![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Chapter one, The Nymph and the Satyr, by Arthur Farmer
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 top-notch archaeological digger. I was not expecting them to send me someone with ash-blond hair, a slightly uptilted nose, sensuous lips, provocatively tip-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-fetishist 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 [huh huh], 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 in the wrong way. One simply does not say things like that in front of a native Johnson's Islander [huh huh], 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 own 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, a 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.
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 top-notch archaeological digger. I was not expecting them to send me someone with ash-blond hair, a slightly uptilted nose, sensuous lips, provocatively tip-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-fetishist 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 [huh huh], 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 in the wrong way. One simply does not say things like that in front of a native Johnson's Islander [huh huh], 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 own 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, a 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.
