MacRoscope (22 page)

Unexpectedly, she flashed him a smile. Then she unbuttoned her blouse.

The three watched, hesitating to comment. Afra stripped methodically, completely, and without affectation. She stood before them, a splendid figure of a woman in her prime. “I want — to be handled.”

“Confirmation by tactile perception — very important,” Groton said, not mocking her; but he did not move.

“I don’t understand,” Beatryx said, seemingly more put out by this display than the men were.

“I want you — all of you — to handle me,” Afra explained as though she were giving instructions in storing groceries. Her voice was normal but a flush was developing upon cheek and neck and spreading attractively downward. “So that afterwards you will know me as well as you can, not just by sight or sound.” She smiled fleetingly. “Or temper. So that you can tell whether it is the same girl, outside. When you watch me melt down, you’ll never believe I’m whole again, unless you prove it with all your senses. And if
you
don’t believe, how can
I
?”

“I couldn’t tell one girl from another, by touch,” Ivo objected, feeling his own face heating.

“Do it,” Groton muttered.

“
Me?
”

Groton nodded.

Ivo stood up, far more embarrassed than Afra appeared to be. He walked jerkily toward her. He raised one hand and stopped, overcome by uncertainty. Almost, he wished the drive would fail; anything to break this up.

“Pretend you’re a doctor,” Beatryx suggested sympathetically — but there was an overtone that hinted at hysteria. This must go, he thought, entirely against her grain.

And what of his own grain? Brad had called him prudish. Brad, again, had known.

“No!” Afra said in reply to Beatryx. “No impersonal examination. That’s pointless. Do whatever you have to do to
know
who I am.”

“I already have some idea.” Ivo was aware that he was now blushing visibly — a phenomenon that very seldom appeared in him, since his complexion was dark. Before he met Afra, he corrected himself. The suffusion of his features fed upon itself, summoning more blood; this, too. was feedback. He was embarrassed
because
he was embarrassed. Could Afra have any inkling how he felt about her?

“This is as hard for me as for you,” she said. “I
don’t
like acting like a whore. I just don’t see any other practical way. Here.” She caught his hand and jammed it against her midriff.

Ivo remained frozen, shocked as much by her words as her action. It had been, by his dubious reckoning, less than forty-eight hours since their first meeting, and hardly more than that since this entire adventure had dropped on him. His hand, half-closed, rested against her warm, smooth, gently-heaving abdomen.

“She is trying to preserve her identity,” Groton said helpfully. “But it isn’t an entirely physical thing. She requires an
experience
— emotional, sexual, spiritual — the words are hardly important.”

“Sexual?” The inane query was out before he could halt it.

“Not stimulation in the erotic sense,” Groton replied carefully. “It is possible to copulate without any genuine involvement, after all. Rather, a shared sensation. Your actions and reactions are an important part of it, for they deepen its relevance. When you interact with intimacy, you accomplish something meaningful. She does not exist alone; she needs an audience. Otherwise, like the unread book or the unheard symphony, she is unrealized. Move her, be moved by her; make an experience whose significance will not easily fade.
React
!”

Afra nodded quickly, and the motion sent a tremor through her flesh and his. “Yes, yes — I think you understand it better than I do,” she said, speaking to Groton.

“Merely your way of publishing for posterity,” he said. “I knew male and female weren’t
that
different.”

Surprised, she nodded again, and Ivo felt her diaphragm tighten. Still he stood there, unable to initiate this high-minded inspection, averting his eyes uncomfortably. His hand, so dark in contrast to her pale flesh, felt dead, encysted in plastic, immovable and incredibly clumsy.

“Ivo,” she said, “It’s my
life
, my
self
. I am afraid — I admit it, I announce it, I brag of it. I need this reassurance, and I think you will need it too, once we get into this, this cycle. So humor me, but
do
it. You don’t have to like it.”

