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eBook Category: Humor
eBook Description: A Hilarious Romantic Fantasy Classic! Only Larry Maddock, creator of Hannibal Fortune and his sardonic shape-changing pal, Webley, could have penned this 1960s classic sex-switch comedy with more than a bit of Thorne Smith and tongue-in-cheek. It begins when anthropologists George Martin and Helene Lewis meet, and the result is hate at first sight. Then contact with a statue of Polynesian love God works a magical spell on the two. Each time either makes love to anyone, George ends up in Helene's body and Helene finds herself in his body. If that isn't trouble enough, the two anthropologists run afoul of smugglers, who kidnap Helene. Only its George in her body. But when one of the smugglers forces his attentions on "her," George returns to his body, and so does Helene. To save Helene, George needs to return to her body, and to do that he has to find someone to make love with. Soon he and Helene are looking for love in all the likely places and switching bodies faster than you can unhook a bra, as each tries to defeat the smugglers on his or her own. Throughout, both find themselves in bed with the most unexpected partners at the most unexpected tines. Here's another riotous novel from the author of and The Golden Goddess Gambit. Falling Angel Reviews says Larry Maddock's work is "rollicking, fast paced, attention grabbing, comical." Mild sex.

eBook Publisher: Renaissance E Books/PageTurner, Published: 2005
Fictionwise Release Date: June 2005

12 Reader Ratings: Great Good OK Poor

Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [739 KB], eReader (PDB) [134 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [112 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [99 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [149 KB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [168 KB], hiebook (KML) [316 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [197 KB], iSilo (PDB) [91 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [115 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [174 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [148 KB]
Words: 33311
Reading time: 95-133 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

H. V. MARTIN was a pain in the behind. Under more civilized conditions I would not have had that reaction, but I was expecting the university to send me someone capable of doing the job at hand, someone with that combination of brains, muscle and patient determination it takes to make a topnotch archaeological digger. I was not expecting them to send me someone with ash-blond hair, a slightly uptilted nose, sensuous lips, provocatively up-tilted thirty-eights, a waist I could span with my two hands, pneumatic hips and legs designed to send any man but a confirmed breast-fetishest out of his mind. Those were the major reasons I considered Helene Virginia Martin a pain.

She was not the ideal assistant to have on Johnson's Atoll a small chunk of extinct volcano at the eastern end of the Pacifica chain, where the Burmuru digging was in progress. She proved this on her first day, when she informed me, in the presence of my native foreman, that I was going about the project the wrong way. One simply does not say things like that in front of a native Johnson's Islander, and if you're a man, you certainly don't allow any of your women to say such a thing. As far as the natives were concerned, there was only one use for women, and obviously I had requested this one for my MM entertainment.

"Mister Lewis, I hardly thought you'd be using women as common laborers," she complained that day. "Where are the men in your crew?"

"Omu, here, is the only man other than myself on the project," I explained to her as patiently as I could. "The men of the island will work only as supervisors. I'm lucky to have got Omu."

"Well!" she said primly, "that will have to be changed."

"Why?" I demanded. "The work's getting done."

"Moving all that dirt is much too hard work for women to do."

I smiled. "They're doing it, and they don't complain. They're being paid. It's not as if I had them under the whip."

I could see a look of amusement on Omu's face, so I turned to him with instructions to check the progress of the trench. He inclined his head and departed.

I turned my attention again to the girl. "Miss Martin, you're obviously new at this game and it sticks out all over you. The Islanders here have a simple civilization and it works for them, so don't try being a missionary. The last missionary they had here was tossed out on his keester, his mother hubbards along with him. I suppose the next thing you'll object to is the native costume."

"Now that you mention it, the women could cover themselves a little more. That thing they wear around their hips is certainly not sufficient."

"That thing, as you call it, is a pareau, hell of a lot more authentic than you've seen on Dorothy Lamour. I haven't seen one yet with a figure heavy enough to need a bra, if that's what you're bitching about. In fact," I added, looking her up and down, "you'd gain a lot more local acceptance if you dressed that way. Unless you sag half-way down to here."

"Mister Lewis!" The color in her cheeks was anger, not modesty. She was dressed the way college girls think girl archaeologists ought to dress, in khaki slacks and a tailored shirt, with a pith helmet perched jauntily on her blonde curls. I imagined her in the brief loin-cloth of my twenty-six girls, and the vision was not in the least unpleasant. A girl with knockers like Helene Martin's should share them with the world. But obviously she thought differently.

"Look," I said, "before you start changing anything around here, why don't you get acquainted with the project? I'll show you what we've unearthed so far, and fill you in on what I expect to find later. After the first week, if you still feel like making organizational changes, well talk about it then."

"All right," she agreed, after a moment's hesitation.

