the bed.

     He helped me peal off my T-shirt.  I stood naked
in front of him and despite my frigid dunking, it
aroused me more, though more arousal was the last thing
that I needed.  He took one of my shirts down from its
peg and dabbed the excess water from my gooseflesh.  He
stepped around me then and pulled back the blanket on
my cot.  Instantly I dove beneath it, shivering
violently.  Then Alan covered me up and tucked me in.  

     Recovering from my chill gradually, I watched Alan
taking off his own wet things.  The sight of his bare
pecs, so classically Greek, so near but so well-
defended, was like food set before the gaze of a
starving man.  

     "Can I use some of your clothes?" he queried
evenly.

     "Y-Yeh," I chattered, "anything."

     He selected a shirt and pair of pants.  Seeing him
in my clothing struck me profoundly.  How well they fit
him, and how poorly they fit me.  I found myself
fantasying again.  In the dreamlike shadows of my hut,
Alan became the important officer, while I was only the
nameless girl he had brought home from some bar.  He
would join me in a moment, I imagined, use me hard,
unsympathetically, then, in the morning, when I tried
to get close again, he would push me away and press a
little money into my hand and -- 

     Aghast at such thoughts, I pressed my face into
the pillow.  I wasn't fit to even look at such a man as
Alan after the way I had behaved.  All that had been
good between us was ruined, lost.  I had offended,
disappointed, demeaned him with my groping.  From now
on we would only be medic and patient, officer and
trooper, nothing more.  Our friendship was dead, killed
by the insanity that had taken hold upon me in my
sleep.  I was so unhappy that I hid my face under the
blanket.

     Perhaps to help keep me warm, perhaps to comfort a
patient, Alan sat down on the edge of the cot.  "How
are you feeling now, Major?"

     "Awful.  Forgive me."  

     "There's nothing to forgive."

     I turned my head, looked up at him, wanting to
reach out, but not daring to do more damage.  He put
his hand on my shoulder, as if to say that I wasn't
alone.  Encouraged, I slipped my hand out from under
the blanket and took his.  He didn't pull away, so I
lifted his fingers to my lips and placed a light,
plaintive kiss upon them. . . .

                        *******



                       Chapter 8

     *Affliction is enamour'd of thy parts,
      And thou art wedded to calamity.*
                         ROMEO AND JULIET


     I endured the torture of Tantalus that night.  Had
I had a man's strength, and Drew my weakness, nothing
on Klink would have prevented me from raping him.  I
actually tried to, but only managed to rip his -- my --
shirt.  After that, as I would have done in his place,
Alan bound me hand and foot.  I must have been some
sight -- naked, wild-eyed, and trussed up like a kidnap
victim.

     My senior officers, first Komisar, then Philbrick,
each extricated themselves from the chaos outside just
long enough to have a look in on me.

     "How is -- she?" Philbrick had whispered.  It was
not the first time that I had been called a "she," of
course, but it was the first time that Philbrick had so
referred to me in my presence.  I would have resented
it more, had I not been too far gone to care.

     "Not good," sighed Alan.  "Did you see Dr. Lowry?"

     "No," grimaced Philbrick.  "It's an orgy out
there.  We're restraining as many women as we can, but
who's going to guard the guards?"

     "I don't know, sir."

     Philbrick straightened up.  "Carry on, Private.
Make the major your priority.  If we find Lowry, we'll
bring her to you, too."

     "Yes, sir."

     Philbrick had left abruptly then and I thought
that my reputation was going with him.  He had seen me
tied up like a rabid animal.  What could ever induce
him to turn command over to me again?  I was ruined.  I
moaned like a thing in pain.

     Alan comforted me, but his touch only added fuel
to my fire.  He seemed to understand and whispered,
"I'm sorry, Major."

     I bit my lip and closed my eyes.

     "Is -- is there anything I can do to make you more
comfortable?"

     "Kiss me, please," I gasped.

     There was a moment of silence.  "I shouldn't do
that," he finally said.

     "I know you shouldn't!  Do it anyway."

     "Try to rest."

     "I don't need rest!" I cried.  "I can't rest."

     "We shouldn't do anything that will make things
harder for once you get better, Major."

     "I may never get better," I groaned.  "It may be
like this from now on.  What will you do then?"

     "I'll take care of you, any way that I have to,"
he promised earnestly.

                                #

     I finally slept the sleep of exhaustion and awoke
at dawn, still tied up, my bladder killing me.  I heard
movement in the other room.

     "Alan --!" I shouted, but stopped myself.  I had
never addressed the medic by his first name before and
that slip bothered me for some reason.  I sank back
into my pillow, wondering whether I should fret about
something so minor after all else that had been said
and done.

     The young soldier slipped in through the door.
"Major?  Are you feeling better?"

     I looked at him hard, trying to read his thoughts.
The respect and regard I detected in his expression
encouraged me.  "I've got to take a piss," I said.

     "But what about --?"

     "It's gone," I said breathlessly.  "And if you let
me loose, I promise won't try to seduce you."

     "If I let you go, are you going to court martial
me instead?" he asked wryly.

     "That's the least of your worries."

     He stood weighing my words, as if they were river
sand which might contain a few flakes of gold.

     Suddenly I remembered that there was more to this
nightmare than just Alan and me.  "What happened to us
all anyway?"

     "Whatever it was, it seems to be over for now."

     I rested back.  If the craving had become long-
term, it surely would have driven me insane.  "That's
damned good," I said shakily.  "Now cut me loose,
before I have to do something in front of you that I'd
rather not."

     He did and then discretely withdrew.  I took care
of what I had to, and then threw on some clothes.
While I was dressing, the medic saw Lowry returning to
the infirmary, barely dressed.

     When he gave me the news I asked a favor of him:
"Let me talk to her first."

     I found the doctor seated disconsolately upon one
of the infirmary beds wearing a robe.  I guessed that
she must have eluded Philbrick throughout the whole
night -- and that worried me.

     The brunette glanced up, dazed, chagrinned.

     "Sebastian!" I exclaimed.

     She closed her eyes and lowered her head, as if in
inner torment.  I sat down beside her and, holding her
close, we just sat there quietly for a while.

     "You know," Lowry smiled suddenly, "your beside
manner is getting better, Rupe."

     I gave a very brief laugh.  "That's never been my
strong suit.  It must be these new genes."

     "At least you kept your jeans on.  -- You did,
didn't you?"

     I shifted uneasily.  "Nothing happened.  -- No
thanks to me," I added.  "Bad night for you?"

     "I don't know.  I loved it while it was
happening."

     I got the story out of her by fits and starts.
Half the time she was laughing, and half crying.  The
madness had come upon her in the darkness, just as it
had come upon me.  The first person she had seen was
Alan Drew -- and had reacted to him exactly as I had.
Unlike me, she had eluded her protege.

     Only minutes later Lowry had run into a young
soldier, Stan Kitterson, and ordered him, "Stand where
you are, soldier!"

     She had pulled rank on Kitterson, just as I had
tried to pull it on Alan.  The difference was that
Kitterson had not been advised that he could, or
should, ignore the commands of the medical officer.
Anyway, how much resistance could a young man offer
when confronted by a beautiful woman demanding sex?
They made love in a grove until Lowry had drained him
dry and then they had remained there together, sleeping
in one another's arms.  The spell of lust had
dissipated by the time Sebastian awoke at dawn and she
had fled away, panicked, as if Kitterson had been her
ravisher, instead of the other way around.

     Alan arrived at that point.  I turned Lowry over
to the poor fellow and went to find Capt. Philbrick.
Ames was with him, a little chagrined, I thought, but
otherwise not looking too badly off.

     Philbrick regarded me suspiciously at first, but I
was coherent enough and so he started speaking more
freely after a couple minutes.  The other women's
experiences, it seemed, had been pretty similar to
Lowry's and mine.  Sometimes they had found men willing
to have sex, sometimes they were constrained and
confined.  Some of the women who were tied up had
slipped their bonds before the night was out and had
gotten themselves laid anyway.

     This was a serious business and it called for
another powwow.  To my relief, Lowry managed to pull
herself together in time for the staff meeting.

     The whole affair had us baffled, but one
peculiarity of it seemed especially important -- five
women -- Hitchcock, Logan, D'Aubers, McKenny, and
Bakshi -- had not succumbed to the madness though more
than two hundred others had.  Hitchcock and Logan were
known to be pregnant and that suggested a theory.
Philbrick asked Lowry to scan the soldiers for -- he
used the word "anomalies," but we all knew what was
meant.

                                #

     I waited just outside the infirmary while Dr.
Lowry examined the immune soldiers.  Their readouts, as
we had feared, were positive.  I felt sorry for the
shocked soldiers.  Motherhood was a staggering thing
for anyone to have to face without foreplanning, but it
was made worse by what had been their norms and
expectations up to only a couple months earlier.  Lowry
told them to get some rest and come back to talk once
they had had time to sort their situations through.

     At least the three of them had gotten where they
were by making a conscious choice to go to bed with
somebody.  But scores of their comrades had had no say
in the matter.  I asked Lowry what we could expect for
the Group as a whole and she suggested that it was
normal for about three percent of sexual encounters to
result in conception, but it would be about a week
before our equipment could detect anything.  I noted
the paleness of her face as she referred to the matter.

