An hour later I boarded the shuttle for Auckland and then had time to consider my folly.
For almost three months, ever since the night I had discussed it with Boss, I had for the first time been feeling easy about my "human" status. He had told me that I was "as human as Mother Eve" and that I could safely tell anyone that I was an AP because I would not be believed.
Boss was almost right. But he had not counted on my making a really determined effort to prove that I was not "human" under Ennzedd law.
My first impulse had been to demand a hearing before the full family council-only to learn that my case had already been tried in camera and the vote had gone against me, six to nothing.
I didn't even go back to the house. That phone call Anita had received while we were in the botanic gardens had told her that my personal effects had been packed and delivered to Left Luggage at the shuttle station.
I could still have insisted on a poll of the house instead of taking Anita's (slippery) word for it. But to what end? To win an argument? To prove a point? Or merely to split a hair? It took me all of five seconds to realize that all I had treasured was gone. As vanished as a rainbow, as burst as a soap bubble-I no longer "belonged." Those children were not mine, I would never again roll on the floor with them.
I was thinking about this with dry-eyed grief and almost missed learning that Anita had been "generous" with me: In that contract I had signed with the family corporation the fine print made the principal sum due and payable at once if I breached the contract. Did being "nonhuman" constitute a breach? (Even though I had never missed a payment.) Looked at one way, if they were going to read me out of the family, then I had at least eighteen thousand Ennzedd dollars coming to me: looked at another way I not only forfeited the paid-up part of my share but owed more than twice that amount.
But they were "generous": If I would quietly arid quickly vanish away, they would not pursue their claim against me. Unstated was what would happen if I stuck around and made a public scandal.
I slunk away.
I don't need a psychiatrist to tell me that I did it to myself I realized that fact as soon as Anita announced the bad news. A deeper question is: Why did I do it?
I had not done it for Ellen and I could not hoodwink myself into thinking that I had. On the contrary, my folly had made it impossible for me to exert any effort on her behalf.
Why had I done it?
Anger.
I wasn't able to find any better answer. Anger at the whole human race for deciding that my sort are not human and therefore not entitled to equal treatment and equal justice. Resentment that had been building up since the first day that I had been made to realize that there were privileges human children had just from being born and that I could never have simply because I was not human.
Passing as human gets one over on the side of privilege; it does not end resentment against the system. The pressure builds up even more because it can't be expressed. The day came when it was more important to me to find out whether my adopted family could accept me as I truly am, an artificial person, than it was to preserve my happy relationship.
I found out. Not one of them stood up for me... just as none of them had stood up for Ellen. I think I knew that they would reject me as soon as I learned that they had failed Ellen. But that level of my mind is so far down that I'm not well acquainted with it-that's the dark place where, according to Boss, I do all my real thinking.
I reached Auckland too late for the daily SB to Winnipeg. After reserving a cradle for the next day's trajectory and checking everything but my jumpbag, I considered what to do with the twenty-one hours facing me, and at once thought of my curly wolf, Captain Ian. By what he had told me, the chances were five-to-one against his being in town-but his flat (if available) might be pleasanter than a hotel. So I found a public terminal and punched his code.
Shortly the screen lighted; a young woman's face-cheerful, rather pretty-appeared. "Hi! I'm Torchy. Who're you?"
"I'm Marj Baldwin," I answered. "Perhaps I've punched wrong. I'm seeking Captain Tormey."
"No, you're with it, luv. Hold and I'll let him out of his cage." She turned and moved away from the pickup while calling out, "Bubber! A slashing tart on the honker. Knows your right name."
As she turned and moved away I noticed bare breasts. She came fully into view and I saw that she was jaybird to her heels. A good body-possibly a bit wide in the fundament but with long legs, a slender waist, and mammaries that matched mine... and I've had no complaints.
I quietly cursed to myself. I knew quite well why I had called the captain: to forget three men in the arms of a fourth. I had found him but it appeared that he was fully committed.
He appeared, dressed but not much-a lava-lava. He looked puzzled, then recognized me. "Hey! Miss... Baldwin! That's it. This is sonky-do! Where are you?"
"At the port. I punched on the off chance of saying hello."
"Stay where you are. Don't move, don't breathe. Seven seconds while I pull on trousers and shirt, and I'll come get you."
"No, Captain. Just a greeting. Again I am simply making connections."
"What is your connection? To what port? What time is departure?"
Damn and triple damn-I had not prepared my lies. Well, the truth is often better than a clumsy lie. "I'm going back to Winnipeg."
"Ah so! Then you are looking at your pilot; I have the noon lift tomorrow. Tell me exactly where you are and I'll pick you up in, uh, forty minutes if I can get a cab fast enough."
"Captain, you are very sweet and you are out of your mind. You already have all the company you can handle. The young woman who answered my call. Torchy."
"Torchy isn't her name; that's her condition. She's my sister Betty, from Sydney. Stays here when she's in town. I probably mentioned her." He turned his head and shouted. "Betty! Come here and identify yourself. But get decent."
"It's too late to get decent," her cheerful voice answered, and I saw her, past his shoulder, returning toward the pickup and wrapping a lava-lava around her hips as she did so. She seemed to be having a little trouble with it and I suspected that she had had a few. "Oh, the hell with it! My brother is always trying to get me to behave-my husband has given up. Look, luv, I heard what you said. I'm his married sister, too true. Unless you are trying to marry him, in which case I am his fiancée. Are you?"
"Good. Then you can have him. I'm about to make tea. Do you take gin? Or whisky?"
"Whatever you and the Captain are having."
"He must not have either; he's lifting in less than twenty-four hours. But you and I will get smashed."
"I'll drink what you do. Anything but hemlock."
I then convinced Ian that it was better for me to find a hansom at the port where they were readily available than it was for him to send for one, then make the round trip.
Number 17, Locksley Parade, is a new block of flats of the double-security type; I was locked through the entrance to Ian's flat as if it were a spaceship. Betty greeted me with a hug and a kiss that showed that she had indeed been drinking; my curly wolf then greeted me with a hug and a kiss that showed that he had not been drinking but that he expected to take me to bed in the near future. He did not ask about my husbands; I did not volunteer anything about my family-my former family. Ian and I got along well because we both understood the signals, used them correctly, and never misled the other.
While Ian and I held this wordless discussion, Betty left the room and returned with a red lava-lava. "It's formal high tea," she an-
nounced, with a slight belch, "so out of those street clothes and into this, luv."