Free Lust Or No Harm Done by Geoff Ryman Page B

top of his head was pressed against the wall.
    'I'm sorry,' Michael said again.
    Tarzan threw off his hand. 'Tarzan want woman,' he said, accusing.
    Michael had made Tarzan let himself be sucked off by an 88-year-old man. It would have been the first time he had had sex, the first time in his fictional universe that sex had ever been present. Love for him had been sexless: kindness, tickling and caresses. It had been the sensuality of childhood. Michael felt the full crushing weight of what he had done.
    The physical reality of sex is always a jolt. How much worse if it is the wrong gender, with loose jaws and crumpled flesh.
    'Sick. Old. Man,' said Tarzan. All three things were out of kilter.
    'He loved you,' Michael tried to explain.
    Tarzan snarled in rejection. That? That was not love.
    'It wasn't his fault. He didn't know.'
    Johnny glowered at him. 'You want that too.'
    This was pushing certain buttons from Michael's past. Those buttons pushed deep. 'I didn't touch you. I left you as you were. Did… did you want to do anything with me?'
    Johnny/Tarzan considered. 'I wanted what you wanted.' He made a cutting gesture with the edge of his hand. Only that. To hold and be held. Johnny's eyes, fixed on Michael, were now those of an adult. Michael had destroyed any trace of affection in them. That affection could only survive in innocence. Tarzan had grown up. He had wisdom.
    Boy looked at Johnny. I don't know what you are, but you have feelings of your own and a mind of your own and you have a right to be happy. Michael thought of Jane swimming naked in darkness in the jungle of innocence. Maybe, he thought. Maybe I just fancy her enough.
    Suddenly, there were many urgent questions to be answered.
     
    Do they have to be male?
    Can I make more than one at once?
    Where do they go back to?
     
    The answers came quickly one after another.
    There was a blurring of flesh as if reality had been dipped in turpentine. Flesh smeared like paint. Something flowed sideways out of Tarzan's belly and ribs – skin and bone poured out of him onto the pavement.
    Flesh sprouted like a plant in time-lapse photography, growing a leather skirt like leaves, long hair like flowers.
    In the time it takes to pipe a musical scale, Jane had risen out of Tarzan. She stood beside him as if fresh from the depths of the river.
    She was played by Maureen O'Sullivan. She was tiny, with a face as fragile as china under a mass of wiry hair.
    Michael introduced them. 'Jane, Tarzan. Tarzan, Jane.'
    Click. They fitted together. They had been married in spirit from the beginning.
    Michael spoke quickly to Jane, who always spoke for both of them.
    Michael asked, 'Can you go elsewhere?'
    Jane's chin thrust out, and her voice was chilled. 'I'm afraid I don't know what you mean.' It was the voice she used with New York lawyers.
    'Can you go back to your jungle?' he asked. 'I mean, does it exist somewhere?'
    Jane's face softened. Her voice quickened. 'I think we can, yes.'
    Back to the treehouse, with its Flintstone home conveniences, waterwheels driven by elephants. Back to a land where animals spoke and Tarzan could talk with them, where lions lived in forests, where chimps and gorillas mingled in the same tribes. A world where there was always another wonder, another lost tribe, another adventure.
    Protectively, Jane took the arm of her innocent. 'Come, Tarzan,' she said, her voice cracking like an adolescent's on the love she felt for him. 'We're going home.'
    And Michael felt the same ache of yearning he had felt as a feminine boy. He yearned for love, for that particular love between them. He heard the MGM strings, swelling like his heart, like his adolescent sexuality, for them both.
    So Michael sent them home. He sent them to their monochrome jungle full of giant trees with conveniently placed trapeze swings. Tired old predators prowled slowly, but were speeded up when anyone was looking. Where love filled their days in pre-lapsarian innocence.
    The pub lights