He could still smell Stephie—between them they had drenched the bed with their scent—and he realized it wasn't a dream. Now was the time to ask the question. He opened his eyes and whispered, 'Nohar, what the hell are you doing?''
The desk lamp was still on. The small fluorescent tube was now overwhelmed by the morning light. Ste-phie was curled up next to him. Her head rested on his chest, spilling her black hair across his upper body. It contrasted with the areas where his russet stripes faded to near-white. In the sunlight, where his color vision reached its optimum, he could appreciate the similarity of their coloring. Her black hair and golden-tan skin formed a near- perfect match to the shading of his stripes. They both had green eyes-He had been perfectly prepared to blame last night on the emotional pit he had fallen into. But when he considered the way he was watching the light from the window curve its shadows around her tailless rear, he couldn't blame that night on any temporary condition.
Stephie stirred, and turned to face him. 'Morning.'
'Do you realize how much this complicates things?'
He could feel her twisting the tip of his tail between her toes as she spoke. 'You're as romantic as five lanes of new blacktop.'
'Please, I'm serious.'
Her foot was going up and down the undamaged
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length of his tail. 'I know.' She rolled over and sat up, looking down at him. 'Is this going to be it?'
Nohar tried to answer the question, but his thinking process was a mess.
'Damn, I don't know how I feel about it. What prompted you to—with a morey—why me?'
Nohar damned his mouth, it was still running away with him. At the worst times. He'd just parroted one of the five stupidest questions anyone had ever uttered in any situation.
Stephie closed her eyes. 'Don't ask that. I don't know why. Until I met you, I didn't think I could care for anyone—male or female.'
She exhaled. Nohar didn't interrupt her. She was quiet for a few seconds. Then she opened her eyes and looked at him. 'You've asked me twice, I might as well tell you. I was a lesbian—for about four months at Case Western I was the most radical bull-dyke feminist lesbian you could want. It didn't do a damn thing about my inability to have a relationship with another human being. I was posing as much as Phil and Derry ever were.'
She idly ran her fingers through the fur on his abdomen. 'Then I met you. I was set to be lonely for the rest of my life, and you screw everything up. After I met you the first time, I couldn't wait to see you again. All during that drive from the hospital I desperately wished you were human. Last night I decided I didn't care.'
Nohar knew the kind of repulsion most humans held for tnoreys. Stephie had to be feeling even more confused than he did. He didn't know what to say. 'I should dump you. For your own good.'
There was a hopeful note in her voice. 'Why don't you?''
Nohar thought of Maria. 'I may be stupid and self-destructive, but I'm not going to do that to you.'
Stephie gave him a hug that made him forget moreys weren't supposed to get involved with pinks.
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He left Stephie to clean herself up and hobbled down to breakfast. As loud as they had been with each other, there was no question Manny and Angel knew what had gone on with him and Stephie last night. They didn't mention it.
He walked into the kitchen and found Angel watching Manny with rapt attention. Manny was involved in one of his passions, cooking. Angel actually seemed interested in Manny's omelette-making procedure. She wasn't even wrinkling her nose as Manny started adding raw hamburger to the cooked sausage. They both seemed to avoid watching his entrance.
'Found a disciple, Manny?'
Manny added the sausage/hamburger mixture to the omelette in the large skillet and folded the eggs over perfectly. 'Don't make fun of an appreciation of good food, even if she's never heard of olive oil.'
Manny got out a platter and let the omelette slide out on to it. Angel was trying to act spellbound. 'Doc, how you keep the eggs from sticking?'
'You just have to remember not to start with a cold pan-'
Stephie came down, interrupting what might have been an endless speech—Nohar had always seen Manny's cooking as obsessive. Nohar noticed, with some pleasure, Stephie wasn't put off by the lack of clothing on him and Angel. Stephie, however, was fully clothed, and she'd worn the outfit long enough that it was beginning to broadcast her scent on its own, even over the sausage.
Manny cut his omelette speech short. 'What will you have? We have a vegetarian and a carnivorous version.'
'Could you do both?'
'No problem—'
Nohar and Angel had the same reaction. 'In the same omelette? '
CHAPTER 15
Stephie sat on the recliner as Nohar searched the boxes in the attic for something to wear. Nohar's mind had drifted back to MLI, Binder, Hassan, and the Zip-heads. Somehow they were connected and he still had no easy way of fitting the pieces together.
'The answer has to be in those financial records.'
Stephie sighed. 'I know. That's the third time you said that.'
Nohar pulled out a relic of his gang days, from before he'd left school—and Manny. It was an old denim Hellcats jacket. It still fit and it was big enough to hide the Vind when he wore it. 'Are you sure that you never saw or heard anything that would help me?''
She shook her head. 'I don't care what they wrote down on my job description. They never let anyone near those records. It was a tight little group, the five of them. Even though Derry trusted me, no one got into the inner circle who wasn't there back in '40.'
'Trusted you?'
'Yes, not to screw up the campaign machine. He knew me from my radical phase at Case. It's a tight little community, even for the ones who are still in the closet. I managed to convince myself that I was helping him out. Found out it was Binder's idea much later. By then I was used to the life-style.'
'Why didn't Binder just let Johnson go?' The potential for a media explosion was even worse with Johnson in the campaign, than if he left under a cloud.
' 'I don't know. Derry never expressed any great love FORESTS OF THE NIGHT
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of Binder, but he also never gave any indication of ever being willing to resign. Believe me, I tried to talk to him about it. He was always evasive about why he stayed.'
'What about Young and Thomson?'
*' Young was never willing to talk about anything but business. I think he resented me. Thomson, I don't know, he's slick and never says an ill word about Binder or the campaign—but he acts like he knows some joke the rest of the world doesn't.'
Still batting zero for hard information.
Nohar pulled out a T-shirt. It was the only black one, but it had a yellow smile-face on it. Stephie repressed a giggle.
Nohar frowned as he pulled out the most intact set of jeans. They'd still been using the human model for morey clothes when they'd made it. The seams on the legs were split so his legs could move, and there was a slit in the ass for his tail. He pulled them on. 'And nobody ever discussed Midwest Lapidary, or morey gangs?'
'You must be kidding.' Stephie had reached over and pulled the Hellcats jacket off of the bed. The denim covered her legs like a blanket, and she ran her fingers over the embroidery. 'How come you get to ask all the
