CHAPTER 2.
Draper had, for the moment, forgotten the codex. He stared incredulously at
the yellow cablegram on his desk, then snatched it up and read it through
twice again.
It was quite impossible to make out anything certain except that a mirror
fragment had been found in the cella - the main chamber of the temple. But
all the rest? It was completely bizarre. Perhaps Colin had come down with
Cycladean encephalitis and was delusional. There was no possibility of
communicating with Yaros. He'd have to assume they'd made an important
discovery, and meet Colin on the quay on the 21st - less than a week away.
And as for the ridiculous shopping list.... the urgency of the request was
obvious. Draper was could not seriously challenge its validity, unable as
he was to put himself in contact with Colin Richards other than by meeting
him as requested on March 21st. He really had no choice but to comply. So
Draper rang up Renée Sedgewick, who ran an upscale shopping service for
well-to-do men like him who were too busy (or too inept) to shop for their
wives, girlfriends or mistresses. He'd asked Renée to pick out intimate
feminine apparel for various paramours on any number of occasions - but
never a wardrobe for twelve. And never a whole shipment of female
paraphernalia.
"Renée? Peter Draper here. Fine, fine. How're you? Good. Look, Renée, I
have rather an unusual request...."
Draper read her the cable in its entirety.
"How should I know what it means?" he exclaimed, annoyance cutting through
his determination to treat this as a routine matter. "I have no idea. Just
the same, I'm resolved to bring all of it with me. Where do I want you to
buy it? Anyplace but Filene's or Penny's. Whatever this stuff is for, we
may as well get the best labels. Pick up three or four footlockers, too.
We'll need at least that much space.... Get it all packed up into the
footlockers and have it delivered to the museum's loading dock on Quincy
street by tomorrow afternoon. Put it all on my account, including your
usual commission."
After a few pleasantries, Draper rang off. Then he dialed up Pan American
and reserved a first class seat to Athens on the Friday flight. That would
give him a good part of Saturday and all of Sunday at the Athens
Intercontinental. He could unwind and catch up on the jet lag. Then he'd
grab the six A.M. ferry from Piraeus on Monday. He'd be on Andros by ten,
with plenty of time to catch the noon shuttle ferry to Empoulis, which
would put him on the quay no later than two.
* * * *
By six-twenty Monday morning, Piraeus was already receding in the ferry's
wake and the sun was rising off the port side. Draper, in chinos and a
light poplin jacket, leant on the rail and felt the sun's first rays,
already hot, on his face. The sea was calm and the ferry - the Sappho -
made good headway. A faint morning breeze blew the diesel fumes starboard,
sparing the passengers. It promised to be a perfect day on the Aegean, but
Draper could not enjoy it: he was anxious for the hours to pass, for now
that he was so close to learning the facts behind Colin Richard's odd
cablegram, he had difficulty restraining his impatience.
Renée Sedgewick, a marvel of efficiency, had procured all the required
items by Friday noon. At Athens International, customs had hardly raised
its official eyebrow. The inspectors asked what all the stuff was for and
when Draper told them it was for a theatrical production, they smirked,
elbowed each other in the ribs and nodded gravely with poorly feigned
belief. This explanation (along with several crisp twenty dollar bills)
ended further questions, however, and he was waved through.
The Sappho gained Andros harbor fifteen minutes early. He was able to
transfer to the shuttle ferry without incident, and by noon the Elektra, an
ancient prewar steamboat, was chugging valiantly towards Empoulis, the
professor's considerable baggage taking up a good part of the tiny
passenger deck. By two, Draper and his luggage were on the quay and by two-
thirty the motor launch from Yaros hove into view.
