The others were intrigued with questioning Tracy about the working of his organization back in the 1950s, but he was more interested in practicing his Interlingua. He already knew the grammar, which was as simple as Betty had said, and now he was trying to get the correct accent. He was increasing his vocabulary very quickly under the drug stimulation.
He was already making tenative plans for his immediate future. As soon as he had picked up enough of the language and some know-how on the workings of this new world, he planned to return to North America. All his life he had looked forward to really seeing the land of his birth. He wanted to see the Rockies, Yellowstone Park, Yosemite. He wanted to fish along the Florida coast, go down one of the fast-flowing rivers in a canoe, tramp through the Smokies. All his life he had wanted to do these things. When he’d had an idle hour, in the old days, he’d leafed through the travel books and brochures.
Cogswell the incorruptible, the dependable, the lifelong devoted organization man. Ha! His Utopia was here. He was going to enjoy it.
After dinner he went back to the study. By this time he was into Secondary Interlingua. Betty had been right. It was a scientific language. It worked. He could see the advantages. All languages in the past had been fouled-up messes, even the more beautiful ones like Spanish.
Look at Spanish. It went back to the days when the Basques, wherever the hell they came from, had dominated most of the Iberian peninsula. Possibly the Cro-Magnons, who had done the fabulously beautiful animal drawings in the caves at Altamira, had spoken a language which later became Basque. Then came the Celts and later the Carthaginians with their Semitic language, and the Greeks with their language, and then the Romans with Latin. Then the Vandals and later the Visigoths, with Germanic tongues, and the Moslems with Arabic and Berber. And the Jews had been the intellectual leaders of Spain for a millineum.
So what kind of a language did Spanish shape up to be? They called it one of the Romance languages, based on Latin. But Tracy had never seen a Spaniard who could understand, say, a Rumanian, who supposedly also spoke a Romance language.
It must have been twenty o’clock—he had already found that they used the twenty-four hour clock these days—when a knock came on the study door. A very gentle knock.
He guessed that it was Stein, fussing around about his health, and ready to order him to bed; but it wasn’t.
It was Betty, and she was obviously freshly out of her bath. He had never seen her looking prettier. And, somewhat to his surprise, she was in a quite transparent negligee.
He had already become used to the fact that the modesty of his own period didn’t much apply to the present. Several times he had seen Betty topless, her excellent breasts openly in view, and wearing a bikini bottom even more revealing than those on the beaches of France in the 1950s. Neither her father nor Edmonds had seemed to notice. Evidently, the sight of a women’s breasts were no more stimulating these days than the sight of a man’s had been to a woman in his own era.
From the first, he had thought Betty Stein much more than averagely attractive, but it hadn’t occurred to him that he would ever see her in a negligee, nor had he thought of her as available sexually. Indeed, he hadn’t thought of sex since he had been brought to this century. It wasn’t a field in which he had been overly active, since he had spent his time fully employed in the movement, in prison, or in an army or partisan group where women were hard to come by… at least, women who were attractive. It wasn’t that he didn’t have normal sexual drives, but Tracy Cogswell simply hadn’t very often had the opportunity to indulge in sex. Oh, he’d had his moments, sometimes shacked up with a girl active in the movement, but as a whole his life had been on the monkish side.
Now, Betty, with a wry smile, said, “It occurred to me that you might be… lonesome.”
“Lonesome? ” he said inanely. All of a sudden his mouth was dry.
He stepped back into the room, to allow her entry, and looked at her in blank surprise.
Her forehead wrinkled a bit and she said, “Why, yes. It occurred to me… well, you haven’t met any other women at all save me and you must have… ”
It was just one more of the curves that had been thrown at him these past few days. He couldn’t believe what was transpiring. Surely she couldn’t have come in here in this outfit—it was so transparent that he could make out her dark pubic hair, which he tried to keep his eyes from—with anything in mind except…
Her frown deepened. On her, a puzzled frown was no detriment to her features. She said, though her voice portrayed that she couldn’t possibly believe it, “Perhaps you would rather I go to Jo and suggest… ”
He looked at her blankly. “Do you mean that Jo is, uh, queer?”
“Queer?”
This was the damnedest conversation Tracy Cogswell could ever remember having had. Here he was, confronted with one of the most attractive women he had ever met, obviously dressed—or undressed—for him, and they were standing, facing each other, talking about… talking nonsense.
He said, “A homosexual.”
She said brightly, “Oh, no. Jo is quite normal. He likes everything. Women, men, group sex. I’m sure he would enjoy spending the night with you, or us, if that’s what you like.”
Tracy closed his eyes in pain. He opened them again and said, his voice a bit thick now, “Look, let’s go into the other room. And, uh, no. I’m not interested in Jo. I… I like girls.”
He followed her into his bedroom.
She turned and smiled and her mouth had a slightly mocking quality. “It occurs to me that it has been almost a century since you have had a woman.”
They stopped next to the bed. He said, his voice thicker still, “The same thought just came to me. But, well, what would your father say?”
She began helping him remove his clothes.
“My father?” She obviously didn’t get it. “Do you mean… well, are you one of these fellows who likes older men?” She seemed disappointed in him.
He slipped out of the shorts he had been wearing. “No,” he said quickly. Good God what a conversation. “I told you, I like girls. I meant, here I am in his house, and, well, a guest, I suppose you’d say, although I didn’t ask to be brought here. At any rate, you’re his daughter, and here I am in his house and… ”
He was nude now and, in spite of the fact that he was almost middle-aged, slightly embarrassed.
She said in puzzlement, “This isn’t his house.”
“Let’s get into bed,” he said, not wanting to pursue that. “We can discuss it later.”
She threw back the bed cover and made a flick of hand to extinguish the lights. He had already found out about that remote control of the lights.
She said, “Or would you rather leave the lights on?”
“Never mind,” he said hoarsely. “Either way. Just come over here.”
“Like this?”
“Yes, like this.” He took her into his arms, finding her immediately to be everything he could have guessed.
“Goodness,” she said with a giggle, which was one of the last sounds Tracy had ever expected from the lips of the well-possessed Betty Stein, “but you’re… ardent.”
He began pawing her. Pawing was the only term that applied. His hands were moist. Her body was exactly what he could have expected her body to be. She was an extremely attractive young woman in her late twenties, in perfect health, and perfect in physical condition. He had the horrible feeling that if he didn’t watch himself, and it was becoming increasingly difficult, that he’d come to orgasm even before entering her.
She caressed him too, though not with the same immediacy. And, of course, they kissed. The mouth of Betty Stein was especially well constructed for kissing.
Tracy Cogswell felt like an adolescent virgin.
She murmured, “Do you particularly like any of the usual perversions?”
“What!”
She murmured, “Isn’t that the term you used in your day? You must realize that I studied English secondhand. That is, from the data banks through the autoteachers, and from books. I’m wobbly when it comes to idiom. I can’t remember, for instance, if you said ‘scram,’ or ‘get lost,’ or ‘go get screwed,’ or ‘fuck off’ during the period when my father put you into hibernation.”
Tracy was desperate with passion. He said, “Look, we’ll talk about slang later. But, meanwhile, no, I’m not