     There was going to be a lot of anxiety around the
camp for a while, I realized.  And if it hadn't been
for the grace of God and Alan Drew, I might have been
sweating out visions of wet-nursing for the next
several days along with so many others -- including
poor Sebastian.

     I accompanied the doctor toward the end of the day
when she went to make her follow-up report to
Philbrick.

     "What we experienced a couple nights ago," Lowry
began, "was not normal, of course.  We've all been
trying to make some sense of it, but we've been reduced
to guessing again.  I mean --"  The strain was clear in
the woman's drawn face.  "-- I mean, I think that the
-- the Madness -- was artificially-induced.  If someone
or something is inflicting such a thing upon our
psyches, we have to ask ourselves, why?  What's being
gained and by whom?"

     "Why didn't it affect the men?" I asked.

     "Maybe it did," Philbrick suggested.  "I've never
seen a sorrier example of undiscipline and bad
judgement on the part of this outfit."

     "A long time ago I identified an anomalous
particle lodged in the medulla of each transformee,"
Sebastian reminded us.  "It may have nothing to do with
what's happened, or it might have everything."

     "How?" the captain queried.

     "It's just possible that this particle is a
receiver for an externally-originating impulse -- one
which affects that part of the brain which controls
human sexual activity.  Whatever its nature, it was
powerful enough to override almost all contrary
inhibitions.  But it's worse than that."

     Worse?  Wasn't it bad enough? I thought.

     "Just as you cite, Captain, the men were not
acting entirely normal either.  We already know that
human bodies, like many mammalian species, produce
hormones known as pheromones.  One of the pheromones
most important functions is to excite sexual interest
in a prospective mate.  Most legal and illegal
aphrodisiacs make use of synthetic human pheromones, in
fact."

     She went on to explain how these airborne
substances reached one's partner's brain by way of the
respiratory system.  Lowry thought that our
transformees' sexual pheromones had been artificially
enhanced some way and massively released during the
Madness, like one sweats more when the temperature
rises.  That might serve to explain why so many of the
men had behaved so irresponsibly.

     "But even if all this speculation were true," the
doctor continued, "we're still left with the question
of `why?'  Every time I think about the phenomena we've
been experiencing, the more certain I am that we're
being biologically and emotionally manipulated to some
end.  I believe that someone or something wants us to
produce the largest possible number of children in the
shortest possible time frame."

     Philbrick and I looked at one another, not exactly
in surprise, and not exactly in disagreement.

     "One thing that makes me think so," Sebastian
pressed, "is the way that the pregnant women were
exempt from the Madness.  Their bodies were already
awash in the hormones of the gestation cycle and I'd
bet anything that these secretions were what killed the
biochemical trigger that affected everyone else.  But
why would this sort of immunity be built in, unless the
desired end of the Madness has been already achieved --
pregnancy?

     It all fit.  Our women have been sent back to us
young, heathy, and physically attractive.  The
transformation process had halted when we were evenly
divided sex-wise.  Were we all the unwilling subjects
of a breeding experiment?  I gritted my teeth.  It was
just too demeaning to contemplate.

     The obvious question soon occurred to Philbrick:
"Why would aliens want human children born here?"

     "I'm getting on very thin ice," Lowry admitted,
"but these phenomena might not be human-specific.  In
fact, they're probably the reason why the Asymmetrics
avoided colonizing this world themselves.  Either the
Assies couldn't disarm whatever is responsible, despite
all their power, or they judged that doing so would be
just too difficult or costly.  If our transformations
are not of Assie design, and I really don't believe
that they are, some other beings -- or the automated
equipment they left behind -- must be."

     That made sense to me.  If the phenomenon had
attacked the first Assies explorers just as it has
attacked us, their people would naturally have written
Klink off as a place unsuitable for settlement.  On the
other hand, what could be more natural than to use this
mild and fertile world for some other purpose, such as
a prison colony?  Maybe the Assies would even have
thought that its effect on us would make a good joke.
Well, maybe -- but I'd have liked to put a blaster to
the back of the head of the comedian who had dreamed up
such a stunt!

     "As to why some independent factor would want to
accelerate reproduction of higher life forms, there may
be more than one possibility," speculated the doctor.

     "For instance?" I asked.

     "For instance, the secret masters of Klink may
have been philanthropic and realized that our
settlement couldn't survive if it remained all-male.

     "Or, the original inhabitants of this planet might
have suffered the catastrophic loss of their females
population -- possibly through a sex-specific plague.
If they were facing extinction as a race, they might
have created some elaborate process to transform male
survivors into fertile females on a massive scale."

     "What about the -- insanity?" asked Capt.
Philbrick.

     Lowry shrugged.  "Maybe the Klinkian males had as
much or more psychological resistance to assuming the
female role as human ones do.  If that was the case,
the survival of the species depended upon overcoming it
by some means -- and an artificially-induced mating
frenzy is one way to that end."

     "Where are these people now?" I inquired.  "If
they're extinct, what made their plan fail?"

     "That's a question for archeology," said Sebastian
with a shake of her head.

     "Why weren't we affected immediately after landing
on Klink?" I asked.  "It took about a month before the
first transformations occurred."

     "I don't know," Lowry admitted.  "Maybe it takes a
little while for this planet to draw a bead on its new
arrivals."

     The talk went back and forth for a while, but we
didn't make much more progress.  All we really knew was
that we were up against something much bigger than we
were.  We had little choice, it seemed, but to live
with it and treat the symptoms as best we might.

                                #

     Would the Madness come back?  It was ironic that
Sebastian and I had been speculating how the special
circumstances of Klink would give the women a natural
superiority over the men.  But the Madness had more
than redressed the imbalance.  If a woman -- or at
least a transformee with a bead in her brain -- didn't
play it sweet with her man, he could put her through
the Madness cold turkey the next time it came along.
Even if pregnant and temporarily immune to the
phenomenon, she'd still be dependent.  A gravid female
always needs help from outside herself, whether it's a
government check or the commitment of a well-disposed
working male.  And in a world of primitive agriculture
and hunting, it sure wasn't going to be the government.

     By the end of seven days, Sebastian's scanner had
started discovering the expected new pregnancies.  She
found four, but actually only about half the affected
females had asked for a scan; the rest, seemingly,
would rather not face the truth so soon.  But four was
already within the average that Lowry had expected for
the population as a whole.   This caused the doctor to
speculate whether the fertility of the affected women
had been increased.

     But what was more perturbing to her, no doubt, was
the fact that one of the new pregnancies was her own.

     It broke my heart to see my friend staggered by
still another piece of bad luck.  Lowry had taken as
many emotional body blows as anyone else so far, and it
was only her resilience, her determination to carry on,
that sometimes made us forget that fact.  Nonetheless,
she kept a stiff upper lip while she was breaking the
news to me -- a lip so stiff that I wondered whether
she wasn't repressing again.

     I certainly expected some of the women receiving
the sad tidings to ask for termination, but none did.
This seemed impossible to me, considering.  Lowry,
analyzing her own feelings as well as her observation
of others, could only assume that that option had been
programmed out of the transformee psychology.
Apparently, in some important areas at least, we had
less free will than a lab rat.

     Lacking for better alternates, Philbrick decided
that with so many our people falling in love and
conceiving children, the old model of our organization
was about to fall apart anyway, and so it would be wise
to anticipate it.  In largest part, restructuring
ourselves meant taking the risky step of sanctioning
marriage between transformees and non-transformees.
The whole idea still sounded strange to us, but the
alternative was a sexual free-for-all.

     Philbrick realized that in order for Klinkian
marriage to serve its intended purpose, it had to be
more than a mere reassignment of roommates.  It had to
operate under rules which the command structure, and
the Group as a whole, was committed to enforcing.  It
also had to have ritual, because ritual is the easiest
way to give mystique and a sense of importance to any
societal institution.  Also, public ceremony allows for
group-participation, and group-participation in this
case would establish the marriage partnership as the
basic building block from which the community, or
whatever it was that we were turning into, had to be
built from.

     Having decided to take such a daunting step, we
furthermore needed to put forward some recognized
person of authority empowered to perform the ceremony
and give it solemnity.  For some reason Philbrick
didn't want the latter job himself, so he appointed
Captain Ames as a kind of Justice of the Peace.  She
also was placed at the head of a committee consisting
of formerly-married soldiers, both male and female, to
draw up the actual rules which would govern Klinkian
matrimony for the foreseeable future.

     The commission in fact came up with logical list
of regulations, the most important being a pledge that
the partners must pledge to materially support one
another to the best of their ability.  The same
consideration was also extended to any children
begotten by them.  Mistakes would be made and some
matches would fall apart, but care had to be taken that
the couple's children would suffer least of all.
Desertion of mates or offspring without adequate
justification would result in stern discipline, as
would adultery -- since adultery bred quarrels and
internecine strife would be detrimental to the group's
survival.

     We also understood that the barracks system, which
had seemed so natural up to now, was nearing its end.
Communal living would not suit either the needs of
married couples nor families with children.  We would
have to do a great deal of new carpentry, it seemed, on
top of all the other crucial things we had to
accomplish in so short a time.

