Daughter to Demons

by Jeffrey M. Mahr and Levanah

Chapter Twenty-Five:
Heavenly Fire

There is in every true woman’s heart,
a spark of heavenly fire,
which lies dormant in the broad daylight of prosperity,
but which kindles up and beams and blazes
in the dark hour of adversity.
 ― Washington Irving,
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.
(1819-1820)

 

She heard Frank’s shower go on first, and then Frank’s voice singing Oh, What a Beautiful Morningwith great enthusiasm and only one misstep, from the sound of it when he’d dropped the soap or something, because he’ suddenly said, “Damn!” paused for a moment, then started up exactly where he’d left off. She wished that she felt similarly cheerful, but you play the cards you have in hand, not the ones you’d wanted.

Soon enough he rushed out through the door and headed toward the kitchen, saying,“Hi, Sweetheart! Coffee smells great! Did you have a good night at the shop?” with a big grin on his face and purpose in his steps. “Coffee!” he enthused as he almost jogged toward the kitchen door.

He was halfway through the kitchen door when Jackie finally said, “Hi, Frank.” Unfortunately, her words sounded just about like she felt.

Instantly, he turned around and rushed toward her. “What’s the matter, Sweetie? What happened? Has your mother…?”

She shook her head. “Nothing like that, Honey.”

“Well, what is it then? If you’re feeling like you sound, you feel terrible.” He held out his arms to pick her up, but she shrank back instinctively as his hands approached her.

“Okay,” he said, observant as always. “Now I’m worried. Do you want to talk about it now? Or should I wait until you feel better?”

“Now, I think. It’s really, really complicated,”

“Well,” he said calmly, “Why don’t you start at the beginning, then, and go on until we come to the end, by which time we will have covered everything.” He went to sit in one of the end chairs, and made a production of it, fluffing up the seat cushion, turning the chair itself so it faced toward her, conspicuously giving her both space and time to gather her thoughts. He made a show of patting his empty shirt pocket — usually filled with a case of multi-colored pens and pencils in a ‘pocket protector’ case. “Should I take notes?”

Jackie couldn’t help but laugh, a little nervously, but her mood had definitely lightened. Frank was, and had been throughout her strange experiences, her rock. She felt comforted by his presence, even if she didn’t want him to touch her right this minute. “No,” she said. “I’ll try to be as brief as possible.”

“I’m ready, then, and on your side no matter what, Jackie.”

With that reassurance, Jackie began her story. “There were a number of serious attacks on us tonight, although I don’t believe any of us are now in any danger.”

“A number?”

She scowled in remembrance. “Well, two, but the second involved several bad actors. The first was by Tris Magister, whom I think I told you about, since I saw him at the Convention, and he was a client of Doctor Emrys.”

“I remember. What did he do?”

“He came at me when I was with Ruth Bernstein, the woman I told you about who’s naming her firstborn after me.” She smiled, briefly. “I’m doing her wedding gown. Anyway, Tris was disguised as the undead maniac from the Friday the 13th movie franchise, and came at us with a bloody big knife. It didn’t amount to much, in the end, although it was clear that he’d meant to kill me, if I’d been alone, but both my mother and Father Sam were there, and with too many witnesses he was caught fair and square.”

“So what did you do with this Tris fellow?”

“I stuck him inside a diamond, the same as I’d done with the angels, so he’s out of the way for a good long time.”

“Was that necessary, loosely speaking?”

“Oh, yes. Tris is… was a formidable opponent, and the humiliation of being thwarted by a mere woman would have stuck in his craw, so he would have brooded and plotted against me until he’d either succeeded in harming me — or those I love — or I took stronger measures. By taking those measures now, I’ve saved myself and the world further grief, since he’d done enough damage already.”

“He’d already harmed others?”

“He had. He was the brains and evil genius behind the angelic attacks on many, including Jane, my sister, who was killed by his puppet proxy, Sansanvi.”

“So he’d harmed others as well? Anyone I know?”

“Surprisingly enough, both Sansanvi and Sanvi, although I’d never met them before he’d messed with their minds, as well as several dozens of angels besides, who were subverted and essentially destroyed through his ‘brainwashing’ techniques, so I’d count them among his victims as well, even though they weren’t exactly innocent bystanders.”

“Brainwashing?”

“Sort of. He’d replicated the Stanford Experiment using angels as both victims and guards, but carried it to extremes, because he’d intended to harm the participants as a clever way of escaping personal responsibility. With Zimbardo, the problem had been inadvertently built into the experimental design, and he stopped the experiment after his girlfriend told him that he was being a jerk and called him to account.”

