Get off the Unicorn

Changeling

Claire glanced quickly at Roy again, her mind churning with astonishment, fury, and confusion. She simply had to persuade him to bring her back to City. Prenatal instructions blithely stated that the first birth was apt to take longer, but never how long. Claire knew that she had a wide pelvis, and she'd done all the strengthening exer– She concentrated on deepbreathing as the uterine muscles contracted strongly.

Good God, was this why Roy had been so faithful in attending the prenatal courses? She and Chess had thought that it was only because this baby was Roy's and, because of his sexuality, likely to be his only issue. Had Roy planned this all along?

She swallowed, for the nausea was acute.

"Roy, I'm going to be sick," she said, amazed that she could speak so calmly.

"Don't!"

The order was frightening, almost as frightening as the speed with which he skipped the uneven terrain, barely skimming the low ridges as the helicar climbed higher and higher into the Alleghenies.

He must be taking me somewhere, but where? Claire thought desperately. And why? Why?

A short, strong contraction pulled at her and she gasped inadvertently. Roy looked at her then, his almond-shaped eyes narrowing slightly.

"That's too soon. Are they increasing?"

"Yes, yes. You've got to take me back to City, Roy."

"No."

A flat-out, inarguable negative.

"For your baby's sake, Roy…" The soft entreaty, intense despite her quiet voice, caused the perfect curve of his wide mouth to flatten in anger.

Claire felt bereft of all courage. Roy was not going to be dissuaded from whatever insane course he had inaugurated. And that was very like Roy… and terribly unlike him. Why? Why? Where had she miscalculated with this brilliant, beautiful, complicated personality. What had she, after all, done wrong? Artificial insemination had solved his basic problem in the matter of becoming a father. Had he so little confidence in her after the years they'd lived so equably together? What maggot had got into his mind over this baby? He couldn't be jealous of Chess… or EUyot? That was the prime reason for her having Roy's child first.

Claire had to stop thinking to concentrate on breathing as the contractions renewed. As she checked the sweep second hand on the heli's panel, she realized that Roy, too, was timing the spasms.

Oh, God, what is the matter with him? Why is he acting this way? We thought we'd covered every possible reaction. But to kidnap me? At the onset of labor? Roy, Roy, what did I do wrong?

Claire fought back tears, which would infuriate Roy. She wanted to scream but such a distressingly female reaction would not serve. It was the calm, rational quality of their relationship, the experts had told her, that was so essential to Roy's stability. The fact that Claire was always serene, so much the antithesis of the flamboyant feminine emotionalism which was repugnant to Roy Beach, had sustained this unusual experiment in human relationships. Now, every instinct in her rebelled noisily against his actions. But every last shred of disciplined rationality she had cried caution, patience, containment.

What had possessed him that he was compelled to act in this fashion? Things could go wrong, even at the last minute, and if they were so far from the City's obstetrical help, what could she do? Then Claire remembered again that Roy had attended every prenatal lesson and had read more books than she had. She bit her lips to contain an hysterical sob. Now she knew that it had not been complacent acceptance that Roy had exhibited, but twisted planning.

No, not twisted planning, she hurriedly corrected her thoughts. Roy wasn't twisted: he just saw things from a different angle. A very different angle, since he regarded women as a different species, useless in his environment. Up to the present moment, she'd been the sole exception. And how could she have been so dense as to imagine that he would react in any normally predictable fashion at the moment of parturition of the one child he was likely to sire?

The groan that issued from Claire's throat was part despair, part pain.

Roy glanced at her again, his eyes sliding around, through, beyond her, without seeming to pause long enough to admit her existence. He did note the contractions that rippled across her swollen belly. He frowned slightly as he looked back across the hills. Judging, Claire realized, whether he had enough time to make his destination before the birth occurred.

Where could he be taking her? Did EUyot know? Or Chess? Ellyot surely, of the four of them, should have caught an inkling of Roy's plans. Roy barely noticed her these last few months, but he was constantly with EUyot and Chess. The grotesqueness of her once slender, perfect figure would be repugnant to him: she'd expected that. Her physical perfection had first attached Roy to her. So it was reasonable for him to be revolted by her gravid condition even though it was his child that warped her body. She had dressed as concealingly and fashionably as possible and then kept out of his way—to the point of ducking into closets whenever she heard his quick light step in the house.

