I was a pale girl and still haven't lost it. No amount of UV-no matter how graduated-can change that, with all the Irish and English I have in my genes. I've got big bones, too-big country-girl hands, pronounced veins and tendons, and hipbones that bruise loves. "Daughter of a meatless tribe," as my father used to put it.

I wonder how I first looked to Jory.

He was the darkest man I'd ever met, as dark as an "olive" complexion can get-the curse (as he put it later) of some rather thoughtless BlackAm, Amerind, and Hmong-refugee ancestors.

His face, when he turned it to profile, was a hatchet from an ancient dream, and he frightened me at first.

I was raised on one of the last megafarms of the American Midwest. No, that's wrong. I was raised as the daughter of the senior administrator of one of the last megafarms of the American Midwest. There is a difference. Our house was a big plasticoated three-story Victorian in Cedar Falls, an hour's helirun from The Farm. No one ever really grew up on a farm like that.

Jory, though, was a son of the Detroit Glory Ghettos-those Recessional projects begun by a cornered liberal administration two decades before his birth. Every minute of his life had been subsidized by citizens who, at their noblest, were full of self-congratulating "concern"; at their worst, rationalized bigotry; and for 1,439 minutes of every day, apathy and indifference. He knew this. He'd grown up knowing it-1,440 minutes of every day.

For years I dreamed of a career somehow related to the magical sciences of megafarming. What I really wanted, of course, was a way never to leave home-a career to protect my narrow affections, first loves, prized childhood memories of a mother and father who worked happily for The Farm. My father, the loud, proud administrator; my mother, the taciturn gene-splicer whose love of her work showed clearly in her quiet eyes.

The last time I saw The Farm was the eve of Jory's departure. I was twenty-eight years old. The machines were still incredible-the immense nuclear combines, the computerized "octopus pickers" and "dancing diggers." The land was just as awesome-the dark pH-perfect soil stretching from horizon to horizon. But it was boring now. How could this be the world I'd romanticized for so long?

The career I finally chose to pursue-at the clear-thinking age of fourteen-was veterinary medicine. Not the anthropomorphic-pet kind (which I knew was glutted with practitioners), but the animal-husbandry kind (about which I knew absolutely nothing).

I made it as far as my fourth year of undergraduate studies, and then the world changed. I discovered people, and the dream of veterinary medicine began to fade.

One day I discovered a young man named Jory Coryiner and never dreamed the dream again.

I met him at one of the dinners my parents gave for the Huddleston Industries trainees. There were twelve this time-the usual fifty-fifty split of women and men-and Jory was impossible to miss: dark, cocky, intimidating, haloed with heroic rumors-in all, the most magnetically masculine thing I'd ever encountered in my cloistered Iowan life.

He disliked me intensely at first, I know that now. And with good reason. He knew who I was, and dreaded the inevitable patronizing. I persisted. Here was a young man all were talking about, a young man who'd won a fertboss traineeship not through federally imposed quota-tokenism but through his own impressive record, and for some reason I felt chosen, destined to understand him-his obvious need for a wall, tough carapace, calciferous shell, to hide behind.

How it happened, I can't say. After an hour's efforts, he softened. By the end of that hour, I felt I had glimpsed what few others had-the real reason for his chitinous ways: he was the son of a "welfare gloryhole" and he believed he wore that stigma for all to see in the melanin of his skin.

He was wrong, of course. To most men and women, his complexion was charismatic, magical, superior to their own. My own parents certainly never thought twice about my seeing him. But he never understood this. He still doesn't, and now, it is too late.

I should have seen it. I should have realized that the son of two mothers and two fathers-a boy shuttled back and forth from "step'nt" to "step'nt" throughout childhood-might perceive families in a different way. That a man from a Glory Ghetto who had struggled to escape the dark badge of its dependency might never stop struggling. That the moat might never dry up, the walls never crumble, the carapace never see a shedding no matter how much love fell upon it.

Were there alternative worlds in your eyes even then, Jory-places where Hiroshima never rose toward heaven, where the Jurassic Sea never dried, where the Visigoths held Italy for over five centuries?

I do not know. I lied to myself then, too.

