“Sorry, Fawn was in the doorway and I think she was hoping for action rather than words.”
“Tell her to wait. This is more important.”
Continuing my narrative I explained that I was doing my best to explain to Sally by deed rather than word that regardless of shape or configuration, a man (or in my case, a nominal man) could be every bit as satisfying, sensitive, aware—fill in any additional adjective you feel necessary—as a dog, and perhaps even a bit better.
Lucy turned her attention back to me. “Did you succeed?”
“Of course I did. After all, I’ve done this sort of thing before you know.”
“Yes, I know. What’s the surprise?”
“Well the surprise is that on Wednesday Jim confided to me that he had experienced his first conjugal delight since marrying Sally and it seems that Rollo and Bella have both been put on the back burner.”
“That’s wonderful news,” Lucy enthused, “I’m so happy for Sally.”
I’ll bet Jim is too I thought.
“What’s the other surprise?”
“Well it’s more of a surprise to me than to you because you already know about it but didn’t know that I know.”
Lucy clearly didn’t like the direction this was taking as her eyes narrowed but she nodded at me to go on.
“Well we’ve both been puzzled for some time about Gina and I knew as soon as I met her that I wasn’t the father—but hey, that’s alright, you’ve already explained that there have been other Studs—but you’ve never actually mentioned that one of the fathers was a non-Stud, an ordinary man in fact.”
Lucy’s face fell. “What do you mean?”
“Thinking back on it, just over eleven years ago I had just finished a tour of duty in my home town again, a Metro VII city and was on the way to a new city. Rather a coincidence then that who should turn up as nurse for the new Stud but my friend Carl, also from a Metro VII city. Carl seemed to have the uncanny knack of getting posted to minor cities. Less work to do and more time for his real hobby. So I’m sort of suspecting that Carl might be Gina’s dad after all.”
“That’s stretching it isn’t it?” Lucy replied dismissively.
“Well ordinarily yes. But in this case unlikely. You’d been so careful all along to have daughters and now it turns out that one of them is a boy. Sooner or later it would start to become more obvious, after puberty that is, when Gina didn’t start developing breasts. So Gina might soon have to start calling herself Gene. But then Gene isn’t really a boy either, he’s a Stud in waiting and you know that only true males can breed Studs, so just a thought that the father might be Carl. What do you reckon?
Lucy smiled enigmatically. “One can never tell, can one? It’s true I wanted only daughters but I didn’t explicitly exclude Studs did I, and from a certain viewpoint you Studs do look very like girls, which of course makes it all very harmonious.”