Unable to look at him or at the blurring green of the forest over which the heli passed, Claire closed her eyes and shuddered again. She forced herself to relax into the contractions. They were unquestionably stronger—and longer. She could tell that without recourse to the chronometer. And Roy was timing them, too. Let Roy take over. He had. Let him do his worst. He would be the biggest loser. By God and all the growing insight of modern psychiatry, she had done her best. Between pains, she cast back into memory and tried to reason out this extraordinary abduction.

Roy Beach, Praxiteles, Adonis, Apollo, call him Male Beauty in the classic mode, and adore him… at a distance. Always at a distance, please. He is not to be touched, he is untouchable. The crisp golden curls that fall in stylish sweeps across the high forehead; the wide-set, slightly slanting almond-shaped, green-green eyes over broad cheekbones, eyes that looked with such ruthless intensity at the wonders of the world, assessing its hidden beauties, disclosing its accepted horrors; the fine straight nose with sensitive flaring nostrils; the sensuous lips, neither too full nor too thin, graceful in the double curve of an Apollonian bow; the firm wide jaw. An incredibly beautiful face—and a beautiful body, tall, straight, deep-chested, muscular with graceful strength, hairlessly smooth. Then Nature compounded her gifts and gave him an intelligence that ranked him one of the most brilliant geopoliticians of the past three centuries. Nature, not always kind, added one final quirk to the psyche of Roy Beach, prince among men, to ensure that no princess would rouse tender, heterosexual feelings in his superb breast. And yet…

Claire Simonsen met Roy Beach in City University Complex. If they had not chanced to attend the same seminar, they would doubtless have been introduced by some meddler or other. As Roy Beach was a sleeping prince of godly perfection, Claire Simonsen was Snow White. Hair black as coal, skin white as snow, lips red as drops of blood on a queen mother's linen, she was gracious and gentle, and the fairest in the land—at least, in Penn City and its environs. She was also an extremely intelligent young woman: not equal to Beach as a theoretician—for her talent was in personal relationships which translated into human terms the geopolitical equations—but she was both able to follow and interpret his theories up to the point where he made the final ascent of intuitive genius.

At the time they met, Roy had not yet admitted his sexual preference and was intensely aggravated by the importunities of both sexes. Claire, for the same reason, saw in him the answer to her insistent suitors.

"I don't like females," Roy had told her that first evening in his quarters. "But I also haven't found a man with whom I can form an attachment." Roy never equivocated. "I may never find someone congenial. If you do, you have my blessings. Until that time—" and one of his rare and beatific smiles touched the perfect lips "—be my guest?"

"With you, candor has become an art," Claire had replied.

"If we are to continue to deal pleasantly together, candor is essential."

Claire distinctly remembered that she had been strolling around his study room (even as a student, he rated status quarters), admiring the simplicity and elegance of its furnishings, the knowing placement of the few paintings, the Britton bronze, the Flock marble statuette. Unquestionably, Roy had been the model.

"You feel compelled to preserve the image of masculinity?" she had asked.

He had shrugged, his almond, green-green eyes expressionless.

"I am the image of masculinity."

"But not its substance."

He had frowned slightly, then he again awarded her that incredible smile. This time, it lit his eyes with humor.

"Sexuality in this day and age is, thank God, a personal, not a social choice. However, there is subtle pressure to pah– off, and until this has been done, one is subjected to constant entreaties." He paused, nodding understandingly as Claire shuddered. Until Roy had blatantly annexed her that evening, she had been pestered by three quarrelsome and competitive fellow freshmen. "You are the most beautiful woman I have met. It is a pleasure to listen to your voice, to watch you move across a room." Roy smiled wryly. "Artistically, we complement each other."

"We do," Claire could not help grinning back at their reflections in the mirror surface of the darkened terrace doors. "God and witch. White and black."

"Are you always so tactful, Claire?" She was a trifle startled at the laughter in his voice, at the definite twinkle in the intensely green eyes.

Whatever reservations she had faded. Without humor, Roy Beach would have been insufferable.

"Let us see how we deal together, then," she replied. "It'll be a relief, even if we split up next Saturday, to have those hot-handed louts off my… my back."