When you told me you had contracted as a runner for Quanta, you took two hours to explain it. When you were through, you did not want to hear any of my questions. Fait accompli. You wanted no chinks, no soft underbelly through which your resolution might be undermined.

You said you were doing it because of your great boredom-and because of the money, the fortune you'd have when you returned. The fertboss position was driving you crazy, you said. Even with the antidepressants The Farm's headmeds were giving you (I knew nothing of this), your days were leaden with despair, you said.

You said, too, that you'd talked it over thoroughly with three who'd just come back. Two greeters and a diplo-three men. They were colorful talkers, yes, even a little strange at times, but they weren't crazy, not at all. And they were very happy they'd gone.

Willi, who was eight then, said the only thing he could have: he didn't want to leave. He didn't want to give up his school, his teams, his clubs, his counselor, his center, his world. I had no choice. I had to respect it. He would not be our son fifteen years later when Jory returned and I awoke, but it was Willi's life, too, and to take him with us to a future where he would have only the two of us was all wrong. I believe that still. I do.

My mother was ill. She probably would be for the rest of her life. He could not stay with them. It was Clara and Bo, our friends from Cedar Falls, who at last agreed to take him. He would live with them during the school year until he was eighteen; he would spend summers with Jory's sister in Missoula or my parents in Cedar Falls. Whichever he preferred.

That was the best I could do, and as I did it, I wept.

You signed your contract. Quanta responded, depositing fifteen years of executive salary with the Citibank trustees. While you slept in the starlocks and did your business on Climago, the capital earned. When you finally returned, you were (like the others) a millionaire and (like the others) so happy.

I slept for you, Jory, because that was my adventure, an adventure I believed was as noble as yours. All around us men and women were doing such things for their departing lovers, and I knew we would meet again-you and I-in a distant, idyllic future, to begin life anew like a modern Adam and Eve.

I slept for you, and my sad but loving parents paid for the suspension care without complaint, though they knew they were burying me.

I've seen my father only once since I awoke. Mother is dead. He had nothing to say.

I will not do that to him again.

Time marries. Time reconciles. "It is a recombiner like no other," as my mother used to say quietly. It has only been two weeks since Jory's announcement, and I have already begun to believe, to accept what I know cannot be true.

I must be prepared. I cannot afford not to be. If what Jory claims is true, if indeed we are about to have a visitor, I must begin to prepare this house physically-and myself psychologically-for its arrival. Whatever it may be.

After all, the notion of a visitor is, in its own way, appealing. Anything that makes the days feel different is, in its own way, appealing.

I give it the better part of each day. I give it so much that the headaches are excruciating. But they are a small price to pay for being prepared.

1. I'm actually quite qualified to receive the creature, whatever it may be. I received a decent formal training in biology, zoology, and physiology, and I've educated myself in recent years in invertebrate and marine biology, malacology, conchology. Jory would be the first to admit this, I'm sure.

2. If the creature is indeed intelligent, I cannot afford to make it feel unwanted. Jory will insist, I am sure, that it remain with us indefinitely, and I will have to abide by that as graciously as possible.

If the creature is intelligent and feeling-if it is indeed from a race driven by an aeon-spanning need to help, to cooperate, to "care"-there is reason, is there not, to assume that some day I will be able to feel something resembling affection for it?

If it survives, of course.

I cannot guess his exact needs. I can only prepare for a variety of contingencies. I know, for example, that Climagos do not need daily intakes of atmosphere, that their integumentary system is "closed," that they require infusions of oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, and other elements only occasionally-once a week, say. And though the notion doesn't reconcile easily with hemophagia, their nutrional needs (according to the one reference tape I've been able to locate) follow a similar periodicity.

I will order the appropriate compressed gas tanks from San Francisco, and I will have a marine construction firm in Fort Bragg build a self-sterilizing, airtight room. But I need to do more homework on the nutrion. Perhaps through supplements of some kind-say, a concentrated mineral/protein mixture tailored to blood profiles on Climago-we may be able to circumvent the need for volumes and volumes of blood-bearing tissue.

