Chapter 10 — TO LOVE AND BE LOVED

Jupiter Orbit, 2-14-'15—But a person cannot cry forever. Spirit bounced back first, somewhat wasted, having washed much of the first rush of grief out of her system. I knew she still suffered, but already she was coming to terms with it. I had to follow her in that recovery, for I was now the oldest (and only) male in our family, and that is a thing of special significance. I would not presume, of course, to order my mother around, but it would be my position to formulate family initiatives and make suggestions that I knew my mother and older sister would take seriously. So I forced my own continuing agony of soul into a compartment, like the cell I slept in, closed the panel on it as well as I could, and required myself to function. My mother and sisters could grieve; I would have to endure.

There were meals to be fetched and distributed, though our shortage was now, ironically, less acute because of our diminished number. Señora Ortega asked me to resume my prior capacity as food distributor, and to expand my activities as necessary, since I was now the oldest male in the bubble. Oh yes, that woman knew how to make a young person do her bidding! I agreed and got to work, and found that there was indeed reprieve from grief in work.

We had to reorganize the heads, for it was senseless to reserve half the bathrooms for males who no longer lived. I asked Spirit to explain to women how they might be able to use the male facilities by assisting each other as I had assisted Helse—but cautioned her that she should present this as her own idea, and to leave Helse out of it, as Helse was still considered a boy. If Señora Ortega suspected that Helse was older than I, or that she was female, Señora Ortega did not say. I think she did suspect, and did us both the quiet favor of assuming that Helse was a boy a few months younger than I. Women of grandmotherly age can be discreet; they have had a great deal of time to learn that art.

There was further cleaning to be done, removing bloodstains from the floor and walls of the Commons. Helse and Spirit and I helped with it all, keeping ourselves constantly busy.

It may seem that my grief for my father was shallow, since I was soon functioning in virtually normal fashion, and am not referring to it in every paragraph of this narrative. I protest that this was not the case. My father was much in my mind, but I knew I could not bring him back, no matter how much pain I felt, and it is pointless to grow repetitive here. I worked to help alleviate the suffering of the living, including especially the members of my own family, and I hope I succeeded in this. I discovered that in this effort was the most effective reduction of my own pain. So do not slight me for my seeming neglect; I have written as much of this aspect as I care to, though it hardly does justice to the reality.

Spirit had found another girl her age who, of course, had suffered similar loss, and they spent the next night together. That freed me to return to Helse—and I needed to do that, because she maintained her masculine masquerade, and only I could help her in the head. How she managed that one night by herself I do not know; perhaps she borrowed a mop handle to push against the far wall and hold herself in place. It cannot have been comfortable.

The first night I was back with her, after the slaughter, I found it difficult to relax, let alone sleep. I tossed about in the partial gravity, but it was not my own discomfort that haunted me so much as my father's. He was outside in the cold, now; was he shivering? Did he gasp for air in the cruel vacuum? Of course not—yet as I drifted off to sleep, I phased into a dream awareness of Major Hubris, alive and well, to my gratified surprise. But I knew, even in the dream, that it was not so, and that if I embraced him I would feel the absolute chill of space in his flesh. I felt it my duty to advise him of the truth that he was evidently not yet aware of, for my father always preferred to be in touch with reality even when it was not pleasant. Whereupon, surprised, he turned slowly to a staring corpse with a great red wound in his side. He looked in that instant like Jesus Christ, and I could not scream in horror lest I defile an image I was not worthy to approach.

I shuddered awake, finding Helse holding me. Oh, death is no thing of joy! "I would help you if I could," Helse murmured. "But this is not like the other, not like the case with Faith. I have had no direct experience with death."

"Leave me alone!" I snapped. I shouldn't have done that, and don't know why I did it, and was sorry immediately, but unable to apologize. Grief is like that, too. Grief is not necessarily any prettier than death, and the grief-stricken do not wander like lambs grateful for the shepherd's guidance. They can be more like wounded wolves, snapping at those who would help them.