Smoothly, Claire had adapted herself to Roy's ways. It was never mentioned but it was obvious to a girl with Claire's perceptions that the weight of compromise in the arrangement would always be hers. However, it was a small price to pay for being left alone once the word got abroad that Roy Beach and Claire Simonsen were quartering together. There might have been intense private speculation, but custom forbade probing. They were welcomed everywhere and were soon the acknowledged leaders of their University class.

The key, Claire had discovered, to Roy's intricate personality was to accept him at his own evaluation, a fluid standard which she understood intuitively at first, then intellectually as she penetrated deeper into Human Behavorial Sciences, until she could not have said why she knew how to suit him but invariably did. Theirs could never be a physical relationship, but Claire occasionally thought she was his mental alter ego. However, in his own way, he was devoted to her and as aware of her emotional needs as she was of his; once to the point of being demonstrably tender with her when one of her brief love affairs dissolved painfully.

It had been a tempestuous affair and ended in a bitter quarrel. Claire had run blindly back to Roy's quarters to find him waiting for her, and patient with her distress.

"You appeared to enjoy him," Roy had remarked when she paused at one point in her harangue. "He's got a reputation for proficiency, at any rate. Or didn't he make a good lover, after all?"

Claire had pulled the remnants of her pride together and looked at Roy.

"He is certainly physically attractive," Roy had said thoughtfully, taking her by the arm and leading her toward her old room. "But not your intellectual equal. You'd've fought sooner or later. Here's a trank: it'll ease the worst of the withdrawal."

He had pushed her onto her bed, tugged off her boots, gave her water to down the medication, and, to her immense surprise, had kissed her cheek lightly after he arranged covers over her.

With amazement, she detected a faint shadow of worry in his eyes.

"We understand each other, Claire. We complement each other. Do not settle for less than the best your own excellence can command."

As she drifted off to sleep, Claire was oddly comforted that Roy regarded her as a personality in her own right, and not as an adjunct or supplement to his own consequence.

There had been further brief associations for her, but always the standard that Roy had set for her governed the flare of sexual desire. On those occasions she had terminated the relationship—until Ellyot Harding was introduced to Roy at the Eastern Conference of Cities.

When Roy brought the slender dark man back to the flat—Roy and Claire had moved, of course, to civilian quarters after obtaining their advanced degrees —Claire was instantly aware of the bond between the two men, and of her own attraction for Ellyot. She was also aware of the surprise that rocked Ellyot Harding at her presence in Roy's quarters. She could all but hear his startled thought. What's a woman doing with him?

But Ellyot was quick to perceive subtleties and, on the heels of the first shock, came comprehension. He had instantly stepped forward, to grip her hand, to place a cool kiss on her cheek.

"You must be Claire Simonsen," for Roy had not yet had a chance to introduce her. "I followed your programmed analysis of the Deprivation Advantage with intense interest. In fact, I have allowed for that factor in the renewal project currently planned in my City. Oh, I apologize… Roy is rescuing me from the sterility of Transient Accommodations, and the inevitability of having to talk shop with other victims trapped there."

Ellyot's good-natured smile never touched just his lips, his whole face was involved in it.

"Go right ahead," Roy urged, turning to dial drinks at the console. "I rather thought you two would have overlapping interests. Explore them while I order a dinner suitable for this momentous occasion."

The look on Ellyot's face was mirrored in Claire's for both caught the nuance, the unspoken assumption in Roy's bland directive. EUyot smiled, raised his eyebrows in a question.

"Yes, it is indeed an occasion," Claire said. "You might like our northern scallops, Ellyot—tender, sweet, delicious."

"The North has much to recommend it," Ellyot replied, leading Claire to the deep wall lounger. His manner was both triumphant and entreating.

Ellyot did not return to the Transient Accommodations or to the southern City which had sent him to the Conference. Claire's supervisor hired him immediately he made known his willingness to transfer. By the time City Management reviewed accreditation in the fall, the three had enough status to move to a larger single dwelling on the outskirts of the City. In fact, Claire was surprised at the outsized dwelling Roy chose for them.

"It's marvelous to have such space to spread out in, Roy, but it'll take every accommodation credit we own to manage this place," she had said.

"Not for long," was all Roy said, imperturbably.

He looked insufferably pleased with himself during the few weeks it took them to arrange and settle into the new house. Claire noticed that Ellyot was unusually irritable and put that down to Roy's insistence on each of them having a separate sleeping room. In fact, relations, up until then extremely harmonious, became strained.