I've gone ahead and phoned three exobiologists in the Bay Area and in Houston, and have extracted all the information I can without jeopardizing our secret. We just can't let people-scientists, doctors, and commedia folk-know what is about to happen here. Were the word to get out, our lives would be a hell of ruptured privacy. And if the child is as fragile as Jory claims it is, such a commotion might endanger its life.

But the exobs are willing to part with more information than either the transnational corporations or national governments seem to be, and I have unearthed the following: a Climago should be able to exist comfortably on a mixture of oxygenated, hydrogenated, and proteinized Na, K, Ca, Mg, Cl, and various iron- and copper-based transport pigments taken from Terran mammals and accessible through a durable membrane, natural or synthetic.

I haven't seen Jory in days; I have, in fact, seen him only two or three times in the past few weeks. It is as though his announcement that day-his "gift" to me-was at last able to liberate him.

Which is what he has wanted for five years.

When he visited me at the hospital just after I awoke, he said he wanted a house on this desolate coast. I thought I knew why. I imagined the harshness and solitude would be his way of bringing us together again.

I was lying to myself then.

It was the gray sea, the cold crags, the solitude itself that he wanted, not a marriage of lives. It was the inhumanity of it all that he wanted, and he wanted it more than anything else.

There are times-those rare moments when we embrace without the need to consummate-when I feel in his body the rhythms, the suckings and chuggings of the factory itself, of the great pipes that pull their material from the far seabed, of the dark engines that do to it what they do.

"Why is he coming?" I ask gently, wondering if gentleness can prevent a lie.

"His mother is dead," Jory says. "He is too human to live out the rest of his life there."

"No, Jory," I say. "Why is he coming?"

He looks at me sadly, cocks his head like a dog, and tries again: "Because he has a terrible congenital disorder and has very few years to live. He wants to be with his father, his cold mad feary father, before he dies."

"Please. Why is he coming?"

The smile flashes like a knife. The cruel eyes transfix me.

"Because I'm sick and tired of your nagging, your slop pails of complaint, Dorothea. I am giving you what you want and need. It's a better career than the aborted one, isn't it?"

All I can think to say is, "I see."

In a softer voice, he tells me, "Because I asked him to, Dorothea."

"Oh," I say. 'And when was that?"

He looks away. "A few years ago. I've missed him so."

"Jory, a lockgram come-go takes two or three years."

"Yes, it does, but their telepathy is a very special kind. That's their survival secret, Dorothea. I can think a message to my beloved son across the whole galaxy and he can hear me. Hemispherical space is no obstacle for a love that-"

I turn. I leave him.

I am sure of it now: Jory invited his "child" to live with us before he left Climago.

Only one explanation is possible: the Climagos are immeasurably more advanced than we are in genetic engineering. They are able, through computer modeling and analog translation, to convert human genetic message into Climago genetic code. They are able to replicate human morphological and physiological capabilities in Climagoan cellular arrangements. But they made a mistake this time. The translation failed. The resulting organism: a hybrid mess, a congenitally doomed anomaly. What Jory has described. Why they would attempt such a thing, I do not know. They are aliens, and perhaps we should not expect to understand them.

I heard voices as I came down the cedar stairs from the helipad yesterday. One was raised, almost violent, and I should have recognized it.

The other was softer, though not conciliatory.

"I can assure you," the softer voice was saying, "that we do not look sympathetically on visas for them, let alone immigration."

"And I can assure you"-it was Jory's voice; I recognized it now-"that if any government tries to block this, you people will know more trouble than you've ever known in your puny functionary lives. I've accommodated you and your bigoted quarantine laws; now you will accommodate me. If you do not, I can promise you I will spend what funds I have on the loudest, most public litigation this nation has ever seen. The diplomatic repercussions will not be negligible. Official prejudice is never negligible."

The softer voice said something and Jory screamed, "That's xenophobic bullshit and you know it! How in God's name can an organism that must replenish itself once a week with available equipment, that hibernates for two months of the year, that can move no faster than a walk be dangerous? A creature like that is considerably less dangerous than most federal bureaucrats, Mr. Creighton-Mark. "

There was a silence. I stepped into the room.

The violence seemed to recede from Jory's eyes, which twinkled suddenly in a smile. But the violence was still there; it was there in the rippling muscle of his jaw.