What I had to show her was pitifully small, but sometimes archaeological crews will sift sand for months without coming up with more than my three potsherds and a major artifact, which had all been found in the past three and a half weeks. The major piece was what I was excited about, as it seemed to contain a key to the Bumuru hieroglyphic, the written language used by these ancient people some seven thousand years ago. It bore a faint similarity to Sanskrit, which was exciting in itself, as it proved an ancient link between this part of the mid-Pacific and in Indus culture of the same historical period.

Helene Virginia Martin looked at it and smiled. Ancient languages obviously were not her field of study. I was beginning to wonder what was.

Progress on the digging itself was going a bit slower than I had anticipated, but this was due to the available labor on the island--the girls between the ages of fourteen and nineteen. The older ones spent most of their off-duty time trying to get pregnant so that they would qualify for marriage, and the younger ones occupied themselves with childish games and gossip. But, nevertheless, the work was progressing. Omu, in his fashion, was a good foreman, with a good knowledge of native female psychology. He was the gaudiest gaud-damned foreman I had ever seen, what with six necklaces around his sun-bronzed neck, a fresh-picked flower constantly over his left ear, and the blaze of color he wore around his loins, but I have never been one to interfere with native customs or costumes.

Helene had her say on this, too. "It looks," she observed, "like a rather mixed-up culture. The men dress like women and the women dress like men."

I was looking at a particularly well-endowed laborer who was built like a dusky Anita Ekberg. "Dress her in pants and she's still a woman," I said. "And what a woman!"

Helene looked at me sharply. "You sound as if you know," she said pointedly.

I changed the subject, tearing my eyes reluctantly from the lush breasts of Oonga, who not only had an Ekberg figure, but also owned the horizontal hip action of a stateside stripper. She was one of the older girls, and had pregnancy as her goal. Carrying a basket of dirt on her head, she jiggled out of sight.

At the head of the trench was a fifteen-year-old who also had a magnificent pair. A little smaller than Oonga, Calara was one of the best shovel-girls on the crew. She seemed to take perverse delight in overloading the baskets with quick flashes of her shovel. She worked in spurts, however, pausing to rest every five minutes while the basket-girls caught up with her. As we approached she waved gaily at me, her gamin-face glowing with a broad grin, her beautiful chest beaded with perspiration and streaked with the red dust of the island.

"Misser Lewiss!" she said, and. beckoned us closer, eyeing Helene with surprise.

"Miss Martin," I said, "this is our pace-setter, Calara." Then, to Calara, I said, "Miss Martin is from the university, and has come to help us."

"Shovel-girl or basket-girl?" Calara inquired quickly, her eyes full of contempt for the white woman.

Helene opened her mouth to say something, but I got there first with: "Brush-girl. She'll help me, personally."

Calara's eyes were envious--she had seen me carefully brushing the accumulation of the ages from the potsherds, and knew it for easy work. "Calara damn good shovel-girl," she announced defensively.

"The best," I assured her. "And the best looking."

At this, she threw her fabulous chest out another two inches. It compared favorably with Helene's. More than favorably, perhaps--I had no proof that Helene's was real.

"I think I've seen enough for today," Helene announced coldly. "Would you help me get settled in .my quarters?"

Four basket-girls were waiting for refills; I motioned them to follow us. "Your porters," I explained. "When you're settled I'd like to see you."

We had gone perhaps a dozen yards when Calara sang out: "Misser Lewiss! I found something!"

"You go ahead," I told Helene. "I wasn't expecting a woman so you'll be sharing my quarters until we can get a separate house built. If you want to put a partition down the middle, ask the girls--they'll be happy to oblige."

Helene looked at me in astonishment. "I insist on a place of my own, right now!" she flared.

"Sorry--it'll take two days to erect a house for you. And I'm not about to move out and give you mine. On this island it wouldn't be proper at all. If you want to sleep outside that's your business. Put up a partition and I'll honor it."

The khaki-clad girl stormed off with four half-nude native beauties in her wake. I went to the trench.

Calara's shovel had struck a large stone; with her fingers she had brushed away some of the earth around it, revealing hieroglyphics. It was roughly conical in shape, what we could see of it, and about eight inches in diameter.

"Yes, you have found something," I said. "Where's Omu?"

"Sakari most unhappy," Calara said simply. "Omu take her to his house to cheer her up."

"Great," I said. "On company time, too!" Omu, as I said, was a damn good foreman--and, I understand, a quite capable loinsman. He knew just what to do to make a disconsolate worker happy. I wondered if Sakari's unhappiness was due to the way I had treated her when she came to wake me up this morning...

I turned to one of the four younger girls who were truing the sides of the trench. "Amara, go to my house and bring my tools." Instantly, the girl was off, sprinting as if someone had goosed her. Two days before, she had been slacking off on the job, and apparently Omu had devised a suitable enough punishment so that she didn't want to qualify for it again. It was a pleasure to watch her virginal breasts bouncing as she bounded off in the direction of my quarters. She soon passed Helene's group, breaking stride only long enough to impart news of the find.

