Unable to look at him or at the blurring green of the forest over which the heli passed, Claire closed her eyes and shuddered again. She forced herself to relax into the contractions. They were unquestionably stronger—and longer. She could tell that without recourse to the chronometer. And Roy was timing them, too. Let Roy take over. He had. Let him do his worst. He would be the biggest loser. By God and all the growing insight of modern psychiatry, she had done her best. Between pains, she cast back into memory and tried to reason out this extraordinary abduction.

Roy Beach, Praxiteles, Adonis, Apollo, call him Male Beauty in the classic mode, and adore him… at a distance. Always at a distance, please. He is not to be touched, he is untouchable. The crisp golden curls that fall in stylish sweeps across the high forehead; the wide-set, slightly slanting almond-shaped, green-green eyes over broad cheekbones, eyes that looked with such ruthless intensity at the wonders of the world, assessing its hidden beauties, disclosing its accepted horrors; the fine straight nose with sensitive flaring nostrils; the sensuous lips, neither too full nor too thin, graceful in the double curve of an Apollonian bow; the firm wide jaw. An incredibly beautiful face—and a beautiful body, tall, straight, deep-chested, muscular with graceful strength, hairlessly smooth. Then Nature compounded her gifts and gave him an intelligence that ranked him one of the most brilliant geopoliticians of the past three centuries. Nature, not always kind, added one final quirk to the psyche of Roy Beach, prince among men, to ensure that no princess would rouse tender, heterosexual feelings in his superb breast. And yet…

Claire Simonsen met Roy Beach in City University Complex. If they had not chanced to attend the same seminar, they would doubtless have been introduced by some meddler or other. As Roy Beach was a sleeping prince of godly perfection, Claire Simonsen was Snow White. Hair black as coal, skin white as snow, lips red as drops of blood on a queen mother's linen, she was gracious and gentle, and the fairest in the land—at least, in Penn City and its environs. She was also an extremely intelligent young woman: not equal to Beach as a theoretician—for her talent was in personal relationships which translated into human terms the geopolitical equations—but she was both able to follow and interpret his theories up to the point where he made the final ascent of intuitive genius.

At the time they met, Roy had not yet admitted his sexual preference and was intensely aggravated by the importunities of both sexes. Claire, for the same reason, saw in him the answer to her insistent suitors.

"I don't like females," Roy had told her that first evening in his quarters. "But I also haven't found a man with whom I can form an attachment." Roy never equivocated. "I may never find someone congenial. If you do, you have my blessings. Until that time—" and one of his rare and beatific smiles touched the perfect lips "—be my guest?"

"With you, candor has become an art," Claire had replied.

"If we are to continue to deal pleasantly together, candor is essential."

Claire distinctly remembered that she had been strolling around his study room (even as a student, he rated status quarters), admiring the simplicity and elegance of its furnishings, the knowing placement of the few paintings, the Britton bronze, the Flock marble statuette. Unquestionably, Roy had been the model.

"You feel compelled to preserve the image of masculinity?" she had asked.

He had shrugged, his almond, green-green eyes expressionless.

"I am the image of masculinity."

"But not its substance."

He had frowned slightly, then he again awarded her that incredible smile. This time, it lit his eyes with humor.

"Sexuality in this day and age is, thank God, a personal, not a social choice. However, there is subtle pressure to pah– off, and until this has been done, one is subjected to constant entreaties." He paused, nodding understandingly as Claire shuddered. Until Roy had blatantly annexed her that evening, she had been pestered by three quarrelsome and competitive fellow freshmen. "You are the most beautiful woman I have met. It is a pleasure to listen to your voice, to watch you move across a room." Roy smiled wryly. "Artistically, we complement each other."

"We do," Claire could not help grinning back at their reflections in the mirror surface of the darkened terrace doors. "God and witch. White and black."

"Are you always so tactful, Claire?" She was a trifle startled at the laughter in his voice, at the definite twinkle in the intensely green eyes.

Whatever reservations she had faded. Without humor, Roy Beach would have been insufferable.

"Let us see how we deal together, then," she replied. "It'll be a relief, even if we split up next Saturday, to have those hot-handed louts off my… my back."

Smoothly, Claire had adapted herself to Roy's ways. It was never mentioned but it was obvious to a girl with Claire's perceptions that the weight of compromise in the arrangement would always be hers. However, it was a small price to pay for being left alone once the word got abroad that Roy Beach and Claire Simonsen were quartering together. There might have been intense private speculation, but custom forbade probing. They were welcomed everywhere and were soon the acknowledged leaders of their University class.

The key, Claire had discovered, to Roy's intricate personality was to accept him at his own evaluation, a fluid standard which she understood intuitively at first, then intellectually as she penetrated deeper into Human Behavorial Sciences, until she could not have said why she knew how to suit him but invariably did. Theirs could never be a physical relationship, but Claire occasionally thought she was his mental alter ego. However, in his own way, he was devoted to her and as aware of her emotional needs as she was of his; once to the point of being demonstrably tender with her when one of her brief love affairs dissolved painfully.

It had been a tempestuous affair and ended in a bitter quarrel. Claire had run blindly back to Roy's quarters to find him waiting for her, and patient with her distress.

"You appeared to enjoy him," Roy had remarked when she paused at one point in her harangue. "He's got a reputation for proficiency, at any rate. Or didn't he make a good lover, after all?"

Claire had pulled the remnants of her pride together and looked at Roy.

"He is certainly physically attractive," Roy had said thoughtfully, taking her by the arm and leading her toward her old room. "But not your intellectual equal. You'd've fought sooner or later. Here's a trank: it'll ease the worst of the withdrawal."

He had pushed her onto her bed, tugged off her boots, gave her water to down the medication, and, to her immense surprise, had kissed her cheek lightly after he arranged covers over her.

With amazement, she detected a faint shadow of worry in his eyes.

"We understand each other, Claire. We complement each other. Do not settle for less than the best your own excellence can command."

As she drifted off to sleep, Claire was oddly comforted that Roy regarded her as a personality in her own right, and not as an adjunct or supplement to his own consequence.

There had been further brief associations for her, but always the standard that Roy had set for her governed the flare of sexual desire. On those occasions she had terminated the relationship—until Ellyot Harding was introduced to Roy at the Eastern Conference of Cities.

When Roy brought the slender dark man back to the flat—Roy and Claire had moved, of course, to civilian quarters after obtaining their advanced degrees —Claire was instantly aware of the bond between the two men, and of her own attraction for Ellyot. She was also aware of the surprise that rocked Ellyot Harding at her presence in Roy's quarters. She could all but hear his startled thought. What's a woman doing with him?