To Save a World (18 page)

WHEN THEY SEPARATED, quietly and without leavetakings (what for? They knew they would always be together), David and Keral walked home quietly across the city, guided by the lights of the Terran HQ like a vast white tower in the clearing dark. They clung lightly to each other's hands as they walked, but neither spoke much until, as they passed through the spaceport gates, Keral said, as if answering David's words, "I don't care, now, if they know."

"No."

"Contact with Conner brought Missy back from the worst madness of the Change."

They did not speak again, but went quietly up to the rooms assigned to David. It had the familiarity, now, of home.

Taking advantage of privilege, David had supper sent to their rooms, and they ate together in a growing sense of closeness and isolation, deepened by awareness of the falling, insulating snow, all around them. Keral was in the merriest of moods, and it was infectious; everything either of them said seemed witty, and they kept going off into gales of mad laughter, from a dim awareness that somehow their very presence was funny in a solemn way. What had they been afraid of? David suddenly became aware that he was moving perilously close to the edge of drunkenness and pushed aside a third glass of the sweet, pale wine from the Darkovan mountains. Keral followed the gesture and said gravely, "I wasn't trying to get you drunk, but does it matter if we are?"

"Only that I'm not sure of the effects of alcohol on your metabolism—and too damn sure of its effect on mine!" David laughed and put it firmly aside. "Anyhow, I don't want to spoil anything by being out of focus."

"It means so much to you, to have everything clear and defined? Maybe things aren't meant to be quite that clear. It might be a good thing if the edges were a little blurred." Keral came over, bent and took David's head between his hands; a strange gesture and David sensed at once, an unusual and intimate one. He said, almost whispering, "After all, it's only safe to look at the sun through smoked glasses."

"It's too serious for that."

"And you think it isn't serious for me?" Keral turned David's face upward by main force and their eyes met; and something inside David turned over. He had been living with this for weeks, but suddenly it was there crystal clear and without the merciful blurring: desire and tenderness, too entangled to be sure which was which. Keral said, "If I didn't take it more seriously than you can possibly know—I wouldn't be here."

Keral dropped to the floor and laid his head on David's knees. His long hair felt soft and fine; David felt a faint shivering run through Keral, and wanted to seize him in his arms, but he knew, rationally, that he must wait. For Keral this would be a slow-rising, slow-culminating thing, and any shock might arrest or damage the whole process.

Keral looked up, and David, aware now of his subtler expressions, knew he was on the edge of tears.

"I'm afraid, David. Missy was actually in a man's arms when the change came on her, and it went the wrong way. How can we be sure?"

David almost panicked at that. Keral had been sure that all would be well. If he lost confidence, what lay ahead?

But; perhaps this was inevitable. As polarity ebbed and flowed, male to female, passive to active, there must be—David found it quieted him to think clinically—some fairly drastic hormone changes, and this would make Keral's emotions volatile, uncertain, labile. The very knowledge of the inevitability of the process may be what's making Keral panic, as if he's started something he can't change or control . . . as inevitable and drastic as birth . . . .

David thought,
using a male pronoun is part of what's probably bothering me, too
. No good; however hard he tried, he could not think of Keral as a woman; any more than he could sense, psychologically, Missy as a male, though he had actually seen her as one.

Yet there was woman in Keral . . . .

The hidden woman
. . . .

He must accept it; help it to emerge.

David bent over Keral, repeating Keral's gesture, hands at either side of the delicate pale face. "Don't be afraid. I'll try not to—go faster than you can follow."

Keral smiled but did not speak. David, finding that clinical thoughts calmed him, ran deliberately over his knowledge of the alien physiology. Keral's present neuter phase, with a slight balance to maleness, would, if the stimulus was adequate—and this was a big if—if the psychological and physiological stimuli were all in balance, gradually tip the balance toward the female: hormones, genitals, psychology.

From a strictly physical point of view, actual intercourse should be possible; even now, it should be possible. That was all they knew; that theoretically, with their knowledge of anatomy, there was no reason it should
not
be possible.