     The committee had recommended that new mothers
should be granted discretionary leave from routine
duties.  We had no day-care centers and what was the
sense of assigning someone the duty of raising somebody
else's children?  What had seemed logical at home was
illogical on Klink.  Almost everything we had taken for
granted before had been based upon a high-technology
labor force and service infrastructure that had made
male strength and female nurturing obligations largely
irrelevant.

     Like it or not, Klink would be a world of long
hours of back-breaking physical labor, a kind of labor
which men could perform best.  The other work must
naturally fall to the woman.  This work included child
tending, which was a full-time job all by itself.
Nobody need necessarily like this, but what was the
alternative?  The only social structures that would
exist for about the next thousand years would be the
family and the -- well, tribe, for want of a better
term.  The dawning reality bothered me but,
fortunately, few others seemed to be thinking that far
ahead and so were not depressing themselves like I was
doing.

     But to return to the matter at hand, more
marriages took place in the immediate aftermath of the
commission's report than anyone had expected.  Because
Hitchcock and Roberts had requested their nuptials long
before any of the others, their wedding was held first.
We all stood by as Ames recited the simple ceremonial
script which she had written herself, based on what she
remembered from wedding and movies which featured
weddings:  "Do you take this --"  "Do you pledge to --"
etc. etc.

     Without intending it, Hitchcock's wedding had
established a custom that would be with us for some a
while -- that of the bride taking her marriage oath
under an assumed woman's name.  For Hitchcock it was
Mary, of course -- and over the following days we would
be introduced to Ellen, Lorena, Ilene, Racine, Dysis,
Colette, and many others.

                        *******


                             Chapter 9

     *How all the other passions fleet to air
      As doubtful thoughts, and rash-embraced despair,
      And shuddering fear, and green-eyed jealousy.*
                              THE MERCHANT OF VENICE


     What the 54th had to accomplish before it became
self-sufficient was enough to daunt the bravest soul.
Amid the overwhelming variety of local flora we still
had to identify those species which might be
cultivatable plants.  We would also have to experiment
with domesticating animals, and if successful, manage
their breeding.

     But man does not live by bread alone.  If our
little outpost was not to fall into barbarism within a
generation or two, we had to take care.  I especially
wished to preserve for posterity the history of our
extra-stellar origin and our advent upon Klink.  This,
along with the Group's memories of our former homes,
our families, our knowledge of other places and other
ways, had to be written down.  I wondered how the kids
of Klink would appreciate the strange role which the
Assies had played in our story.  Would they feel any of
the animosity against them that we felt?  Or would they
see aliens as benign figures of myth, as the gods who
had led their ancestors into the Promised Land?

     It would be up to us of the first generation to
prevent the darkness of ignorance from descending and
so it worried me that we had so few books of cultural
validity.  Even these few would be lost in no great
length of time, unless copies were made.

     Above all, we had to see to it that the arts of
reading and writing would be passed on, as well as the
basics of arithmetic and geometry.  Knowledge could not
flourish in a vacuum, I realized, and so we needed to
create a societal order that made practical use of such
arts.  The groundwork had to be lain down diligently so
that poetry and engineering might flower again once the
population  had increased enough to justify it.

     But what should our first step be?  To preserve
our books, didn't we have to learn how to make paper?
Ancient Egypt had done very well in that regard using
the stems of the papyrus.  The Romans, as advanced as
they were, had failed to improve upon the technique.
Did Klink have anything like papyrus?  Or could we
instead use fired mud bricks, like the ancient
Mesopotamians?  There was plenty of mud on Klink at
least, but I shuddered to think of the entire Holy
Bible arduously transcribed and preserved on bricks!
One could build a church out of a single copy!

      But what about the other necessities which any
people needed, like clothes?  It would be a shame if
civilized men had to revert to wearing skins in a
single generation.  Was there no shearable beast in
this part of Klink to provide us with wool?  Was there
no plant fiber to serve us for cotton?  I had heard of
primitive tribes on Earth deriving a supple cloth out
of boiled and beaten tree bark.  Might there be a bark
upon Klink that we could similarly reduce to a durable
fabric?

     Inevitably, each problem which I tried to
brainstorm led to another, greater, problem which had
to be solved first.  For a man to fetch a pail of
water, he first must build the pail.  Life upon Klink,
I could now see, would be an unending challenge to our
wits and ingenuity.  Did any of our crew already know
things that would speed us along, ease our burden?
Clearly, we had to accept ideas and contributions from
all the ranks and not leave everything to an
overwhelmed and not-particularly-inspired leadership.

                                  #

     I saw Sebastian every day, but she never alluded
to the baby she was carrying though it must have
preoccupied her every waking hour.  I wanted to be a
better friend to her than I had been in the past, but
what could I do for her?  Did I dare trespass upon
something so personal?

     A couple weeks after the first wedding, I went
into the infirmary and discovered Sebastian wearing a
look of dazed disbelief.

     "You're smiling," I observed curiously.

     "You wouldn't believe what just happened, Rupe!"

     "What?"

     "I was just proposed to."

     "By who?" I queried, amazed.

     "Nobody special.  Just the father of my child."

     "Pvt. Kitterson?"

     "The same.  I guess he's feel guilty, or
responsible, or something."

     "Well, he took his sweet time about stepping
forward!"

     Sebastian shook her head.  "His offer was a
carefully considered one, that's all.  Anyway,
Kitterson's not to blame.  The aliens did this."

     "You're very generous."

     She shrugged.

     "What are you going to do?"

     "Well, I'm not going to marry Kitterson!"

     "Why not?"

     "I don't love him."

     I stared open-mouthed.

     "Love.  You know what that is, Rupe.  It's
important when you're talking about marriage."

     "Sure --" I stammered.

     "Well, I don't feel anything when I look at Pvt.
Stanley Kitterson."

     "I suppose that's natural --"

     She flashed me a crooked smile.  "We left what's
natural back a few million light years, old friend."

     Sebastian crossed over to the table to pour
herself a glass of juice from a small plastic tub.  We
were experimenting with a recently-discovered bush-
fruit that we had dubbed the "red berry."  So far, red
berries had proven out sweet, safe, and nutritious.
"Want some?" she asked.

     "Thanks, yes.  It's hot outside."

     I took the proffered beaker.  Only faintly sweet,
the pink mixture must have been three-fourths creek
water.  Still, red-berry juice served for a welcome
departure from our usual ration of powdered coffee or
tea.

     "If it had been someone else, not Kitterson, I
might had said yes," Lowry remarked suddenly.

     That floored me.  "You don't mean it!"

     "I said `might.'  I'm not really sure what I'm
capable of feeling or doing yet, Rupe.  Are you?"

     I dodged her question.  "Do you have any
particular man in mind?"

     "Don't make me embarrass myself."

     This answer intrigued me.  I wanted to explore it
a little more and so I said, "Stanley's got a nice
body, though, doesn't he?"

     "I'm surprised that you noticed," she quipped.
"Or maybe I shouldn't be."

     Despite her evasion, I wasn't put off the track.
I wondered who in the 54th could she find more
interesting than Kitterson, and why.  Then a startling
thought came to me.  She could mean Alan Drew!  They
certainly worked closely together and had by this time
gotten to know one another very well.  I realized that
I had never heard a word of criticism come from one
against the other.  The idea of these two forming a
couple bothered me somehow.  I suddenly saw a closed
loop forming in front of me, my two best friends on the
inside and me left out in the cold.

     "Klink calling Breen!  How is it up in the
stratosphere?"

     "Sorry," I said, "my mind wandered.  So, you
turned Kitterson down.  You've got a Plan B?"

     "No, and that scares me."

     "You're scared about rearing a child alone, aren't
you?"  I hadn't intended to be so blunt; it just
slipped out.

     She glanced uneasily my way.

     "It's so hard, Rupe."

     "I know --," I began, regretting that I had
brought up the subject.

     "No, you don't know!  Not everything."

     "Am I dumb or something?"

     "No, of course not.  But it bothers me is that --
that David and Wanda are going to have a baby brother
or sister, but -- but they're never going to even know
it.  And, well, that seems sort of sad to me."

     She sucked in a shaky breath.

     David and Wanda were her -- his -- son and
daughter back on Earth, I knew.  Sebastian's separation
from them had been like an open wound from the
beginning.

     "They think I'm dead.  Maybe that's for the best.
It would probably hurt them more if they knew that
their dad was still alive, but that he -- he couldn't
ever come home."  Sebastian's voice began to break.
"It sure would be hard. . . going back to them. . . the
way I am now. . . even if it were possible. . . ."

     Suddenly there were glittering beads in the
corners of her eyes.  I reached out to her, wanted to
comfort her, but she shook her head.

     "I'm all right."

     We chatted for a while longer, on other subjects
-- about her work, about my ideas regarding
agriculture, the three R's, and paper- and cloth-
making.  Nonetheless, after a little bit, I got the
impression that her heart wasn't into any of the
subjects on the table.

     "How are you getting along with Drew?" Sebastian
suddenly inquired.

     Now this was a question from left field!  "Fine,"
I responded warily.  "Did he say anything to make you
think that we're having a problem?"

     "No.  What's there to say?"

     "Nothing at all!" I answered with a nervous grin.

