This choice: Continue reading the "Proceedings ..." • Go Back...Chapter #28The Morale Officer by: Seuzz   A single pole, a single thrusting, silver shaft: She wrapped a slim leg around it and clutched one side of it while leaning around the other. Her hair fell coquettishly to cover a single eye.
There was a floor, but it was invisible, as were the ceiling and walls: they were swallowed in darkness, within which swam blazing pinpricks of light. These revolved slowly around the dark, limitless globe that had the shaft as its axis.
The man in the chair groaned. "What color is your hair?" he gasped.
"Red," she purred, and fluffed out a scarlet tress. "Or maybe it's blonde." She fluffed it again, and it tightened into soft curls and turned golden. "Raven black." It straightened and fell to her waist. "Wild violet, tipped with frosted green." It rustled and snapped around her head like living snakes.
"Oh God!" He was almost horizontal in the deep, cushioned chair, his legs and arms stretched outward. "And if you were Nubian!" She spun lazily around the pole, and with each turn she darkened, until she was darker than dark, dark like black marble. Her teeth flashed like ivory. "Can I see your-- your breasts again?" he asked.
She marched smartly up to him, unzipping her tunic, exposing the small, fist-sized mounds. She cradled them, and they grew and grew and grew and grew--
He reached for them. "No touching, lieutenant," she snapped. "You know regulations." She cocked an eye at the soft bong of the alert. "And I'm afraid our time is up."
The spinning stars vanished--except for those visible through the stateroom porthole, and those slid by much more slowly, even at warp speed. The lieutenant sighed raggedly, stood, shook her hand, and departed. She pushed the pole up into the ceiling, pulled the bed from its recess, and stepped into the wash port.
For Lieutenant Dodson she only needed to act out suggestions. For Lieutenant Ferguson, she needed a model, so she punched up the holographic image from the library. She had learned to use that model before each of his visits, rather than trust to memory, however familiar she felt with the face and body. One time she had tried winging it, but Ferguson had found a flaw, and become whiny and morose. Worse, he'd lodged a complaint that had gone on her record.
As she concentrated on it her skin faded from dark black to an almost translucent white. Her lips thinned and her cheekbones flattened. Her eyes grew wide, like almonds, but sloped slightly at the corners. Her hair shortened and turned very blonde--almost white--and fell in loose curls down the back of her neck. She smoothed out her tunic and tugged the leggings out into a long skirt. The neckline plunged, and the fabric took on a satin-like, emerald hue.
With that done, she pulled out the table and snapped a crisp white tablecloth over it. She was just lighting the candle when the cabin door slid open, and she looked up find Ferguson looking at her. "You look nice tonight, Judy," he said, and held up the tray with the dinner. "I brought the usual. I know you like it."
"How kind," she murmured.
He set the tray on the table, and frowned at her. "You change your hair?"
"I thought I'd let you set it. You always do such a good job." He took up the loose, platinum strands and wound them into a whirlpool, and pinned them in place above the nape of her neck.
"I brought you a necklace," he said, and her throat tightened as he set it--as he always did during these sessions--around her neck. It was old-fashioned and ugly and heavy, but it was part of the drill.
Then she sat and she ate and finally she smoked, while he laid back on the bed and watched her intently. That's all he ever did. They never even talked. It was an easy session, but it was always awkward. He must have loved this woman very much.
If she had ever actually existed, that is. The woman who always ate the same dinner for Lieutenant Ferguson sometimes wondered if she was herself impersonating an elaborate fiction.
After the chiming alert sent Ferguson away, she theoretically had ten minutes for herself, but the captain was often early, so she stepped back into the wash port to change.
It was too much trouble to readjust the dress, so she changed into another tunic, and gave it an admiral's epaulets. She molded her hair into a tight and severe grey bun. Ridge-like wrinkles disfigured her upper lip, and her eyebrows became thick and shaggy. Her only real concession to femininity remained in the body, which she sculpted beneath the tunic into trim, thrusting breasts, a pronounced curve at the stomach, and hips that spread in a way that could fascinate the eye without being grotesque. It was a completely unrealistic body for a putative woman of sixty, but her next appointment always seemed to appreciate it.
"You're late, mein Herr," she snapped in a slightly acidic tone, and pointedly refrained from looking at the clock when he came in.
"The executive officer meeting took longer than I expected," Captain Scheer replied. "The admiral can appreciate such things."
"I can appreciate many things, but I will decline to list them," she snapped back. "A seat?" He took the proffered chair, stiffly.
She tapped the display tablet in her hand. "Your report on the Regulus mapping mission is exhaustive, but it is a trifle unclear on several points." She rattled off a number of questions, which he tried answering. She pressed him into clarifying what exactly had led to the loss of the Seydlitz probe, and harrumphed at the way he tried palming off the disaster on the science officer. "The chain of command is clear," she reprimanded him. "The chain of responsibility should be too." She held out the tablet. "Revise it, please."
"Certainly," he said, and was very pale as he took it. "Thank you. The final draft will be much better for your ... input."
"I have a very high opinion of your abilities, Captain," she said in a milder tone. "It will not be lessened if you are honest."
He smiled gratefully. "It means a lot to me, hearing you say that, uh-- Admiral."
She lowered her eyes and grimaced. "I will need a transcript of the final briefing," she said softly. "Off the record, of course."
"Of course." It was against regulations to share the transcripts of command conferences with any but top-ranked officers. But these sessions between her and the captain were useless without a high degree of verisimilitude.
After the captain left she pulled off the tunic, which always made her feel better. The material was made from the hide of a closely related species--one that shared her metamorphic abilities--and she disliked the feel of it against her skin, even though it made the illusions easier to pull off. Somehow, it felt like cannibalism to wear them.
In the wash port she let her face relax and fade to grey. The nose disappeared, and the eyes sank back deeply into the skull and turned a bright green color. The jaw disappeared, to be replaced by a loose and flexible trunk. She studied the schedule. "Name withheld," the next appointment read. Probably someone new, she thought. Or someone who is very shy. She wondered what form she should introduce herself in. Sometimes it was best to be herself; usually it was best to be human.
But whoever it was, they were early, for the bell to the cabin rang and the door opened without warning. She looked up in surprise to see someone wearing the duplicate of her own inhuman face.
"You?" she exclaimed, her trunk twisting out the alien phonemes. "You're my seventeen hundred?"
"I caught an early shuttle. I wanted to surprise you." The other closed the door and sat on the bed. "And we have the rest of the day together. What do you want?"
She let out a whinny--the equivalent of a pleasurable groan. She made a noise, and the other began to change: Its eyes filled out the sockets and turned a warm hazel; mouth and nose formed--broad and maternal. The arms turned a mottled pink, and bent gracefully at a single elbow. Its chest rose higher and higher with each breath, until they were like twin loafs: soft but heavy. The thing's lap spread out in wide, enveloping hips and plump, comforting thighs. The face became warm, but a trifle sad, and the smile gentle.
As for the occupant of the cabin, she changed too, becoming smaller and smaller (though losing no mass) until she was hardly more than forty centimeters high. She was human again, but bald, with a big head and clumsy limbs. She clambered over to the woman and crawled into her lap; the other undid the tunic and exposed a great breast. "These people take so much out of me," the ship's morale officer sighed in a voice much too deep for an infant. "So much." She closed her eyes, clamped a mouth to the tit, and relaxed as the other crooned and rocked her gently to sleep.
* * * * *
To continue investigating the room: "Disposing of Lucy"    indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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