“I’ve never heard of it, of course, so I’ll trust your judgement, but can you tell me briefly how it worked?”

“It was simple enough; the Navy and the Marines couldn’t figure why their prisoners and military guards just couldn’t get along and play together like good little boys, so they funded an experiment in which they hired ‘random’ college students, randomly assigned them as either ‘Guards’ or ‘Prisoners,’ and then had the ‘Guards’ try to keep the ‘Prisoners’ in line.”

“Don’t tell me… the Guards turned into sadistic assholes and the Prisoners were traumatized..”

“Well, not all the Guards, but a full third of them went on to display what seemed to be pure sadistic behavior, and the rest either kind of liked it or just went along, including Zimbardo himself.”

“So his girlfriend put a stop to it?”

“She did. She pointed out that Zimbardo and his Guards had created appallingly inhumane conditions for the Prisoners, but she was the only person to object on moral grounds out of many people who’d been toured through, including the so-called ‘ethics’ panel who’d approved the study to begin with. It was shut down almost immediately, and is still very controversial. Since then, it’s been discovered that advertising for a prison experiment attracts the crazies in droves, so the experiment turned out to have been badly-designed to begin with, since the statistical universe was heavily skewed to include more of certain personality types than exist in the actual population, not random people at all, but the most controversial part of it was actually that it put the actual prison guard population in a ‘delicate’ position, since the same self-selection process might well apply to those who choose the profession in reality, which makes many people uncomfortable if they think too long about the implications.”

“Well, I could have told them that to begin with. What kind of man, or woman, would want to spend their entire adult working lifetime keeping people from being free? Sane people want to do something with their lives, to build something, not tear things down or put people into cages.”

“I guess you’re smarter than the experimenters, then, or perhaps they were simply naïf. In the end, he had to be hit over the head with the actual results of his experiment before he realized what was happening. In any case, Tris went at it deliberately, seeking out angels created with vengeance in mind, and pushing them over the edge toward the Dark Side of the Force. I believe that he may well have inflicted terrible damage to their minds as well, since my mother reported finding the ætheric equivalent of ‘lesions’ in the area of the hippocampus and frontal cortex, thereby lowering normal social inhibitions.”

“Could he really do that? It seems spooky.”

“Fairly easily, if he’d taken them by surprise. My own powers include the ability to raise or lower libido, for example — among many other things — so I’m quite sure that someone as ruthless as Tris was could do the same with some combination of the negative emotions and traits that fell under his realm of authority, greed, narcissism, ruthlessness, deception, dishonesty, grandiloquence… the list goes on. I know that he liked to hurt and humiliate people, because he managed to pickpocket my brassiere while I was talking to him at the Convention.”

“What!?” Frank almost roared, more angry than Jackie had ever seen him. “It’s a lucky thing he’s locked up then, since otherwise I’d have to break his nose for him.”

“I know, Frank, but I wasn’t actually harmed, and at the time I was trying to solve the diamond thefts, which were more important to your uncle than whether some puerile crêtin got his jollies by the godly equivalent of snapping my bra strap.”

“Why didn’t you tell me at the time, though?”

“Because I’m an adult, Frank, and fully capable of handling the problem on my own, as I’ve quite recently demonstrated.” She caressed his arm and added, “At the time, you were fully mortal, and no match for him on that particular battlefield, although I know that you could outthink him in a New York minute.”

“But why that trait, in particular?”

She laughed. “Because it’s one of the things I most admire about you, of course, and most of the Old Gods haven’t bothered to keep up with modern science or technology, so they’re not most of them all that far removed from being ignorant barbarians, for all their physical and/or spiritual powers. Tris was caught by a novel use of a perfectly ordinary burglar alarm, thus proving his violation of the Compact, in spite of his vaunted skill as a master thief, and with spiritual powers, being caught wrong-footed can be fatal. Having been publicly revealed as an idiot, his aura was diminished, so he was child’s play to gather up and stuff into a crystal.”

“Child’s play?” He seemed skeptical.

“Almost literally. Almost any succubus could have taken him, because his overweening masculine ego was deeply involved, and he’d been humiliated. I simply pushed him deeper into further humiliations until his ego deserted him.”

“Like Aikido, then, using an opponent’s strength against them?”

“Exactly like that!” She smiled, remembering. “The more he struggled to extricate himself from my power, the deeper he entangled himself in it until he couldn’t struggle any more.”

“Sounds dangerous.”

“I’m a dangerous woman, Sweetie.” She smiled and tickled him behind his ear. “Haven’t you noticed?”