"What is he up to?" Ellyot demanded of Claire one evening when Roy was at a meeting. "I know he's being coy about something."

"So do I, but I thought you'd know."

"Well, I don't. You've known him longer, Claire, can't you hazard what's on his mind?"

"Did you think I've some magic talisman to see into Roy's mind? I don't even sleep with him."

"That's the first, catty thing I've heard you say."

"It wasn't catty, Ellyot, truly," she said in gentle apology even as he blurted out a request for pardon.

"You're a remarkable woman, Claire. Why have you never cut out? Why aren't you—well, jealous or…" He hesitated and, to her surprise, blushed. "I mean, you're so obviously hetero, and yet…" He gestured vaguely around the high-ceilinged living room.

"It's as much Roy for me as for you, Ellyot," she heard herself say, and then stopped, having finally voiced that admission. "Yes, it is Roy. We have never been lovers—never—but there's nothing of misplaced maternity in my relationship with Roy, or sisterly affection for that matter. It's a relationship… of the spirit. No platonic nonsense, either. I honestly, truly, deeply admire, respect, and… and love Roy. I cannot live fully without him and I cannot—"

"I know exactly what you mean," Ellyot said softly, with a ghost of a smile on his lips, but none in his eyes. He leaned back against the couch. "You remember the day we met? I'd a hetero marriage contract set up in my old City, you know, but half an hour in Roy's company and that was all over." He grinned. "I wanted children, you see, but Roy was too much."

Now Ellyot turned his head toward her, his eyes reflecting her image. She felt his hand touch hers, spread her fingers against his palm.

"She was no match for Roy… or you." He dropped her hand and abruptly stood up, almost glaring at her. "And this is not fair to you, either. You've enough status to have a child of your own from a lover. Get out of here, have a child, marry, don't waste your life on us… on Roy. He doesn't mean to be exclusive. He just is."

His outburst surprised him as much as did her, for he dropped down on the sofa, one arm behind her, and Scowled earnestly as he covered both her hands in a tight grasp.

"Yes, he just is," Claire said softly. "I cannot leave him, Ellyot, any more than I can leave you. There's no other company I'd rather keep, you know." She gently returned the pressure of his hand.

"But I know you want children. I've seen you pausing by the playyards. I've seen the longing in your face."

"I'm in no hurry. I'll find someone…"

EUyot snorted his opinion of that naivete. "You haven't even had a lover in the past year. All you've done is work… work."

"You've been keeping tabs on me?" Claire was touched by his sudden protectiveness. That was more Roy's role than Ellyot's.

"Neither of us wants you wasting your womanhood on just anybody… or no one."

Claire shook her head slowly, conscious of a deep and tender affection for EUyot. "Did neither of you think to ask my opinion?"

Ellyot glanced sharply down at her. His eyes darkened and he pulled in a deep startled breath just as he bent to kiss her fully and passionately on the mouth.

When she and EUyot emerged from her room the next morning, Roy merely nodded pleasantly and invited them to join him at the table. Breakfast for three had already been dialed.

Nor was there any embarrassment. Almost, Claire once mused, as if Roy had expected something of this sort and was relieved that it had finaUy taken place. After the first occasion, Claire had to be the aggressor with Ellyot, though he was never reluctant.

However, in the course of the next few months, Claire realized that the lovemaking she shared with EUyot could become invidious. It was impossible to make love with Ellyot and not sense Roy, not make love with Roy through EUyot, not hunger for Roy's magnificent body when EUyot's covered hers.

Roy had brought EUyot into their circle for his own ease and solace. Triangularity could deteriorate the relationship. Claire must find a fourth member. She wasn't getting any younger, and Ellyot was correct about how much she longed for a child.

Claire was convinced that Roy had perceived her turn of thought. Of course, they had been talking about building a real kitchen into the house the next time City Management raised their total income. Roy was intensely interested in raw food preparation and increasingly annoyed with the mass-produced combinations available from the public kitchens, despite the interesting variations he achieved with what came out of the dispensers. But it was Claire, restless, increasingly dissatisfied, who undertook to find an architect who would design a kitchen room for them.