My new assistant halted her erstwhile porters and turned back, arriving at the same time that Amara showed up with my tools.

"What is it?" Helene demanded.

"Come on down and take a look," I said from the trench.

Awkwardly she eased herself into the slit, trying not to soil what the well-dressed girl archaeologist should wear.

"An artifact," she announced.

"Brilliant deduction," I sarcasmed. "Here," I said, handing her a toy-like shovel, "make yourself useful."

As Helene took it I heard Calara mutter off to one side, "Calara damn good shovel-girl," but I wasn't sure whether Helene caught it or not. At any rate, she fell to with cautious, workman-like motions, clearing the dirt from around the buried artifact. I put Calara and Helene's porters to work above. I tried to suppress a laugh when someone's shovel slipped, showering Helene's pith helmet with a load of damp clay.

"Damn!" she exclaimed, standing up and brushing the dirt from the vee of her blouse. "Can't these girls be more careful?"

"I think they're being careful as hell," I ventured, returning to my task.

"A man wouldn't have done a thing like that," she said irritably, glaring at a handful of clay that had slipped into her cleavage.

"Except to another man," I said. "I'm sure it was an accident."

"Well see about that!" she flared, starting to turn to the girls above. They were all busy shoveling dirt into a pile at the side of the trench.

"Why don't you concentrate on your job, and let them do theirs," I suggested gently. "This looks like a damned interesting hunk of rock."

An hour later it looked even more interesting. Sculpted from lava, it was lighter than it looked, but it still took six girls on each side to carry it to the work-tent, where Helene and I set about the task of brushing all of the dirt off the thing to reveal the pictographs and hieroglyphics on its surface. Roughly five feet in length, it resembled an arrow with a conical arrowhead at one end and a blob of something at the other. At its midpoint it pierced a geometrically perfect triangle.

"I'd expect to see something like this," Helene said, after looking at it for a while, "carved in the bark of a tree. If that triangle were a heart..."

I was wondering when you'd notice the symbolism. The ancients were much more literal than that. The arrow-pierced heart is a very modern development, growing out of the ancient delta shape, the symbol for woman, which represents the triangular patch of fur between her legs. And if you look closely, that's not an arrow."

I expected Helene to blush but she was too modern a college girl for that. "A pornographic artifact," she said instead.

I shook my head. "A religious symbol," I told her. "Like the Bantu tribes in Africa, the Burmuru were sex-worshippers. They had phallic symbols on almost everything they owned. Instead of prayer meetings they probably held orgies."

Helen crinkled her nose in disgust. "What does it say on this--uh--thing we've dug up?" she inquired.

I had cleaned the head of the "arrow" quite thoroughly by now, and bent to peer at the inscription. It was a variation of the hieroglyphic on the other major artifact I had found, and was even closer to Sanskrit. The language evolution inherent in this was fascinating. Instead of translating the thing, though, I thought I'd teach Helene some respect for her natural superior, me. I read it to her in Sanskrit, tracing the words with my finger as I did so.

She listened for a moment, then looked closely herself. As I traced the inscription around the arrowhead, I was only barely aware of the meaning of it--the sound of the language is beautiful,

When I finished she asked me what it meant.

"It's about the ceremonial relationship between the sexes. I'll work out a complete translation on paper tomorrow. It sounds almost like a religious litany of some sort."

Helene looked more closely at the arrowhead, following the inscription with her eyes. "Oh, what's that?" she asked, suddenly brushing the rock with her hand. "Ouch!"

She held her hand out, palm out, and I saw a scratch across two fingers, like a shallow razor cut.

"Some of this volcanic stuff has sharp edges," I warned. "I'll get the first-aid kit if you think it's serious."

"No, it's just a scratch. I thought I saw blood on the inscription--did you cut your finger?" she asked.

I looked; sure enough there was a bead of blood on my index finger, nothing more than a pinprick. I wiped it off on my thumb, then grinned at her. "If this were an American Indian dig," I told her, "we'd be blood-brothers."

"It isn't," she said icily. "So don't get any ideas about that partition, brother."

"I'll have a house built for you by day after tomorrow," I assured her, conscious of the chill in her voice.

Miss Helene Virginia Martin, as I said earlier, promised to be a first-class pain. Not only did she seem a relatively incompetent idiot, she was a prude to boot. And I had been convinced long before I came to Johnson's Atoll that women as good-looking as that should be used for entertainment purposes only.

Life on the island, until Miss Martin's arrival, had been right in line with my way of thinking.

To further complicate matters, sharing my "house" with her was sure to put a crimp in my sex life. I doubted if she would stand still for Oonga's nightly visit, or Sakari's novel method of waking me up in the morning.

But, in a Western way, Helene was twice as attractive as any of the brown-skinned girls on the island. Maybe, I thought--and then dismissed the idea as a pipe dream. When it came to love-making, nobody could beat an Island girl.

I would simply have to get my nightly ration under the stars tonight.