“I had, actually, almost from the start. Father Sam was afraid of you, although he did a fine job of convincing himself to the contrary.”

Jackie looked at him in growing suspicion. “Do you remember what happened in the bus station now?”

“I do, although it was a little hazy at first. I remember trying to pick a fight with ‘Father Sam,’ and I remember you telling him that he could kill you, if only he’d leave me unharmed. ‘Father Sam’ was being a bit of an asshole at the time.”

Jackie laughed delightedly, snuggling into his chest. “He can be. He swallowed an early precursor to Baden Powell’s Scouting for Boys, and he’s been a little constipated ever since. My mother’s working on him, though, and I expect she’ll loosen him up soon enough.”

Frank rolled his eyes, then shut them tight with a pained grimace on his face. “I refuse to visualize all the images those words call to mind.”

She laughed again. “My mother has a powerful effect on men; she….” She broke off, remembering her part in her mother’s apotheosis and investiture as Semangelaf’s feudal sovereign.

Frank gazed at her in shrewd appraisal. “One of those awkward memories, I see.”

She didn’t hesitate before she said, “Yes. It’s sort of what Freud called a ‘primal scene,’ but far more personal and overwhelming. It’s something I could easily have lived without, and yet, it’s part and parcel of a series of changes in me that allowed me to survive and defeat my attackers, so it turns out that I could easily have died without as well. It’s complicated….”

“I imagine.” Frank furrowed his brow in thought. “So Tris, evidently the seducer of sociopaths, who ran a forcible reëducation clinic and prison camp for angels, is now a prisoner? Is there any irony there?”

“Probably, but without any jailers, so the situation isn’t precisely similar,” she said, and then stopped, unsure of what ought to come next.

There was a long pause before Frank finally broke an uncomfortable silence by saying, “I take it then that the next attack — or attacks — were not so easily handled.”

She winced, because he was exactly right. “Is it that obvious?”

“I’m afraid so, but I’ve got your back, Sweetheart. I was your best friend for many years, and I love you now more than ever. I won’t ever let you down.” He had a peculiar expression on his face, one which Jackie had never seen, mingled love and sorrow.

Jackie looked at him in horror, suddenly realizing…, “You know!” she said.

“Jackie….”

“You know!” She burst into tears, horrified because….

“Jackie, I know it’s a staple of conventional ‘wisdom’ that engineers are totally clueless nerds, but I at least am neither clueless nor a nerd, or at least not much of one. The sort of men who want to humiliate and degrade women follow a very limited playbook, because they’re cruel and hateful dickheads filled with a depraved contempt for — and often fear of — women in particular. Paradoxically, many — perhaps most — are weak and ineffectual otherwise, because long experience in bullying has convinced them that women are safer targets than other men — who might be physically capable of hurting them — whom they quite often cower before as craven curs. I can surmise from your general affect and hesitation the general nature of your assault and injuries, and deeply sympathize, but would never judge you culpable in any way for anything that happened to you during or after their barbarous attack.” He paused to take her hands, just looking into her eyes. “When I look at you, when you look at me, there’s nothing but pure love between us, you have my word.” He opened his arms for her, and she fell into them, sobbing in grief for all that had happened to her, and in gratitude for the generous love of this good man.

Finally, she said, “As it turns out, there were powers behind Tris with an axe to grind, and their primary targets were my mother and me.”

“I can well understand it,” he said softly, petting her hair with one hand while he held her with the other. “As you pointed out, you’re a dangerous woman. The two of you together are far more than twice as dangerous. Lilith was never ambitious, I think, so was content to sit quietly in a little corner of the world, essentially minding her own business, but you set out to take the world by storm, drawing the attention of… someone… who felt threatened.”

Jackie nodded. “Tris was actually Hermes Trismegistus, one of the ancient Greek Gods, although relatively minor. With him gone missing, his Olympian bosses showed up in the form of Zeus, Ares, and Hephæstus.”

“I get it. Never send a boy to do a ‘man’s’ job. They decided to ‘teach you both a lesson.’ I reckon it didn’t work.”

“No, not at all.” She was hesitant, not knowing what to say next.