     Her sudden interest in Alan Drew started a bell
ringing in my mind.  Why the odd question?  Was
Sebastian hoping that there actually was some friction
between the medic and myself?  If so, why?  Maybe my
relationship with Alan was somehow becoming an
inconvenience to her.  Could that be?  I hoped not.

     "Rupe, did I say something wrong?"

     "Wrong?  Of course not!  Doc, what are you going
on about?"

     She gave me a funny look at that point and
abandoned the subject.  I had suffered a mood change
and didn't want to stay longer.  So, after letting a
couple more minutes of pointless conversation pass, I
excused myself.  As I withdrew I felt Sebastian's
studying gaze burning into my back.

                                 #

     I had hoped that my periodic funks lay behind me,
but I was downcast for the rest of the day and could
hardly sleep at all that night.

     I got up listlessly the next morning and chomped
down a ration biscuit for breakfast.  Even this simple
act depressed me.  I thought we should be drawing less
from our limited stores.  How could we ever provide for
five hundred people once they were exhausted?  Were we
all going to be starving by this time next year?

     I looked outside.  It was clouded-over, which did
not improve my mood.  I went to my log book and started
a new entry, just to give myself something to do.
Before I realized it, droplets were spotting the pages
in front of me.  I wiped the splashes off the open
pages with my sleeve, wiped my nose, and pushed the
book away before I damaged it more.  I slouched down on
the desk, thinking about my conversation with
Sebastian.  She was my friend, she was the most
important man -- person -- in the whole camp.  She had
suffered so much, had done so much for others.  Now, I
realized, her happiness had to come first, no matter
the personal consequences for me.  Yet I could not
shake off a sense of profound loss, the core meaning of
which eluded me in some way.  My tears were burning my
eyes and I started thinking that it hadn't been such a
lucky stroke that Alan Drew had saved my life up on
Woolenska's Leap.

     I lifted my head suddenly.  The death wish had
returned!

     My mind raced.  If I was getting suicidal, I
needed help immediately.  I had to be with my watcher!

     I left my hut and crossed over to Alan's barracks.
The young medic was inside along with two other
soldiers and the three young men snapped to attention
at the sight of me.  "At ease," I said, then added in a
low and tentative voice, "Gentlemen, could you give
Pvt. Drew and me some privacy?"

     I waited for the men to disappear, then turned
toward Alan, only to find myself somewhat at a loss for
words.

     "Sir?" he queried.

     "I'm sorry," I began, feeling on the spot.  "I
mean, I'm having a rough time of it right now.  I --
could use some company."

     He regarded me curiously.

     "If you're feeling depressed maybe we should take
a walk together," he suggested.

     "If you think that would be a good idea."

     Alan lightly placed his hand upon the small of my
back and guided me outside.  I found that while I had
nothing specific to say, I felt better just being
with -- someone.

     "I had a bad night," I admitted finally.  "I don't
think I got two hour's sleep."

     "You do see keyed up, Major.  I'd recommend
exercise.  Or would you want to go back to your hut and
catch up on that rest you missed?"

     "I don't want to be alone."

     He seemed to smile, though his mouth didn't
change.  "Then why don't we follow along the stream?"

     I nodded.  There is something about the human eye
and ear that loves water, its rushing sound, the glint
of light off its rippling surface.  The sun came out as
we started along and it immediately grew very hot.  We
made for the coolness of the adjacent arbors, whose
supple branches, like willow whips, were bent so low
that they swept the grass when the breeze stirred them.
Once we were out of sight of the camp I relaxed a
little more.

     "You were doing so well," Alan remarked.  "Did
anything happen?"

     "I was talking to Sebastian --" I began unwisely.

     "Did you quarrel?"

     "No.  It's personal," I hedged.

     "All right, don't tell me anything that you don't
want to."

     I was grateful to let the matter drop and we soon
came to the "swimming hole," a broad, deep portion of
the stream where the troopers liked to take their
baths.  The water was always cold because it issued
from an artisan spring up in the nearby hills, but a
bracing dip would be a needed relief from the
subtropical heat.  I sat down; the shaded rock beneath
me felt cool through my denim.  There were some small
brown animals playing on the rocks not far away, their
faces fox-like, their pelts dotted with darker spots.

     Some Klinkian animals were very wary, but others,
like these, seemingly had no instinct of fear regarding
humans.  It supposed they would acquire one in time.
We had such ineffective hunting tools that we were
simply unable to pass up easy prey, and that was too
bad.  Klink as we had found it reminded me of the
Genesis story of the harmony which prevailed between
the first animals and the first Man and Woman.  Then
there arose Sin, and fear came into the world.

     While I definitely desired company, little of what
was bothering me could be put into simple terms.
Because I thought that I shouldn't just sit there like
a dummy, I tried to make conversation, but the first
time I opened my mouth I betrayed myself.

     "You and Sebastian are very good friends, aren't
you?"

     "Yes, we are.  Why?"

     "No reason."

     He looked at me keenly.  "There must be a reason.
You told me that talking to Dr. Lowry depressed you."

     "It's just that --"

     He waited patiently for me to go on.

     I took a deep breath.  "-- It's just that with
people working together so closely, they, well, they
naturally tend to get -- close."

     "I suppose the doctor and I are close, on one
level."

     "What level?"

     "The level of working well together."  He searched
my features as if I had said something remarkable.  I
looked away.

     "What's this about?" he asked.

     "It's nothing.  It's just that Dr. Lowry hinted --
just hinted -- that she was interested in somebody -- a
man -- but wouldn't say who it was."

     "You've never been a busybody before."

     I met his gaze in surprise.  I wasn't used to be
spoken to by a subordinate that way but, then again,
his statement was within bounds for a friend, or even
for a medical advisor.

     "I'm not a busybody.  I was just wondering --"

     "You were just wondering whether something was
developing between Dr. Lowry and myself?"

     I gulped hard.  Had I been so transparent?

     "Well, you needn't have worried --"

     "I wasn't worried!" I broke in.

     "You don't have to worry," he persisted.
"Sebastian is my superior and my friend, that's all."

     "That's all I thought you were!"

     "Besides," he concluded, "I'm not that kind of a
man."

     His words had struck me powerfully.  I looked down
into the stream, in one sense relieved by them but, in
another, and for reasons which eluded me, disappointed.
"No, I didn't suppose that you were!  Really, I don't
know how all these men can be falling in love with, and
even marrying, people who were males themselves just a
couple months ago.  It's -- illogical."

     Alan shook his head.  "I didn't mean that.  I
don't even know what's logical or not anymore.  What
I'm saying is that I'm not the sort who could be
personally interested in two people at the same time."

     Two people?  I stared in amazement.  Alan's
confession was even more appalling than Sebastian's.
"You're interested in somebody?" I blurted.  "-- No,
don't tell me!  It's not my business."

     He placed his hand lightly on my lower arm.  "Of
course it's your business, Major.  Friends talk things
over.  You do consider us friends, don't you?"

     "Yes, of course!"

     "Then you might be just exactly the person I need
to advise me."

     I felt a bit mystified.  "Advise is cheap."  Did
Alan really expect me to give him advice to further his
love affair?  For some reason my mood was sinking
again.

     "My problem is that I'm attracted to this -- woman
-- but she's been having a rough time of it since her
transformation and she can't possibly feel the same way
that I do."

     "Maybe you should just try to forget her then."

     He smiled.  "I couldn't do that -- not unless she
told me straight out that she could never reciprocate."

     "Why don't you be up front with her then?" I
suggested, hoping that he would not take my advice
seriously.

     "Two reasons," Alan replied wistfully.  "I think
that she's becoming accustomed to being a woman, and,
if I'm patient, the day will come when she won't reject
me straight off."

     "It could take a long time," I warned.

     "Maybe, but there's a worse problem.  She's of a
higher rank.  It's always been drilled into us soldiers
that we had to respect the braid and never fraternize.
But it's driving me crazy!  I want to touch her, I want
to hold her, I want to tell her how much I care."

     "It sounds hopeless," I put in.  "You'd better
give it up!  You shouldn't chase after a person --
especially an officer -- unless they give you some sort
of encouragement."

     "I do see things that encourage me.  Many small,
wonderful things.  If I could only be sure that I'm not
misunderstanding."

     This was getting worse and worse!  I tried to
guess who it was that he was talking about.  Capt.
Ames?  Tritcher?  Lt. Pitts?  Any one of those
supernally beautiful women might have captured the eye
of a man of discerning taste like Alan Drew.  He must
have had the opportunity to speak to all of them at
length through his medical duties.  I suspected Ames
especially.  She was a such a cat -- always trying to
draw attention to herself!

     "I can't give up hope," sighed Alan.  "Not until
I'm forced to."

     He was so stubborn!  Unfortunately, men like Drew
usually got what they set their sights upon.

     "It seems like you've got it bad for this -- lucky
person," I observed.

     "Lucky?  It's a catastrophe!  She's an officer.
I'm nobody.  We're friends now, but if I say the wrong
thing at the wrong time that might all be over!"

