Get Off the Unicorn (14 page)

Why on earth did Clas look so stunned?

“Fenn . . . Nora, you've an alarming habit of changing state when no one expects it.” He got to his feet.

It was difficult to talk on the fast belt back to the University Complex, but Clas kept one hand firmly about her waist and whenever she looked up at him, he smiled down at her and gave her a little squeeze. When they finally hopped over to the University Plaza, he took both her hands in his.

“What's your call sequence?”

She stammered it out, because she certainly hadn't expected him to ask for it. He gave her hands one more squeeze.

“You'll be hearing from me, Nora Fenn.
After
I've turned in that essay.”

And somehow, to her surprise, she believed him.

She had to take the cross-campus belt to her dormitory quad, a trip she'd found rather chilling in the old cloak with the wet spring winds knifing around building corners. She pulled the new, windproof cloak more tightly around her, secure in its warmth and in the warmth of the day's miracles. Just wait till she showed Con . . .

The day's pleasures diminished. It'd been gratifying to have Clas Heineman interested in her, prod her into buying more clothes than were really needful, and luxuriating in a high-credit meal, but she'd rather have shared her triumphs with Con. He'd shared her miseries.

She was half tempted to go to the Commons and see if, by any chance, he might be about. But he wouldn't want to see her, not after the way she'd stormed out of his place yesterday. She'd even told him she'd canceled his number from her program. She hadn't, of course, but he wouldn't know that.

She cudgeled her brain to think of some way of apologizing to him, of making amends. She couldn't help him with any of his courses because he was in a different discipline. She'd darned all his socks and patched his good cloak where the fastening had torn. She'd . . .

“Hey, don't you speak to old friends now you're a d.h., with a five-hundred-credit bonus?”

Con's bony fingers clutched her arm and swung her about. She searched his long, doleful face, with the shock of bird's nest hair, the rather ludicrous black handlebar moustache, and saw only comic dismay in the wide-set intelligent grey eyes.

“You mean, you're still speaking to
me
?”

“Whaddya mean? Am I still speaking to you?” He frowned and then, seeing they were attracting attention, pulled her out of the walkway and into the angle of the building. “You mean, because of last night?”

She nodded, swallowing anxiously, watching the shift of expression on his mobile face. He was no Clas Heineman for looks, but she felt much more comfortable with Connor Clarke. He took her by both arms now and gave her a rough shake, his thin fingers biting into her flesh.

“Aw, Nora,” he said in a cajoling tone, his eyes tender, “friends can get mad at each other, you know, without printing out a major disaster. Besides,” and he recovered himself with a characteristic shrug, “I was right and you ought to know it today. Say, gal, have I been strutting for you since I heard. A d.h. and 500 lc's? And you scored off Clas Heineman and all those wire-brained plug-in artists . . .”

“The bonus was only three-hundred and Clas Heineman—”

“You watch that soft-soaper, Nora,” and with one of his sudden switches, Con was in a sober phase again. “He may come trying to pick your brains 'cause he's got to maintain his—”

“He already has,” Nora said, giggling. Now she knew what had disconcerted Clas Heineman in the food shop. He'd laid on the charm thick and figured he'd taken her in when he was pumping her about her files. Only it'd never occurred to her that that wasn't a fair exchange for the way she'd talked to him in class and for the meal he'd bought her. She did know more about people than programming.

“He has?” Con was nonplussed.

“He waylaid me after Siffert excused me and—”

“He didn't!”

“And,” Nora giggled again, twirling on her toes to show off her cape and the tunic suit underneath, “he made me spend money on new clothes. D'you like 'em? The student issue just tore right off me.”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, nice— Tore right off you!” Con looked angry enough to take Clas Heineman apart bit by bit.

“Mind your thoughts, Con. Really, you're overreacting in a gross fashion. Besides which, you caused the first rip in my s.i. last night . . . All Clas wanted was to pump me and—well, after the way I rounded on him in front of the class . . .”

“Nora!” Con roared her name with a most reassuring possessiveness in his tone. “Nora . . .” Then he deflated with misery. “Nora, I was wrong last night. You don't have to gabble like me to relate to people. You
know
!”