“Which doesn’t surprise me, because I know that they were sadly mistaken in their arrogant assumptions, because I am lots smarter than they were, and I use the past tense advisedly, because I’m personally convinced that they would have been better off jumping into an industrial paper shredder than attacking you in any way. Now, you will let me help you with this, because I love you, and wish you nothing but good. I’m very angry that they touched you against your will, that they very deliberately set out to kill or hurt you, and if they were still around I’d be very interested in tearing them into tiny little pieces, but exactly what they touched and exactly how they hurt you are a matter of complete indifference to me, only that they hurt you badly, and I’m filled with nothing but love for you, and suffused with loathing and contempt for the vicious cowards who tried to harm you. I sincerely hope that they rot in Hell, but I suspect that that wouldn’t be nearly as bad as what you’ve already done to them.” He paused for breath after this impassioned speech, then said, “You did do something to them, didn’t you?” and looked over the bridge of his nose so owlishly that she burst into a paroxysm of nervous laughter, and then started crying again.

“I did, Sweetheart, but….”

“Richly deserved, I’m sure. Please don’t trouble your head about it, whatever it was, and please don’t think that I think any less of you for what you did, or what was done to you, whatever the particulars might be. In a long life — and I’m given to understand by your friend Tiamat that we will have a very long life together — things happen. If you want to talk about it, I’m here to listen with a sympathetic ear; if not, I’m here to keep on loving you no matter what.”

“But you don’t know what happened, Frank. Not really. They….”

“Jackie….” Frank interrupted her. “I have exactly zero interest in ‘finding out what happened,’ and you don’t have to explain yourself or make any excuses.’ You’re an innocent in this, and I know that. That’s all I need to know. If you need to talk about anything, I’m here for you, but I will never interrogate you, nor display any prurient interest in your ordeal or any detail thereof. The only important thing to me is that you’re safe right now, and that we love each other.”

Jackie thought about it for a while before she realized exactly what he was saying, that he didn’t claim ownership of her private thoughts or experiences; that she was an autonomous adult, and didn’t need to make excuses — to him at least. “Thank you, Frank,” she said. “I do have news I ought to share, though. My mother has made me her heir, which evidently means a little more in the supernatural realm that it does in the mundane world. During the assault on both of us, she placed herself in harm’s way to save me, and she was killed by the thunderbolt of Zeus. Somehow, when her… her body… was destroyed, when all this happened, I was inundated by a overwhelming cascade of all the memories of her life — and of all her prior and related lives — and it established a link between us that was startling in its intensity and power.” She paused again, then said, “One of the things I learned from her memories is how I can have a baby, so I wanted to tell you that I’m ready to start trying, if you’d like, and her other gift was the ability to control my hunger, so there’s no longer any reason to call a halt to anything we might get up to, in bed or out of it.”

He was flummoxed for a moment. “Lilith is dead?” he asked. “I’m very sorry. I know how much she meant to you.”

“As if! I re-manifested us both into new ætheric bodies from memory, after sharing my brain with her for longer than was really comfortable — for many reasons — so she’s still with us, reborn as good as new and as constantly annoying and sometimes wonderful as always. It’s the reason we can have babies, though, so I can’t complain too much, although many of her experiences and memories were… difficult… to incorporate into my own. Then again, I created her new body, so I suppose you could say that I’m her mother now, which sounds almost as strange to me as it probably does to you.”

Frank gave a sharp bark of laughter. “How perfect. You know how women always say that they’re afraid of becoming their mothers? Well….”

“I know. It feels a little odd. I just hope she doesn’t demand an allowance and a car.” She smiled. “On the other hand, if you’ve ever wondered what the dance of the seven veils was really like, I can perform it perfectly now.” She waggled her eyebrows at him in a sort of feminine parody of Groucho Marx in his character as an unrepentant reprobate. “So if you’ve got the money, Honey, I’ve got the time.” She grinned.

“Great! If I ever want to retire, you can take over your mother’s gig as an exotic dancer.” He thought for a second. “Will I have to wear one of those big fur hats and dress in flashy outfits?”

“I don’t think so, Sweetheart. It’s not that sort of bar.”

“Too bad,” he mused. “I always thought that I looked good in purple.” He’d managed to say this with a straight face, but broke into laughter as soon as Jackie looked closely at him, her eyebrows slightly narrowed.

“Trust me,” she said, frowning. “It’s definitely not your color. In fact, as a professional fashion designer and consultant, I’m of the opinion what you have on right now clashes with your inner nature.”

He was obviously puzzled, since Jackie had never given him fashion advice before. “And what would my ‘inner nature’ be, exactly?”

Jackie demonstrated by disincorporating both their outfits as she leapt into his arms, and he automatically caught her in midair. ‘Hot damn, but he was strong!’ “Naked, of course.” And then she kissed him.

Frank very wisely said nothing, but returned her kiss with fervent passion as he held her cradled in his arms.