     "Don't call yourself a nobody!" I admonished him.
"In a couple years everything that we've learned to
take for granted might change.  You're going to be a
doctor, just about the most important person around
here.  And you can be pretty sure that this separation
into military rank isn't going to go on forever.  The
people with the special skills or insights to help us
to survive are going to be the important ones.  You
have many talents and qualities that any sensible
person would respect."

     "Do I?  Like what?"

     I drew in a deep draft of air, thinking hard and
trying to answer honestly.  "Well, you're steady, hard-
working.  You're intelligent and understanding.  You've
got taste, and you've got talent.  You're good at your
job, and you have skills that we wouldn't want to do
without.  You're also a very compassionate a man with a
fine -- uh, bedside manner."

     "Anything else?"

     "Well, physically, a woman -- if we had any real
women around here -- would find you a fine figure of a
man -- I imagine."

     "I'm flattered."

     "It's not flattery!  And it's not that me who
thinks so!"  I felt my face getting hot.  "It's
just --"  Alan had a way of getting me flustered, this
time much too flustered to go on.

     "I'd like to take a dip," the young man stated
abruptly, thereby taking me off the hook.  "Would you
join me, Major, or would that be fraternization?"

     "Technically it would be -- but everyone knows I'm
crazy so I can do anything I want."

     "That's the wonderful thing about being crazy," he
said brightly.

     Alan stripped to his shorts.  I took off my
sandals and cutoffs, exposing my own droopy drawers,
but, unlike him, I kept my shirt on.

     He jackknifed into the pool and I followed after,
feet-first.  The chill went right through me as I
stabbed through the surface tension, but my inner
thermostat quickly adjusted.  We swam back and forth
for a while, floating, dipping, paddling.

     Before long, we emerged soaking wet and so shook
ourselves off like dogs.  I wrung out my hair; I must
have had a pondful of water in it.  Why had I kept it
so long all this while?  I thought that it made sense
to get a short trim once I got back to camp.

     "I hate this hair," I remarked.

     "You shouldn't.  It's -- lovely."

     I looked at him incredulously.  It was not the
sort of compliment that I was used to and so I laughed
it off.

     We went out into the sun to dry ourselves.  We had
had a good swim and I now felt better, but Alan's mood
had altered subtly in the course of our exercise and
his glance was making me vaguely uncomfortable.

     "That really wore me out," I jabbered.  "I think I
should catch up on that sleep now."

     "Can I trust you to be alone?"

     "I don't want to kill myself.  At least not
today."

     "I really hope not," he replied.

                        *******



                      Chapter 10

     *Thou think'st 'tis much that this contentious
          storm
      Invades us to the skin; so 'tis to thee;
      But where the greater malady is fix'd
      The lesser is scarce felt.*
                                   KING LEAR



     I slept poorly that night and kept to myself the
following morning.  In the afternoon, thick black
thunderheads roiled up from the west and, though we
were used to Klinkian storms, this incoming blow looked
like a mean one.

     Standing outside my door, I saw people hurrying
about, battening down, covering up equipment.  I
thought I should shutter my windows, but my mood was
much too low.

     I was thinking about Alan.  The tumult of the
storm became like an echo of my own emotions.  Alan was
in love with a transformee!  Had he lost his reason?
Transformees weren't women.  How could a normal man be
attracted to one?  Or was Drew simply less of a man
than I had given him credit for?

     Anyway, I knew what I was.  Alone.  I thought back
upon Rupert Breen and missed him so much that the pain
was like a knife through my body.  Rupert had been
indomitable.  He had never allowed his loneliness to
wear on him like mine wore on me.  When would I be
myself again, inwardly at least?  Where was my vanished
inner strength, my lost self-sufficiency?  When would
duty and service again be enough -- enough to fill my
days with satisfaction and meaning?

     Overhead, the sky had darkened to slate, a slate
upon which, I imagined, I could draw my innermost
thoughts.  But what I found myself chalking down was a
portrait of Alan.

     That appalled me.  Why could I not drive Alan Drew
from my mind?  Was it because I had paintered the wreck
of my life to his solid rock and now I feared to be
cast adrift again?

     Lightning flared behind the treetops and the
thunder roared like the voice of an angry forest giant.
The boles near the camp shook violently and the harsh
wind swept the storm's first stinging droplets against
my cheeks like chips of ice.  As the downpour grew ever
more intense and the lighting began firing like heavy
artillery, I simply stood there, becoming soaked to the
skin.

     Suddenly I saw someone running my way.  He was
big, broad-shouldered, with a powerful stride.  I
didn't recognize him at first in his rainwear.  But, as
the man jogged closer, he raised the broad brim of his
rain-plashed hat and I knew him for Alan.  Private
Drew, that is.  He looked at me in askance.

     "Major!  What's wrong?  You should go inside!"

     I didn't move, didn't reply.  Alan waited but a
few seconds before he took my arm and dragged me
indoors, not exactly against my will, but without any
help from me.

     "Aren't you well?" he asked anxiously.

     "I was just thinking," I replied, as if to mollify
a phantom in a dream.

     He barred the door against the wind, then turned
to face me.

     "You're soaking wet, sir.  You should put on
something dry."

     "Don't you mean, `ma'am?'" I quipped forlornly.

     He looked at me carefully.  "I'll call you ma'am
if you'd prefer, Major."

     I shrugged.  Words of address seemed unimportant
just then.  "You were watching me?"

     "Everyone saw you still standing outside after the
storm blew in."

     The whole hut shuddered under the wind.  Alan went
about, covering my windows while I just stood there.
The lightning was casting blue flashes through every
crack while the thunder pealed and the rain beat on the
roof like drumming fists.

     "Stay until it stops storming," I suggested,
turning on the battery-powered lamp.

     Alan took off his hat, but had not lost his
worried look.

     "I'm all right," I assured him.  "I just enjoy
storms.  It's been too long since I've taken the time
to watch one roll in."

     "That's fine, Major, but you could get a chill."

     "Did you come over to be my doctor?"

     "If you like.  But first we have to get you out of
those wet clothes."

     "Sure," I said indifferently.

     He went to my trunk where he found my bathrobe and
a towel.  I started taking my uniform off in front of
him.  Why shouldn't I?  He was a medical man and I was
his patient.

     When I was totally nude, I accepted the towel from
his hand, drying my face and hair with it.  Then I held
back my arms to let him slip the absorbent robe over my
shoulders.  Listlessly, I tied a knot in the sash,
while Alan started removing his wet-weather gear.

     It occurred to me that I was being a poor host and
so took a rations tin down from the shelf.  Company on
a stormy day was, after all, a good reason to splurge a
bit.

     "A biscuit?" I asked.

     "Thank you, sir," he said.

     "Someday we're going to have fresh bread," I
remarked as I opened the can and did the service, "if
we can only find something to grind into flour."

     "I can't wait!" he responded.

     I handed him half of the biscuit and then poured
some red-berry juice into a couple of aluminum mugs.
"I mix mine stronger than Sebastian does," I remarked
casually.  "It doesn't go as far, but I think you'll
like it better."

     He accepted the cup, saying,  "I've been wondering
whether this stuff ferments."

     I shrugged.  "It depends upon what sort of
microbes Klink has.  The things we don't know about
this world would fill a library."

     "Finding it out is going to keep life
interesting."

     I tasted the first crumbs of my biscuit-half.  "We
might not like everything we discover," I warned,
though I really meant nothing in particular.

     "We have to know as much as we can, especially
about what's dangerous or unpleasant."

     "Lots of things are dangerous and unpleasant," I
whispered.

     "What's that, sir?"

     I eased myself back against the desk and raised my
cup in toast.  "To progress, to survival -- and
danger."

     Alan likewise lifted his mug and took a sip from
it.  "It's very good, Major."

     "My name is Rupert, you know.  I'd like you to
start calling me by it, at least when we're alone."

     He returned a thoughtful frown.  "I'd rather not."

     I felt surprised and hurt.

     "I mean, you don't look like a Rupert," he
explained hastily.  "I feel more comfortable with
Major, begging the major's pardon."

     "Whether I look like it or not, Rupert's my name."

     "What's your middle name, sir?"

     "Eberhart.  I never use it."

     "I can see why."

     I scowled; nobody likes to have his name made fun
of.  But I understood his sentiment.  "Maybe that's why
Mark calls himself Mary, and Micah, Ruth, and . . . ."

     "I suppose it is," Alan agreed noncommittally.

     Just then, in shifting position, my robe
inadvertently parted, baring one of my legs from the
toe nearly to the hip.  The sight of it clearly
registered in Alan's expression, though he instantly
corrected it.  I smiled secretly and carried on as if I
hadn't noticed his reaction.

     "You're in an unusual mood, Major," he observed.
"Did you sleep last night?"

     I shook my head.  "I woke about five.  How are
things going with you?"

     "What things?"

     "The pursuit of your unattainable love, for one
thing."

     He smiled ambiguously, but demurred to answer.

     "It's not fair that you're keeping me in the
dark," I said with a toss of my head.  "At least tell
me what she looks like.  She -- she must be beautiful."

     "If I described her you might guess who she is."

     "That's the point."

     "I might be embarrassed if you knew."

     "Maybe I'd have an idea for helping you to win
her.  I know all my officers very well."

     "And non-coms," Alan put in.

     "She's a sergeant?"