“No, Con,
you
were right. And I am out of CompSci. Master Siffert is ordering me out,” she said, patting Con's face to reassure him and grinning affectionately at his miserable expression.

“Well, then,” and Con brightened immediately, putting his arm around her waist and drawing her over to the cross-campus walk, “since that's settled, let's go eat and you can tell me all about it. Mind you, I've heard some state-changing versions that don't sound like my Nora at all.” He stopped in his tracks, so that she all but tripped over his feet. “That is, if you want to . . . after the way I treated you last night.”

Nora smiled up at him. “Oh, go tell it to the computer. It
has
to listen to you!”

 

 

Changeling

C
LAIRE GLANCED QUICKLY
at Roy again, her mind churning with astonishment, fury, and confusion. She simply had to persuade him to bring her back to City. Prenatal instructions blithely stated that the first birth was apt to take longer, but never how long. Claire knew that she had a wide pelvis, and she'd done all the strengthening exer— She concentrated on deep-breathing as the uterine muscles contracted strongly.

Good God, was this why Roy had been so faithful in attending the prenatal courses? She and Chess had thought that it was only because this baby was Roy's and, because of his sexuality, likely to be his only issue. Had Roy planned
this
all along?

She swallowed, for the nausea was acute.

“Roy, I'm going to be sick,” she said, amazed that she could speak so calmly.

“Don't!”

The order was frightening, almost as frightening as the speed with which he skipped the uneven terrain, barely skimming the low ridges as the helicar climbed higher and higher into the Alleghenies.

He must be taking me somewhere, but where? Claire thought desperately. And why? Why?

A short, strong contraction pulled at her and she gasped inadvertently. Roy looked at her then, his almond-shaped eyes narrowing slightly.

“That's too soon. Are they increasing?”

“Yes, yes. You've got to take me back to City, Roy.”

“No.”

A flat-out, inarguable negative.

“For your baby's sake, Roy . . .” The soft entreaty, intense despite her quiet voice, caused the perfect curve of his wide mouth to flatten in anger.

Claire felt bereft of all courage. Roy was not going to be dissuaded from whatever insane course he had inaugurated. And that was very like Roy . . . and terribly unlike him. Why?
Why?
Where had she miscalculated with this brilliant, beautiful, complicated personality. What had she, after all, done wrong? Artificial insemination had solved his basic problem in the matter of becoming a father. Had he so little confidence in her after the years they'd lived so equably together? What maggot had got into his mind over this baby? He couldn't be jealous of Chess . . . or Ellyot? That was the prime reason for her having Roy's child first.

Claire had to stop thinking to concentrate on breathing as the contractions renewed. As she checked the sweep second hand on the heli's panel, she realized that Roy, too, was timing the spasms.

Oh, God, what is the matter with him? Why is he acting this way? We thought we'd covered every possible reaction. But to kidnap me? At the onset of labor? Roy, Roy, what did I do wrong?

Claire fought back tears, which would infuriate Roy. She wanted to scream but such a distressingly female reaction would not serve. It was the calm, rational quality of their relationship, the experts had told her, that was so essential to Roy's stability. The fact that Claire was always serene, so much the antithesis of the flamboyant feminine emotionalism which was repugnant to Roy Beach, had sustained this unusual experiment in human relationships. Now, every instinct in her rebelled noisily against his actions. But every last shred of disciplined rationality she had cried caution, patience, containment.

What had possessed him that he was compelled to act in this fashion? Things could go wrong, even at the last minute, and if they were so far from the City's obstetrical help, what could she do? Then Claire remembered again that Roy had attended every prenatal lesson and had read more books than she had. She bit her lips to contain an hysterical sob. Now she knew that it had not been complacent acceptance that Roy had exhibited, but twisted planning.

No, not twisted planning, she hurriedly corrected her thoughts. Roy wasn't twisted: he just saw things from a different angle. A very different angle, since he regarded women as a different species, useless in his environment. Up to the present moment, she'd been the sole exception. And how could she have been so dense as to imagine that he would react in any normally predictable fashion at the moment of parturition of the one child he was likely to sire?

The groan that issued from Claire's throat was part despair, part pain.