"This is my spou, Mr. Creighton-Mark," he said. "Dorothea, this is the BIN-or at least a representative of it." To the official, he said, "May I assume her feelings are admissible?"

The man ignored me and said, "She knows what's at stake here?"

"Of course." The anger glowed in Jory's eyes again, the scar livid. "But why ask me? She's only a meter from you, and I'm sure she'd answer a question put to her. She might even thank you for the courtesy of it."

The man ignored the sarcasm. He looked at me at last, and waited.

Helpless, I looked at Jory, found eyes burning with a passion I did not recognize. If love, love for what? If hatred, toward whom?

I nodded, found myself saying, "Of course," and then repeating it. "Yes, of course."

Again the violence receded from his eyes, only to be replaced by a distance I knew all too well, as he said: "We are childless, Mr. Creighton-Mark. I was gone for fifteen years. My spou suspended for me. Our one pre-contract child is now twenty-nine. He's a courteous young man, but he doesn't know us, and couldn't care less. Who could blame him? We abandoned him, did we not? We want to try again now-to be a family."

My face burned. I could not look at either of them. How could Jory use me like this-against this man? How could he claim feelings he'd just never had!

When I finally did look at the visitor, I could not understand what I saw. His eyes were on Jory; his expression was chaos-as though nothing Jory had said had made any sense to him, as though Jory's entire speech was the last thing he had expected to hear.

It was the look, I would realize later, of a man stunned by insanity, by the look of it, by the sound of it.

"I see," the visitor said at last, expression fading, words full of a relinquishing fatigue.

It was over. Jory had somehow won. Parting amenities were exchanged, and as he left the official offered a platitude about government's debt to those who serve its diplomatic and economic interests at great sacrifice. He stressed it-the word great.

The autonomous room was finished two weeks ago. The shipment of blood components arrived yesterday. I still have questions, dozens of basic ones, but there's nothing to be done about it. I've used every possible tape available through interlibrary banks and manufacturer listings, and I will not risk further exposure by contacting more "experts."

These remaining questions would worry me if Jory seemed at all anxious. But he is calm. He must feel we're prepared.

We argued today about who should copter in to SFO to get him. I insisted that both of us should, but Jory said no, that would be unfair to both "the boy" and me. I did not understand this, and I said so. Jory said only, "I need some time to prepare him."

I resent it, being excluded. Am I jealous already?

Jory took the copter to SFO this morning. I've been spending the day putting finishing touches on the special room, and on the refrigeration units with their blood substitutes and pharmaceutical stocks, all of which should allow us to control any Terran disease to which the poor thing might be susceptible. (I've done my homework. I've mustered up enough courage to phone two more exos-both at UC San Diego-to get the chemoprophylactic information we need. And I did it without making them suspicious, I am sure.) They're here and I never heard them arrive! I've been too involved in last-minute scurrying.

I try the covered patio first, expecting Jory's voice, but I hear nothing. I start to turn, to head back toward the south patio, imagining that Jory has perhaps carried him down the cedar stairs toward our bedroom.

I see something, and stop.

A figure-it is in shadows under the patio beams. I cannot see it clearly, and what I do see makes no sense. It is too small to be Jory; it is not Jory. Yet I know it is too big for what he described. It is standing upright, and that is wrong too.

I walk toward it slowly, stopping at last.

My mouth opens.

I cannot speak; I cannot scream. I cannot even cry out in terror or joy.

It is a boy. A very real, very human boy.

He is thin, a little too thin, and he has Jory's hatchet face. He has Jory's blue-black hair.

He is, I know suddenly, more Jory than our Willi ever could have been.

I feel the tears beginning to come, and with them, the understanding. It is the kind of lie I never foresaw. There was no alien lover, no. Instead, it was a woman, an honest-to-god woman. On the lock shuttles perhaps. Or on Climago itself. A greeter or diplo or runner just like Jory.

This boy, this very real boy, is theirs. The truth is wonderful!

Why Jory felt he had to lie, I cannot say. I would have accepted the boy so easily, so gratefully, without it.

I take another step toward the boy, and he smiles. He is beautiful! (Don't be vain. You don't really care whether there's a chromosome of yours in him, do you?) A voice intrudes suddenly, and I stop breathing.