But there was a hell of a long gap between the theoretical and the practical! He thought,
I've never had hypothetical sex before
, and realized he must still be on the very edge of being drunk. He wondered how long the shift to female phase took.

"I don't know," Keral said, and David never knew if he had put the question aloud, "we're not as tied down to clocks as you people. I've never timed it. To guess—with one of my own—perhaps two or three hours or less. But with you—I'm not trying to be vague; I don't
know!
"

"It doesn't matter," David said quickly, recognizing near hysteria.
The hormones are identical. Theoretically he should react to me exactly as to one of his own people. But the psychic factor means a hell of a lot too
.

David felt a sort of fierce tenderness. Difficult and frightening as this was for him, for Keral it must be almost unbelievably so. David only broke a superficial taboo against sex with someone with similar organs.
A damn silly taboo anyhow
. David would at least remain in his own familiar gender and role. Keral, after unimaginable years as a male—how old was he? Three or four hundred or even more?—must change. And—this distressed David even more—it was Keral as a male he had learned to love. Would Keral as a female seem so strange that love would vanish in the strangeness? Would he be less beloved?

Keral was still shivering violently; David held him, wondering with a curious, distracted curiosity if some more directly sexual stimulus would help or hinder the psychic, or even the physical changes. It might ease the sense of strain, or heighten it. He didn't know. He could only guess. Tentatively, he kissed Keral; Keral accepted the kiss passively, neither refusing nor responding, and David began to draw away; but Keral's hands tightened and he kept David close.

Damn it. It seems so cold-blooded, to psych him out like this. Like an experiment.

David finally found his voice. "Keral, I'm afraid too. I don't know how you respond, or what to expect at any given moment, or even how you feel about this. If this is going to work at all, there's one thing we don't dare do, and that's to assume the other one
knows.
I've found out that this mind reading business tends to come unstuck at the damnedest times! If this is even going to be physically possible, let alone the way we want it, we've got to be completely frank with each other. Completely. If I go too fast, or do anything you aren't ready for, you're going to have to stop me; and don't be upset if I do the same with you. Because we can't take the chance of blundering down blind alleys."

He said, with a faint, fey smile, "We'll have to keep our minds open about—blind alleys, and give ourselves a chance to recover, if we hit them. I can't imagine anything you could do that would turn me against you. It would be only a mistake, not a catastrophe."

"Was it a mistake to kiss you? Some Terran groups don't—"

"Not a mistake. A little before I was ready, maybe."

David felt the effort it was costing Keral to put this all into words, not even in his own language, during this tremendous emotional and physical upheaval. He felt cruel for forcing this alien game of total frankness on Keral, but he saw no other way to come through this without hurting each other deeply, inflicting emotional wounds which could drive a deep wedge between them.

What diversion, then, while Keral moved at his own pace toward some unimaginable goal? It struck David that they had seen each other unclothed only under the most ordinary of circumstances; it might be wise to get used to each other and not risk being surprised by strangeness later. Keral was completely matter-of-fact when David suggested it, saying quietly that his people went clothed only against the bitterest weather or among strangers. He drew off his clothes without a hint of shyness or erotic awareness. David felt slightly less matter-of-fact; nakedness, to him, was a furthering of intimacy and did have sexual overtones. It heightened his awareness of Keral, and of himself. He was glad that they had grown used to each other's bodies under more impersonal conditions, but he seemed to be seeing Keral for the first time. Keral was tall, inches taller than he, although David was tall, and his frail, fine-boned body was pale and almost hairless except for a faint silvery shadow across the loins. Despite the smallness of the breasts, it was not too hard to think of it as feminine even now. Next to Keral, David himself felt gross, rough, almost apishly masculine.

They stood looking at each other for a time, trying to recapture their old selves to fit this new time and place; then, with a small shiver, Keral held out his arms and they stood embraced, carefully, not too close. David found himself laughing, and cut it off, aware of the dangers of hysteria. Instead he tried kissing Keral again, and this time there was a hesitant, infinitely shy response. When they drew apart Keral said timidly, "I don't even know—what forms of love play are—customary or permitted with you."

