LORELEI
By CHARLES V. DeVET
She was everybody's sweetheart—but
not every man's at once!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Seven days stranded on Europa. Seven days without hope. The couragethat had sustained me, like the numbness after a fatal blow, wasbeginning to slip away. All that seventh day my nerves balanced on athin jagged edge. And that night the anamorph visited me in my bubblecubicle.
I caught the sheathed rustle of a crinoline skirt and a scent of Perifragrance, and I knew she had come. Stubbornly I kept my face averted,and tried my best not to think of her. If I did I was lost. My fingersdug into the sponge fabric beneath me until they ached. I sucked breathdeep into my lungs and held it.
I wanted no visitors. But that of course was why she had come. She hada way of divining who needed her most, the one whose morale was nearestbreaking.
"Poor Bill," she murmured. She knelt beside me. I felt her foreheadpress against my temple and a tear—from eyes which I knew wouldnow be a clear candid blue, deep in the shadows, appearing almostblack—traced a salty path down my cheek.
The wall of my resistance broke. I reached up impulsively and pulledher to me. She was all soft, yielding femininity, live and warm andvibrant, the antidote to the raw need that was like a bleeding wounddeep within.
Still I tried to resist. I summoned my last dregs of resistance andpushed her roughly from me. I opened my eyes, deliberately keeping mymind locked against her.
She swayed back at my shove.
I saw that her features had not yet set into the mold she had probedfrom my mind. Her head was round and shapeless, with doughy white skinand the characterless face of a baby. The auburn mat on her head wasloose and coarse, with a consistency that was hair and yet not hair;her body was too thin, too rigid, too stringy.
Yet she was Lois. Sweet, gentle, loving Lois, the bride I had leftbehind on Earth, the girl I would never see again. Lois.
My breath came out in a ragged sigh of surrender, and my mind opened toher unconditionally.
She altered visibly as I watched. It was too late to go back now.Lois stood before me, full-fleshed and delicately tall, with her richbrown hair curling inward at the ends, and her shapely shoulders allhoneyed-gold from the sun. Her supple body was straight, poised andproud, her head back and her breasts pressing against her blouse. Justas I remembered her.
I could have sent her away no more than I could have stopped the beatof my heart. "Hi, hon," I whispered.
She laughed happily, and sat on the mat beside me and rumpled my hair.We kissed gently, tentatively. I pulled her closer. As we kissed againshe kept her eyes open, looking at me sidewards in her fondly teasingway. "It's good to be back, dear," she breathed against my cheek....
Long she lay at my side, regarding me with eyes that were filled withher love, her only movement the throb of a pulse beneath my fingers asthey fondled her arched throat. I sighed contentedly. At the moment Iwas filled with a warm serenity that had quite effectively subdued myanxiety.
Once a man let himself go, there was no companion, male or female, whocould compare with the anamorph. She caught his every thought, crestedthe tides of his every mood. She became the idealization of woman,without flaws, formed and