     "I didn't say that."

     "I just don't understand why you're being so
mysterious.  If you're ashamed of having fallen in love
with a man, maybe you shouldn't pursue it."  There was
a bit of acid in my challenge.

     "She used to be a man," he began defensively, but
then shrugged resignedly.  "Maybe she still is, down
deep.  I don't understand any of this, Major, and I
especially don't understand how I can feel the way that
I do.  But I can't help it."

     "Maybe you're just lonely," I postulated.

     He looked at me as if I were a code that he could
almost, if not quite, decipher.

     "She's -- she's very attractive, like you say," he
resumed.  "I especially like her hair and her eyes, but
it's much more than that.  There's this incredible
magnetism about her."

     I nodded, waiting for more.

     "When she was a man she always seemed kind of
distant, cold.  But I respected her -- him.  She --
he -- was always the sort of man who put the good of
the Group before himself."

     "If I were you, Private," I advised him, somewhat
superciliously, "I wouldn't waste my time with a cold
woman."

     He shook his head.  "She's not really cold.  I
should have realized that shyness in a man often comes
across as aloofness."

     Shyness?  A clue at last!  I tried to think of any
officer whom I might consider shy, at least as a woman.
Second Lieutenant Kaopoulis, maybe.

     "I think it's her shyness that really made my
heart go out to her --" Alan went on.  "Underneath it
all, I think that she's surprisingly innocent and
easily injured.  When a man sees vulnerability in a
woman, well, he just naturally wants to protect her, to
keep her from ever being hurt again."

     "Do you think you could do that for her?"

     "Nobody can be another person's suit of armor,
Major, but I'd certainly try my best."

     I was struggling to keep my voice steady, but
hated this conversation. "She's a lucky -- person --" I
ventured, "to have a man like you interested in her,
even if she doesn't know it yet."

     "You don't think that she'd despise me -- for
coming across as overprotective and smothering, I
mean?"

     "The right kind of protectiveness isn't
patronizing."

     "What's the right kind?"

     "Everybody has to fight his own battles, Alan.
It's insulting if not to trust a person to stand on his
or her own two feet.  But everyone needs someone,
somewhere, to retreat to for reinforcements.  Nobody
can go it alone all the time."

     For some reason, Alan chose that moment to step
closer.  Now it was my turn to feel uneasy.  I had the
impulse to cover up my leg, but didn't want to draw
attention to the fact that I had been -- what? --
teasing him?

     "I've wanted to tell her what I feel for weeks,"
he said with a strange intensity, "but I've been
worried that if I spoke too soon, it would probably
destroy any chance that I have."

     "Chance for what?" I asked with a slight quiver.
"Do you really want to jump into bed with her that
badly?"

     "No -- I just want to hold her, to tell her
honestly what I feel, to share my time with her, and
for her to understand why I want to share it.  What
happens after that, we'll see."

     The more powerful the interest he expressed in his
mystery woman, the more depressed I became.  I fought
hard to maintain my composure.

     "Maybe what you need is a John Alden," I
suggested.

     "Are you volunteering, sir?"

     "Possibly," I nodded with feigned benignness, but
my thoughts were treacherous.  If I could only find out
who Alan was fixated upon, I might be able to keep him
and her apart.  But what a selfish thing to be
plotting!  What sort of a person was I?  The sort who
was fighting against a return to loneliness with all
the desperation of a drowning man.

     "I don't know now," he smiled.  "John Alden was a
washout as a go-between."

     True, legend said that Alden had stolen Priscilla
from Miles Standish, the man whose troth he had agreed
to plead.  Love did not conquer all necessarily, but it
often did conquer honor.  "John and Priscilla got mixed
up in the male-female thing," I observed blandly.

     "That couldn't happen here, I guess."

     "Of course not!"  I exclaimed.  What was he
suggesting?  That I could fall in love with a
transformee?

     "Is there something wrong, Major?"

     "It's nothing.  It's just that, well, I've lost a
lot of friends once they got romantically obsessed.  If
that happened with us, I'd regret it.  Besides, that
girl of yours probably has some bad qualities that
you're overlooking.  I worry about you.  If things go
sour down the line, you won't it able to put it behind
you.  This is a very small town."

     "You may be right.  There's one bad thing about
her that I've found out already."

     "What's that?" I asked hopefully.

     "She doesn't have sense enough to come in out of
the rain."

     I grunted disparagingly.  "She sounds like some
kind of airhead --" I began before the words sank in.
Then I stared up at him, astonished, and for a moment
our linked gazes communicated volumes.

     What he saw in my eyes must have told him that it
wouldn't be a mistake to put his arms around his C.O.
and crush his lips against hers as if she were the
heroine on the cover of an old romantic novel.

     If so, the man had read me like a book. . . .

                                #

     We didn't jump into bed.  That stuff is for kids.
Just admitting that we loved one another was, all by
itself, like crossing a mountain range.  I still
couldn't believe what had happened.  What did it all
mean?  That I was a person that some man could love?
Was I actually in love myself -- and with a man?  What
was wrong with me?  Had I turned gay -- or was I
something else, something too impossible to
contemplate?

     Whatever I was, whatever I might become, I wanted
to be careful.  What would people think?  Soldiers
would never follow an officer whom they held in
contempt.  Also, I wanted to be especially careful
about making a mistake, one that could change my life
radically and force me into circumstances which I never
had had to consider before.

     How reality had changed in just a single hour!  I
had been worrying myself sick over some nameless rival,
and that rival had never actually existed!  I could
have strangled Alan for putting me through that kind of
ordeal, but instead of recriminating we kissed
desperately, clung to each other as if this moment
would be our last.  We didn't say a lot, except things
like, "We shouldn't be doing this," or "This is crazy,"
and "What will people say?" but we were actually
singing sonnets, non-vocally at least.

     Later, sitting together upon my bed as if it were
a love seat, we finally came up for air long enough to
discuss practicalities.

     And there were many of these to consider.  How
would the troopers react to a major, the C.O. in fact,
taking a private for a suitor?  For a lover?  Alan's
status might be raised a little, but he also ran the
risk of drawing resentment, envy, and being mistaken
for an ambitious Lothario.  For my own part, I expected
to be looked down upon for granting "my favors" to one
beneath "my station."  But, hell, everyone was beneath
my station.  That's what you get when you operate in a
pyramidal hierarchy.

     "We can't give you a promotion," I said, thinking
out loud.  "It would send exactly the wrong message.
It's the old story of a good-looking subordinate
sleeping his or her way to the top.  I could resign my
commission, though," I suggested.

     He shook his head vehemently.  "I want to give you
the world.  I don't want to take anything away."

     "Living is a trade-off," I sighed.  "Anyway, no
matter what we do, could you see me ever resuming
command around here again?"

     "I don't see why not."

     I thought that his feelings were blinding him.
"Even if I stop falling into suicidal depressions," I
explained carefully, "there's no telling when we'll get
another bout of Madness.  Periodic insanity is not any
recommendation for command."

     "It'll probably never happen again," he averred,
though without much conviction.

     "All I know is that Klink's secret masters seem to
win every trick."

     "Some of Klink's tricks are better than others,"
he whispered, as he again drew me close.

                                  #

     After that, life was hell.

     I had myself absolutely convinced that everyone
knew that I was in love with Alan Drew.  I went about
the camp not with my former confidence, but like a
thief who senses the security patrols closing in.

     Despite my anxiety, no one seemed to treat me
differently, not even Sebastian, who had proven herself
so astute in the past.  But I was different somehow,
inwardly, and that made all the difference.

     What a self-unaware babe-in-the-woods I had been!
I had been falling in love with Alan for weeks, and all
the while had been trying to call it something else.

     I should have been in bliss now that a gulf had
closed between my mind and my emotions, but another
gulf had seemed to yawn open.  Was I ashamed of my
feelings?  Would my apparent weakness cause people to
lose respect for me, would it diminish their regard for
Alan?  Did it matter?  I momentarily imagined myself as
the camp trollop, scorned by some, sniggered at by
others -- and decided that I didn't like that
particular fantasy one bit.

                                  #

     Alan and I swam the next day at my suggestion,
figuring that because we had gotten away with it once,
we might do so again.  Another swim meant another wet
shirt, of course and so I went back to my hut to
change, Alan escorting me.

     As I took a dry tunic from my footlocker, my
companion remarked:  "You'd look sexy in that shirt."

     "Oh?" I responded, not sure whether I liked being
considered "sexy" by a man.

     "I mean if you did it right," he clarified.  "Just
wear the shirt.  Make a tunic of it, like a lot of the
women are doing."

     Not taking him seriously, I slipped on the shirt.
"Oh, sure!  You want me to go around like Haulder, or
Marduke?"

     "Why not?  You've got prettier legs than either of
them?"

     "You've got to be kidding!  Those two are
gorgeous."

     "You're gorgeous, too."

     The compliment made my face warm, as if a sunlamp
was shining into it.  "Go on!  A shirttail looks awful
over these dumpy drawers.  And don't expect me to walk
around bare-bottomed."

     "No problem.  Haven't you been watching the girls
lately?"

     "That's more your department," I quipped.

     "They've rediscovered the venerable loincloth.
Let me show you how to make one."