“Oh, Frank! I love you so!” she cried, and then she settled in to hold him close, as close as she could manage, drawing comfort from his strength and from the heady scent of him, filled with the spicy fragrance of masculine power and drive. ‘This is right for me,’ she thought. ‘This man is perfect for me, the true partner of my soul, my beloved, my other half.’

“And I love you, Jackie,” he said, whispering, kissing her hair, so that his warm breath swept through the individual strands, gently suffusing them with the heat of his body, the tangible presence of his love manifested in his embrace, in his words, and in his gentle strength, which held her to his heart with no hint of awkwardness or effort.

“Frank, let’s get married….” She was whispering into his ear. “I want to be your wife right now, to be the mother of your children.”

He smiled and said, “There was never any doubt of that, Jackie. Will you marry me? Should I set you down and go down on one knee, my princess bride?”

She shook her head. “No, Frank, I’d rather be in your arms right now than anywhere else in the world. I’d rather remember this spontaneous embrace than any clichéd set piece with candles and flowers, much less billboards or skywriting airplanes. You’re my man, not a supplicant, and I’m yours because we belong together, both strong and proud, partners in life forever. I take you right now, Frank, as my husband for all eternity, and give myself to you as your wife and the future mother of your children.”

“And I take you, Jackie, as my wedded wife, and plight thee my troth and body as your husband forever.”

Jackie smiled just like the cat that ate the canary and added, “I suppose we’ll have to have a ceremony to please your aunt and uncle, and probably the civil authorities, but that will just be a procedural recognition of the troth we plighted just now, which undertaking is the true covenant that binds us. I refuse to acknowledge that any higher power is needed to join us, nor would I submit to anyone or anything which sought to separate us, because we’re destined for each other, beyond the reach of powers and principalities, because perfect love drives out all fear, puts to flight every hesitation, and utterly rejects any appeal to external authority. Our union is blessed of our own volition and by our own solemn affirmation, because we’ve recognized each other as true life mates, and the only sacrament I need is the precious gift of your love. My own true love is all that I can possibly offer in return.”

Frank kissed her with infinite tenderness and care, saying, “That sounds good enough for me, Jackie, although I don’t have your way with words. I’d only add that you’ve had my heart from the first day I followed you when you tried to leave, and caught up to you in the bus station. I knew then that I would never leave you, and that we’d never be apart, Semangelaf and all his pestering conditions and cautions be damned.”

And as he carried her through the door into their bedroom, Jackie laughed, a deep and throaty woman’s laugh. “We have another spare bedroom now, my darling. Shall we see about filling them up?”

Frank laughed in turn. “First things first, my dear…,” and tossed her lightly to the bed, then followed closely after.

‘Now let the great work of alchemy begin,’ Jackie thought to herself, ‘the magnum opus, the creation of the philosopher’s stone, that priceless entity capable of transmuting base metals into gold, bestowing immortality upon creatures of mere flesh, the cintamani, the jewel that lies within the lotus, the pearl of great price which embodies the entry of Dharma into the Universe.’ As Frank moved within her, she moved through him, selecting just the right sparks of life, those which best embodied his essence, and then manifested her own, the pure heritage of the first woman in the world undamaged by time and loss, the pristine precipitation of eternity into time, and brought them together, once, twice, then chose souls for them — taking care that they were both compatible and complementary — and then she was finished with her working, even as she placed them at the beginning of their journey, just beginning their stately progress down her fallopian tubes toward her womb, where they would implant and grow for the next thirty-eight weeks or so. Only then did she allow herself her pleasure, and climaxed, a paroxysm made more precious by marking the conception of her twins.

All through the night she watched him breathing, feeling a peculiar sort of envy at this signifier of metabolism, the inner fire of physical life, supplanted in her case by the deeper fires of creation. How long had it been, she thought, since she’d last breathed for herself, and not for dissimulation. People noticed if you never took a breath, so she went through the motions without need, as an elaborated courtesy and disguise, and had to take special care to ensure that her manifested womb was properly supplied with all it needed to nourish her developing embryos when they implanted themselves five days (or so) from last night, at which memory she smiled, the first of many such encounters, she hoped, though not her first memory, which now included a multitude of men and an infinite variety of couplings, both good and bad, not to mention her mother’s latest adventure with Semangelaf, in which she’d been both observer and participant, her viewpoint shifting back and forth with dizzying fluidity and speed. She was a little disappointed that Frank — the man she’d been ‘saving herself’ for — hadn’t been her first memory, but not enough to wish herself dead, which was the only likely alternative.

