Offshore (10 page)

The wind
dropped to something less than gale force and the rain had eased
from the horizontal as he stretched his new limbs and filled his
new lungs, scouring Lonny’s memories for information.

He let
them guide him through the maze of corridors, up the steps, and
into the warm and comfortable habitat, to the company of other
living beings and their food.

When
Lonny Dick entered the mess hall only two faces looked
up.

Both
registered complete indifference at his presence. The others didn’t
bother to look at all, preferring to concentrate on their
breakfast.

Had anyone even noticed the real Lonny had been absent
since seven o’clock the previous evening? Did anyone care? The
answer to both questions was, apparently,
no
.

A quick
look round to get his bearings and he took a plate and fork from
the servery, then filled the empty seat at the table next to Shaw.
He stabbed at the pancakes heaped on a plate in the middle of the
table and transferred three onto his own.

“
Is that all you’re having?” Shaw said with his mouth full,
pointing with his fork. Euterich searched his new-found data to
identify the speaker - Matthew Shaw, aka Dipstick, Capstan’s
lackey.

Be careful what you say in his presence because he’ll
report back. Act dumb. Stick to short blunt answers, preferably
edging on the aggressive, he’ll expect nothing more. Keep
conversation to a minimum
.

“
Yeah,” he said dully. “What of it?”

Shaw
shrugged. “Nutt’n. Just thought a bloke your size would pack ‘em
away like nobody’s business.”

“
Just ‘cos I’m big don’t mean I’m greedy, so mind yer own
beeswax.”

Shaw
returned to his own plate. “Pardon me for breathing.”

Euterich
smothered the pancakes with maple syrup, and as Lonny would have
done held his fork in his fist like a brickie wielding a trowel -
so terribly crude. Also, as he imagined Lonny would do, he ripped
into the pancakes, stuffing them into his mouth so tightly he could
hardly move his jaw to chew.

They
tasted like heaven, the intense rich sugary sweetness of the maple
syrup stroking his taste-buds like angels wings. Truly
divine.

He
helped himself to two more pancakes. If they made him sick, he
didn’t care. It would just make room for more. He alternated
mouthfuls of sticky breakfast with slurps of hot milky coffee and
listened in to the conversations around him; raw, male chatter,
dominated by cars, football and sex, until his ears picked up
another tone from behind him, softer, gentler … unmistakably
female.

Why had
he not noticed her when he came in? Why did he not pick up on her
scent straight away?

Maybe
his naturally heightened senses had been dulled to the level of the
human he inhabited. Or maybe the overpowering aroma of the sweet
food and coffee had blocked it.

Disguising a deep inhalation as a runny nosed sniff, he
quickly filtered out and dismissed the rich sweet scent of the
maple syrup and the pungent acid of freshly brewed coffee,
searching past them, through them, for the fragile, the barely
there, and there it was, the soft delicate fragrance of
female.

A
lopsided grin grew on his face as he delighted in the bouquet
sliding through his olfactory passages, into the deepest most
primitive recesses of his brain. Proust hard at work.

“
What the fuck’s the matter with you?”

The
voice sliced into his concentration, pulling him out of his
reverie. Strident and annoying, it belonged to Reynolds - A1 first
class prick, shit stirring trouble maker.

If
anyone deserved a kick in the balls, it was him. “Wha’?” said
Euterich, adopting Lonny’s general slack jawed expression of
inanity.

“
You were grinning like a loony. What’s the
joke?”

“
No joke. I was just thinking?”

“
What about?”

“
Nuttin’ special. Just a funny.”

“
Share then.”

He said
the first thing that popped into his head, one of Lonny’s crazier
ponderings. “I was thinking about Domino’s pizza.”

What?

“
What about it?” said Reynolds, humouring him.

“
They deliver in 30 minutes or you get it free, don’t
they?”

“
Yeah?”

“
Well I think we should order, ‘cos, d’uh, look where we
are. Free pizza!”

His
shoulders shook with the power of an unintelligent moronic
guffawing. What the hell did he say that for? Was this the level of
intelligence this man worked at? Hell fire. He had to get out of
this body and quick, before its dull-wittedness began to rub off on
him and dragged his IQ level down to one so low it needed
watering.

Reynolds
shook his head hopelessly. “You’re a fucking head case, Lummox, you
know that?”

The
nickname struck a chord with Euterich.

He found
he detested it, simply because Lonny detested it. Euterich pounded
his fist onto the table, rattling the crockery, having a sudden
urge to pummel Reynolds’ sneering face to a pulp.

“
What did I tell you about calling me that?” he said, making
to rise from his seat.

“
Calm down, big fella,” said Reynolds, holding up his fork
in capitulation. “I was just having a jape.”

“
Well don’t, okay, unless you want your teeth knocking out
the back of your neck.”

“
Trouble guys?” Eddie Capstan’s voice carried from the next
table over.

“
No trouble, boss,” said Reynolds, keeping a wary eye on
Euterich and his massive fist. “No trouble at all.”

They ate
the rest of the meal in silence, after which the assigned kitchen
hands took care of the clearing up before joining the rest of the
crew as they girded themselves for a morning’s hard graft,
accompanied by a chorus of tuneful belches and farts.

Chapter 12

It
didn’t take long for Euterich to discover Lonny had not been
employed for his quick wit or nimbleness with an electrical
circuit, or his ability to make rapid calculation.

He was
there purely for muscle power, for brute strength without thought,
a grunt who would follow instructions without question at all
times, and what started off as promising height and bulk and
strength, soon paled. He found the large hands and feet clumsy and
cumbersome, the mind slow and restricted, and the work assigned to
him, routine, uninspiring … boring.