She did leave me alone, and I slept intermittently again. But I had not escaped my nightmare. It came at me again and again, like a ravening monster, its moist teeth seeking to rend my flesh. It was guilt, the personification of my neglect. Could I have done something to avert the tragedy? Why had I had such ennui when the pirates were slaughtering our men? Why had I stood silent when the pirates hoodwinked the officer from the Jupiter patrol? Certainly the pirates had held three children hostage—but those children had been doomed anyway, and by my neglect our entire group had become vulnerable. Why hadn't I screamed the truth to the officer? It seemed so simple in retrospect. I had known the pirates were not to be trusted. I banged my fist against the wall in frustration.

I woke again, feeling Helse's restraint on my arm. "Hope, you'll hurt yourself!" she protested.

"I ought to kill myself!" I flared. "I let my father die!"

"But there was the pacifier. You tried to—"

"Shut up!" I shouted, and spun through the same cycle of self-reproach and inaction as before.

She shut up, and again I tried to sleep. If I did, I got no satisfaction of it, for the horror and guilt stalked me relentlessly. Gradually I realized that the truths I cached away in emotional compartments during the day only gained strength to conquer me at night when my resistance was down. And the most fundamental truth was the one I had glimpsed before, when Faith was raped: A man was a creature of murderous lusts, and I was a man. I might as well have raped my sister and murdered my father myself. Only circumstance had put me in the camp of the victims rather than that of the perpetrators. I was a damned creature, because of my anatomy and nature.

I contemplated my erect member and cursed it. "You are the cause of all this!" I ranted. "You don't care who you hurt!" For I knew that a sword is but a symbol of the phallus, and when it plunges into a living body and causes blood to spurt, that is a symbolic sexual act. That is why women are not much for violence; they lack the weapon. "I ought to rip you out by the root!"

Again I woke to find Helse's hands on me, preventing me from attempting what I had threatened in the dream. My rage was swiftly replaced by chagrin, for of course she had seen me handling my aroused private.

But she said nothing, and I remembered that the male member was no stranger to her. She knew better than anyone else the nature of the lusts of the male. I turned my back on her and struggled back to a semblance of sleep once more. This time I made it fairly well through the arbitrary night of the bubble.

The following day was grueling. My intermittent night's sleep left me ill-prepared to fend off the emotional horrors. I went about my business in grim silence. Spirit tried to speak to me, but I repulsed her, then cursed myself for it when I saw her silent, hurt tears, but I did not try to make amends. It was as though my emotions were under the type of interdict the pacifier box had instilled, so that I could lash out verbally but not apologize.

I saw that there were others as morose as I, and some refused to come out of their cells to eat. One woman went into the head and did not emerge; when someone finally checked, they discovered her dead. She had cut open an artery in her thigh and bled to death on the bidet. Suicide.

I knew exactly how she felt.

Helse guided me to our cell early. "Hope, you are dying on your feet," she told me. "I think I can help you, now."

"Nothing can help me," I muttered, but I was so tired and dazed that I offered no resistance.

Then, perhaps as much to hurt her as from curiosity, I asked: "That pirate who started to go after you and Faith—why did he quit?"

"I spoke the word," she said.

That was what I had suspected. But had the pirate left them alone because he feared QYV—or because he thought they were two teen-age boys? I resented the fact that my parents had had no such magic word to protect them. What grief we all might be spared if we could deter malice with a single spoken syllable!

When Helse had secured the cell and had me alone, she used some cloth to block the faint light spilling in around the panel, putting us in darkness. Then she dropped to the floor and moved about, away from me. Two meters cubed is not a lot of space for two people, but I was in the corner and she was in the opposite corner. I could hear her without seeing her.

In a moment she was back. "Please remove your clothes," she said.

"What?" I asked dully.

"I am nude. I want you to be too."

"I don't understand."

"I know. I can help you sleep well." She came to me and took hold of my shirt and started to remove it for me.

I resisted. "Helse, if anyone should look in here—"

"I told them I would talk to you and straighten you out. You have been bristling at everyone. No one will look, or listen—and anyway, I've blocked the cracks. They can't see in from the Commons."