She hadn’t studied him sleeping for a while though, and noticed that he no longer had any tendency to snore since Tiamat had taken hold of him. It made sense, since perfection is inherent in immortality. As an immortal, Frank embodied an ideal archetype, the epitome of his genetic and ancient cultural heritage — wherever the Ahtrams came from originally — ancient Mesopotamia or Ariana, in all probability, since the name was still common in Turkey, Pakistan and elsewhere in Central Asia, parts of which were formerly the North West Frontier Province of India under the British Raj, but Jackie’s best guess would be Mesopotamia, since he now appeared to be a recognizable avatar of Marduk, the Sun God of Babylon — as Jackie’s own memories seemed to verify — the patron of water, plants, and magic, which she supposed would be the ancient equivalent of engineering. Funny how things worked out.

Frank’s eyes fluttered open, and if he were unnerved by finding his wife staring at him, he made no sign other than to smile and say, “Having trouble sleeping?”

Jackie laughed. “As if, you big nut. You know I don’t sleep. I couldn’t resist staying with you, though, when you dropped off.”

He arched one perfect brow. “Oh, yeah? Lookin’ for some nookie?”

She grinned. “Not particularly, but nookie is always on the menu, Dearest.”

He reached for her and drew her close, saying softly, “What are the words? ‘With my body, I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow.’ Something like that; I left out the ring part because I didn’t think to bring one. Shall we go shopping?”

Jackie clapped her hands together twice and gave him a huge smile. “Oh, goodie. I know just the jeweler.”

“Not Perlmutter’s, I hope.” Frank rolled his eyes. “I’d feel guilty, after staging our elaborate charade around the ‘borrowed’ diamonds thing.”

“Well,” she frowned slightly, “they do carry the widest selection here in town, unless you want to go down to New York. I suppose we could have breakfast at Tiffany’s.” She smiled again, but impishly, daring him with a sidelong glance.

“Tiffany’s it is, then,” he said, then grinned. “You were always a hopeless romantic, you know.”

She thought about that for a moment; it was a stretch, remembering her former life amongst so many. “I suppose I was. Certainly I was never motivated by greed or lust for power.”

Frank snorted. “Not at all. You could have gone to the B-school, or taken up the law — the modern routes to power and wealth — but instead you chose to study what are essentially fairy tales, however real they turned out to have been in retrospect, and set out to follow the dream of Rose ‘Rosie’ Alvarez in Bye Bye Birdie, and actually became the equivalent of her English Teacher with a fairytale twist.”

She pouted prettily, just for effect, and said, “Well, an English teacher really is someone, you know.” Unfortunately, your last name isn’t Peterson, and Ahtram doesn’t fit into the scansion.

“No, I suppose it doesn’t, but then I’d never fit into that particular role, since I’ve always supported and admired you, and was never a ‘mama’s boy’ like he was. He treated Rosie very shabbily, I think, not that you’re anything like Rosie — well, until she breaks out of the Sixties model of ‘proper femininity’ in the Spanish Rosie scene. She let herself be a doormat for far too long, I think. Albert didn’t deserve her.”

Jackie stared at him, halfway amazed to hear him say this, since her head was still swimming in thousands of years of inherited experience of misogyny, and at the same time relieved that Frank was so much a man of this age, in which women were valued as individuals by so many younger men, and in which the injustice of a woman waiting for a man to finish dithering around and make up his mind to grow up struck even men as odd. There were thousands of Hollywood films depicting exactly the opposite notion, and the women of Sex and the City were still a little avant garde. “Remind me to let you know, Dear, exactly how much of a treasure you really are.”

“That good, hunh?” he preened, puffing out his chest — which Jackie had to admit was very … attractive, not to mention his impeccable washboard abs, fetchingly displayed peeking out from under the rumpled sheets — obviously understanding her compliment as referring to his sexual prowess.

“Hold on, Tiger!” she smiled. “I was referring to your wonderful mind, not that you’re lacking in more earthly charms. Your spontaneous defense of Rosie just made me think how lucky we are to be living in an age of relative enlightenment, in which men see women as equal partners in life, as opposed to the ‘little women’ who keep their homes in order.”

