John Varley - Steel Beach

Not that my own clothes were anything to shout about. She'd said semi-formal, so I could have gotten away with just the gray fedora and the press pass stuck in the brim. But upon reflection I decided to go with the whole silly ensemble, handing the baggy pants and double-breasted suit coat to the auto-valet with barely enough time for alterations. I left the seat and the legs loose and didn't button the coat; that was part of the look my guild, in its infinite wisdom, had voted on almost two hundred years ago when professional uniforms were being chosen. It had been taken from newspaper movies of the 1930's. I'd viewed a lot of them, and was amused at the image my fellow reporters apparently wanted to project at formal events: rumpled, aggressive, brash, impolite, wise-cracking, but with hearts o' gold when the goin' got tough. Sure, and it made yer heart proud ta be a reporter, by the saints. For a little fun, I'd worn a white blouse with a bunch of lace at the neck instead of the regulation ornamental noose known as a neck-tie. And I'd tied my hair up and stuffed it under the hat. In the mirror I'd looked just like Kate Hepburn masquerading as a boy, at least from the neck up. From there down the suit hung on me like a tent, but such was the cunning architecture of my new body that anything looked good on it. I'd saluted my image in the mirror: here's lookin' at you , Bobbie.

Liz spotted me and made her way toward me with a shout. She was already half looped. If her late mother had given her nothing else, she had seemingly inherited his taste for the demon rum. She embraced me and thanked me for coming, then swirled off again into the crowd. Well, I'd corner her later, after the ceremony, if she could still stand up by then.

What followed hasn't changed much in four or five hundred years. For almost an hour people kept arriving, including the hotel manager who had a hasty conference with Liz-concerning her credit rating, I expect-and then opened the connecting door to Suite #1, which relieved the pressure for a while. The food and champagne ran out, and was replenished. Liz didn't care about the cost. This was her day. It was your proto-typical daytime party.

I met several people I knew, was introduced to dozens whose names I promptly forgot. Among my new friends were the Shaka of the Zulu Nation, the Emperor of Japan, the Maharajah of Gujarat, and the Tsarina of All the Russias, or at least people in silly costumes who styled themselves that way. Also countless Counts, Caliphs, Archdukes, Satraps, Sheiks and Nabobs. Who was I to dispute their titles? There had been a vogue in such genealogy about the time Callie had grudgingly expelled my ungrateful squalling form into a less-than overwhelmed world; Callie had even told me she thought she might be related to Mussolini, on her mother's side. Did that make me the heir-apparent of Il Duce ? It wasn't a burning question to me. I overheard intense debates about the rules of primogeniture-even Salic Law, of all things-in an age of sex changing. Someone-I think it was the Duke of York-gave me a lecture about it shortly before the ceremony, explaining why Liz was inheritor to the throne, even though she had a younger brother.

After escaping from that with most of my wits intact, I found myself out on the balcony, nursing a strawberry Margarita. Howard's had a view, but it was of the cargo side of the spaceport. I looked out over the beached-whale hulks of bulk carriers expelling their interplanetary burdens into waiting underground tanks. I was almost alone, which puzzled me for a moment, until I remembered a story I'd seen about how many people had suddenly lost their taste for surface views in the wake of the Kansas Collapse. I drained my drink, reached out and tapped the invisible curved canopy that held vacuum at bay, and shrugged. Somehow I didn't think I'd die in a blowout. I had worse things to fear.

Somebody held out another pink drink with salt on the rum. I took it and looked over and up-and up and up-into the smiling face of Brenda, girl reporter and apprentice giraffe. I toasted her.

"Didn't expect to see you here," I said.

"I got acquainted with the Princess after your… accident."

"That was no accident."

She prattled on about what a nice party it was. I didn't disillusion her. Wait till she'd attended a few thousand more just like it, then she'd see.

I'd been curious what Brenda's reaction would be to my new sex. To my chagrin, she was delighted. I got the skinney from a homo-oriented friend at the fashion desk: Brenda was young enough to still be exploring her own sexuality, discovering her preferences. She'd already been pretty sure she leaned toward females as lovers, at least when she was a woman. Discovering her preferences as a male would have to wait for her first Change. After all, until quite recently she'd been effectively neuter. The only problem she'd had in her crush on me was that she wasn't much attracted to males. She had thought it would remain platonic until I thoughtfully made everything perfect by showing up at work as my gorgeous new self.

I really, really didn't have the heart to tell her about my preferences.

And I did owe her. She had been covering for me, putting my by-line on the Invasion Bicentennial stories she was writing, the stories I simply could no longer bring myself to work on. Oh, I was helping, answering her questions, going over her drafts, punching up the prose, showing her how to leave just enough excess baggage in the stories so Walter would have something to cut out and shout at her about and thus remain a happy man. I think Walter was beginning to suspect what was going on, but he hadn't said anything yet because expecting me to cover the Collapse and get in our weekly feature was unfair, and he knew it. The thing he should have foreseen before he ever came up with his cockamamie Invasion series was that there would always be a story like the Collapse happening, and as a good editor he had to assign his best people to it, which included me. Oh, yeah, if you wanted somebody to intrude on grief and ogle bodies puffed up like pink and brown popcorn, Hildy was your girl.

"Tell me, sweetheart, how did you feel when you saw the man cut your daddy's head off?"

" What ?" Brenda was looking at me strangely.

"It's the essential disaster/atrocity question," I said. "They don't tell you that in Journalism 101, but all the questions we ask, no matter how delicately phrased, boil down to that. The idea is to get the first appearance of the tear, the ineffable moment when the face twists up. That's gold, honey. You'd better learn how to mine it."

"I don't think that's true."

"Then you'll never be a great reporter. Maybe you should try social work."

I saw that I had hurt her, and it made me angry, both at her and at myself. She had to understand these things, dammit. But who appointed you , Hildy? She'll find out soon enough, as soon as Walter takes her off these damn comparative anthropology stories that our readers don't even want to see and lets her get out where she can grub in the dirt like the rest of us.

I realized I'd drunk a little more than I had intended. I dumped the rest of my drink in a thirsty-looking potted plant, snagged a coke from a passing tray, and performed a little ritual I'd come to detest but was powerless to stop. It consisted of a series of questions, like this: Do you feel the urge to hurl yourself off this balcony, assuming you could drill a hole through that ultralexan barrier? No. Great, but do you want to throw a rope over that beam and haul yourself up into the rafters? Not today, thank you. And so on.

I was about to say something nice and neutral and soothing, suitable for the reassurance of idealistic cub reporters, when the Jamaican steel band which had been reprising every patriotic British song since the Spanish Armada suddenly struck up God Save The Queen , and somebody asked everyone to haul their drunken asses down to the main ballroom, where the coronation was about to commence. Not in those words, of course.