"I love you, Annie. I love you so much I don't want ever to hurt you. Ever, ever, ever. I want to be with you all the time. Yes, you're smart and talented and good." He kissed her tough face.

Whether forgotten or forgiven, the hurt of his laughter was gone from her eyes. She held him tighter, making a soft sound in her throat, a sound for him.

They lay together in the crackling yellow weeds, clinging. Douglas felt his love physically growing for her. More passionately than ever before in his life, he wanted to make love to her. He touched her. He felt that she understood what he wanted, that her breath on his neck was anticipation. A consummation as he'd never imagined, the joining of their species in language and body. Not dumb animal-banging but mutual love. ... He climbed over her and hugged her back.

Annie went rigid when he entered her.

Slowly, she rolled away from him, but he held on to her. "No." A horrible grimace came across her face that raised the hairs on the back of Douglas's neck. "Not you," she said.

She's going to kill me, he thought.

His passion declined; Annie disentangled herself and walked away.

He sat for a moment, stunned at what he'd done, stunned at what had happened, wondering what he would do the rest of his life with the memory of it. Then he zipped up his pants.

Staring at his dinner plate, he thought, it's just the same as if I had been rejected by a woman. I'm not the kind that goes for bestiality. I'm not some farm boy who can't find someplace to put it.

His hands could still remember the matted feel of her fur; tucked in his groin was the memory of being in an alien place. It had made him throw up out in the field that afternoon, and after that he'd come straight home. He hadn't even said good-night to the orangs.

"What's the matter?" Therese asked.

He shrugged.

She half rose out of her chair to kiss him on the temple. "You don't have a fever, do you?"

"No."

"Can I do something to make you feel better?" Her hand slid along his thigh.

He stood up. "Stop it."

She sat still. "Are you in love with another woman?"

Why can't she just leave me alone? "No. I have a lot on my mind. There's a lot going on."

"It never was like this, even when you were working on your thesis."

"Therese," he said, with what he felt was undeserved patience, "just leave me alone. It doesn't help with you at me all the time."

"But I'm scared, I don't know what to do. You act like you don't want me around."

"All you do is criticize me." He stood and took his dishes to the sink.

Slowly, she trailed after him, carrying her plate. "I'm just trying to understand. It's my life, too."

He said nothing and she walked away as if someone had told her not to leave footsteps.

In the bathroom, he stripped and stood under the shower a long time. He imagined that Annie's smell clung to him. He felt that Therese could smell it on him.

What have I done, what have I done ...

And when he came out of the shower, Therese was gone.

He had considered calling in sick, but he knew that it would be just as miserable to stay around the house and think about Annie, think about Therese, and worse, to think about himself.

He dressed for work, but couldn't eat breakfast. Realizing that his pain showed, he straightened his shoulders, but found them drooping again as he got out of the car at work.

With some fear, he came through the office. The secretary greeted him with rolled eyes. "Someone's given out our number again," she said as the phone buzzed. Another line was on hold. "This morning there was a man standing at the window watching me until Gramps kicked him off the property."

Douglas shook his head in sympathy with her and approached the orang's door. He felt nauseated again.

Vernon sat at the typewriter, most likely composing captions for his photo album. He didn't get up to greet Douglas, but gave him an evaluative stare.

Douglas patted his shoulder. "Working?" he asked.

"Like dog," Vernon said, and resumed typing.

Annie sat outside on the back porch. Douglas opened the door and stood beside her. She looked up at him, but-like Vernon-made no move toward the customary hug. The morning was still cool, the shadow of the building still long in front of them. Douglas sat down.

"Annie," he said softly. "I'm sorry. I'll never do it again. You see, I felt ..." He stopped. It wasn't any easier than it had been to talk to Oona, or Wendy, or Shelley, or Therese. ... He realized that he didn't understand her any more than he'd understood them. Why had she rejected him? What was she thinking? What would happen from now on? Would they be friends again?

"Oh, hell," he said. He stood. "It won't happen again."

Annie gazed away into the trees.

He felt strained all over, especially in his throat. He stood by her for a long time.

"I don't want write stories," she signed.

Douglas stared at her. "Why?"

"Don't want." She seemed to shrug.

Douglas wondered what had happened to the confident ape who'd planned to write a best-seller the day before. "Is that because of me?"

She didn't answer.

"I don't understand," he said. "Do you want to write it down for me? Could you explain it that way?"

"No," she signed, "can't explain. Don't want."

He signed. "What do you want?"

"Sit tree. Eat bananas, chocolate. Drink brandy." She looked at him seriously. "Sit tree. Day, day, day, week, month, year."

Christ almighty, he thought, she's having a goddamned existential crisis. All the years of education. All the accomplishments. All the hopes of an entire field of primatology. All shot to hell because of a moody ape. It can't just be me. This would have happened sooner or later, but maybe ... He thought of all the effort he would have to make to repair their relationship. It made him tired.

"Annie, why don't we just ease up a little on your work. You can rest. Today. You can go sit in the tree all of today and I'll bring you a glass of wine."

She shrugged again.

Oh, I've botched it, he thought. What an idiot. He felt a pain coming back, a pain like poison, without a focal point but shooting through his heart and hands, making him dizzy and short of breath.

At least she doesn't hate me, he thought, squatting to touch her hand.

She bared her teeth.

Douglas froze. She slid away from him and headed for the trees.

He sat alone at home and watched the newscast. In a small midwestern town they burned the issues of the magazine with Annie's story in it.

