Alan Dean Foster (ed) by Smart Dragons Foolish Elves

Author:Smart Dragons, Foolish Elves [Smart Dragons, Foolish Elves]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-01-26T22:58:51+00:00

Is it embarrassment or the inevitable pursuit by the media and fanatics that encourages my furtiveness? It is not yet too late for this all to turn out a bad dream, or at least a creative tumor.

No one could be more loving, more supportive than that bright-eyed, red-haired, long-nosed lawyer who is my wife. “The entire legal establishment is prepared to defend you.” she assures you. “At least, I pledge myself without cost in your cause, no matter how prolonged. So long. Mom, and all that. Here is a list of precedents I have made up for you already.”

Spencer Tracy never received so magnanimous an offer from his legal-minded screenmate Kate; happy am I to have such a wife, to care for the swelling life within me.

The doctors are very puzzled.

“It’s not a par-then,” they declare. “It’s clearly got both your chromosomes. Confess, sly scoundrel, how did you do it? Did Johns Hopkins pull this fast one? What perverse position did your wife and you employ that fatal night? Talk, or we shall publish!”

I stay silent, aware of my rights. Their bluster cannot budge me. I know they are relieved that Christmas will come only once this year.

She is gentle with me now, allowing me the bottom in all but our most energetic moments. Even so, my tongue is more convenient. We do not go out much; our evenings are preoccupied with reading and talk.

We have much to discuss; all these years she has been a woman and I have failed to take interest except in the obvious. Suddenly I am very concerned; the rights of mothers, Lamaze and painless birth, proper nutrition, obligations to the state-I find I am less alert to the outside world than I used to be; my mind drifts at unlikely moments and fills with thoughts of sky.

To hide our fear, we joke: will she join me in the delivery room, or pace frantically outside, choking on cigars?

Someone has told the papers, the mercenary scoundrel. Peace is a forgotten concept; the household, the driveway, the entire block is littered with newssneaks. Our phone sounds like an ice cream truck. Our mailbox is overrun; indeed, the mailman has taken to doing our house as an entire bag drop. Luckily, no one has yet been violent.

The church is rather off-balance. Hurrah!

I can feel movement already. My body feels light in spite of its new bulk; I rest my hands on my hairy navel and wonder whether some mistake has not been made. Surely the noble doctors could not be wrong?

Perhaps the women never really did it at all, it is only a lie spread and carefully maintained by some mysterious power structure. It is as likely as my being the only one.

The thought does not console me.

Spring has exploded: the air is overpoweringly sweet. Birds sing, worms turn, leaves unroll … I feel a mysterious kinship with the earth, and cautious of my cargo I take to our garden.

Sitting in the class together, my wife and I attract strange glances, but everyone is too polite to talk to us.

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