"They could wrench open the panel, idiot! If you don't have your clothes on—they will know—"

"Spirit already knows."

"She's a child."

"Yes." Again she worked at my shirt.

This time I let her do it. I didn't know what she was up to, but it was better than the nightmares I faced when I slept.

After she got the shirt off, she worked on the trousers. Now I was afraid to stop her, for she seemed to know what she was doing, while I was a mass of confusion. She bid me stand, and I stood, and she undid my belt and took my clothing down. I simply let her continue until she had me naked.

She ran her hands lightly over my body in the darkness, not excluding the genital. I was aroused, of course; it could hardly have been otherwise. There was something about being undressed by a woman this way. She evinced no shock or surprise, and I was reminded again that she had done things with men I had never imagined. But such would not be the case with me; I was no pirate or seducer of children.

She made me lie on the floor, using some wadded clothing for cushioning, then lay down on her side beside me. Her warm bare thigh touched mine, and her cool soft breast rested against my left arm. I hardly dared breath.

"Hope, I want to tell you about sex," she said. "I've been listening to you talking in your sleep, and I think I understand your problem. You saw the pirates rape your sister, and you think it's your fault. You think all men are like that. You're afraid one day you'll rape someone."

She was right on target. I said nothing.

"Well, you won't," she said. "I'm not as sharp as you are about judging people, but I do know something about this. All men are not alike, in any way. Some are terrible, like the pirates—but some are so gentle and nice they would never hurt anyone. Most are in between, like your father—and you. They all like sex. That has nothing to do with the way they are. But the bad ones use sex to hurt people, and the good ones use it to make people happy. The pirates were not getting pleasure of Faith, they were punishing the people of the bubble. That's different. Just because you have this"—at this point she put her hand firmly on my rigid genital—"it doesn't mean you're bad. I know you, Hope; I know you as well as I possibly can, in a week. I know you are good. You get angry, you make mistakes, you suffer—but you are good. You have nothing to hurt me—or anyone."

Still the vision of the pirates raping my sister haunted me, and of the one trying to rape my mother. Between those two was the murder of my father, inextricably linked. I never wanted to share any part of the life or lust of those pirates! I remembered how my member had swelled when I saw Faith raped, and it damned me at this very moment similarly. It had a will of its own, and I could not trust it.

"It's the difference between a theft and a gift," she continued. "When you steal something, or take it by force, you hurt someone. But when you accept a gift, you hurt no one, and both the giver and the receiver profit. The gracious acceptance of a gift is a gift in itself. All you have to do is decide never to steal, never to cheat or deceive or force, and always to accept a proper gift. Then you will know you are not like those pirates, and never will be. You will know that you have tamed the fires in you, and turned it to proper advantage."

I pondered that. It seemed to make sense. "All right."

She waited, but I did not move. I was holding my fire tame. "I don't think I've quite convinced you yet," she said. "You will still have nightmares. You still think you can hurt me if you let yourself go."

"Yes." I was afraid that if I moved at all, I would do something terrible.

"I'm going to make you know it's not true," she said. "This is the one thing I can do for you, to repay you for helping me, for keeping my secret."

I thought she was going to talk to me again, explaining how I was normal and it was all right to be normal. But she didn't speak. She shifted herself about, climbing on top of me. I refused to move a muscle, not from any antagonism to her—it was impossible to feel that now, for her sleek woman's body electrified me wherever it touched my flesh—but because any motion at all would represent a commitment, one way or the other.

She held herself above me, then lay full length on me, her breasts resting on my chest, her thighs falling outside mine. She brought her head down and touched my lips with hers, and it was as though I was being propelled through space without moving at all. I had never known that mere touch could have such an effect. Still I did not move.

She shifted herself again, getting her balance, then used one hand to catch and guide my member, pointing it the way she wanted. She raised her hips, then slowly settled on me again. So gently and easily that I could hardly believe it was real, I found myself inside her.

"Now tell me this is evil," she murmured, letting her thighs settle all the way against me, and bringing the rest of her body down so that she lay as she had before, her breasts pressing me down. Only one detail had changed, a small detail, yet with an overwhelming significance.