     "I don't know about this," I hedged.

     "You weren't so squeamish back on Helene, Major."

     I lifted my chin defensively.  "There we were only
facing planet-busters and orbiting cannons."

     Alan laughed, but wasn't to be denied.  For the
next quarter hour, I became his clothes dummy.  To make
a loincloth, he demonstrated, one needed a strong cord,
like a bootstring, for instance.  This he girdled
around my waist.  Subsequently, he ran one of my large
handkerchiefs between my legs, pinning it fore and aft.
(Alan suggested that sewing it to the girdle would be
better.)  Then, with a little folding and tucking, I
suddenly found myself wearing a very serviceable bikini
bottom.

     I regarded the result with misgivings.  "Fun is
fun, Alan, but I'm no sex-sim girl --"

     "I always think of you as a sex-sim girl," he
grinned.

     The liberties the private was allowing himself
were mind-boggling, but I had a bad case of the Drews.
To pin his shoulders to the wall on this or any other
excuse would be to hurt our relationship.  Besides, I
knew few things about the psychology of men, both in
love and out, and so let him have his fun.

     He looped a second bootstring around my middle,
tying it into a slipknot belt which emphasized the
narrowness of my waist, in effect creating a very short
dress.  Finally, he adjusted the tie, remarking, "Most
women are wearing it like this, with the knot just a
little forward on the right.  Our C.O. has to represent
the height of fashion."

     "The beginning of Klinkian haut culture?" I
remarked with a twitchy smile.

     "I guess so.  Anyway, you look fine."

     "I feel like a chorus girl."

     "Maybe you missed you calling."

     "Hey --!"

     "Let's go outside, Major," he suggested, taking me
by the arm.  "I want everyone to know how beautiful my
girl is."

     "Oh no you don't!  Nobody's going to see me like
this!"

     "Come on, Commander.  Ames will die of envy."

     "Let her die anyway she wants to!  I've got my
pride --"

     In reply, the dirty dog scooped me up, threw me
over his shoulder cave man-like, then carried me to the
door, which he proceeded to unbar.

     "You idiot!  This is assaulting an officer!  I'll
have you doing ten thousand push-ups!  You'll be
digging latrine for the rest of your life --!  I'll --"

     He put me down with a raucous laugh, then pasted a
quick, hard kiss to my gasping mouth.  I glared at him
furiously, but my nonplus only incited him to greater
mirth.

     "Ease up, Major.  I was only joking."

     I calmed myself with an act of supreme will.  He
was such a clown -- but, then, I had always known that.
It was part of what attracted me to him, I think.

     "I just wish you'd stop calling me major," I said
wistfully.

                        *******




                            Chapter 11

     *Love comforteth like sunshine after rain,
      But Lust's effect is tempest after sun.*
                               VENUS AND ADONIS


     Along with everything else, Dr. Lowry had to
address a sort of hysterical anxiety among the
expectant mothers that their babies might be born
mutants with alien DNA, or in some other way be not
normal.  I understood easily enough where such fears
could come from -- someone had played with the women's
genetics outrageously and it was only a small mental
leap from there to begin wondering whether they would
be giving birth to monsters.  All Sebastian could do
was to keep reassuring them that she could, as yet,
detect no hint of abnormality in any of the fetuses.

     Everything that I learned over at the infirmary
about the physical and dispositional changes that
pregnancy brought reenforced my predisposition to play
it chaste.  I found it hard to understand how any woman
could actually want to become pregnant or, if she had
experienced it once, that she would ever allow it to
occur again.  But I thought it wise not to take a
superior attitude upon the subject.  After all, I had
already accepted a male lover and who knew what other
changes of attitude Klink might have programmed into
us?

     It troubled Dr. Lowry a great deal that we had
such a paucity of pediatric-specific supplies.  Forget
the pharmaceuticals which we didn't have.  We even
lacked baby powder and so faced a future in which our
days and nights would be rived by the cries of sore and
chapped infants.  Though we still had a little of the
adult equivalent, its dust, according to Lowry, would
be too harsh for an infant's delicate lungs.
Cornstarch would be the best solution by far, but --
alas -- Klink had no corn.

     We were also bereft of much in the way of strong,
absorbent cloth to use for diapers.  To meet this
crisis, I resolved to pursue my tree-bark-to-fabric
theory as a personal project.

     I sought out the advice of everyone who had some
botanical knowledge but, alas, none of our troopers had
anything useful to suggest.  Determined to do good
nonetheless, I went about, sometimes accompanied by
Alan, sometimes alone, taking samples of bark from ever
local species which I could find.

     After each day's search, I made a fire and
subjected each to boiling and subsequent beating, just
as I had read about primitive tribes doing long ago.  I
felt like some medieval alchemist conducting
experiments on the basis of almost zero knowledge.  As
it turned out, no amount boiling and pounding every
reduced any slip of bark that I found into anything
resembling cloth.

     In less than two weeks I had ruled out every
species of tree -- a term we used to describe any
large, trunked Klinkian plant -- which we had so far
identified.  But then I recalled having seen many trees
growing up on of Woolenska's Hill and so suggested
another sample-collecting outing to Alan.  He agreed --
perhaps because my returning to Woolenska's Hill
bothered him, or perhaps because he realized that the
trip promised to afford us two a little privacy.

                                  #

     Alan was unshaven when he called at my hut that
morning.

     "My razors are all dull," he explained.  "Some of
the guys are shaving with utility knives, but I didn't
want to turn my face to just before meeting with you.
Anyway, I always used to wear a beard in college,
before I got drafted."

     I nodded resignedly.  One by one the amenities of
civilization were falling away from us.  But even more
disheartening than the prospect of the 54th turning
into a tribe of cave people by inches, was the thought
of kissing someone who might soon have a beard like a
'Forty-Niner.

     We hiked up to the hilltop and, being very tired
by then, sat down in the shade of a white stone
outcropping and refreshed ourselves from our canteens.
Out of the sun, it did not take Alan long to become
frisky.  He sidled up close to me and took my hands in
his.  Once more managing to fight down my residual
queasiness about intimacy with a male, I rested my head
on his sweat-dampened shoulder.

     Powerful memories came rushing back to us as we
sat there quietly -- memories of our last time upon
this bluff.  The fact that I was still drawing breath I
owed to Alan alone.  I believe that our shared
experienced of that terrible hour had forged between us
a bond stronger than Tosolian steel.

     "Alan, what's going to become of us?" I murmured
suddenly.

     "I don't know.  It's best to take things slow."

     "I guess you have your reservations, too."

     "I suppose so.  I just wish I had the nerve that
Roberts does, to be open about what I feel, no matter
what anyone else thinks."

     I looked up at him.  "Do you think this business
doesn't require nerve from the women, too?"

     "I suppose it takes even more," he conceded
thoughtfully.  "You know," he added, "it's getting
harder and harder to remember that you ever our rangy,
square-jawed commander."

     "But I was," I sighed.  "We've got to work though
that fact, as hard as it is for both of us."

     After a moment's reflection he asked:  "What do
you feel when you look at me?"

     I gazed into his unshaven face, into those soft
and caring blue eyes, and replied rather lightly, "I
like what I see -- mostly."

     "Mostly?  Come on, level with me!"

     "It's hell," I confessed as, careworn, I slumped
back against the white stone.  "How can the sight of
any male affect me the way you do?  I can't stand the
idea of being laughed at for weakness, or being thought
queer."

     Alan's expression suddenly sobered.  I realized
too late how much my words must have hurt him.  "I
didn't mean that the way it sounded," I pleaded.

     He nodded somberly.  "I know you didn't."

     To make amends, I nestled closer.  He put his arm
around me and drew me in.  His hug felt good, but a
kind of internal dichotomy still told me that I might
be doing something wrong.

     After a while, Alan grew restless.  "Maybe we
should check out these trees," he suggested at last.

     Reluctantly, I eased myself to my feet.  "It's as
hot as Antares up here, but I came prepared."

     I unbuckled my belt and dropped my trousers.
Alan's eyebrows went up when he noted that I had worn a
loincloth instead of my usual baggy shorts.  While he
watched, I arranged my shirttails and, from my breast
pocket, took out a second bootstring to bind about my
waist.

     "Is this an attempt to seduce me?" Alan inquired
with a big, wide grin.

     "It's for freedom of movement," I said matter-of-
factly, "and it's much cooler."

     "You could sunburn those beautiful legs, Major."

     I turned, exasperated.  "Don't call me Major!  It
puts a distance between us, and -- and I don't want any
distance."

     "Like I said before, I'd rather call you Major
than Rupert.  It's too unfeminine.  It puts another
kind of distance between us, and I don't want that
either."

     "Don't be so pig-headed, guy!  On this planet
Rupert will probably become known as a woman's name."

     "I hope not!" he said glumly, then instantly
brightened.  "Say, I know -- what was it that your
mother would have called you had you been a girl?"

     The question had caught me flat-footed.  "I don't
know," I equivocated.

     "Come on now, Major, every woman who's ever wanted
a child always has both a boy's and a girl's name
picked out.  Your mother must have told you.  Mothers
always enjoy humiliating their sons that way.  I would
have been Diane, in fact."

     "On this crazy planet, you could be Diane
tomorrow!"