Roy glanced at her again, his eyes sliding around, through, beyond her, without seeming to pause long enough to admit her existence. He did note the contractions that rippled across her swollen belly. He frowned slightly as he looked back across the hills. Judging, Claire realized, whether he had enough time to make his destination before the birth occurred.

Where could he be taking her? Did Ellyot know? Or Chess? Ellyot surely, of the four of them, should have caught an inkling of Roy's plans. Roy barely noticed her these last few months, but he was constantly with Ellyot and Chess. The grotesqueness of her once slender, perfect figure would be repugnant to him: she'd expected that. Her physical perfection had first attached Roy to her. So it was reasonable for him to be revolted by her gravid condition even though it was his child that warped her body. She had dressed as concealingly and fashionably as possible and then kept out of his way—to the point of ducking into closets whenever she heard his quick light step in the house.

Unable to look at him or at the blurring green of the forest over which the heli passed, Claire closed her eyes and shuddered again. She forced herself to relax into the contractions. They were unquestionably stronger—and longer. She could tell that without recourse to the chronometer. And Roy was timing them, too. Let Roy take over. He had. Let him do his worst. He would be the biggest loser. By God and all the growing insight of modern psychiatry, she had done her best. Between pains, she cast back into memory and tried to reason out this extraordinary abduction.

Roy Beach, Praxiteles, Adonis, Apollo, call him Male Beauty in the classic mode, and adore him . . . at a distance. Always at a distance, please. He is not to be touched, he is untouchable. The crisp golden curls that fall in stylish sweeps across the high forehead; the wide-set, slightly slanting almond-shaped, green-green eyes over broad cheekbones, eyes that looked with such ruthless intensity at the wonders of the world, assessing its hidden beauties, disclosing its accepted horrors; the fine straight nose with sensitive flaring nostrils; the sensuous lips, neither too full nor too thin, graceful in the double curve of an Apollonian bow; the firm wide jaw. An incredibly beautiful face—and a beautiful body, tall, straight, deep-chested, muscular with graceful strength, hairlessly smooth. Then Nature compounded her gifts and gave him an intelligence that ranked him one of the most brilliant geopoliticians of the past three centuries. Nature, not always kind, added one final quirk to the psyche of Roy Beach, prince among men, to ensure that no princess would rouse tender, heterosexual feelings in his superb breast. And yet . . .

Claire Simonsen met Roy Beach in City University Complex. If they had not chanced to attend the same seminar, they would doubtless have been introduced by some meddler or other. As Roy Beach was a sleeping prince of godly perfection, Claire Simonsen was Snow White. Hair black as coal, skin white as snow, lips red as drops of blood on a queen mother's linen, she was gracious and gentle, and the fairest in the land—at least, in Penn City and its environs. She was also an extremely intelligent young woman: not equal to Beach as a theoretician—for her talent was in personal relationships which translated into human terms the geopolitical equations—but she was both able to follow and interpret his theories up to the point where he made the final ascent of intuitive genius.

At the time they met, Roy had not yet admitted his sexual preference and was intensely aggravated by the importunities of both sexes. Claire, for the same reason, saw in him the answer to her insistent suitors.

“I don't like females,” Roy had told her that first evening in his quarters. “But I also haven't found a man with whom I can form an attachment.” Roy never equivocated. “I may never find someone congenial. If you do, you have my blessings. Until that time—” and one of his rare and beatific smiles touched the perfect lips “—be my guest?”

“With you, candor has become an art,” Claire had replied.

“If we are to continue to deal pleasantly together, candor is essential.”

Claire distinctly remembered that she had been strolling around his study room (even as a student, he rated status quarters), admiring the simplicity and elegance of its furnishings, the knowing placement of the few paintings, the Britton bronze, the Flock marble statuette. Unquestionably, Roy had been the model.

“You feel compelled to preserve the image of masculinity?” she had asked.

He had shrugged, his almond, green-green eyes expressionless.

“I am the image of masculinity.”

“But not its substance.”

He had frowned slightly, then he again awarded her that incredible smile. This time, it lit his eyes with humor.