Still I would not move or speak. It was fear as much as stubbornness. I really did not know what to do, and was afraid that anything would be wrong, and would make her angry or hurt her.

"Tell me you are raping me," she said, putting her hand behind my head as her whole body pressed more tightly against mine. Her weight was light, less than half-gee; it might have been uncomfortable in full Earth gravity, but even so, her body was the most wonderful thing I could possibly know.

"Tell me you love me," she whispered, and now her tone of challenge had become one of urgent pleading. When I still was silent, she dipped her head and kissed me again, but this differed, as the other position differed from before, from the prior kiss. This time her mouth was open, and her tongue came through to touch mine.

I was at last overwhelmed. "I love you!" I breathed around our tongues, and was transported by a paroxysm of amazing sensation.

I woke, it seemed, an eon later. Helse lay beside me, her hand holding mine. She squeezed my fingers, and I knew she was awake.

"What is it that you want, that cannot be bought?" I asked, remembering what she had said before.

"You know it now."

I knew it now, I discovered. "To love and be loved," I said. "But why me?"

"You're a decent person, and you need me," she said simply.

"I need you," I agreed. And slept again, my hand in hers, without ill-dream.

In the morning, bubble time, I found her still beside me, sleeping. Still I could not see her, except as the vaguest outline, and I discovered I did not dare touch her body, for fear that everything would turn out to be illusion. I realized that she had been kind to me, and more than kind; she had shown me in an absolutely believable manner that sex itself was not evil. In the time following, that realization was to expand and deepen, becoming a fundamental aspect of my philosophy. This was Helse's invaluable gift to me: my honest acceptance of my male nature.

But right then I did not perceive that essence so clearly. I was only aware of Helse herself, and of my need for her. Had she given me her body for a night, to tide me through the storm of my guilt and grief, or was there more to it than that? I had said I loved her, and indeed I did, in that overwhelming flush of feeling that a person my age and temperament is capable of; it was sudden but profound. But she, she had not said she loved me, and she was a year older than I...

In my desperation to know, I reached out and found her shoulder. She woke immediately, and caught my hand in hers.

"Helse," I said, but then could not find the phrasing for the question.

"Yes, Hope," she murmured.

"Is—will there be another time?"

She brought my hand to her lips and kissed it, sending a sweet tingle through me. "If you ask me."

"Ask you?" I repeated, perplexed.

"I won't do it for you, next time, Hope," she explained. "You will have to ask me. Then I will do it."

That wasn't enough of an answer. I struggled to formulate my objection. "I don't want your acquiescence. That could be for any reason. I want your love."

She frowned against my palm. "I never said I loved you, Hope."

"I know. But I love you!"

She sighed. "You are less experienced than I am, Hope. You mistake rapture for love. Your emotion is shaken by tragedy. It is right for me to ease your confusion in my fashion, but not to ask too high a price. When you are able to put it in perspective, you will know that love is not made in a single night."

I jerked my hand away from her, hurt.

She apologized immediately. "Hope, I did not mean to imply your emotion is not real or strong. Only that it is too soon to distinguish passion from love. I have been loved for a night by many men. By day they have other interests. Had I loved any of them, I would have been hurt, for my love is not just for a night. Give me leave to protect myself from heartbreak, as I protect my body from abuse by concealing it from strangers."

I began to understand a little better. "But you could love me, if you were sure of me?"

"It is my dream, to love and be loved."

Still that gentle evasion. She was being honest with me, and I appreciated that, but still it was hard to accept. I sat up, disgruntled, wanting more than I had any right to ask.

"May I kiss you?" she asked.

"I would like that," I said, somewhat stiffly.

She got to her knees, leaned across, found my face, and kissed me. Her lips were warm and moist, and her body where it touched mine was wonderfully soft. "When you ask, and it is granted, it is good," she said.

"I wish I could ask for your love."

She smiled, a faint gleam of teeth in the dark, and separated. We dressed, then went out in the guise of two boys to visit the head. Helse had opened a door to a new dimension to me, the dimension of love, but some things had not changed.