Piers Anthony: Phaze Doubt

The acceleration increased. Gee rose to about 1.5. His right hand felt odd. He tore his eyes away from the porthole and looked at it.

Alyc was holding his arm to her bosom and kissing his hand. It was warmth of her breath on his fingers that had distracted him. Relieved that it was nothing serious—sometimes this body reacted in odd ways to stress, and 1.5 gee was a type of stress—he returned his gaze to the porthole.

What Lysander found hard to figure was how the planet maintained a regular day-night cycle. With the sunlight coming always toward the South Pole, there should be no changes; the southern hemisphere should always be day, the northern hemisphere night. Yet that was not the case. The planet acted as if the light were turned at right angles, and it cast its night shadow to the side. The manual indicated that scientists had never been able to agree exactly how this was possible, but it was so. The prevailing theory of the moment was that the planet acted with respect to light like a black hole, bending the light ninety degrees without affecting anything else. This left formidable questions unanswered, but was the best that was offered. Apparently no competent local study had been undertaken to resolve the mystery.

Then the shuttle changed orientation. The planet seemed to swing back and out of sight. They were coming down to the surface. There was nothing of interest to be seen now.

Alyc still had his hand. She was licking it. Lysander tried to remember whether this was normal procedure, but found no applicable facet. He had to assume that it was within tolerance for the species.

Alyc saw him looking. “I’m sorry,” she said. “High-gee makes me nervous.” She removed her mouth, but did not let go of his hand.

A stress reaction. He filed the information in a facet. Others might have different mechanisms of coping. Still, it was possible that it was not the mere availability of more intelligent companions that caused males to leave this woman.

The gee increased. Then there was a bump, and the gee reverted to one. They were down.

Alyc relaxed. She released Lysander’s hand. “I feel so much safer on solid land,” she said. “Low-gee or high-gee just—“ She shrugged. Then she touched the center of the bra, and it separated and fell away. “We might as well wait for the others to clear,” she said, nodding her head at the people now stepping into the aisle.

Lysander noted that a number of the others had done as Alyc had, and were now naked. They carried their clothing bundled under their arms. They seemed to have no luggage.

Alyc drew up her legs, bending the knees. In a moment she had worked the panties off. “You might as well strip here,” she said. “That way, they’ll think you’re a returning serf, like me, and you won’t have to go through the indoctrination routine.”

Lysander nodded. He preferred to avoid attention. He started to get out of his clothes, awkwardly, in the seat.

Alyc jumped to help him. Her hands touched his body caressingly, not shying away from the genital region.

“I am not certain this is wise,” he said.

“Oh, no, it’s better to strip now,” she assured him.

“The presence of your hands is causing a reaction,” he explained.

“Oh, that’s right—you’re new here. You think naked is sexy!”

“I was under that impression. Am I mistaken?”

“Yes, here. Serfs aren’t sexy, they’re dull. We really have to work at it to get sexy. Clothing helps a lot; I got so heated up the first time I went offplanet—“ She shrugged again. “But I know it’s the other way around, with you. I can take care of it, though. Just get naked so I can—“

He realized that she intended to proceed to a sexual engagement. Human interest in the act declined after it had been indulged. But he foresaw points of awkwardness, because he understood that such an act was normally done in a private place, and would attract some attention if done publicly. Also, his inexperience was likely to contribute to miscues. It would be better to avoid it at this time.

However, he did not wish to walk out of the ship in an obvious state of sexual excitement; that too might attract attention.

He would have to draw on his true nature to turn it off. “I think I am adapting to the culture,” he said. “Allow me a moment.”

“If you wish.” She seemed disappointed.

He reverted to his core facet. Now he saw things as he would if in his natural body, rather than as the humanoid body did. He opened the two eye segments available and looked at the woman.

She was completely repulsive. A mat of long fur sprouted from the top and rear of her head to dangle around the auditory flaps and the jaw bone, tufts of it coiling of their own accord. Her breathing orifice projected, and her eyes were rounded and set in sockets. Assorted white teeth showed within the peeling gash of her sustenance intake orifice. Substantial bags of flesh hung around her front. She had two massive upper limbs and a bifurcate base.

He shut off the eyes; the awful vision was too strong. If he allowed it to go further, he would be unable to function in this alien society, and therefore unable to pursue his mission.

He stood and quickly completed the disrobing. He had no sexual interest in the female now. He hoped he would be able to damp down the vision of her fleshy nature when the time came, as it inevitably would, to indulge in the way she preferred.

“I guess you did adapt,” Alyc said. “Well, maybe some other time. It isn’t too good in a shuttle, anyway, I think.” She evidently would have been glad to make a trial of it, however.

“Yes. Now I must enter the city and seek employment.”

“You don’t have a job yet?” she asked.

“I understand that employment is inevitable. Was I required to achieve it before coming?”

“Oh, no! I just thought maybe you had been brought in for your expertise. A special assignment.”

“No, I merely wish to achieve a suitable situation, in a culture that accepts androids more readily than does my own.”

“Then maybe you can apply for work with Citizen Blue!” she exclaimed, delighted. “He’s a good employer, really he is! He’s very generous. Most Citizens don’t allow their serfs offplanet until their terms are up and they have to go, forever, but he let me travel.”

Lysander frowned, though this was exactly what he wished. “Wouldn’t that be a conflict of interest?”

She was preceding him down the aisle, her fleshy posterior shifting its masses in ways that threatened to alienate him again. He focused his two eyes on her face as it turned halfway back toward him. “Conflict?” she asked, perplexed.

“If you and I are to have an association, wouldn’t that disallow employment by the same Citizen?”

She laughed, as she so readily did. “No way! Citizens don’t care about serf interactions. Just so long as they do what they’re told. The only trouble is when a Citizen wants a serf-girl for sex and doesn’t want anyone else using her. But Blue isn’t like that; he’s true to his wife, as he has been for twenty years.”

“She must be a remarkable woman.”

“She’s a robot. They have a son.” She paused, waiting for his reaction.

He made it, as they left the shuttle and passed into the interior chamber of the spaceport. “A robot had a son?”

“The son’s a robot too,” she explained. “Her name is Sheen, and his is Mach. Mach-Sheen, Machine, you see; it’s sort of a pun, only nobody laughs. And he’s married to an alien female, and they have a daughter, Nepe. Only it’s more complicated than that.”

“I think that’s as complicated as I can assimilate,” Lysander said ruefully. He glanced around the large chamber. Sure enough, only the clothed parties were being challenged; the naked ones were ignored. “So you believe that Citizen Blue might employ me, if he has use for my abilities?”