“I’m afraid I
would
like it,” he blurted. There was something more fundamental than vanity involved. Ivo grasped that now, but it did not help him.
He
did not imagine security in handling, and he doubted Groton did, for all his explanations. Women, more than men, were made for such caresses. Publishing a book made sense; this—

“Where are you afraid to touch me?” Afra demanded, nervous and impatient. “The UN won’t hold off forever.” She grabbed at his hand again and lifted it in both of hers forcing his fingers to uncurl. “Here?” She plastered his right palm against her left breast.

He had been wrong about the insensitivity of that extremity. Hot/cold shocks ran up his arm and exploded in his consciousness, making him dizzy. React? How could he help it!

“Here?” she demanded again, and rubbed his fingers against the firm lower crease of her left buttock… Ivo snatched his hand away. His entire body was shaking. He felt ridiculous, yet excited.

“Praise God for naïveté,” Afra remarked, not unkindly. “I’m not making passes at you, Ivo. I just have to prove to you that I mean it. There can’t be any prudery for this. Now go ahead, please. There isn’t much time.”

She had accomplished her purpose. After the intimacy of the contacts she had forced upon him, hesitancy was ridiculous. He started at her head, running his fingers over her forehead, her cheeks, her nose, her closed eyelids, stroking her delicate lips, cupping her chin. There were two faint freckles on her neck near the right ear. He combed through her loose hair with splayed fingers, getting the texture of it, finding it more substantial than he had anticipated, more resilient. He circled her sleek white neck and pinched her earlobes gently between thumb and forefinger.

“Bite it, taste it,” she said quietly.

He brushed his lips to her ear. He knew her and loved her — guiltily.

He closed his eyes and ran his hands down one arm and then the other, feeling the smooth outlines of bone and flesh and sinew and skin, while she stood submissively. It was like a dream — more than a dream, for she was fair in every part and in every physical respect. The tonus of her moderate musculature was good; the curves and planes were without tactile blemish. Her fingers were slender and finely molded; the hollows around her collarbones perfectly sculptured. Only in her armpits was there roughness: the stubble of hair shaved clean a few days before, growing back already. This reminder that she was not an animated statue shook him again;
he was handling her
.

Her breasts were heavy but not as large as they had seemed by eye, nor did the nipples project so much — until he touched them. Internal texture of the breast was not consistent; pressure showed up the clumped masses of the mammary glands beneath. Men, he thought, had been so fascinated with this distinguishing mark of the female that they had identified the species through it: mammalian. Yet the feature typical of it — not the species, he remembered now, the
class
— the most typical feature was hair. The mammals were hairy-bodied. Even whales had some pubic hair…

Eyes still closed, he brought his errant mind back to business. To the sides the breasts faded into lightly covered ribs, that in turn dropped off into a much wider space above the hips than he had suspected. Her back was almost flat, mounded by the shoulder blades on either side, ridged by the backbone down the center. The ribs angled up in front to disappear somewhere near the solar plexus.

Her buttocks as his hands experienced them were astonishingly generous, the soft flesh overlapping onto hip and thigh. In front, the stomach and abdomen were rounded, projecting more than he expected, and the hips were so wide he had to open his eyes to verify his location.

Afra’s eyes were closed; she was not watching him or reacting to his increasingly personal explorations in any overt way. He did not know whether that pleased him or disturbed him.

Her hips and buttocks were normal, considering the sex and general health of the subject. He had been judging by his own anatomy, and his slowly traveling hands had magnified her dimensions unrealistically. He closed his eyes again, kneeled and continued.

He touched her pubic hair and passed over it lightly, finding no more reason to probe within it than he had to feel the insides of her ears, nose or mouth. Her legs were braced somewhat apart; he ran his hands down the insides of her thighs, up again and around to the projections of the glutei maximi behind. Then down over the large muscles of the legs, under greater tension than those of the arms or rear, and to the knees, far more esthetic than his own.

The calves were tighter yet, and as he squeezed them he could feel their shifting as trace corrections of balance were made. The ankles were narrow, the tendons flexing through them and over the tops of the feet. Her arches were good, the toes small but strong. As he traversed this final portion of her, one great toe flexed upward, a parting salute — and abruptly his diminishing embarrassment re-surged.

He had indeed been handling a live woman.

“Do you know me now?” she inquired, eyes open.