“Don’t be too hard on past generations, Jackie” Frank said gently. “I think men and women have always made accommodations for each other. Don’t forget that before home freezers and industrial food and material goods production, someone had to perform all the time-consuming tasks of food preparation, making clothes, and ensuring that the pigs stayed out of the kitchen. It was usually women, because most outside labor was brutally hard, and even men didn’t hold up well under the burden of it. Both men and women tended to die young, worn out by the struggle of living. No one got a free ride, with the possible exception of a few members of the upper (formerly warrior) classes who skimmed off most of the cream by right of conquest, a politically-correct synonym for strong-arm theft.” He paused, then said, “And don’t forget that, for all his faults, Rosie loved Albert, and when he finally realized that he loved her, but had been… distracted by his musical career, but then he almost lost her. In fact, you could also say that it was when his whole life came crashing down around him that he finally discovered the depth of his love for her, because she was all that mattered to him, in the end.”

Jackie was confused by his last words. “But you said he wasn’t good enough for her …”

“Oh, he wasn’t good enough at all,” he said quietly, “but she wanted him. Few men, I think, deserve the love that women give them, including me. As an engineer, however, trained to observe and evaluate the tiniest detail, I’m profoundly grateful that you’ve chosen to overlook my many faults.”

Jackie’s heart melted. “Oh, Frank, I love you so!”

“See, there you go.” He smiled, stroking the curve of her waist and hip with one hand, his other trapped between them. “What did I ever do to deserve you? Have I ever told you exactly how beautiful this curve is?”

She didn’t know what to say. “Unh…”

“There’s a perfectly logical explanation, of course. In men, at least, that precise feminine curve is hardwired into our brains, so most men are instinctively attracted to almost anything that duplicates that curve. It can be anything, a guitar, the profile of rolling hills and valleys, even an assemblage of metal; sculpt that particular curve into it and men — perhaps every human being, male or female — will find it beautiful in almost exactly the same measure as it approximates a woman’s curves. ”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Not at all. It was an engineer who discovered this principle, of course, a Dutchman named Niko (Nikolaas) Tinbergen.” He looked very pleased with himself. “The Dutch are great engineers, you know, having engineered half their country out of the ocean. Anyway, he reëngineered a seagull’s beak and discovered that seagull chicks are hardwired to peck at long slender things with high contrast, so a thin dowel with black and white stripes on the end is much more attractive to them than real seagull mother with food. They go crazy when they see it, like a crack addict with a rock of freebase cocaine, or a tobacco junkie a cigarette for that matter, the delivery system for freebased nicotine. Shared the Nobel Prize with Konrad Lorenz and Karl von Frisch.”

Jackie still wasn’t sure if he was being serious or if this was an elaborate shaggy dog story. “Unh, right. Is that why women tend to find a nice square jaw on a man attractive, or well-defined muscles?”

“Not exactly, but the same general principle applies, I think. In populations of wild horses, mares tend to be attracted to the most muscular and strong stallions, but horses are designed to run away from danger, and the dangers to horses typically come from predators like wolves and lions, so the issues are complex, but mating with big powerful stallions up the chances for big powerful colts who can run away more successfully than those of lesser stallions. In humans, the dangers quite often come from other humans, so I suspect that the ability to fight comes into play on a different level.”

“But you said both men and women find the same things attractive. How does that….”

“Oh, they do, but they usually do different things with the same attraction, except in the case of lesbians and gay men, of course. If you look through most women’s magazines, you’ll see page after page of beautiful women, while the pictures of men are relatively rare. The opposite holds true for most men’s magazines, except for racy stuff. The market for nude men is relatively limited amongst women, nowhere near the number of male subscribers to magazines featuring nude women, but both sexes have a strong interest in the members of their own sex as well, not usually in a sexual sense. Look at football; the most avid fans tend to be men, and there are sports magazines for men in bewildering array, most of which focus primarily on male sports, but sports are for men what fashion tends to be for women.”

Jackie thought about that for a bit before she said, “Okay, I can see your point, but why does this have to be hard-wired?”

“Because it’s existed forever, as far as we can tell from the evidence we find preserved. Birds compete to create the most beautiful songs, or weave the most enticing bowers, because intelligence is very important for a small animal that almost everything would like to eat, so female birds are attracted to beautiful songs. Animals ‘show off’ to each other in many ways. We find decorative items placed in burials as far back as the Neanderthals. Infant humans have the ability to tell the difference between eyes that are looking at them and eyes which are looking away, or which are closed, in other words, whether the one doing the looking is interested in them or not. Baby chimpanzees can do the same. In humans, fitness is an important measure of whether one’s babies will survive. In women, the waist to hip ratio is an important measure of overall health, as well as an indication of the width of the pelvic arch, which often translates into an easier birth.”

She smiled craftily and said, “How interesting! Tel me more. What would you say my hips translate into?”

He seemed flustered to have the conversation steered so quickly away from theory and into practicality. “Why, that you would make a good mother, of course. With hips like that….”