Now,
after a week of occupying Lonny Dick’s skin, thoughts and memories,
the prospect of having to keep up the act for another two and a
half months stretched out before him like a long dark
tunnel.

Time to put some thought into putting a light at the end of
that tunnel.

As
usual, at the end of this day’s shift, he showered, changed his
clothes and ate his dinner. Today it was a spicy mix of chilli con
carne and rice. Not a favourite. Chilli gave him gas, but it would
have to do.

Well
fed, if a little bloated, he sat in a chair apart from the others,
thumbing through a men’s health magazine and brooding, all the
while keeping the focus of his interest on the edge of his vision,
as he had since the first minute he saw her. Lydia Ellis - tiny
frame almost consumed by her deep armchair, legs tucked under her,
comfortable, reading her book and sipping her coffee.

Relaxed.
Natural. Unaware of being watched. He inhaled her tantalising scent
with every breath, teasing himself with it.

After a
while she drained her cup and yawned, closed her book and rose to
leave, bidding her workmates, 'Goodnight'. He allowed his gaze to
follow her across the room.

She
certainly was lovely. Small and slender, with intelligent eyes, her
chestnut hair tied up in a practical ponytail which swung from side
to side in time with her step, flawless skin carrying the remnants
of a summer tan, a tight neat backside and pert firm breasts.
Faultless. Unlike this oversized unwieldy form he had lumbered
himself with.

Euterich
told himself over and again that beggars can’t be choosers and he
should be grateful for Lonny’s turning up and saving him from a
horrible slow death, but it came as no consolation. He could feel
no gratitude, only resentment. He deserved better than
this.

He was a
product of ages - educated, refined, sophisticated, brutal. He
liked to read, to think, to converse; been tinker, tailor, soldier,
and spy. He had lived high and low; had loved and lost. He had
killed often, sometimes without mercy, always with
respect.

He
enjoyed the finer things in life - a good meal, a fine wine, a
night at the opera. He liked to travel, to indulge in discussions
about art and philosophy, appreciated the sciences, understood them
for the most part, and now those qualities were in danger of being
irretrievably corrupted by low minded vulgarity and sheer
thick-headedness.

And it
wasn’t only his mind at risk. His well cultured urbanity went hand
in hand with a healthy appreciation of a lovely lady companion;
thousands of them throughout his long lifetime.

He’d
made love to more than he could count, had lived and worked with
them, slipping into the roles of their colleagues, their fathers,
husbands, sons, lovers, brothers.

While he
watched Lydia he considered that his many and varied incarnations,
for want of a better word, had always been male, never female. At
least … not yet. Maybe now was the time to put right that
oversight.

Perhaps
Lydia Ellis, who with her freckled nose and chestnut hair, with her
merry laugh and soulful eyes appealed to his baser instincts, would
provide him with the wherewithal to achieve this long buried, long
neglected ambition.

But it
wasn’t quite that simple.

He
couldn’t just take her body and inhabit it like he had done with
Lonny Dick. He would have to gain her trust, keep the fear level to
a minimum, because fear induced surges of cortisol and adrenaline
which tainted the flesh, making it sour and bitter. He had tasted
it many times before. It was nasty. What was it the poem said about
women - sugar and spice and all things nice? They certainly should
not be bitter and sour like vinegar and lemon juice.

And the first step towards gaining that trust would be to
get out of Lonny Dick’s body and into someone else’s, because she
wouldn’t want to be alone with
him
for a minute longer than she had to. He didn’t
blame her.

He
didn’t even like to be alone with himself - unattractive to look at
with his face like a cracked paving stone, lax with his personal
hygiene, a sloppy eater who wore almost as much food as he ate.
Even his name was a joke.

Worst of
all, his unappealing nature went hand in glove with an unimpressive
and unresponsive set of genitalia that even frequent and aggressive
masturbation failed to arouse.

For certain, the big man had left this world the male
equivalent of
virgo intacta
, and if he were condemned to remain in Dick’s
body for whatever reason, his chances of having any kind of sex any
time soon, particularly with a lady as lovely as the fair Lydia,
rated at less than zero.

So, how to overcome this particular problem? Which one
among his new comrades should he step into next? Who among this
crowd, after ten days or so of getting to know each other,
did
she trust enough to
be alone with?

If he had to choose her special favourite, the one she
would have confidence in over all the others, his money fell on one
outstanding candidate - Mister Eddie ‘I’m In Charge’ Capstan, in
his fancy red
look at me
overalls and the annoying row of coloured pens in his
breast pocket. Stiff, uptight, as dull as ditchwater, but she
seemed to like him.

He
remembered what Lonny observed the first afternoon they arrived -
her and Capstan in close conversation by the book case, her
touching his arm and smiling at him, and then the long time he
spent with her down in sickbay when he took a trolley load of stuff
down to her. They sat together at breakfast and dinner every day
too.

Yes. If
there was any sure-fire way of getting to her, gaining her
confidence, it was going to be through Capstan. However, diving
straight into him would arouse suspicion, and forcing himself on
her would frighten and spoil her. He would take his time, move
slowly, using each one of the others as a stepping stone, making
his move on her by degrees, eliminating the competition one body at
a time until he occupied the one she trusted and accepted the
most.

He would
give her time to fall in love with him before joining with her in
the best sex ever. And then, after they had copulated and were
enveloped in post coital satisfaction and surging hormones, he
would take her, and it will be like consuming a spoonful of syrup,
assimilating with cotton candy. He would, at long last, fulfil his
dream. The very prospect made him tingle with
anticipation.