Do I know a goddess?
“Yes,” he said, uncertain whether it was truth or untruth.

Dazed, Ivo returned to his place and watched Groton go over her in much the same fashion. He felt like a voyeur and suppressed it; he felt a crude jealousy and suppressed
that
. Afra belonged to neither man, and this experience meant nothing, except in whatever intangible way she chose to take it.

Then Beatryx reviewed her, and this embarrassed him once more. For a man to handle a woman — that was provocative but in the natural course. For a woman to handle a woman—

He was still reacting foolishly. He would have to learn to divorce his instincts from current necessities, as the others had. Perhaps the time would come when he could clap his hand upon Afra’s cleft without…

He was glad no one was watching him, for he was sure he was reddening brilliantly.

Afra’s inspection was over. She, still naked, glanced inquiringly at Beatryx. Was the other woman going to undertake a similar ordeal?

Beatryx looked calmly at her husband.

Groton smiled. “With all due respect for these proceedings,” he said, “I believe I will know my wife in whatever guise she may manifest herself. Trust her to me.”

Beatryx returned the smile. “I should hope so, dear.”

Ivo was glad Beatryx had not undertaken similar handling. He imagined himself passing his hands over her body as he had for Afra, and recoiled. She was older, and she was married, and this did seem to make a difference. A married woman should not be touched by other men.

He tried to turn it off, but his mind proceeded against his will, fascinated by the morbid. He saw his fingers touch the flesh of the older woman, finding it flabby and rough in comparison, unattractive. How was a woman of that age to compete with such as Afra? Age, intelligence, appearance — as washerwoman to a princess. The exploration of Afra was the guilt of forbidden fruit; of Beatryx, merely aversion.

Yet this was a dire wrong to Beatryx, even in fancy, for he knew already that she had qualities of compassion and courage that Afra lacked. He was judging by sex appeal — his own possibly juvenile standards, too — and that negated the evidence of experience and intellect.

How much better to feel guilt for lusting after a woman than to feel it for failing to lust!

He came alert with a start. The preliminaries were over and they were ready for the supreme commitment.

Afra lay within her basin, and the others stood by while Ivo positioned the projector directly overhead. This was nothing more than the large macroscope screen; once a person had been primed — that is, introduced to the broadcast — the existence of a certain situation and frame of mind triggered a beam of light originating within the alien channel. This bypassed the computer; it was direct contact with intergalactic science.

Groton had somehow produced five man-sized containers. Ivo suspected that they were pirated chemical tanks sliced lengthwise. Afra, in hers, was lying in several inches of clear sterile water, spread out so that the beam could catch an entire side at once. That was all they had to do.

Was it a horrible demolition he aimed at her? How could he be sure that this was not after all another destroyer, as Groton had suggested; more subtle than the first, set to catch the few who circumvented the first?

Afra looked up at him. “You believed in it before.”

So he had. Why was it suddenly so chancy when she was the one? Because he loved her and would survive to witness his mistake?

“It takes a couple of minutes to warm up,” Afra said. “Stand back.”

Numbly, Ivo obeyed. He wished he could think of some appropriate remark to make, but he had never felt so stupid. He was afraid, too, as he had not been before.

Inevitably the seconds passed. He could not stop them. “Joseph!” he exclaimed. “Who will pilot it, while — ?”

“Eight hours from now the macroscope computer will jump the engine to a full ten G’s acceleration and modify our course accordingly,” Groton said. “We have taken care of the programming. What did you think we were doing while you slept?”

So the others had committed themselves to Neptune even before he—

A flash; the projector came on. A thin yellow light bathed Afra’s body, making it oddly sharp; the flesh tones stood out deeper than in life, the hair brighter, the irises, as the eyes dropped closed, a clearer blue. It was as though some famous painter had enhanced the predominant hues.

He knew that this was only the surface manifestation. It was the cell that counted, that the beam was seeking out and rendering individualistic. The bulk of the radiation was invisible, acting within her substance, setting up unusual relations, breaking down lifelong bonds. A change was beginning — one unlike any experienced by the human form before.