EBOOK LORELEI *

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 courage that had sustained me, like the numbness after a fatal blow, was beginning to slip away. All that seventh day my nerves balanced on a thin jagged edge. And that night the anamorph visited me in my bubble cubicle.

I caught the sheathed rustle of a crinoline skirt and a scent of Peri fragrance, 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 fingers dug into the sponge fabric beneath me until they ached. I sucked breath deep into my lungs and held it.

I wanted no visitors. But that of course was why she had come. She had a way of divining who needed her most, the one whose morale was nearest breaking.

"Poor Bill," she murmured. She knelt beside me. I felt her forehead press against my temple and a tear—​from eyes which I knew would now be a clear candid blue, deep in the shadows, appearing almost black—​traced a salty path down my cheek.

The wall of my resistance broke. I reached up impulsively and pulled her to me. She was all soft, yielding femininity, live and warm and vibrant, the antidote to the raw need that was like a bleeding wound deep within.

Still I tried to resist. I summoned my last dregs of resistance and pushed her roughly from me. I opened my eyes, deliberately keeping my mind locked against her.

She swayed back at my shove.

I saw that her features had not yet set into the mold she had probed from my mind. Her head was round and shapeless, with doughy white skin and the characterless face of a baby. The auburn mat on her head was loose 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 left behind on Earth, the girl I would never see again. Lois.

My breath came out in a ragged sigh of surrender, and my mind opened to her 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 rich brown hair curling inward at the ends, and her shapely shoulders all honeyed-gold from the sun. Her supple body was straight, poised and proud, her head back and her breasts pressing against her blouse. Just as I remembered her.

I could have sent her away no more than I could have stopped the beat of 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 again she kept her eyes open, looking at me sidewards in her fondly teasing way. "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 with her love, her only movement the throb of a pulse beneath my fingers as they fondled her arched throat. I sighed contentedly. At the moment I was filled with a warm serenity that had quite effectively subdued my anxiety.

Once a man let himself go, there was no companion, male or female, who could compare with the anamorph. She caught his every thought, crested the tides of his every mood. She became the idealization of woman, without flaws, formed and molded into a perfection beyond possible actuality, her beauty and desirability greater than any real woman’s could ever be.

When full rapport had been achieved she was able to keep mentally ahead of a man. She could gauge his every reflex, and match her speech and actions to every subtle anticipation.

I felt almost happy then. The tragedy of being stranded here was something apart, and the reality was the delightful woman-creature warm against me …​ until at last my passions grew sated with the luxuriance of her charms and I slept.

In the morning the anamorph was gone.

Eight other men had fears that must be eased. She might have spent parts of the night with any one or all of them. The thought would have been distasteful, except that absence made the sense of her less all-pervading. I even experienced a kind of grateful relief. I was able to regard her now, not as the real Lois I wanted, but as merely a source of solace I had badly needed.