As the launch neared the quay, Draper arose from his seat on one of the
footlockers, shaded his eyes and tried to make out who was on board besides
Colin. There were only two people in the craft - and neither of them looked
like Colin Richards. Colin, a redhead, was a fairly broad shouldered man,
though not above average height. The two people in the launch were slight -
Indeed, one was redheaded. The other was dark. When the launch was only
about seventy-five yards off, he saw clearly that they were women... girls,
really, in their early twenties or younger, he guessed. The dark one stood
in the bow, holding the hawser, ready to cast it off; the redhead was at
the controls. Both were extremely attractive, though their faces looked
rather grim. They were clad in oversize khaki workclothes - men's clothes -
and both were barefoot. Draper was mystified. The girl with the hawser
needed all her strength to cast it to Draper; he caught it and the redhead
cut the engine as Draper pulled the line taut and secured it to the aft
cleat on the dock. Then the redhead cast Draper the stern sheet; he pulled
the launch in against the quay and looped the line securely around the
other cleat, making the vessel fast.
The tide was out, so the launch lay about five feet below the level of the
dock. The redhead extended her hand, Draper reached down, grasped it, and
pulled her up onto the quay. Then he did the same for the brunette. The
redhead was light, not more than a hundred and twenty pounds, he guessed,
but the brunette was just a wisp of a girl, and now that he got a good look
at her, he could see she was no more than eighteen - if that - and soft-
appearing. In fact, neither girl seemed at all athletic - they seemed more
like the sort of girls one might find at a debutante ball, not on an Aegean
island. The sort who, at college, wore pink cashmere cardigans and Villager
skirts. Their bulky masculine garb concealed their figures, but even so,
Draper could tell that they were big-breasted..... and braless. The
brunette blushed intensely under Draper's brief scrutiny and looked down at
her feet in embarrassment and confusion, but the redhead met Draper's gaze
squarely and did not turn away.
On the contrary, she managed a brave half-smile. "Thanks Professor," she
said, briskly dusting off her hands, "I just can't do some things anymore -
haven't the size or the strength." The brunette, still looking at her feet,
murmured in a nearly inaudible voice, "Yeah. Thanks, Professor," and
sniffled.
Draper towered over the two. "I'm very glad you came to meet me,
Miss...Miss," he began, addressing the redhead, who was clearly in charge.
When she did not pick up the cue, Draper continued, "Well, if you don't
want to tell me your names, you at least need to do some explaining. First,
where's Colin Richards? And second, what are you doing in this launch?"
The girl looked up at him and fully met his gaze. Draper drew in his breath
sharply: for a fraction of a second, the girl's eyes seemed terribly
familiar, but Draper knew he had never met her before - she was extremely
pretty, and he certainly would have remembered meeting anyone so lovely,
especially a redhead. The girl saw the fleeting recognition flash across
Draper's face. She licked her lips, smiled ruefully and opened her mouth as
if to speak, but could not find the words. Draper saw her eyes glisten with
tears. She bit her lower lip briefly and spoke.
"I'm Colin, Professor. And this is Justin Singleton, one of the grad
students."
Draper stared at her, speechless, and waited for her to continue.
She pursed her lips for a few moments, then resumed,"Well, you see, we...
um.... we were...." And suddenly the words rushed out in a torrent, "We
were turned into girls last Monday morning. In fact, all of us on Yaros
were turned into girls - me, the five grad students and the six Greek
laborers: the whole expedition is female now. You'll be the only man
there."
This redhead certainly had an odd sense of humor. Draper was not sure what
sort of prank she was trying to play on him, but he wasn't buying. He
started shaking his head before she had finished speaking, and said, "Look,
Miss, it's very nice of you to come fetch me, but you don't expect me to
believe a word of what you said, do you? Now, where's Colin Richards? Tell
me right now!"
"You're looking at him, Professor," she answered, not breaking eye contact.
"I'm telling you, I'm Colin, I'm a girl now and everyone on Yaros was
turned into a girl." Evidently imparting this story was too much for her
self-control; her voice had started to quaver and she suddenly burst into
tears - the tears of a frightened, confused and frustrated young woman. The
little brunette joined her and the two collapsed in one another's arms.