The first firm she consulted laughed at the notion of an entire room devoted to the preparation of food for consumption. The second thought she wanted a rough arrangement such as could be installed in a retreat too far from a City or Center for regular facilities. They recommended another firm that did reconstruction work for museums. That was how she met Chess Baurio.

"He's very busy, you know," she was told over the telephone by the receptionist. "But the notion is bizarre enough that he might just like to try it." An appoinment was made and she went directly to his office, not far from their home.

It could never be called love at first sight, for he was extremely antagonistic from the moment she introduced herself. Only because he'd never attempted to solve such a design problem did he reluctantly agree. And then, under the stipulation that it was done his way. He knocked down one after another of her plans, sarcastically deriding her painstaking research. In fact, when she had finally got him to agree to come to the house and examine the proposed site, Claire wondered why she had put up with his manner and attitude for one session, much less contemplate a further association.

Still, when he arrived the next morning, he was unexpectedly pleasant, even charming—until Roy walked in. If Roy Beach was the personification of the classic concept of the male manner. Chess Baurio was the twenty-first century's. Compact, lean, healthily attractive, alert, he was the antithesis of Roy's studied indolence. Roy was the aloof, detached, arrogant observer;

Chess was the involved, enthusiastic, vital participator.

As Roy strode up to the terrace where she and Chess were discussing the location of the kitchen room, the air became charged with electric hostility.

Claire looked at Chess, saw that his eyes were snapping with anger, that the smile on his face was set, that his movements as he leaned forward slightly to shake Roy's hand were jerky. His manner became stilted, false. She glanced at Roy, who was his usual urbane self.

"Chess Baurio? You designed the new theater complex at Northwest 4," Roy said by way of greeting. "Now, why did you use polyfoam instead of Mutual's acoustical shielding?"

"Ever heard the wows in the Fine Arts Theater at Washington South?"

"Can't say that I've been in that theater, but wasn't it John Bracker, Claire, who was so vehement in his objections to playing in that hall?"

"He did mention he'd rather play under Niagara Falls," she said lightly, hoping to ease the tension.

"And polyfoam corrects wow?" Roy demanded of Chess.

"In that size building, or in amphitheater form." Baurio's voice had a bitten quality.

"I've been advised to use it in our music room," Roy went on, blandly, dialing out three coffees and passing them round as if Chess would naturally take his black as they did. "What's your opinion on its use in a small room?"

"As a consultant?"

The rudeness in Chess' tone surprised Claire. People were rarely rude to Roy. He simply didn't elicit that kind of response. She held her breath. Roy did not appear to notice.

"The kitchen room comes before the music room, but we always combine efforts. I believe that Ellyot… Ellyot Harding," and that was the first time Claire ever heard Roy qualify any acquaintance so pointedly, "is the third member of the house… has a preference for natural woods as acoustical materials, rather than manmade products."

Hostility fairly bristled from Baurio now.

"We have not really discussed the music room. I imagine, however. Designer Baurio, that if the kitchen room is successful, we'll get busy on the other," Claire said, trying to sound relaxed and gracious. Why was anything Roy said so offensive to this Baurio?

"I'm not at all sure," Baurio said icily, putting down his untouched cup of coffee, "if anything I designed would be successful in this… this kind of manage."

Not even Roy could ignore that, and he slowly turned toward Baurio, his eyes glittering.

"You object to polyandry?"

"I object… I object to such a monopoly, to the sheer waste of…" He broke off, glaring savagely from Claire to Roy before he spun around and strode out of the house.

"What on earth possessed you to come out with statements like that, Roy?" Claire asked. "He was… to design a kitchen room… What happened?"

Roy smiled down at her. "He'll be back. And you must make him stay."

After the most tempestuous three months in her entire life, she did, but only when their marriage contract had been registered in the City. And that came about only because Roy and Ellyot cornered Chess privately at the end of a particularly bitter quarrel.

The end of the mad abduction and the cessation of a particularly painful contraction—her muscles were beginning to hurt despite training and control—were simultaneous. Claire opened her eyes to a leafy vista, the tops of trees below the heli's landing gear. Startled, she peered down. The heli was perched on the edge of a sudden, sharp drop, the bottom of which was hidden by foliage. Wildly she turned to Roy. His eyes wouldn't focus on her, his breath was uneven. "Can you move?" he asked.

"Where?" She couldn't control the quaver in her voice.

