Geoff Ryman - Lust Or No Harm Done

Perhaps it was simply that he could have whomever he wanted.

When Michael and Philip used to go out together, the bars would seem to be full of delicious men served cold. When Michael went alone and sex was a serious possibility, the men all seemed to be ballet fans pretending to be motorcyclists, or over-coiffured skinny young queens, or bitter old ones, or flakes who believed in numerology, or fake rockabillies who talked only to each other, or men who lived with their mothers. Availability washed the bloom off the fruit.

Michael invited all of the team at the lab out to lunch. In the first flush of summer, they sat outside on a jetty on the river, crowded around two tiny silver tables. The day seemed to yawn and stretch in the warmth. Across the river were the Houses of Parliament, looking misty like an old aquatint.

'If you could sleep with anyone in the world, who would it be?' Michael asked his staff after three bottles of red wine.

No one answered at first. Who would you sleep with? is not a question anyone can answer easily. It's not only that the question is too personal. The answer changes, moment to moment. It could well be that at that moment you do not want to sleep with anyone at all.

Ebru smiled and said her boyfriend. 'Of course,' she added.

'Well… and who else?'

'No one else,' she insisted, smiling.

Michael turned to Shafiq and asked him.

'Oh!' said Shafiq, and looked pleased and embarrassed. 'Oh, I don't think I could answer that.'

'Don't say your wife,' said Ebru.

Emilio was humorously outraged. 'You said your boyfriend!'

'Yes, but that is the privilege of the one who is brave and goes first.'

'All right, I will tell you,' said Shafiq. His eyes sparkled with daring. They all waited. 'Sophia Loren. I like the mature women.'

Michael imagined sleek brown thighs in old-fashioned stockings, with a little wrinkle just above the knee. 'I can see that,' he said.

'They are more… you know. The young ones are beautiful, but…' Shafiq was shy and his smile overwhelmed his face.

I know, thought Michael. You can't imagine that the young ones are really interested in you.

Ebru kept up the attack. 'Emilio?'

'My girlfriend,' he murmured under a sheltering elbow.

'Oh dear, so unimaginative.' Ebru was teasing.

'We are all being that,' said Shafiq.

There is good reason for that,' Ebru replied. 'We would all like to sleep with many people. But there are consequences in doing so. I would only do anything if there were no consequences.'

Michael could promise. 'There would be no consequences. Nothing would change. You couldn't get sick, you could not get pregnant.'

Ebru chuckled at her own naughtiness. 'And my boyfriend could not find out?'

'Absolutely.'

'Then… I would consider sleeping with George Clooney.'

'Oh dear,' said Emilio. 'And not Anthony Edwards?'

'He's bald. I couldn't. Now it's your turn, for you to say.'

'Anne Heche,' said Emilio, with an air of finality and a grin that was frankly smug.

'Oh, but you know that she is a lesbian?'

Emilio's smile went hazy and naughty. 'Hmm, maybe I like that.'

'Oh. We are learning many things about each other. It is good to be social so that we can all get acquainted better.' Ebru plucked each word like strings on a guitar. She turned to Michael. 'OK, boss. This was your idea, now it is your turn.'

Michael grinned and thought: I'm the only one here who can actually answer that question.

He drew it out. 'Well. First. Hmm. Who would I ask first?' Michael crossed his arms. 'I think it would be… Mother Theresa.'

Emilio yelped. 'Mother Theresa!'

Michael surfed it. 'Is she not beautiful?'

'Yeah, but to sleep with?'

Ebru was pleased. 'That is a very clever answer.'

Emilio couldn't accept it. 'It would be like sleeping with ET!'

'Hmm,' said Michael. 'I hadn't thought of that one.' He pretended to consider the proposition, rubbing his chin.

Ebru was proud of him. 'You see, Shafiq, Michael likes the mature women as well.'

'And then, after that,' Michael announced, and all conversation stopped: Michael was going to give them more than one? 'I think it would be… Johnny Weissmuller from the Tarzan movies.'

Ebru's eyes widened, miming shock, but she was smiling. She already knew.

'Right on,' said Emilio, which raised further questions about Emilio.

'And then it would be…' Michael took an olive from the dish, and chewed it, and they all waited him out. 'Taffy Duck from Dumb Duck, Detective, and after that… mmm… a girl from my high school.'

Ebru laughed some more and applauded. 'You win first place for originality. So as first-place winner, you now have to answer the next question, Michael. Who here in the staff of the project would you sleep with if it was no harm done?'

Michael smiled and shook his head. 'Oh no.'

Ebru drawled, amused, 'Oh, but you have to answer. It is the contest.'

'Oh no I don't.'

'I will tell you one other if you tell me.'

'OK, I will then.'

There was a quick exchange of nervous glances. No one, male or female, wants to know that the boss fancies them. 'Oh my goodness,' chuckled Shafiq and mimed getting up to leave. Michael should have studied drama. He looked at each of them in turn. 'I have to tell the truth… and say… that… I don't fancy any of you.'

There was a general groan of disappointment.

'And now Ebru.'

'No, no. I don't have to say anything.'

'You asked me the question and I answered it honestly. You wouldn't want me to lie, would you? So now it's your turn.'

Ebru laughed and picked at her fingernails, which did not look as if they had polish on them until you realized they were perfect and translucent. 'OK. Then it is Sean Connery.'

'Oh, everybody fancies Sean Connery. I fancy Sean Connery,' said Emilio. Which was probably just a shade too devil-may-care for it really to touch anything private. Michael studied Emilio: fresh-faced, a big nose, a shock of hair. Pretty, intelligent, lively… but no.

Icons, thought Michael. Everyone offers up icons. They're impersonal and safe and they never change and, for the most part, you even get people agreeing with you.

'I've got one,' said Hugh. The sciences can sometimes produce people who are colourless to the point of invisibility. Hugh had to say it again, amid the general clatter of disappointment at Ebru's answer.

'Hugh's turn, everyone,' said Michael, who knew enough to keep alert to anything that told him about his staff.

The table quietened down. Hugh was pale, with perfect jet-black hair and a neck so thin that it looked as if it could not support the weight of his spectacles. 'I saw a girl once, across the big courtyard at UCL. She was beautiful. She wasn't dressed like a student. She wore what I imagine very chic French women wear to work: a kind of brown jacket and almost a mini-skirt. She had beautiful legs and medium-length hair that was very tidy, and she was talking to one of the professors. No, actually,' he smiled to himself, and moved the spectacles up his nose, 'she was listening to him. Really listening to him. This bloke was a bit of a bad-tempered old hippie, but she was obviously asking him really good questions or something. He was taking it all so seriously. And suddenly she said something, and he laughed.' Hugh looked up and away, his smile growing. 'He laughed and laughed, and shook his head. And she said something else, and he laughed even more.'

'And so you have dreamed of her ever since?' Ebru had the good sense to make that a question.

'I asked the professor who she was,' Hugh corrected her gently. 'And he asked me why, and I said it was because I thought she was the most beautiful girl in the world.'