"I told you he wouldn't believe me, Justin!" sobbed the redhead. The little
brunette turned her tearstained face towards Draper and shot him a
reproachful glance. Then she returned to consoling the redhead and said,
"You'll just have to work harder to convince him, that's all." The two
girls broke into fresh cascades of tears.
A small crowd had already gathered on the quay, drawn by the spectacle of
two pretty young women dressed in men's workclothes and crying. They were
watching with increasing interest and were gradually drawing nearer.
Exasperated and wishing to avoid a scene, Draper became conciliatory.
"All right, all right, girls. You're Colin and Justin, OK? Just calm
yourselves, please, and stop blubbering. Let's get the gear into the launch
and you can tell me all about it on the way over to Yaros," Draper said,
placating the two with his hands. Then he went over to the luggage, hoisted
a footlocker and set it on the edge of the dock, ready for loading.
The two girls dried their tears on their shirtsleeves and approached the
pile of baggage. They gave a few feeble tugs on the handles at either end
of one footlocker and together managed to skid it to the edge of the quay,
using all their strength. It was clear they'd not be able to manhandle it
into the launch by themselves. They looked about helplessly and both began
to cry again in frustration, but silently this time.
Draper called over two wiry young men from the gathering crowd and asked
them in fluent Greek if they'd mind lending a hand. Eager to impress the
two strange but lovely girls, lovely despite their tears and masculine
garb, the young men had the launch loaded in no time, then eagerly helped
the girls down to the deck before they clambered back up onto the quay.
Draper gave them each two dollars. They thanked him, blew the girls kisses
and lit off after the dispersing crowd. The redhead, still blushing from
the attention of the young men (one of them had given her a pinch in a
place he should not have), switched on the engine, Draper threw the bow
line to the brunette, then disengaged the stern line and, coiling it around
his arm, jumped in to the launch.
The redhead handled the boat skillfully, guiding it out through the harbor
channels and into open water before she gave it full throttle. As it had an
inboard motor, the noise of the engine was not overpowering, and allowed
conversation.
"When I came here last Wednesday to send you that cablegram, the tide was
in, so it was easier getting up on the dock, and no one pinched me,
either!" she began, her eyes flashing with indignation. "I was in and out
in less than fifteen minutes. I was alone, but one stopped me. No one asked
me any questions. I wanted to get out fast. Bad things can happen to
American girls in Greece who travel alone... But now I have something
special to tell you, Professor, to make you believe me."
The girl then proceeded to recite, word for word, the contents of the
cablegram, finishing with, "I do hope you brought everything on my list."
Draper saw what the girl was doing but remained unconvinced. Colin always
made carbons of his cablegrams and kept them in a loose-leaf binder. If she
had gotten hold of the binder, she could have seen and memorized the cable.
"I brought everything on Colin's list," replied Draper slowly, "And then
some. But I still want to know who you are, Miss."
The girl stamped her foot in frustration. "I'm Colin, goddamn it! What's it
going to take to convince you?" Draper thought her eyes filled with tears
again, but it might have been just the spray off the bow. She wiped her
eyes with her sleeve and glared angrily at Draper.
"Impossible," Draper answered. "Completely impossible. I'm not a fool or an
idiot, Miss. Men don't get turned into women, period, so please don't even
mention it again. Just tell me who you really are."
"Impossible?" echoed the redhead, ducking to avoid another sheet of spray,
"Impossible? If anyone knows it's not impossible, it's you: it's all in the
New Circe Legend as written in the Kythnian Codex, and you're the one who
deciphered it, as if you need me to tell you."
The girl was clever and well-informed. She knew about the Kynthian Codex
and had hinted at what it contained. Suddenly Draper knew how to catch her.
The Codex was written in a rare Phrygian dialect known as Linear-Sigma.
Draper not only could read it, but he had worked out its phonetics from a
ship's manifest found in a pre-Christian era wreck salvaged off the
Anatolian coast in 1951. The manifest, cataloging a cargo of olives,
sandalwood and Malabar peppercorns, had been written in Attic as well as in
Linear-Sigma. From this he deduced how Linear-Sigma must have sounded. The
only person on earth with whom Draper had shared this knowledge was Colin
Richards, who had memorized the Kythnian Codex and could recite it by
heart, as could Draper.