He threw up the hatch and jumped out, ignoring the gasp she made as she had a flash of him disappearing over the precipice, leaving her alone and at the mercy of her body's birth-drive in the cramped nose of the heli.

"Put your hands on my shoulders," he ordered, and she found herself obeying.

She moved as quickly as she could, knowing that a spasm was seconds away. It seized her as she reached out to him and sent her reeling into his arms. He had seen the look of pain on her face, and deftly caught her to him, holding her firmly despite the awkward position for them both.

It seemed an age until the contraction passed. She submitted weakly as he swung her up and strode off. She buried her face against his shoulder.

Does he intend for me to have the child in the woods, like an animal? she wondered.

"You'll have to open the door," he said in her ear.

She looked down and fumbled for the crude latch, surprised that there should be a door, for she had only the fleeting impression of the facade of the retreat, its rustic logs, the heli's floatons apparently resting on the surface which camouflaged the retreat. Vaguely, she hoped the roof was firmly supported against the heli's weight.

As Roy angled her through the doorway, she caught a glimpse of the superb view of the valley below them, the mountains beyond. When had he acquired such a retreat? Or who had lent it to him? Stupefied, Claire wondered if Ellyot had suspected this and kept silent.

A contraction. She couldn't suppress the groan, which deafened her to a statement Roy muttered under his breath. But, seemingly a century later, he laid her on a bed and was arranging her body in the best position to ease the strain.

"A hard one, huh?" he said as she lay, panting. She didn't resist as his hands turned her gently and stripped off her maternity sack, or as they felt her writhing abdomen.

How can he bear to touch me? He has scarcely looked at me for five months.

The next moment she became aware of other preparations for the coming birth and she began to struggle fastidiously.

"Don't resist. This has to be done. For the child's sake."

Hearing the anger and distaste in his voice for what he had to do, she forced herself to relax and endure his ministrations.

Her waters broke while she was on the toilet and she began to whimper, more from embarrassment and tension than pain.

"What is it?" His voice was clinical. "The waters broke."

He got her back to the bed, on her back, and examined her with the deftness of her obstetrician.

"The head is in the birth canal," he said just as she experienced the first of the second-stage contractions. "That's right. Push down!"

She fought the hand that pressed down on the upper part of her belly.

"No, no Roy. Leave me alone. Get a doctor. Please, Roy!"

His face loomed suddenly above her so that she was forced to open her eyes wide and look at him.

"I know what to do, Claire. The child is mine!"

"But you could have assisted at the hospital, Roy," she cried, slowly perceiving through her pain and anxiety what motivated him.

"With Chess listed as your legal spouse? We haven't that right yet. No, Claire, this is my child."

"It's mine, too," she screamed.

"Is the pain unbearable? I'll fix the mask for you."

"Mask?"

"I have assembled everything that might be needed," he told her in that odd flat voice. "Do you need the mask now?"

"No, no. No!" She couldn't succumb to the desire for relief from the pain, though it was fierce now, fierce and inexorable, convulsing her body, seizing her with a steadily increasing rhythm, permitting her not so much as a moment to relax straining muscles.

"Good. Press harder. Press downward." She heard his voice through a mist of sweat and tears and pain.

She grabbed at the bed, flailed wildly around for something to hang onto and was rewarded with a strong wrist to grasp. But for that hand, she was lost in a nightmare of stretch, strain, pant and gasp, of a body that was not hers, that responded to primal urgings. The comforting hand, the reassuring voice were part of it and apart from it. The rhythm increased, unbearable, constant, exhausting, and then, wrenched by a terrible spasm, her body arched. She was sure she had been torn apart.

The pain was gone. Sweat dripped into her eyes. She felt almost lifeless, certainly weightless but… serene, strangely enough. Her legs were spread wide, the thigh muscles ached, her vagina throbbed, and all pain was replaced by the languor of exhaustion. She became conscious of movement within the room, of a harsh breathing, a wet splat, and then the tiny gasp as infant lungs sucked in air and complained mewlingly.

She raised herself on her elbow, one hand reaching for the sound.

"Roy?" She dashed sweat and damp hair from her eyes.

Roy's back was to her. When he turned, she was startled to see a surgical mask across his face, the translucence of plastic gloves high up his muscled forearms. And, dangling from his left hand, a tiny, armwaving inverted form, the cord still attaching it to her.

