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After, coming back to my quarters, I saw that Dory was still up and went in to
tell her.
"Well, you don't look any worse for wear," she noted. "What did you think?"
"I don't know what I think," I told her honestly. "It was well, strange. On
the one hand, I'm now convinced that women get a little more out of it than
men.
A man's only got one place to feel it, while we've got four."
"We," she noted. "You are adjusting."
I shrugged. "On the one hand, it felt really good. On the other, well, it
felt wrong. I kept wanting to be the aggressor, for one thing. And
while the preliminaries were fine, during intercourse I kept wanting to stick
it in, to feel that total sensation, and instead I had a whole
different set of feelings. Not unpleasant, in any way, but not what I knew
he was feeling. Put it down to mixed reviews, I guess. I haven't gone sour on
the deal, although the idea of a blow job is pretty repulsive."
"Did he come?"
"Yes."
"Did you get off?"
I hesitated, then replied, "No."
She just nodded for a moment, then asked, "Did he use a condom? Or have you
started on the pill?"
I felt a slight shock go through me. "No on all counts," I said uneasily.
"Jesus! How far along are you? How long since your last period?"
"I thought a moment. "Two weeks. I'm about mid-way."
"Holy shit! You took a chance there! Or do you plan to have his baby?"
I just sat there, stunned, for a bit. It simply hadn't occurred to me.
Dory whistled. "You're really in the club now. You got two weeks or more of
heavy sweating to do. As much as you hate your period, you're
gonna be praying for it to come. And if it doesn't, and the feds don't do
abor-tions here, you're gonna go through more than I ever did. Now you're
really gonna find out what it's like to be a woman."
Chapter Eight
The next three weeks were among the most misera-ble of my life. I
grew increasingly nervous and irritable, and even throwing myself into the
reports and mounds of paperwork on Pauley and the Urulu didn't help. I screwed
up form after form, couldn't type worth a damn, and every little thing made me
furious where in other circumstances I'd have laughed them off. I was a holy
terror to be around and I knew it, but I just couldn't help it.
I certainly didn't blame Jeff Overmeyer. In fact, I didn't even
tell him, although he didn't quite escape blame in my mind. I was irritated
with myself, of course, for not thinking things through, and the primary
blame was mine, but there seemed something unfair about the fact that
he had assumed that I had taken precautions rather than think along those
lines himself. Score another one culturally for men, I thought sourly,
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realizing that, as a man myself, in my very infrequent sexual acts not once
had I considered any kind of male birth control.
Dory tried to cheer me up by noting how much against the odds any
intercourse leading to pregnancy was, but I was sure that the
venerated
Murphy's basic law would apply. When I was a week late, I got one of those
home pregnancy test kits from the pharmacy and tried it, only to
get some chemical confirmation of my worst fears.
I was pregnant.
The very news, knowing for sure that the worst had happened, calmed me a bit,
since, at least, it outlined a series of actions. I knew from the
start that I
wasn't ready for this sort of thing, not yet, anyway, and that left abortion
as the only option. The trouble was, the medical facilities at IMC
were entirely governed by government regulations, and while they see-sawed on
the abortion question and had for many years they cur-rently didn't allow
it in government facilities except to save the life of the mother. I was
furious at this they didn't have to carry the kid, let alone bear it
under these circumstances but they wouldn't let me take the only obvious
way out. There seemed a particular irony
to my problem, since we were of undetermined status (although officially on
the government payroll) at IMC and it had been many months since either Dory
or I
had seen the sun. I wasn't about to take this, though, and finally confessed
the problem to Jeff.
He arranged an appointment with Harry Parch.
I'd seen almost nothing of the man since the first few days at IMC, and I'd
had the impression that he'd been away more than here which suited everybody
just fine, but walking into his office once again I found him the same cool
fish, only more cruel and infuriating than ever.
"So you got knocked up and you're stuck," he said with a trace of
amusement. I grew furious at his tone and felt myself becoming flush with
anger, yet I held it in. No matter what kind of slimy eel the man was, he was
the only one who could help.
So instead of yelling at him, I just replied, "I'm in trouble, I have a
problem, and my status here keeps mefrom resolving it. I'm asking pleading for
your help. It's only a problem because of your goddamned govern-ment
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