"So, you know about the New Circe Legend, do you? You're certainly a bright
little thing... for a redhead. I don't suppose you know how it reads, in
the original, that is...."
"You can still be a real bastard, Professor. You used to do this to me when
I was a grad student," she replied, beginning to smile at last, "But if
that's what it's going to take to convince you who I am, I'll give you
everything but the lacuna. Here goes..."
And then, to Draper's utter astonishment, the pert little redhead proceeded
to spout off the entire Kythnian Codex, minus the lacuna of course, in the
peculiar sing-song fashion characteristic of all Phrygian dialects.
"Good God!" exclaimed Draper, "You really are Colin Richards!"
"You bet I am," she cried triumphantly. "And if you think that was hard to
believe, you're going to have a much bigger problem with the rest of what I
have to tell you!"
Draper, who had been standing this whole time, sank weakly down onto one of
the footlockers, holding his head in both hands, his eyes tightly shut.
"No! O, No! That ridiculous myth is true! It's impossible, impossible!"
"You haven't heard the half of it, Professor."
Suddenly Justin, who appeared unable to contain herself any long, sprung up
from her seat on one of the foot lockers and came over to the redhead.
Blushing and averting her face from Draper, she whispered something in the
redhead's ear. All Draper could hear was, "Ask him whether...." Then she
scurried back to her place and sat again, hunched and huddled, facing the
sea and looking the very picture of a miserable teenager.
The redhead frowned, obviously considering her next words carefully. She
swallowed hard and said, "Justin is terribly embarrassed to bring this up,
Professor, but, the fact is that he, um, well, he's the first of us girls
to start... um, menstruating - two days ago, in fact - and, ah, well, as
there had been no girls on the island until a week ago, we had no idea that
we'd ever need.... you, know, um, well, I think they're called 'feminine
hygiene products.' So, without them, Justin's had to... well..." (and here
the redhead blushed deeply), "he's had to, um, improvise, and he says he's
very uncomfortable. Being a girl now myself, I can understand why. But
Justin's not the only one. Martin started complaining this morning that his
breasts were tender and that he felt bloated. And one of the Greeks said he
had cramps and wouldn't come out of his bedchamber this morning."
On overhearing this conversation, Justin shrank with mortification, making
herself as small as possible - and she was a very small girl to begin with.
"Tell... tell Justin here that he... I mean she... can stop worrying. I've
brought ample supplies of all different kinds. I'm sure there'll be
something to suit him... I mean her." Draper was already getting dizzy at
the evident gender confusion the two girls were dealing with. To him they
appeared to be two lovely young women, thoroughly female except for their
garb. But clearly they had not yet come to terms with who - or what - they
had become, and still were going by their masculine names. More important
than Justin's starting her period, however, was that single word,
"bedchamber" that the redhead had used. There were no permanent structures
on Yaros. The prison had been demolished - now just a heap of white stones
- and the entire crew lived in wall tents. There were no "bedchambers."
"Wouldn't come out of her bedchamber..." the Professor slowly repeated.
"What 'bedchamber' can you possibly mean?" He absently watched a school of
dolphins sounding off the starboard bow as he awaited a reply.
"Well, that's the other part of the story, Professor...."
"See here, Colin..." Draper interrupted, the stopped himself and began
again, "Look, do you mind if I call you something else? 'Miss' seems a bit
formal. But I simply cannot call you Colin. Except for your red hair and
your eyes, you bear no resemblance whatever to him."
"I'm rather glad of that," she said, "Colin in drag would have made a
rather unfortunate-looking woman. But for the time being, I'm afraid you'll
have to keep calling me Colin. I'm not quite ready to choose a new name."
"Very well. Colin it is, if you insist. Now, as I was about to say, why
don't you start at the very beginning, then. I'm all ears."