"Oh, God, Roy, give him to me."

Roy's eyes were full of tears as he laid the child on her belly.

"I have delivered my son," Roy said in the gentlest voice. "Don't touch him," he added, knicking her hand away with the bare part of his forearm. "You're not sterile."

"He's mine, too," she protested, but did not reach out.

She watched as Roy deftly tied on the umbilical cord, swabbed the child's mouth, painted his eyes. As he tenderly oiled the reddish skin, Claire craned her neck to glimpse with greedy eyes at the perfection of the tiny form.

And the baby was perfect, from the delicate kicking feet to the twitching fists. His head bones were still pointed, but there was a fineness about the angrily screwed features. Despite the unconventionality of his birth, he was alive and obviously healthy. She did not protest when Roy swathed the child in a receiving blanket and laid him in the portable crib that he pushed gently to one side of the bed.

"Now, you." Again all emotion was leached from his voice.

With the heel of his hand, he pressed into her flattened belly. She screamed for the pain of it and was seized, to her horror, with another contraction that brought a flood of tears to her eyes.

"You leave me alone!" she cried, feebly batting at his arms.

"The afterbirth!"

And it was delivered.

Utterly exhausted, she lay back. She felt but did not move as he sewed the torn skin of her, only vaguely wondering that he knew how. She was too weary to help as he cleaned her, changed the soiled sheets. She was only grateful that the pain and the shame were over as he covered her tightly bound body with a light blanket. She could hear the baby snuffling somewhere in the room and his continuing vigor was more reassuring than anything else. She felt herself drifting off into sleep and tried to fight it. She must stay awake. She couldn't afford to sleep. He might try to leave her now he had the child he had wanted so desperately.

And that thought stuck in her mind. The child Roy wanted so desperately was born. That was why he had acted so rashly. His child. His child! She had, after all, and however deviously, become the mother of his child.

A tiny voice, insistent and undeniable for all its lack of volume, roused her. She felt hands turn back the covers that lay so comfortingly around her. She felt her upper body lifted, supported with pillows. Drowsily, she evaded full consciousness until she felt her arm crooked, felt the scrape of linen against her skin, the warmth of a small rounded form, hands against her right nipple, the coolness of a wet sponge, then the fumbling of small wet lips and the incredible pleasurable pain caused by a suckling child.

She opened her eyes to the dim light. Roy was sitting on the edge of her bed, his hand securing her lax hold on the child. She was fully aware in that instant, aware and awake. She glanced down at the tiny face, eyes tight, lips working instinctively for the nourishment she could feel it drawing from her breast.

Roy did not remove his hand, yet it was not as if he did not trust Claire. And suddenly she understood all that must have been driving him since she had blithely announced her desire to have his child first. She had taken him, of them all, by surprise. She had astounded and startled him. She had given him a hope,

II? a promise that Roy Beach had never even considered, given the circumstances of his sexuality. She had given him the child of his own flesh, yet she had not soiled him with her femininity.

She understood now why he had been unwilling to trust anyone but himself with the responsibility of delivering his child.

The pressure in her other breast was painful. She disengaged the nipple from the searching, protesting mouth and quickly shifted the babe, taking a sensuous delight in the tug and pull of the eager lips as they fastened on the new food source.

Then she looked up at Roy. She smiled at him as their eyes met. She felt that she saw directly into his heart and soul for the first time in their long association. With her free hand, she reached for his and placed it on their son.

"I called Chess, and told him where you are. He said Ellyot made him understand."

Claire tried to tell him with her eyes that she did, too, but all she could say was, "Does he plan to come here?"

There was a quick start in Roy's body and his eyes plowed deep into hers as if he, too, had to know her heart, at least this once.

"It would be more peaceful," she added, holding onto his gaze, "to have the first few days alone, if you can stand it."

"If I can stand it…"

Claire had to close her eyes against the look of intense joy, of almost painful jubilation in Roy's face. She felt him lean toward her, across the child, so that the baby kicked against the constriction. She felt his lips on hers, her body responding unreasonably to his benediction.

When she opened her eyes again, he was smiling down at the babe with untroubled pride and affection.

And that was how it must be forever, Claire reflected and deliberately put aside that brief, tantalizing glimpse of the forbidden paradise.