A heavy woman in a windbreaker was interviewed with the bonfire in the background. "I don't want my children reading things that weren't even written by humans. I have human children and this godless ape is not going to tell its stories to them."

A quick interview with Dr. Morris, who looked even more tired and introverted than usual. "The story is a very innocent tale, told by an innocent personality. Annie is not a beast. I really don't think she has any ability for, or intention of, corruption ..."

He turned the television off. He picked up the phone and dialed one of Therese's friends. "Jan, have you heard from Therese yet?"

"No, sure haven't."

"Well, let me know, okay?"

"Sure."

He thought vaguely about trying to catch her at work, but he left earlier in the morning and came home later in the evening than she did.

Looking at her picture on the wall, he thought of when they had first met, first lived together. There had been a time when he'd loved her so much he'd been bursting with it. Now he felt empty, but curious about where she was. He didn't want her to hate him, but he still didn't know if he could talk to her about what had happened. The idea that she would sit and listen to him didn't seem realistic.

Even Annie wouldn't listen to him anymore.

He was alone. He'd done a big, dumb, terrible thing and wished he hadn't. It would have been different if Annie had reciprocated, if somehow they could have become lovers. Then it would have been them against the world, a new kind of relationship. The first intelligent interspecial love affair ...

But Annie didn't seem any different than Therese, after all. Annie was no child. She'd given him all those signals, flirting, then not carrying through. Acting like he'd raped her or something. She didn't really have any more interest in him than Dr. Morris would in Vernon. I couldn't have misunderstood, could I? he wondered.

He was alone. And without Annie's consent, he was just a jerk who'd screwed an ape.

"I made a mistake," he said aloud to Therese's picture. "So let's forget it."

But even he couldn't forget.

"Dr. Morris wants to see you," the secretary said as he came in.

"Okay." He changed course for the administrative office. He whistled. In the past few days, Annie had been cool, but he felt that everything would settle down eventually. He felt better. Wondering what horrors or marvels Dr. Morris had to share with him, he knocked at her door and peered through the glass window. Probably another magazine burning, he thought.

She signaled him to come in. "Hello, Douglas."

Annie, he thought, something's happened.

He stood until she motioned him to sit down. She looked at his face several seconds. "This is difficult for me," she said.

She's discovered me, he thought. But he put that aside, figuring it was a paranoia that made him worry. There's no way. No way. I have to calm down or I'll show it.

She held up a photograph.

There it was-a dispassionate and cold document of that one moment in his life. She held it up to him like an accusation. It shocked him as if it hadn't been himself.

Defiance forced him to stare at the picture instead of looking for compassion in Dr. Morris's eyes. He knew exactly where the picture had come from.

Vernon and his new telephoto lens.

He imagined the image of his act rising up in a tray of chemicals. Slowly, he looked away from it. Dr. Morris could not know how he had changed since that moment. He could make no protest or denial.

"I have no choice," Dr. Morris said flatly. "I'd always thought that even if you weren't good with people, at least you worked well with the apes. Thank God Henry, who does Vernon's dark-room work, has promised not to say anything."

Douglas was rising from the chair. He wanted to tear the picture out of her hands because she still held it up to him. He didn't want to see it. He wanted her to ask him if he had changed, that it would never happen again, that he understood he'd been wrong.

But her eyes were flat and shuttered against him. "We'll send your things," she said.

He paused at his car and saw two big red shapes-one coppery orange, one chocolate red-sitting in the trees. Vernon bellowed out a groan that ended with an alien burbling. It was a wild sound full of the jungle and steaming rain.

Douglas watched Annie scratch herself and look toward chimps walking the land beyond their boundary fence. As she started to turn her gaze in his direction, he ducked into his car.

Angrily driving away, Douglas thought, why should an ape understand me any better than a human?

About "Her Furry Face": I had been interested in chimpanzees after reading Jane Goodall's books, and this carried over to an interest in language-using apes such as Lucy and Koko. My first glimmering of the story was to write something funny and satirical about an orangutan who became a celebrity best-selling author. As with many stories, two ideas collided and made something more complete. I had a character in mind whose roaming lover found everything about her irritating and everyone else wonderful. However, I couldn't quite grip the point of it all. So Douglas became a bridge between the two characters, but in my view the most interesting because of his tragic inability to love in a real way.

LEIGH KENNEDY.

WAR BRIDE.

RICK WILBER.

Rick Wilber is a novelist and short story writer whose work often focuses on the impact on cultures overwhelmed by colonizing aliens of one sort or another. His long-running S'hudonni Mercantile Empire series of stories began with the arrival and departure of the Pashi aliens in "War Bride," and continues through a number of other short stories in Asimov's Science Fiction magazine, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and elsewhere.

The Sweep, Wilber's novel about the colonizing Pashi aliens, is forthcoming. Wilber is also a journalism professor at the University of South Florida and is administrator of the influential Dell Award for undergraduate writers in science fiction and fantasy. Visit www.rickwilber.net for more information.

JAMES PACKS HIS BAG.

Ahab, Huck, Yossarian, Nick Adams, even Hornblower goes in, along with six toothbrushes, a handful of postcards with various sunsets and palm trees and bathing-suited blondes, and four like-new baseballs. He would like to pack his basketball, but it just won't fit.

He needs them-the books, the cards, the baseballs. He won't be coming back, and he's picked the things that will last the longest and serve him the best.