     "I hope not.  That would spoil a lot of
possibilities.  But don't change the subject."

     "Like I said, I don't know!"

     He took my hand and pulled me down beside him.

     "What now?" I scowled suspiciously.

     "I'll show you what now!"

     He started tickling my ribs.

     "Stop that!"

     "Not till you tell me what I want to know!"

     I fought down the urge to shriek.  "If I told you,
you'd start calling me by it!"

     "What's wrong with that?"

     "It's not dignified!"

     "Would it be dignified if I put you over my knee
and paddled you till you came clean?"

     "Don't try it!"

     He let me go then.  "Look, what's the big deal?
All the women are changing their names."

     "Not the officers!"

     "Bull!  Captain Tritcher is calling herself
Jasmine now."

     "She is?"  I shook my head.  "She looks like the
king of Elfland's daughter.  If I had her face and
build, I'd call myself Eveleen, or Daphne, or something
sylvan like that."

     "Do you like one of those names -- Eveleen or
Daphne?"

     "Don't even think of it!"

     "Come on, sexy.  If you don't tell me your girl's
name, I'm going to pick one for you myself."

     "Stow it, soldier!"

     "You know, your hair looks so much like those
Gypsy girls' in those old movies that I think I'm going
to call you `Gypsy.'"

     I gave him a punch in the shoulder.  "There,
that's what I think of your damned Gypsy!"

     "Gypsy-Gypsy-Gypsy!"

     I took another swing at him.  He ducked and
grabbed me about the waist.  Once he had my arms
pinned, he started tickling my ribs again.  I yelled
wildly, struggled to get away, but he was too strong
for me.  I was breathless with laughter by the time my
captor deigned to show mercy.  For a while he just
reclined there, gazing down at me with a long stem of
grass between his teeth.

     "You hayseed!" I rebuked him.

     "Show some deference, woman, or you'll get some
more."

     "Don't call me a woman, you -- man!"

     His fingers were on me again.

     "No, stop!" I laughed.

     "Then tell me what your girl's name is."

     "No!"

     He kept at it until I had had enough.  A person
can only endure so much torture.

     "-- Mom said she'd had `Katherine' picked out," I
gasped, then added:  "Don't you ever call me that!"

     "Kathy-Kathy-Kathy!" he started hectoring me
until, exasperated, I swung at him again.  This time he
caught my roundhouse, pulled me forward, and pecked me
on the nose.

     "Damn you!" I cried, "Show some respect to your
commander or I'll have you court-martialed!"

     "You've got to decide whether you want to be loved
or just obeyed, Kathy.  Besides, who'd ever convict me
for kissing and tickling the sexiest girl on the
planet?"

     "I said, don't call me Kathy!  And don't be so
complacent -- officers are bad asses and they'll nail
you for me if I ask them to.  Besides -- Ames is much
sexier than me."

     "No, she's not."

     "Give me a break!"

     "I don't think that there's anybody on Klink
sexier than you."

     I had to admit, he had a way of mollifying me.

     I finally got around to asking Alan whether he had
felt any of Dr. Lowry's supposed pheromone effect that
night we had been together during the Madness.

     "And how!" he exclaimed.  "It was the hardest
thing I ever did, not touching you."

     "You could have touched me just a little," I
suggested.

     "You're crazy!"

     "Do you know anyone who has a better reason to
be?"

     Instead of answering, he kissed me.  I knew then
that it was going to be hard getting used to smooching
with someone wearing a beard.  Worse, he tried to sneak
his tongue between my teeth.

     I squirmed away with a wry face.  "You're moving
too fast!"

     "Too fast?  At the rate we're going, Rip Van
Winkle would wake up before he missed anything.  What
sort of sex life did you have in your last incarnation
anyway, Kathy?!"

     "One a lot different from this one!"

     "Well, at least you're learning to answer to your
name!"

     "Oooh!" I cried, shoving him.

     He took that as a challenge and his hands were
suddenly all over my body.  When he had worked his way
up to my shirt, he opened enough buttons to slide his
hand within.  I gasped in surprise and pleasure as he
fondled my breasts.  Not long before, I had been
embarrassed to have a pair of jugs pushing out in front
of me all the time, but now I was fast getting to know
their possibilities in lovemaking.

     I also was becoming aware of how easy it was for a
woman to be persuaded by someone she really cared about
to go too far, despite her apprehension about the well-
attested consequences.

                                  #

     What to do?  By being stubbornly virginal I felt
that I was cheating Alan.

     I guess he felt the same way, because he suddenly
asked, "How did men control themselves before
contraception?!"

     "They didn't," I replied gloomily.  "They sired a
lot of bastards.  A few used sheep guts for condoms,
like Casanova."

     "Did it work?"

     "He only had one bastard -- at least only one that
he knew about.  Not a bad record, considering his life
style."

     Alan directed an intense gaze my way.  "Our
children wouldn't be bastards, Kathy.  I'd marry you in
a minute."

     Children?  The idea left me speechless.

     "Did I say something wrong?"

     "Are -- are you proposing to me?" I asked.

     "I suppose I am."

     I bit my lip.  Marriage?  Wifehood?  Possible
motherhood?  My mind whirled.

     "Major?"

     I rolled away, shaking my head.  "This is crazy,
Alan.  If I became a man again tomorrow, all this would
seem like weird dream."

     "A sexy dream."

     "Okay, a sexy weird dream."

     He reached for me once more.

     I eluded him and got up.  "We'd better buckle down
and examine these trees," I proposed seriously.

     He sagged backwards against the stone.  I could
almost hear him thinking, "Women!"

     I turned and led the way into a hilltop grove.
Some species there I recognized, though most had no
names as yet.  I suddenly began fantasying myself as
Adam, naming the animals, or at least the trees.  To
human mind names are such important things.  Every
living creature, object, or artifact has to have its
own name.  But names are always just an illusion.  For
millions of years Klink's trees had grown very well,
quite oblivious to the fact that they were nameless.
Also, calling me Kathy or Rupert changed nothing about
the sort of person that I was down deep.

     Alan and I took samples of whatever bark appeared
new to us, but they inspired us with little hope that
we were close to finding the cloth which we sought.
Then, getting warm and tired once again, we returned to
the shade of the white-rock outcropping.

     Only now did I bother to take a good look at the
stone behind us.  I noticed how soft and greasy it felt
to the touch.  Suddenly I had an idea and asked Alan
for his knife.

     He obligingly handed me his utility blade and I
dug its point deeply into a joint, prying off a big
flake.  Once I held a sample in my hand, I found that I
could easily cut the stone, even chip off bits with my
nails.

     "What is it?" the soldier asked curiously.

     "I think it's talc!" I exclaimed.  "Do you know
what this means!"

     Laughing, almost cheering, Alan declared:  "Baby
powder!"

                                 #

     Sebastian was pleased with our discovery and I
felt elated that I had made a positive contribution to
Klinkian civilization.  People suffering from chapping
and heat-galling, or from the tearful cries of unhappy
babies, would be thanking me for ages to come.
Afterwards, Alan kidded me that posterity would erect a
statue to "Rupert Breen, Discoverer of Baby Powder."
But that would never happen, not unless we first
discovered writing paper.  Otherwise, how would history
ever record events, even discoveries as earthshaking as
my own?

     That night, still euphoric from a day well-spent,
I took a walk.  Gazing skyward, I noticed that the
moons were at their point of conjunction yet again, the
silvery orbs seemingly separated by less than the
thickness of a playing card.  All of a sudden, I
experienced an ominous chill.

     The moons had also been going into conjunction
just before the first transformations had occurred, and
then again just as the Madness had struck.  Both events
had had to do with sex and so there seemed to be a
disturbing symbolism here.  To a primitive mind, the
conjunction of the moons each thirty-seven days might
have looked like the heavenly bodies were mating.  Did
Klink somehow time its mind-boggling phenomenon to the
phases of its moons?

     A single coincidence does not a rule of science
make, true, but, regardless, my insight motivated me to
cross the trampled grass of the camp to knock on Alan's
barracks-room door.  "Gentlemen?!"  I called from
without.

     Recognizing my voice, the medic met me at the
threshold.

     "Major, you wanted to see me?" he queried
respectfully, tonelessly.  Some of his mates were
within earshot and we were still trying to be cagey
about our affair.

     "I was hoping I could see you tonight, Kathy," he
whispered once we were off by ourselves.

     "That's nice," I said, "but I had a special
reason."

     "What's up?"

     I explained, but he didn't seem to take the matter
of the moons too seriously.  In fact, my idea had begun
to sound a lot like astrology and I suddenly felt
foolish.

     "Well, as you say, the conjunction is tonight,"
Alan remarked noncommittally.  "I guess we'll just have
to wait and see if anything happens."

     "I'd feel better if I didn't have to wait it out
alone."

     He smiled and, his hand resting lightly upon my
back, he guided me to my door.  Once inside the hut, I
snapped on the lamp, brought out the cards, and we
played a series of poker hands.  Before long, I found
myself wishing that we could make our game something
more interesting, but anyone might have seen us through
the windows -- and covering them up would be tantamount
to crying out into the night, "We're in love!"


TO BE CONTINUED. . . .