David felt an almost dizzying, sudden wave of desire and fought an impulse to crush Keral against him, roughly, forcing some sort of response . . . the slow pace was torture, advance and retreat, tantalus . . . but he mastered it, knowing this was the blindest of blind alleys. He suspected rape would be physically impossible, and even if it were possible, what could it possibly accomplish but alienation and anguish? He said, very gently, "My dear, does it matter what's customary? This isn't a customary situation. You said nothing I could do could turn you against me. I feel the same way, but we'll simply have to take our time and see what happens." And David realized this was something of a crucial breakthrough. As the infinitely delicate polarity tipped, male to female, Keral would become more shy, more passive. It was David's turn to take the lead.

An experienced woman can take the lead with a young or shy male. But he didn't even know how much experience, among his own kind, Keral might have had, and in any case it would now be irrelevant. David must now initiate; lead; and still be aware of response or refusal.

He drew Keral down beside him and they lay embraced, full length, kissing gently, then moving with a growing response. David said at last, huskily, coming up for air, "This isn't too fast for me—but it might be for you, Keral." He took Keral's hand gently in his own and guided it, but Keral jerked violently away.

For an instant David felt a spasm of anger. Nothing in Keral had prepared him for what seemed like prudery. Then, coming back to sanity (
he had to think. Violent erection, desire, or not, he couldn't let his body do the thinking here
), he realized that Keral was afraid. Physically afraid, and if that fear began to spiral upward, out of control, they were finished. Keral's whole body was shaking with the effort to conceal his fear, but it was like a scent. David sat up, moving away.

"See? I'm still in control, Keral. I promised; nothing you're not ready for. But I wish you'd told me before it got so bad. I can't read your mind now; your emotions sort of blur everything. So you'll have to tell me."

"It's not; I wanted you to touch me, but—"

David said, on sudden intuition:

"Am I so different from one of your people in male phase? Different enough to frighten you?"

"Not really, although—I think you're stronger than I believed. I'm always—it's hard to say this—I'm always a little afraid in the early stages. But it isn't just that. Among us there is more, more continuing change, and if you are already like this, I am afraid that later, when I am ready—"

He was shaking terribly now, very near tears, and David suddenly understood. He almost laughed, it was too much like some stupid dirty joke, but he cradled Keral gently in his arms and held him tight. He said quietly, "No. No, Keral, you forget. We reach the full stage of arousal quickly. As I am now—that is what I will be when you are ready. No more."

Of course. If Keral was used to a slow and gradual sexual change, a growth which lasted over a period of hours, and if at this early stage David had already reached maximum size and intensity, how could Keral know that? They were, after all, David realized, more alien than civilized man and savage; and even among men of a single breed and single planet, there were endless misunderstandings and alien taboos.

Keral was calmer now. He said, "Of course; it was foolish to be afraid. I wish I were ready for you."

"I can wait."

"You're trying so hard to meet me halfway. I'm ashamed."

"Don't be, Keral."

He felt pliant, almost brittle in David's arms; David felt gross and rough and almost unsure of the kind and type of physical change he would see in Keral. David said, at last, "I'm still in unfamiliar country, without a map. I want to be sure—"

Keral said immediately, "Yes. This at least is so. We must know completely what the other is . . . even if we were two of a kind, it would be wise, and now there's no other way."

David was glad to be detached and almost clinical again as Keral slowly explored his body with his hands. The touch was exciting, but not dangerously so, and mutual curiosity relaxed the tension.
To hell with theoretical specimens and anatomical generalities, I want to be sure about this one, individual one!
as he touched Keral curiously, he wondered, embarrassment and unsureness mingled, would the strangeness be enough to repel him? Could anything about Keral make him feel revulsion? The textbook drawings he had made from the first medical examinations of both Keral and Missy were in the back of his mind. When he made them had he guessed this? He touched the folded genital slit, thinking randomly that it was a more sensible arrangement than the exposed one of his own kind of human. "Promise to stop me if I hurt you."