She squealed with pleasure, then said, “Lucky me, then. That’s awfully good to know!”

“Well, of course, since you have control over your appearance, you’d naturally gravitate toward the most attractive….” Then he stopped, then started again, “Unh, what did you just say?”

Wide-eyed, in perfect innocence, she said, “I said that’s good to know.”

“And why in particular is that ‘good to know,’ pray tell me.”

“Because it will come in handy in about eight and a half months.”

He looked at her with growing suspicion. “Eight and a half months? Is there something magical about eight and one half months?”

“Well, yes, it is rather magical, actually. It’s the time required to carry a baby to term.”

He looked bewildered. “I thought that was nine months.”

“It’s a common misconception, if you’ll pardon the pun. It’s difficult to say what goes on inside a biological woman’s body, so they rather arbitrarily pick the onset of the last menstruation as the official ‘start’ of a normal pregnancy, but actual conception starts around mid-cycle, so it works out to around thirty-eight weeks, eight and a half months in terms of the actual date of conception, although by some definitions pregnancy doesn’t actually begin until implantation in the lining of the uterus, about four to five days after the actual union of the sperm and the egg.”

“And this is apropos of…?”

“Did you know the forty percent of all pregnancies in the United States are unplanned? ” she said, changing the subject slightly. “In the developing world, of course, the figures are much higher.”

“Why exactly are you telling me this, Jackie?” He frowned.

“Why, just that there’s science behind every magical thing, and that every miracle can be examined in such fine detail that it seems commonplace, even boring.”

It took him a minute to work that through. “I get the impression that I’m being very subtly scolded, Jackie.”

“Not at all, Sweetheart. You’ll need to take care of yourself now, is all.”

“Take care of myself?”

“Well, yes. I’m not worried about me, of course, but expectant fathers sometimes go crazy, so you’ll need to eat right, and have plenty of rest.”

“Are you telling me you’re pregnant, Jackie?”

She smiled very prettily, she thought. “Exactly! So much for the ‘glow’ theory… or maybe that comes later. It’s my first time, at least in this body, so I really have no clue.”

“This body?”

“I told you that I’d remanifested myself, Frank.” She gave him a moderately peeved look. “After what happened, I didn’t want to keep the old one, so I started fresh.”

“But you’re pregnant!”

“What’s that got to do with it?” Now she was getting irritated.

Frank’s voice rose into an angry shout. “How the Hell can you be pregnant and just swap bodies like they were negligées?”

“Duh! Because I’m an immortal spiritual being is how. All my bodies are the product of my indomitable will acting upon the subtle fabric of reality. Give me some credit, Frank. I know what I’m doing. How could I possibly keep our children safe if I were limited to one body?”

“Wait a minute! Children?! Is that a rhetorical ploy or when were you going to tell me?”

“I was just getting to it,” she said scathingly, “before I was so rudely interrupted. We have two, a boy for you and a girl for me”

“Oh, swell! And when were you going to tell me?”

“Again, I was telling you before you started acting like a jerk!”

“Well! I….”

“Hang on a minute, Mister Know-it-all!” she interrupted whatever it was he was going to say, “If you’d like to become an instant expert, how’d you like to carry them for the next eight and a half months. I can easily arrange that for you, Dear, just say the word.” Then she added, “Or almost any word,” and glared at him again.

And then the doorbell rang.

They looked at each other and Frank said, “What the Hell?” He glanced up at the clock on the wall. “It’s just after five in the morning!”

“I’ll get it,” Jackie said.

Frank said, “No, I’ll get it!” with a stubborn clench of his jaw and an irritated look on his face. “I may be the junior partner in this marriage, but I’ll be damned if I let my wife answer the door because I’m too scared to face whatever’s out there.” He opened the bedroom door and started through.

Jackie made as if to follow.

“Jackie, you stay here! I don’t need my wife to hold my damned hand for me!” Then he slammed the bedroom door shut behind him.

Jackie blinked, and waited, unwilling to push him further. Belatedly, she saw that she may have been a little high-handed.

A few minutes elapsed, and then Frank came storming back in, grinding his teeth together and his face as grim as death, throwing the door back so forcefully that it crashed against the wall and the doorknob put a hole in the plaster to one side of the doorway. “You’re going to have to deal with this one after all, Jackie, and it had better be good.” He bit out his words as if they tasted terrible. “There’s a blue man out in the living room who claims that he’s your husband!”

 

Copyright © 1998, 2002, 2005, 2007, 2009 by Jeffrey M. Mahr

Copyright © 2011, 2012 by Levanah