“Sexuality in this day and age is, thank God, a personal, not a social choice. However, there is subtle pressure to pair off, and until this has been done, one is subjected to constant entreaties.” He paused, nodding understandingly as Claire shuddered. Until Roy had blatantly annexed her that evening, she had been pestered by three quarrelsome and competitive fellow freshmen. “You are the most beautiful woman I have met. It is a pleasure to listen to your voice, to watch you move across a room.” Roy smiled wryly. “Artistically, we complement each other.”

“We do,” Claire could not help grinning back at their reflections in the mirror surface of the darkened terrace doors. “God and witch. White and black.”

“Are you always so tactful, Claire?”

She was a trifle startled at the laughter in his voice, at the definite twinkle in the intensely green eyes. Whatever reservations she had faded. Without humor, Roy Beach would have been insufferable.

“Let us see how we deal together, then,” she replied. “It'll be a relief, even if we split up next Saturday, to have those hot-handed louts off my . . . my back.”

Smoothly, Claire had adapted herself to Roy's ways. It was never mentioned but it was obvious to a girl with Claire's perceptions that the weight of compromise in the arrangement would always be hers. However, it was a small price to pay for being left alone once the word got abroad that Roy Beach and Claire Simonsen were quartering together. There might have been intense private speculation, but custom forbade probing. They were welcomed everywhere and were soon the acknowledged leaders of their University class.

The key, Claire had discovered, to Roy's intricate personality was to accept him at his own evaluation, a fluid standard which she understood intuitively at first, then intellectually as she penetrated deeper into Human Behavorial Sciences, until she could not have said why she knew how to suit him but invariably did. Theirs could never be a physical relationship, but Claire occasionally thought she was his mental alter ego. However, in his own way, he was devoted to her and as aware of her emotional needs as she was of his; once to the point of being demonstrably tender with her when one of her brief love affairs dissolved painfully.

It had been a tempestuous affair and ended in a bitter quarrel. Claire had run blindly back to Roy's quarters to find him waiting for her, and patient with her distress.

“You appeared to enjoy him,” Roy had remarked when she paused at one point in her harangue. “He's got a reputation for proficiency, at any rate. Or didn't he make a good lover, after all?”

Claire had pulled the remnants of her pride together and looked at Roy.

“He is certainly physically attractive,” Roy had said thoughtfully, taking her by the arm and leading her toward her old room. “But not your intellectual equal. You'd've fought sooner or later. Here's a trank: it'll ease the worst of the withdrawal.”

He had pushed her onto her bed, tugged off her boots, gave her water to down the medication, and, to her immense surprise, had kissed her cheek lightly after he arranged covers over her.

With amazement, she detected a faint shadow of worry in his eyes.

“
We
understand each other, Claire. We complement each other. Do not settle for less than the best your own excellence can command.”

As she drifted off to sleep, Claire was oddly comforted that Roy regarded her as a personality in her own right, and not as an adjunct or supplement to his own consequence.

There had been further brief associations for her, but always the standard that Roy had set for her governed the flare of sexual desire. On those occasions she had terminated the relationship—until Ellyot Harding was introduced to Roy at the Eastern Conference of Cities.

When Roy brought the slender dark man back to the flat—Roy and Claire had moved, of course, to civilian quarters after obtaining their advanced degrees—Claire was instantly aware of the bond between the two men, and of her own attraction for Ellyot. She was also aware of the surprise that rocked Ellyot Harding at her presence in Roy's quarters. She could all but hear his startled thought, What's a
woman
doing with him?

But Ellyot was quick to perceive subtleties and, on the heels of the first shock, came comprehension. He had instantly stepped forward, to grip her hand, to place a cool kiss on her cheek.

“You
must
be Claire Simonsen,” for Roy had not yet had a chance to introduce her. “I followed your programmed analysis of the Deprivation Advantage with intense interest. In fact, I have allowed for that factor in the renewal project currently planned in my City. Oh, I apologize . . . Roy is rescuing me from the sterility of Transient Accommodations, and the inevitability of having to talk shop with other victims trapped there.”

Ellyot's good-natured smile never touched just his lips, his whole face was involved in it.

“Go right ahead,” Roy urged, turning to dial drinks at the console. “I rather thought you two would have overlapping interests. Explore them while I order a dinner suitable for this momentous occasion.”