The John Varley Reader Read Free Page A

movements, stance, fingers; maybe even the total kinesthetic gestalt the doctors talk about. This was like that. I could see behind the pretty female face and the different height and weight and recognize someone I knew. It was Halo, my best friend, who had been a male the last time I saw him, three lunes ago. She had a big foolish grin on her face.
    â€œHi, Fox,” she said, in a voice that was an octave higher and yet was unmistakably Halo’s. “Guess who?”
    â€œQueen Victoria, right?” I tried to sound bored. “Come on in, Halo.”
    Her face fell. She came in, looking confused.
    â€œWhat do you think?” she said, turning slowly to give me a look from all sides. All of them were good because—as if I needed anything else—her mother had let her get the full treatment: fully developed breasts, all the mature curves—the works. She had been denied only the adult height. She was even a few centimeters shorter than she had been.
    â€œIt’s fine,” I said.
    â€œListen, Fox, if you’d rather I left . . .”
    â€œOh, I’m sorry, Halo,” I said, giving up on my hatred. “You look great. Fabulous. Really you do. I’m just having a hard time being happy for you. Carnival is never going to give in.”
    She was instantly sympathetic. She took my hand, startling me badly.
    â€œI was so happy I guess I was tactless,” she said in a low voice. “Maybe I shouldn’t have come over here yet.”
    She looked at me with big brown eyes (they had been blue, usually), and I started realizing what this was going to mean to me. I mean, Halo? A female? Halo, the guy I used to run the corridors with? The guy who helped me build that awful eight-legged cat that Carnival wouldn’t let in the house and looked like a confused caterpillar? Who made love to the same girls I did and compared notes with me later when we were alone and helped me out when the gang tried to beat me up and cried with me and vowed to get even? Could we do any of that now? I didn’t know. Most of my best friends were male, maybe because the sex thing tended to make matters too complicated with females, and I couldn’t handle both things with the same person yet.
    But Halo was having no such doubts. In fact, she was standing very close to me and practicing a wide-eyed innocent look that she knew did funny things to me. She knew it because I had told her so, back when she was a boy. Somehow that didn’t seem fair.
    â€œAh, listen, Halo,” I said hastily, backing away. She had been going for my pants! “Ah, I think I need some time to get used to this. How can I . . . ? You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?” I don’t think she did, and neither did I, really. All I knew was I was unaccountably mortified at what she was so anxious to try. And she was still coming at me.
    â€œSay!” I said, desperately. “Say! I have an idea! Ah . . . I know. Let’s take Carnival’s jumper and go for a ride, okay? She said I could use it today.” My mouth was leading its own life, out of control. Everything I said was extemporaneous, as much news to me as it was to her.
    She stopped pursuing me. “Did she really?”
    â€œSure,” I said, very assured. This was only a half lie, by my mother’s lights. What had happened was I had meant to ask her for the jumper, and I was sure she would have said yes. I was logically certain she would have. I had just forgotten to ask, that’s all. So it was almost as if permission had been granted, and I went on as if it had. The reasoning behind this is tricky, I admit, but as I said, Carnival would have understood.
    â€œWell,” Halo said, not really overjoyed at the idea, “where would we go?”
    â€œHow about to Old Archimedes?” Again, that was a big surprise to me. I had had no idea I wanted to go there.
    Halo was really shocked. I jolted her right out